Sociobiology and the Roots of Human Social Systems

     In Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology, he stated that humans have 2-5 million sweat glands, far more than any other primate, helping us become distinctly adaptive to bipedalism since we could move longer distances than others in our family tree.  It helped me realize that sweating profusely is nothing to be ashamed of; in fact, people who sweat more readily have a superior trait in our evolutionary branch.  People who sweat more can survive in extreme environments like excessive heat or food scarcity, which requires further migration.  While our culture seems to shame sweat with expressions of disgust, I wear it like a badge on my sleeve.  When I'm running or working hard, I don't care what others think.  I'm content to show the world how strong this necessity of human survival is in me.

    The book itself seems to have caused a rift in the sciences, as it rightly suggests a biological basis for some of the more nefarious human behaviors.  The social sciences in particular (psychology, sociology) take issue with the postulate that genes determine most of our behavior, socially and individually.  Though I majored in social sciences, I'm not going to let it influence my judgment on the matter.  I believe much of our behavior can be explained the same way animal behavior can, since we all developed along similar lines and we all came from the same ancestor species.  But humans are so marvelously diverse that biology can't explain all behavior- environments certainly can as well.  

    It's just that as social creatures, it's important to consider the roots of anthropological and political order, thus I feel we must heavily consider the information in this book when investigating how civilization became the way it is, with its hierarchical structures and dog-eat-dog mentalities, with so much inequality that it's a miracle we can see our sociological habits as any more superior than insects.  We are truly a a classic example of evolutionary convergence, where our social habits have strangely emerged to mimic ants and bees.  We create hierarchies and network the same way they do; we build and destroy, claim property and wage war and build cities like ant colonies; we follow each other in line, excavating and consuming resources like there's no tomorrow; all to feed our miraculous amount of nervous energy; and like them, we are far stronger than our small stature would indicate.

The Parenting-Industrial Complex

     One of the important things to learn from Gabor Mate's The Myth of Normal is that the western version of parenting is toxic to culture.  Self-soothing, shaming, ignoring, teaching them to sleep alone, no breastfeeding- these are all symptoms of a backwards philosophy we inherited from the Puritans, who sought to enhance the Protestant work ethic by sacrificing the child's well-being.  Because now we don't have the time, energy, or patience to always be by our child's side.  We don't have multiple caregivers like the thousands of hunter-gatherer societies before us, all through history, that rarely left infants alone.  We're lucky to even have children in multiple age groups living near us, for our children to interact with.  And if we don't, we have to pay thousands of dollars for daycare or preschool just to buy them a social life.

    This is something I have never been more wrong about.  Four years ago, I agreed with Dr. Benjamin Spock in his most-popular-selling-parenting-book-of-all-time that discipline should be taught as early as possible, and with our pediatrician that letting a baby cry to sleep won't do it any harm.  I tried to enforce these views on my wife and firstborn for a long time, but neither would succumb to these westernized violations of nature.  Every time I made a stressful situation worse by trying to force compliance, it made my son that much more defiant.  My wife was right all along; we needed to hold him as much as possible, no matter how tired this sick society made us.  And no matter how little help we got.  

    My mother has the same disease I have, the expectation that a child should have minimal contact in order not to spoil them.  It is a disease of our culture and society and goes a long way to explaining how neurotic these generations have become, at least in the west.  I see no such symptoms in places like Thailand, my wife's homeland, where younglings are given as much attention as any other mammalian species gives to theirs.  It is even a crisis of evolution, that we are teaching our children to be as unemotional and detached from nature as possible, going against the fiber of every other upbringing in our kingdom, the mammals, where we inherited a natural need to be touched, held, and loved unconditionally.  

    I have not seen evidence that being fully attentive to children aged 1-5 spoils them.  My feeling is that it only happens if parents continue doing it past an appropriate age.  The whole idea is fodder for the parenting-industrial complex, which publishes books that indoctrinate us with the capitalist suburbia mantra that before we can care for our children, we must make the money to support them.  If we must teach them to be alone at an early age, all for that glorious dollar, so that we can prove how successful we are as individuals, then it is a total sham in the eyes of nature, which judges us from afar, mocking us with the evidence that all mammals care for their young more than we do, as did every human culture before ours.  It proves how much the western lifestyle is a neurotic function of individualism, a crippling detergent from reality, which has not only damaged our minds but the world around us as well.

The Red Cedar

It was the only home they knew,

A hollowed red cedar in a dampened wood,

Carpets of moss fringing their hideaway,

Solace of snow undressing the spring.

Tempest of ocean the divide radiates

Between their races, between their souls,

First love, young as the budding trilliums,

Shadows of war spoiling the vintage.

There they hid, in the hollow cedar,

The world away from them, no one could see

Their secret, a sacred natural temple

Where all their differences could be shared.

She touched him there, on fertile ground,

Shafts of sunlight penetrating

Holes in the wood where he held her,

Hands trembling, a dangerous submission,

Breaths rising, secrets compromised,

When he asked her to marry him,

In the the hollow red cedar, her hands on his chest,

Their breaths subsiding, the golden sunlight penetrating

Deep, a rupture of doubt to darken the bliss.

Ferocious Trash Angel Package Pixie

She was a blur, courageously assure,

Obscurely dirty, wearing a dusty shirt,

She churned the packages, burnt and purged,

The cardboard buried in magic words,

Spurned conveyor backward once heard,

Earned my turn at the faint soft yearn,

Enchantress of perfume, a luring dessert,

The smile that served my humble reserve.

Silver streaks of hair superb,

Glossy nails of length absurd,

Sandy freckles aglow, a vacant concern,

Eyes and lips of fermented luster,

And the curves, wow, they made me burst,

Frisky whorl of unburdened swirls,

Stirring mischief among the boxes unfurled.

Geography Ponk

To be given another chance is an unexpected treasure,

A dream recovered is a mistake reversed,

To teach one's greatest talent is a life fulfilled,

Dawn of excellence the voyage traversed,

Every struggle groveling to martyrdom. 

A garden of maps the trees encompass,

Stems magnetic, aligned in longitude,

Mountains and rivers carving the petals,

Fragrant valleys leading to the pollen

Where ripened cities upwell the roots.

As they blossom, life comes full circle,

Spring returns, growth retaliates,

Wraps itself over the civilizations

Wasted by a wintry youth,

A long winter, the longest in memory,

New certainties thawing that season of doubt.

Insects fertilize the streets, ambitions erected

From buildings in the budding,

Frozen wishes melted by the sun,

Turning toward that sacred energy

Watching over us like the Maker.

Shadows lift and suddenly it is noon,

The busiest hour, a time to catch up,

Enter in the lost data, navigate the hedges,

Be the one you were destined to be,

When suddenly a funny noise disturbs the peace.

It's a blimp aloft, a child's play thing,

Crashing into the trees, a silly interruption,

Generated by other desires to complete the mission,

Reminding you that their gift is yours to return,

A father to maintain, a teacher to become.