Day 160
Whenever I see a predator about to kill its prey, I always root for the prey. Just yesterday (true story) a hummingbird flew through the open balcony doors into my house and got stuck at the ceiling trying to fly through the skylight windows. The cat waited patiently for the hummingbird to give up and hover down a little... which it eventually did.
And the cat just does it to be nice. It's his way of thanking me for all the cat food. In the two weeks I've lived in this house so far the cat's killed and presented to me three mice, a sparrow, and the hummingbird, as mere trophies. It's hard not to be annoyed at the cat, but the cat is in fact doing something very kind and human-like, just with a different object than a human would normally use.
And it should be humbling to point out that it wasn't far back in human history a dead animal was as good a gift to us as it is to a cat today. Do you want to get your neanderthal woman to do 'that thing' tonight?? Nothing like a fly-infested boar carcass to win her over.
And today, instead of the boar carcass to woo that lovely lady, we have a more elegantly prepared cow carcass, a depressant drug beverage, and perhaps a movie about people killing each other. It's comforting to know how much we've evolved as a species since our roots in the cave and on the savannah.
But really, I often find it difficult to avoid looking at the world through the lens of evolutionary psychology. When I see guys on those obnoxious harleys, or in 'pimped out' cars, I sometimes just see mountain goats waving their horns around, or monkeys beating their chests at the other monkeys, or male peacocks fluttering about all their colours. The strip club reminds me very much of a snake "mating ball" (you can google that). And so on.
The more that human relationships are understood in quantifiable, scientific terms the more they come to resemble an evolutionary story parallel to that of countless other species.
But, on the contrary, human relationships may not be as quantifiable as scientists wish them to be. Psychology, like any other science, has to accept certain precepts, not the least of which is the precept that if something can't be measured or tested, it is by very definition not worthwhile within the rubric of the discipline.
Hence why you get people saying stupid things like "love is just feremones." That conclusion is the result of testing people under the rubric that only testable things matter when it comes to attraction. But, a moment's reflection will tell you that attraction isn't necessary quantifiable or understandable in biological terms alone. Nobody goes around saying "Vision is just neurons firing in the occipital lobe," even though, in some sense, that's what it is. But that's not just what it is.
And that's the trick: science can't by its very nature discuss what I'll call the existential significance of feeling and perception. A reduction of something into scientific terms can be dangerous that way.
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On a separate note, I've had it up to here *hand at eye level* with this weather. It's 7 degrees celsius right now, windy and raining, smack in the middle of JUNE. I know, we're Victorians, spoiled rotten compared to the rest of the country, but still I think I have a right to complain. Just because I don't choose to live in some weather hell-hole like the rest of Canada doesn't mean I can't gripe when it sucks here!
So yea, the weather sucks. I want some heat and sunshine, and I want it to last more than a day.
And the cat just does it to be nice. It's his way of thanking me for all the cat food. In the two weeks I've lived in this house so far the cat's killed and presented to me three mice, a sparrow, and the hummingbird, as mere trophies. It's hard not to be annoyed at the cat, but the cat is in fact doing something very kind and human-like, just with a different object than a human would normally use.
And it should be humbling to point out that it wasn't far back in human history a dead animal was as good a gift to us as it is to a cat today. Do you want to get your neanderthal woman to do 'that thing' tonight?? Nothing like a fly-infested boar carcass to win her over.
And today, instead of the boar carcass to woo that lovely lady, we have a more elegantly prepared cow carcass, a depressant drug beverage, and perhaps a movie about people killing each other. It's comforting to know how much we've evolved as a species since our roots in the cave and on the savannah.
But really, I often find it difficult to avoid looking at the world through the lens of evolutionary psychology. When I see guys on those obnoxious harleys, or in 'pimped out' cars, I sometimes just see mountain goats waving their horns around, or monkeys beating their chests at the other monkeys, or male peacocks fluttering about all their colours. The strip club reminds me very much of a snake "mating ball" (you can google that). And so on.
The more that human relationships are understood in quantifiable, scientific terms the more they come to resemble an evolutionary story parallel to that of countless other species.
But, on the contrary, human relationships may not be as quantifiable as scientists wish them to be. Psychology, like any other science, has to accept certain precepts, not the least of which is the precept that if something can't be measured or tested, it is by very definition not worthwhile within the rubric of the discipline.
Hence why you get people saying stupid things like "love is just feremones." That conclusion is the result of testing people under the rubric that only testable things matter when it comes to attraction. But, a moment's reflection will tell you that attraction isn't necessary quantifiable or understandable in biological terms alone. Nobody goes around saying "Vision is just neurons firing in the occipital lobe," even though, in some sense, that's what it is. But that's not just what it is.
And that's the trick: science can't by its very nature discuss what I'll call the existential significance of feeling and perception. A reduction of something into scientific terms can be dangerous that way.
---
On a separate note, I've had it up to here *hand at eye level* with this weather. It's 7 degrees celsius right now, windy and raining, smack in the middle of JUNE. I know, we're Victorians, spoiled rotten compared to the rest of the country, but still I think I have a right to complain. Just because I don't choose to live in some weather hell-hole like the rest of Canada doesn't mean I can't gripe when it sucks here!
So yea, the weather sucks. I want some heat and sunshine, and I want it to last more than a day.
Comments
Most of our behaviors do parallel those in the rest of the animal kingdom in every conceivable way. And it can be a worthwhile activity to draw both theoretical and practical inspiration from these parallels. But humans are still humans, as opposed to fish, or snakes, or bears. And each one of us is an individual whose behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and lives resist duplication, despite the endless parallels.
It pains me whenever I hear the phrase "we're just a bunch of chemicals" or something to the same effect.
I think: "Way to go Einstein!"
It's not that I don't believe we're made of chemicals- of course we are! It's that whoever is speaking seems to think they're saying something important and spiritually insightful when, in reality, they are merely trying to buttress some prior comment with a trivial blanket assertion that is both useless and irrelevant. Assuming of course, the speaker is not actually a chemist, speaking from a working knowledge of chemistry, about actually chemical reactions! Good grief.
Don't even bother to get me started on the "just" part of the equation. Ugh.