“If Adam and Eve had two sons, how do we have black people, white people and Asians?” I had an insight after reading Darwin's on the Origin of Species. I had heard of a doctrine called "Social Darwinism." I also heard from many reputable sources that it had no relation to what Darwin actually said. Now I have that from the most reputable source. Disclaimer: I'm only halfway through it. I am taking a break to explore nature and digest what I have learned so far. I have yet to read what, if anything, he says about our own evolution. I have been able to make my own conclusions based of Darwin's description of genetic variation. This is not my only source. Darwin's work has been very influential in the biological science that has been developed since it was written. I can now see how a television program I watched in my youth was informed by it. It was called Wild Kingdom. It was hosted by a zoologist named Marlin Perkins. You may be able to find it on Youtube. I now recognize Darwin's influence in it. I took general biology as my life science elective toward my degree. The textbook introduction gave explicit acknowledgment to Darwin. It is generally accepted that humanity originated in Africa. Like all species there is a great deal of variation on our genes. Look at the great diversity of human populations in terms of skin shade. In Africa intense sunlight could damage bare skin. There is evidence that over five million years ago a change in environment caused humans to lose their fur. This can be found in The Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan. Those humans whose genes carried a variation to produce cells called melanocytes that produce melanin, a pigment that protects the skin, were given a survival advantage. Other factors in survival included tool making and the development of language. When species spread over a geographic distance, then become isolated from each other they will develop differently over many generations to adapt to different environments. Populations that had spread to northern Europe found themselves in an environment were production of melanin was no longer essential to survival. Over many generations it faded from dominance in the populations genome. According to Darwin, populations isolated in this way will have the same basic genome. Genes associated with melanin production are still present in northern populations. Those differences in genetic traits between European and African populations that can be seen in skin color and are dependant on latitude and climate. I can think of no example where toolmaking and language would be dependant on latitude. The cognitive ability to plan to hunt a giraffe is not that different than required to hunt caribou. Advanced language developed among different isolated populations. We can still see this in the great variation in human languages now. Social Darwinism argues that the "white race" dominated the darker "races" because they were evolutionarily superior. Actual Darwinism says no such thing. The history of colonialism can be looked at through a Darwinian perspective applied to culture. While one culture developed advanced mathematics, and a very accurate calendar, another learned to form iron into weapons. Darwin also discusses population pressure. Europe at the start of the colonial age was very populated, and started crossing oceans in numbers Americans and Africans found hard to resist. Parts of Asia were densely populated and European colonists were less successful there.
I am a humanist. There are nearly as many definitions of humanism as there are humanists. Here is mine. It includes the belief that humanity's fate is entirely in the hands of humans. To me, this means it follows that it's incumbent on us to treat each other decently. Science is the study of the natural universe based on that which can be seen and measured. As such it cannot be reconciled with supernatural claims for which there is no irrefutable evidence. Humanism, however, can be somewhat reconciled with Christianity, as defined in the preamble, the first ten verses, of chapter five of the Book of Matthew. 1Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them. 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
My recent reading of Darwin's Origin of Species has me thinking about our evolution as a species. At quarter of the way through Darwin's work, I decided to re-read something I had read during my aborted attempt at graduate school. It was an excerpt from The Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan titled The Escape Route: The Aquatic Theory of Human Origins. In it, she argues that that roughly five million years ago during a climate upheaval that turned much of Africa to desert, and drove our ancestors out of the trees, caused those living near the coast to adapt to that environment in ways that drove the species closer to our current form. I will not elaborate here on what this reading has me considering, only that it informs recently conceived work. I have now made it a quarter of the way through Origin of Species, and am considering what path our future evolution will take. Vonnegut had a satirical take on the subject in his novel Galapagos. In that book he had humans evolving over the next million years to return to the sea. Morgan postulated that our hairlessness, bipedalism, downward facing nostrils were adaptations to living part of the time in the sea's shallows. It helped us escape predators, and provided an abundant food source. The point in Galapagos was that our big brains, once an evolutionary advantage, had become a liability in that it was developed to a point that it allowed us to build a massive civilization at the expense of the environment. That environmental crisis would eventually spell the extinction of the human race, except for a small contingent stranded on the Galapagos Islands. They would go on to seed our future evolution of smaller brains so our skulls would be more streamlined so we could swim faster and catch more fish. This was all meant as satirical allegory for the trouble our big brains have gotten us into. My project is inspired by a similar sensibility. I have been considering how intelligence at the level we have developed came about. What are the evolutionary advantages? On my walk today I had an insight. I'll save that for the finished work. The focus of the work will be how our big brain could be an advantage in some ways to our surviving the environmental changes we are causing, and in some ways a disadvantage. The disadvantage should be obvious to thinking people. Our development of toolmaking, and language gave us the power to poison our environment to an extent far beyond what any other species has been able to do. The variability in intelligence across the human population insures that there will be disagreement among different individuals, and cultures, about how to address the crisis. Evolution requires natural selection over many thousands of generations. We may or may not evolve traits that are beneficial to survival in a rapidly changing environment. Our big brains have enabled us to adapt in that we are able to build structures that will protect us from the environment. This provides the ability of the population to continue growing at a geometric rate of increase. There will, inevitably, be a limit. When will we reach that limit? How will those limits manifest themselves? I believe we are in the early stages of one of those manifestations of collapse. This is in the growing disparity of wealth. There have been cycles throughout recorded history of great accumulation of wealth, followed by social upheaval, as occured recently in the French, Russian, and Mexican revolutions. The recent "Arab Spring" is related. Those are my thoughts. I have more, but don't want to give those spoilers now.
We are living in dystopian times. Perhaps we always have been. I am starting to think Revelation may have been the first dystopian novel. I have been trying to wrap my head around the whole "End of the World" genre. Truly. Revelation. No, I do not believe in four headed beasts with tongues of fire any more than I believe in Klingons. Still I consider it a relevant work of dystopian fiction. Relevant in that the author, in and around all that Armageddon shit, spoke to the culture in the Mediterranean basin at the time. There were 'good guys' and 'bad guys.' I get the sense that had the author lived someplace other than Patmos, say Smyrna for example, the heros and villians would be cast differently. We live in a time and place where the villians are defined for us by the media. Terrorists, Russians, immigrants; It depends on your news source really. In Iran we are called "The Great Satan." Russian leaders have been fond of calling us 'Imperialists.' The thing is, no one's description is totally wrong. They are all describing the Human Condition from different points of view. The human condition, and civilization; the key to our situation can be found in both. Jane Goodall ruffled feathers in the animal behaviourist community by describing the culture of chimpanzees. Before her, the scientific community put humans apart from the animal world. (I really need to finish Origin of Species, as I have not yet gotten to much of what Darwin says about us.) Some of what Darwin has said, up to chapter four, supports the notion that we can examine our own behavior and abilities from examining closely related species. Chimps can be real assholes too. Wife beacons. More later.
Everyone is concerned about the recent events in eastern Europe, as well they should be. Many are expressing confusion about who to blame. Even more are putting the blame squarely on Putin. Don’t get me wrong, Putin is by far the worst actor in all of this, but there are provocations. Russia, at the core of the old USSR, lost the Cold War. Some of the territories that split from the USSR at the end of the Cold War have joined their prior adversary, NATO. Now there is talk of Ukraine joining NATO as well. If you look at a map, it is apparent why an authoritarian ruler in Russia would see this as a threat. Russia, which lead the USSR, and the wider Warsaw Pact would be surrounded by NATO. Do they fear being attacked by NATO? I don’t think so. The west would, however, dominate economically, and this could be making Russian leadership feel like a cornered animal. It is important to consider that I have been speaking about the leadership of the parties in all of this. War is not in the interest of ordinary people like you and me. It never is. It never was. War is representative of the march of human progress. Throughout the march of history, populations of this country, and that, have been convinced to go along because “right is on our side.” In many conflicts, like this one, and that thing in the 1940s, there is clearly a major aggressor. This may have been the case in many of the bloodbaths down the ages of human experience. It doesn’t have to be. The people who are actually slated to do the fighting and dying are not from the ruling class. They are you and me. Our families and neighbors. Once in the recent past, many of them were convinced to fight and die to save their fatherland from a non-existent Jewish conspiracy. Many were convinced there was such a threat by rulers who knew how to play on their prejudices and phobias. I am not a believer in any literal interpretation of scripture but have found some relevant truth in the Christian Book of Revelation, which starts with an address to the “seven churches in the province of Asia.” Chapter two addresses specific regional churches. The author, John of Patmos, commends Ephesus in modern day western Turkey for worshiping the proper god but admonishes them for some backsliding. He likens the leaders of the church in Smyrna to Satan. He has similar critiques of the churches in Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. What strikes me from looking at the world today is that if the author had been based in Smyrna, the good guys and the bad guys would be different. The point I want to make is that the information we get to see about our leaders is usually controlled by those leaders. Even in our American democracy, the true government, large corporations, control most media content. The broader point is that while Revelation predicts the end times, we have not seen these things come to pass in the nearly two thousand years since it was written. This doesn’t mean I believe the human race will continue on forever. I am, in fact, certain that our civilization will eventually collapse. I fear, as did many people in biblical times did, that I may live to see it. August 1945 was a huge global wakeup call on that point. The citizens of Roman occupied Judea certainly knew that Rome was the seat of an empire larger and more powerful than any that had been seen before. They understood that plagues, famine, and drought came and went. Combined with the growth of human civilization that even they witnessed, it instilled fear that it would all come crashing down. Crash down it did, several times over the last few thousand years. Then came Darwin. He became famous for describing the ways in which life came and went over the longer history of the planet. In his seminal work he describes how organisms tend to reproduce in numbers too great to sustain themselves in an environment, and eventually must be ‘destroyed,’ in some cases to the point of extinction. In the last two hundred years humankind has developed technical means, in industry and agriculture, to grow the population to numbers that would not have been possible before. The industrial revolution was about a hundred years old when Darwin presented his findings, and he took note of the accelerating growth of the human population. What will save us? I have hope the human race will survive, but that is possible only if two things happen. First everyone will need to start questioning what they are told by their leaders. Then they will have to acknowledge that growth of our population, especially at our current levels of consumption, and the effects of that consumption on the environment, is not sustainable. Modern warfare could certainly accelerate our demise.
Ok, I have been having trouble focusing on my writing. This has not been a totally bad thing. I have been focused on two closely related things that I am doing in support of what has become my primary writing project. Since earlier last year I have been walking. Miles and miles of walking. Walking an average of thirty miles a week. You may have seen me. Really. For the very first time I will reveal in these forums an actual image of myself. View attachment 23072 Yes, I'm that guy you have seen around your town walking around in a brown hat. It's a group actually. The Association of People who Understand Practical Headgear for Being Outside. What have I been doing on these walks? Taking pictures and videos. Almost three thousand files. Maybe ninety percent JPG, and the restMP4. What am I taking pictures of? They will be part of a multimedia art project on a particular project. I am taking pictures of trash. Birds too, and trains, but it is the trash that will be the subject of the piece. View attachment 23071
I have decided to give my pen name a middle name I am now Vincent A Higgins. Aloysius, after a saint in the church I left at the age of seventeen. At eighteen I was sent invitations to apply to several colleges. One of them was one I had never heard of, with a very funny name. It was in Spokane WA, and was called Gonzaga. I would later find it was named after Saint Aloysius Gonzaga.
Holidays over. New Year coming up you say? Nine PM rolls around I say; "It's midnight somewhere. Happy New Year, and good night." No walking today due to rain. Those walks have helped me focus on the direction of my #1 project. I will miss the 1/1 deadline of going live with it. Life, and a little writer's block, got in the way. The focus will be on a single watershed. The one I have been hiking was the one I originally intended to focus on, but the next one north is larger, and starts on an indian reservation, which could be worked into the intro. It is also bordered on the north by a very large military reservation.
This is being posted here for reaction before going live on Blogger. Introduction View attachment 23069 In the last two years I have walked extensively through watersheds that are just miles from the Pacific Ocean. I pass miles of streets and streams that are often clogged with the waste of our consumer culture. It’s depressing. I now realize there is something I can do. I have started going around picking up plastic trash. No. I have no intention of ever attempting to pick it all up myself. I am starting by studying it. I intend to use knowledge I have acquired over a career in the technical professions to propose some things that should help to stem the flow into the ocean. There are some who have proposed machines to collect the waste from the open ocean. I wish them success, but there are big challenges to scaling it to the needed proportions. My proposals deal with the terminal stage of the pollution’s journey to the sea. A little about my background. I have taught. I have done other things. I am retired from doing a variety of technical occupations, mostly in manufacturing, with a fairly lengthy detour into construction and land development. It is the latter that I will mine for details of what I am proposing. Now for a confession. I am responsible for much of the problem. I am a Boomer. Over the course of my life I have worked in the production of everything from consumer products to military weapons. Personal transportation over my career has left behind a horrible carbon footprint. The starting point of this presentation will have to do with another of my past sins. From 1977 to 1988 I was a smoker of cigarettes. Cigarette filters are a major source of plastic, cellulose acetate, flowing into the ocean. The relative uniformity of the size of the pieces makes them a good subject for studying the flow, and how to arrest it.
Just over a year later. Time to light this up. I've been walking exclusively since a bike accident involving a potentially serious injury, but the outcome was fine. Last week I completed my longest walk since my health issues began well over ten years ago. Ten miles. I have started carrying a notebook to write down my ideas. Came up with some doozies. Offensensitivity alert. Involves politics. The 2nd amendment was intended to protect the American nation from the savage Indians, and escaped slaves. Sadly, those so called savages were not the threat. The well-armed Americans were. We are their legacy. It is time we own up to it. Those now wanting to use the 2nd amendment to overthrow the elected government are arguing from similar motivation. The perceived threat this time has morphed into Indians from further south, in Central America, and inner city black youth. Many of the fiercest defenders of the 2nd amendment openly attack the First. Therein lies the real threat they face. Having to hear an honest recounting of the history. A history that many deny rather than face the future with all Americans. They claim the government is out to get them because they are giving privileges to minorities. Those minorities that have been robbed of privileges for well over two centuries. They feel armed insurrection is what they were given to make change. We were actually given the First for that. If, in a representative form of government, rebellion comes from a minority of the citizens, their only hope of success is by armed force. The First amendment is intended to give citizens freedom to have their own opinions, and for the government to respect the opinions of all citizens. It gives them freedom to freely assemble and express grievances with the government. It is imperfect. This is largely because while the government is required to respect my opinion, There is nothing that compels anyone reading this to do so. Some may get very heated and angry at some of my words. That's life. I will not temper my words for them, nor will I get in a war of insults. I'm too old for that shit. Donald Trump was a highly visible disaster on the world stage. I cannot deal with anyone who supports him. They know what he is. They identify with him. The deny being racist. Many I have spoken to have convinced me that they really believe they are not racists. The reasoning I have gotten from more than one was along the lines of; it would only be racist if they were not truly inferior to us. Many of the people who believe this are highly educated and economically successful. The success often comes out of exploitation. Such people have been called trained monkeys. It is an analogy I have used referring to many of my former colleagues in aerospace engineering. I never talked politics at that workplace. I was fired once for, among other things, talking politics. Those other things involved complaining about the exploitive corporate greed of my employer, and even my contacting of government agents regarding their corrupt business practices. The discussion of politics was because all this occurred around the time GW Bush and his gang of "upper crust C students" were going to throw young American men, like "toys some rich kid got for Christmas," at a personal enemy, using an attack on us by others as an excuse. Quotes;Kurt Vonnegut-Man Without a Country.
Not really a fan of the fantasy genre, but was a fan of many bands and artists during the seventies. Younger fantasy fans may or may not be familiar with this band. I found this video of one song featuring the artwork of the painter Roger Dean, who illustrated many of their, and other artist's albums. Enjoy.
I had a heart attack in 2008. I had gotten quite fat, and did not get much exercise. I have had a bicycle most of my life. In 2006 I got a nice one because an opportunity arose for me to commute to work easily by bike. By 2008 I was riding ten miles comfortably, and had lost thirty pounds when it happened, while I was riding the bike. A passer by saw me and called 911. When I came too, I felt much better than I had in weeks. I was getting tired, and having heart burn. I was back to work in two weeks. Back on the bike in three. The docs tell me that the exersize I had been doing greatly improved my outcome. By 2012 I was doing sixty mile rides in five hours, and have done a few over 100. The last year has had many health challenges. A broken bone six months ago has taken me mostly off the bike. I broke a foot riding it. I can ride, and I recently did some hills, but find that I am getting skittish about breaking another bone at my age. I can't handle a stationary. I get too bored. Music helps. Lately I have taken to keeping in shape by walking, and fortunately there are hills nearby to make them pretty cardio. Now I am nursing a blister, so the walk was short. The last two days have been almost entirely on pavement. I am nervous about twisting an ankle on the back country trails. Kinda sucks. Looking at walking sticks, kind of like ski poles, for better traction, especially down hill. The blister developed on a spot the shoe rubs going down too. View attachment 23060
In one of my earlier posts I made reference to "channeling Kilgore Trout." Here is what that is about. For those unfamiliar, a recurring character over many novels by Kurt Vonnegut is a science fiction writer by that name. He is not exactly the same in all of the books he appears in, and in the case of Galapagos, he is a ghost narrator that haunts a ship that makes an ill fated journey to the islands made famous by Darwin. One of my favorite books is Vonnegut's 1978 novel Jailbird. In that case, Trout is the pen name of a prisoner serving a life sentence for espionage. He is a friend of the protagonist, whose first two days of freedom upon his release are the focus of the story. The protagonist, Walter Starbuck, was a low level official in the Nixon administration who takes the fall, and serves two years, for some higher ups in the Watergate scandal. Starbuck narrates the story of an incredible journey to his old haunts in New York, using flashback, and foreshadowing for a gradual exposition to a stunning, and ironic conclusion. Interspersed in the narrative, Starbuck quotes story lines from Trout. The one about Einstein going to heaven could stand on it's own. Earlier today, I also posted small clips of some dystopic storylines. I would imagine that Trout's stories were Vonnegut's way of burping out story ideas.