Patience: the gift of delayed gratification

At my household we celebrate the mid-winter holiday from December 20 or 21, 'til about January 13. In America today we are already weeks into a consumer frenzy called Xmas. The third Walmart Holiday ad came in the Sunday paper this weekend. Santas across the globe are talking about their gigs starting. I take deep breaths & hope to stay calm during the next several weeks. I'm rehearsing to sing in the choir with Open Eye Figure Theatre's Holiday Pageant.

When we learned to wait, to be patient, we built several strong, new connections in our brains that serve us today in ways we are only beginning to understand. Patience is ultimately the basis of economy. A look at the word economy reveals the notion of managing a household: in other words food, shelter, & offspring or dependents. If a strong economy means the ability to eat well, live & sleep well, and bring great kids into the world then patience gives us real advantages.

Over the next few weeks I expect to write about how our ability to wait: for delicious food; the ecstasy of sex; the comfort of home; the exhilaration of games well played, art well made, songs well sung, dances well danced; or the transcendence of preforming a physical feat, has helped our brains to become better at guiding & planning fulfilling lives.

• Patience, a real gift for the holiday.

Making & throwing stone weapons: The gift of handedness

Unlike crossing the Rubicon, crossing the corpus callosum is a two-way task. We can go back across the connection between the two hemispheres of the brain. However, too often we are lazy, we don't push the thought process to use both sides of our thinking. When we're in conversation and the language centers are humming we often allow our sensing side to languish. When we're working out or moving in performance we often get into a state of languagelessness - a place where we might say we're "in the zone." These are a result of the dualistic nature of our brains. While the motor cortex works, behind the scene, neatly controlling the left side of you body from the right side of your brain and vice versa, our limbic system which surrounds the core "brain stem is exempt from hemispheric dichotomy and the cortex, where our "conscious thoughts originate, is usually under the glamour of this cross brain odyssey. ( what the heck does that sentence mean?)

Here's my idea. Our cerebral cortex –the outer folds of our brains; the place where language, tool use, conscious thought, creative juices, style, advanced planning and many other human traits originate– is hobbled to some degree in most people's brains because of the difficulty of processing ideas, thoughts and nerve impulses across the corpus callosum. Meanwhile, down low, in the core of our brain the limbic system, a knot of brain structures we share with mammals and probably marsupials & monotremes, the crossing is less an issue. And, when we get to the R-complex, that brain stem at the top of our spinal cord, it becomes entirely about reaction.

When we learned by mimicry to fashion and throw tools, weapons and play things we used the same hands for the same tasks as the individual we were learning from. As these skills were passed along from generation to generation handedness, in most cases right-handedness, became the norm. But, even this long, long evolutionary tree can be reversed. We can become ambidextrous or, less dependent on our dominant hand by practice. I assert that by working to be more ambidextrous we can increase our brain's connection to the other side.

Food storage: 11+ Millennia of Solar Power

We've been storing food for more than eleven thousand years. Granaries over eleven thousand years old have just been uncovered in Jordan. Wow! You have to be glad that people were able to use simple technology to store food, essentially storing the sun's energy for later use. Think of all the great things it allows us to do!

Specialization, new uses for time, art, politics, housing, clothing, food cultivation, domestic animals. The list could go on and on. We owe it all to food storage. We didn't have to spend our time hunting and gathering. We could gather and save! Smooth out the slow times with the abundant. We become more social, able to accommodate larger groups, better learners. I can just imagine the advances that these ancestors made when they could store food! 

What about talking? Gifts in story.

I talked in my St Pat's Day post about Language. Now I've been learning some things about communications that lead me to think the gift of story goes back further. 

Primates of many types understand and respond to language in amazing ways. Many mammals can learn to respond to aural stimuli but some chimps gather the meaning of numerous words and are able to understand them even when they're put together in unique, new ways! Watching a chimp carry a TV out of the enclosure to the prompt, "Can you bring the TV outside?" was instructional. We know that birds understand words and learn to create unique sequences. We know that recent experiments have placed the gene for language into mice. We know that most mammals experience emotions, some as complex as human emotions. So, when are we going to let them vote?

People turned this ability for language into an entirely new thing. I can relate a story or idea to you in a few words and if you grasp the concepts behind the story, you can repeat the story without remembering or even using any of my words. If you know more than one language you most likely can translate my story. This is how human culture has created a new life form on earth. Society. Human society exists as a living organism separate from the individuals that make it up. We've created a monster be allowing a new replicator -like genes- to participate in our culture. The meme builds languages to allow for easier replication of these conceptual life forms.

Wow, we've really got it good don't we?

Eccrine sweat glands: A new sensitivity & mobility.

Round about 2,000,000 years ago our ancestors were moving across the landscape, out of the forests, running long distances, collecting tool material, exploiting the midday period when quadripeds soaked too much heat to be active. This meant we needed to dissipate heat ourselves. What better way than a network of two to four million eccrine sweat cells spread across the surface of our skin? By that time most of our sweat glands were on our palms and soles. They originally provided moisture for better grip when fleeing or fighting and were emotionally activated. Since we started to stand upright, exploit the midday times when most quadripeds rested our species evolved any sweat glands that activate based on heat. Now most sweat glands are used solely to dissipate heat. 

I'm amazed by simple seeming innovations to our genotype that end up providing a real advantage to us as individuals. I'm also amazed at how memotypes sometimes work to overcome innovations as in the development of antiperspirants and deodorants. 

Empathy: The first gift of human civilization

IT has to be said as the elected "nay sayers" in Congress start to sing their chorus against any Supreme Court Justice nominee who might have empathy: our ability to see the world thru the eyes of others was the beginning of our transition from cold blooded, killers and procreators to the civilized people we are today.  Yes, empathy, the gift of being able to put yourself into the shoes of others. 

Without being able to see the world thru others eyes we never learn to communicate. We never learn to care for our children, we never learn to govern, we never learn human emotion. Many mammals have an ability for empathy but, it our finely tuned skill at being able to understand what another creature, not just another human, is experiencing that unlocked most of what distinguishes us from reptiles. Empathy allows a mother to nurture her young. Empathy makes mentoring possible. Empathy is a necessary concept behind all economic transactions. 

Please, tell your Republican Senator  your opinion of empathy. It's the foundation of our legal system. From the Ten Commandments to the Koran, to the US Constitution, the primary purpose of these instruments is to codify empathy. Listen to a Senator try and create a dichotomy with Empathy & Legal decision making on opposite sides!

(Why are the the Republicans so opposed to anyone who might display empathy? My guess is John Kyl, the junior Republican Senator from Arizona didn't think before he came up with this amazing way to criticize any potential nominee that our President proposed. 

Of the President, Kyl said, "He believes in justices that have empathy," Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

Had Senator Kyl thought first I'm sure he would have realized the key place empathy holds in our culture, our community, our government, and our civilization.)

It really makes Santa wonder: What are these leaders thinking? Who are they trying to impress? I remember talk about mainstream values and ideas. We are really getting far out of the mainstream if we take empathy, a basic, core aspect of human existence off the table for any potential Supreme Court Nominee.

The Lever: Move the World

"Give me a long enough lever and a platform to stand on, I will move the earth"
-Archimedes

When Archimedes discovered the power of the lever in the second century BCE humans had been using science and it's language, mathematics for tens of thousands of years. (Meanwhile, conceptions of God were much more recent ideas on the human memescape.) People had likely been using levers for quite some time as well but the gift Archimedes gave us, (one of many, many gifts he left for us) is the ability to calculate all the forces involved to create levers, fulcrums, pulleys, rigging, etc. to carry out the work that previously required many strong men!

Now, we use leverage and the concepts in areas beyond the strictly mechanical. In finance for example, the concept of leverage refers to the ability to attract and service debt as a growth strategy at certain phases of an entities life. Some might argue that leverage had substantial influence on the recent banking/lending crisis. We might try to understand what are the basic constituents of leverage in lending? 

In simplified form, the assets are the "weight" to be moved, liability is the "lever", equity is the "fulcrum" and cash is the force applied to one "end of the lever." Of course there are other ways to interpret the lever metaphor and finance. I suggest this one to show how the concept of lever is used in diverse situations.

Just this morning a radio commentator suggested that President Obama had leverage in dealing with Republicans and with Congress because of his popularity with the people. Political leverage is an even more abstract image for levers. What is the weight? The fulcrum? The lever?

Counting time: Joining the magic of number & life's events

Back on Santa's Birthday I talked about the magic of number. How our ability to count beyond one, two, a few and many has allowed us amazing advances. Today, in honor of my beloved's birthday I want to expand on number to the counting of time. I think this might bring us to the origin of SANTA, that bearded gift giver who came at the winter solstice to predict the return of the sun from the south after it seemed to fall almost to the horizon in some northern reaches. Those first Santas brought seeds, and that prediction. They were able to predict the return on f the sun because they had learned to count time.

Counting time seems a simple, unimportant task now but this shared skill allowed some groups of people to thrive while their contemporaries who could not count time floundered. As with all deeply rooted memes, this gift pushes evolution without directly affecting the genome, or the phenotype. It means a slowing of change in physical characteristics and advance for those skilled at manipulating abstract concepts. My goodness! What a gift. Counting time!

The Inclined plane: Great tool for many things!

I know you're all thinking the inclined plane is no big deal. Slide a block up the hill to make a pyramid. Make a wedge to keep a door closed! There is a lot more to it than that. An inclined plane allows the user to lift an object using less force than would be required to move the object directly up. The plane allows the object to rise slowly but steadily. When it was invented, about ten thousand years ago it changed the height and majesty of building we could make.

You probably know that Archimedes advanced the uses for the inclined plane by wrapping one around a cylinder and making a screw! Archimedes Screw allowed water to lifted and run through out an area by way of aqua ducts! Let's hear it for the Inclined Plane another gift to us from the smart people Before the Common Era!

Rhythm & Music: Gifts of story and action

I've been thinking about music lately because I spend so much time practicing the guitar and listening to music. I used to let the music flow over me and I was inspired by the song, the lyrics, the beat, the melody. I couldn't really tell what was happening. Now that I've taken some lessons and start to understand more clearly the structure of music like the simple 8 measure verse or chorus. AABA or AABBAA or ABAB rhyming schemes and chord progressions like I IV V I or I IV V IV I now seem more obvious when I listen to the songs I like. 

Music experience like mine seems to mirror the flow of music in human evolution. We started out with simple stories, maybe told later with approving sounds of our cohorts. Or, stories told with a beating drum in the background. As musicians became more adept, tuned their instruments differently, or built new ones, stories & rhythms became more complex. 

As rhythms evolved our ability to hear them was enhanced. We could move to them more smoothly. Dance co-evolved with the rhythms. Our species grew stronger bodies, bigger brains and better prediction skills. 

Music really was a gift that keeps on giving. Finally, its only in the past hundred years that we have have widespread recording techniques so all the sounds that went down before the first sound recorders are lost forever! Those performances were written down at times but many are really lost, vibrating forever into the ether at the speed of sound but unavailable to us.

Science: A new way to reason.

When we first started experimenting our science was primitive but very important to growing our brains. Throwing rocks, cooking food, or maybe just fermenting it, building, group hunts, fire control, group story telling, dyadic grooming, etc. all primitive science projects helped, or propelled our brains to grow and add fun new parts!

I don't think we understood the scientific method then, language being so primitive. I do think we experimented and made choices based on our observations. The science we conducted was more evolutionary than replicable until we developed memes to transmit the observations and techniques to one another. So once we learned, and taught each other to make fire we'd created a fire making meme. I think this is the essence of science and an incredibly sweet gift from our distant ancestors. 

(Any guesses on how long ago this period was in our development?) I'd love to hear you ideas on this.

 

Government: A gift from the founders to US.

I've said before, this simple sentence.

Government is good.

Many who know me as a longtime anarchist must be thinking what IS he talking about? Remember, anarchists believe that leaders are not needed. That people can organize themselves without leaders. This doesn't mean we don't need organization. This is where government can use its ability to create and enhance alignment of people. 

People have been self-organizing, aligning their interests for thousands of years. We'd have a hard time surviving an ice-age if we weren't organized. Our first governments seem to have arisen in the past 10,000 years. The Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, and Native Americans, and others show evidence of using governments for cultural, economic agricultural, and social tasks. These tasks often had a very overt power dimension. A leader would coerce with food, intimidate with fear, or cajole with hope. As specialization and scientific discovery grew our structures became more complicated and effective. As language developed we became better able to describe these structures in the abstract and in concrete terms. Writing it all down lead to books, like the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, Origin of Species, or Snowcrash.

Two hundred years ago, the pinnacle of self-organizing systems, was the representative democracy developed in North America based on a mix of Iroquois and Greek ideas (with a lot of other influences). The United States of America created a subtly simple alignment of our nation. We've been wrestling with the consequences ever since. While the United States of America is still strong and 'yeasty' in theory, the practice of our governance faced some real tests recently. 

A group of leaders, let's call them Republicans, has spent much of the past 28 years tearing down government and working to cut off its life blood, revenue. From Ronald Reagan's declaration in 1980 that "government is not the solution, government is the problem," to the starve the government drumbeat of no-tax pledges Republicans have argued for limited government. This while they were in power. Now, in the past few months, their hands no longer on the levers of power their tune has changed a bit but their key points remain the same. Govern on the basis of faith, opinion and fear instead of reason, facts, and shared interest. 

Our Government - given by our founders - is THE one enduring gift, the last vestige of a time before electricity, cars, the germ theory of disease, and evolutionary biology. It is still robust. But, if we let the gift sink us into another dark age of superstition, selfishness, and fear of facts,

we lose the vast power of an open, informed, democratic populace. The Enlightenment brought so much to society and culture. We must stand, honest, truthful, and free in the face of God, Allah, and fascists to avoid digressing and losing our way again. 

Not all states are as lucky as us but many have taken the lesson of our Revolution and built on it. Many governments are now made better by our example. We can't be so arrogant and blind to the advantages developed by others in imitation of our system. Americans are rightly proud of our institutions. This pride cannot be enhanced by starving our system just because we think our faith in the almighty tells us not to pay taxes. I believe the facts as observed. Do you?

Cooked food: The miracle science of energy!

Cooked food came along shortly after we learned to control fire. An ancient gift from real scientists! We used fire to slow cook, sear, roast, broil and bake. We tried new foods. If something made us sick we stopped eating it. The scientific method even before we knew what a method was.

Our diet changed. We spent less time looking for, killing, gathering, and cultivating food. Because cooked food releases much more energy from the starch, carbs, sugars, proteins and fats we had time for lots of other activities. 

Preparing food by cooking or by other methods such as fermenting, drying, sprouting, or soaking is a such an amazing advance I wonder how it came about. If you imagine the ancestors sitting around a fire with a haunch of mammoth or a dead bird you see how simple cooking might have com to be. 

I ate at my local pub the other night, I had a tempeh reuben. This is fermented soy bean cake with sour kraut, swiss cheese on dark rye bread with a side of horseradish and thousand island dressing. The magic of these high energy foods combined in this tasty gustatory treat was enough to make my mind spin. It was delicious. 

When ever you share an evening meal with family or friends, think back to the ancestors who developed cooking. Thank them for sharing.

Music: A gift to move and soothe us

Heard a short piece today on the Science Pod from the AAAS. Music seems to have an evolutionary component and may not be "auditory cheesecake" as Stephen Pinker described. Music might be ingrained in our psyche to provide group benefit of some sort. 

Three different pieces of music were played to the Maffa people from Cameron. They were able to distinguish "happy" or "sad" music despite never having been exposed to outside music forms or influences. The researchers concluded an evolutionary component to musical understanding.

Music is a gift that can soothe our nerves, move our tushes an inform our needs. Early music may have been used to alert or describe. It may have helped tell a story or build rapport with new friends. We all make music whenever we open our mouths. You may not find your child's requests or demands for attention melodious but you're hearing music of human interaction. 

I suspect that after hundreds of thousands of years we've really refined our sense and ear for music. Listen to rap, hip hop, rock, soul, ragtime, R&B, juju, reggae, tango, waltz, rondo, no, butoh, raga, folk, calypso, or any of hundreds of other forms of music, now mixed, remixed and mashed. You will quickly hear similarities and differences. Structure, time signature, scale construction, instrumentation, rhythm and language all participate in our sharing of music.

As our species spread across the planet we turned most materials we found into food, toys, tools, garments, and musical instruments. We've learned a variety of systems to record music to share with others and to teach it to our young.

I expect to have more to say about music in the future. I had to write about it today because, after hearing the new evidence from Science, I'm sure music is vital to our brains' growth and balance.

Santa's Birthday Post. The gift of number.

Only 39 weeks 'til Christmas Day. 

I've reached another prime number. Its been six years since I was prime! 

When humans learned to differentiate by number we slowly became more adept at counting. At first we likely could tell the difference between one and more than one. Between few and many. Now we can accurately count up to 71 or 1,234,456,987,543,954. Number sense is a gift passed on from generation to generation. To some extent as we move along the time line of history our past piles up behind us in the form of numbers. Years ago, in the past decade, 200 years ago, 10,000 BCE. These logs or recitations of past events gave new meaning and understanding to our ancestors. We marked off the passing of time by the season and the year. 

Imagine now, when credit default swaps trade over ethernets based on complex algorithms and calculations of future market value assuming a 2.2% growth rate and 1.7% inflation. Numbers fill our life with meaning and confusion. Gifts are not always the boon they are intended to be. In fact a gift's value can change depending on our cultural needs. I'll explore this idea later when I talk about the gift of faith!

Language: The gift that redefines everything

Since we're on the  really old gifts that we humans have received from our ancestors I thought I'd take a few sentences to talk about language. 

Mary's (Mrs. Claus)  idea is that language was passed on by mothers as they cooed and tended to their babies. I think the sharing of a cooked evening meal I talked about yesterday helped language develop. Folks need a way to communicate the day's events or plan for tomorrow's. Our need to communicate on the foraging trail or in a hunt led to words/grunts/keening cries as well as much used gestures. 

As people lived in died generation after generation the growth of symbolic meaning became more standardized. Now, we can pass on the most advanced or mundane ideas with just a few keystrokes or utterances. [OMG, it's late gotta run CU L8R.]