Several ideas -- Eden, rhythms, overlaps of men and women, and even Paul MacLean (!) -- intersected in a few paragraphs of this morning's paper. A blond 16 yo, Amy Schneider, tells us things about consilience, dinosaurs, and perhaps finding Eden. Amy is 5-5, 110#, and a student at the Hill School in Pottstown which has only taken girls as regular students for a year or two. Daughter of a contractor in Limerick, Amy lifts weights, runs 4 miles per day at the indoor track when possible, plays B Team ice hockey for the Hill in addition to lacrosse, and field hockey. She also, despite big blue eyes clear complexion, and rosy cheeks, shows many traits often stereotyped as "male" as well as sometimes indicative of subclinical "mania," that lively determined alpha state described by John Price and Russ Gardner. You see, going on less than average amounts of sleep can be a part of the structure -- Amy hits the rack at midnight and gets up at 6 A.M. I -- and probably many others -- have suggested that "Eden" is personal and individual, perhaps an overlap of our birthplaces and our destinations. We each vary in our traits and we seek experiences and niches consistent with such. Eden and Heaven are the same for none of us despite claims about a "universal human nature." "My Father's house has many rooms" acquires a slightly different meaning than generally ascribed to that phrase. While we have a high percentage of overlap with each other; each of us is also a bit different from every other one of us. We differ in our beginnings and in our preferred ends and in the paths we travel from one to the other. Thus, none of us will imitate Amy in regard to her goals and tactics; none of us should try to. We each "need to do" the Amy thing but in ways that fit our own tapes of epigenetic rules and the options in our varied niches. Paul MacLean? We have biological continuity with the first replicating units whatever their nature from about 4 eons ago. We do not have one original environment but, as David Buss mentioned once, a different selective environment depending upon the particular features that you may examine in our mental structures. Thus, MacLean's attention to our basal ganglia was probably accurate in regard to them as devices for the fundamentals of dominance, mating, courtship, feeding, escape, and communication. We perhaps share -- whether by convergence or by a continuous refinement of the same original tools -- the mannerisms, the goals, and the basic routines with a large and previously unlikely mix of critters. Insert us -- lizards, birds, cats, and people -- into that tavern in "Star Wars" and everyone else there would consider us to be kindred earthlings. Hollywood used ducks as templates for the movements of dinosaur models in Jurassic Park. Probably an accurate representation? Most humans, possibly regardless of culture, prefer the color blue. Frogs have blue detectors. I would imagine birds to share them with us. There is a continuity not only of DNA but also of the mechanisms -- the big eyes, the skittering waltzes we perform in courtship, the upright postures that lizards and Swartzenegger and Stallone display and that most of us try to imitate whether in confrontation or posing for ladies. Skeptical? Listen to Amy who rides in horse shows; her mount is "Hypnotized," a son of "Seattle Slew." "And I get so much joy out of riding. It's the greatest thing in my life. To tune into your horse is so amazing. It's like you are singing along to a song, matching your words up with the singer and every beat is the same. "That is what riding feels like BECAUSE THE HORSE'S BEAT IS ESSENTIALLY MY BEAT, TOO (emph added). You have to almost melt into the horse, feel the horse's rhythm at every fence. This is how I know whether I did well or not at a show, regardless of if I win or place." (Quoted material by Rosemarie Ross, Mercury Sports Writer. Pottstown Mercury, 1/27/99, p 1.) I'm convinced. Jim Brody http://www.clinical-sociobiology.com Clinical Sociobiology: Darwinian Feelings and Values
http://www.behavior.net/forums/evolutionary/
John Price, Russ Gardner, John Fentress, Jim Brody, Robin Walker
July 19-23, 1999
20th Cape Cod Institute (register at http://www.cape.org/1999/
15 CEU for health care professionals
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