.JPG)
I have been horrified and appalled by what i've seen, at the ways that humans seem to inventively come up with to be unkind to each other for fun and profit. I have gone through long periods where i didn't want to live anymore, because of what i've seen. It's only because i do meet people who are good that i keep on. That, and because i have family who need me, and because i somehow hold onto faith that i can be of some purpose yet in my life. I've had a lot of reflection, though, about what drives human behaviour, and a friend posted something about "normal social behaviour" yesterday, so i began to think about that again. Thus it seems like the time is ripe to post what i've been writing on this to date.
As i'm seeing it, at this point, "Normal Social Behaviour" is largely little more than an extension of "Primate Social Interaction", with a thin layer of mannerly veneer added to preserve the illusion of "Civilization". Now mind, this isn't a new idea for me; it's one which i was introduced to back in the early 90s by an old friend in San Francisco. It's an idea which he and i would spend hours talking about in cafe's with the regular crowd we hung out with, and when others were appalled and would change the subject - or flee - i would sit and listen, fascinated, and watch when he noted examples which were taking place right before our eyes there in that same cafe. He explained the basics of primate behaviour to me, and then he would point out examples in the people around us. In the long run, in the years after i had moved away from SF and many miles and life changes separated me from this friend, i read, and observed. I found over time, with seasoning and observation, it only became all the more chillingly clear how little humans have evolved, behaviourally. Now, no less than it was, probably, a million years ago, little thought goes into the underlying nature of our interactions. By and large, the "Rules of the Game" are taken as given, not to be challenged or questioned. Those who do possess the ability to question these suppositions are treated like the enemies of the species - excoriated, villified and bullied. As many people who are deemed to be deviant from the norm for calling out what they see will tell you, we are unfortunately the targets of this all too often. Xenophobia is hard-wired into our species, many evolutionary biologists would tell you, because this is how a species made sure that "inferior" members would not breed. In some species of lower primates, death is the result of that culling. More often the result is marginalisation. The reason for that may be nothing more than that there is safety in numbers, and too much culling could result in a vulnerable group.
"We should not be allowed to breed". Today that concept is still implicitly present behind ideas of identification of an "Autism gene", so that possible Autistics can be aborted. It hasn't been that long since Eugenics was considered a viable idea, and it's precepts practised unchallenged in orphanages throughout our country. Our culture, and others which colonised continents inhabited by aboriginal people practised all manner of genetic suppression unabashedly. It's sad to see human intellect put to the use of camouflaging, or justifying the drive of species to prevent the breeding of variant members. When will we be more than merely the vehicle for genetic material to grow and perpetuate itself? And what of evolution? Does that fit into the picture at all? Can our species evolve? Some people would have us believe that the human's (as currently realised) are the zenith of evolution, that nothing higher could possibly occur after us. So what would it look like if our species did start to evolve?
