Rousseau and Lord of the Flies

 

In my reading I try to keep up with the anthropological discoveries that pertain to our species evolutionary history.  And in doing so I can’t help cringing at the political positions that maintain theories that our anthropology doesn’t support.  For example, the political influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau which can hardly be overestimated.  He threw out the idea that men were born evil and needed the church and forgiveness to lead legitimate and wholesome lives.  He proposed instead that men were born good and subsequently became evil because of faulty education.  Such teachings as “spare the rod and spoil the child” were subsequently considered barbaric.  

Evolutionary anthropology gives no support to the idea that men were born good.  They were born animals that became more and more potent until in the last 300,000 years ago they became the apex predator here on earth.  In very recent times, the last 15,000 years or so, men have adhered by force and teaching to religious and common legal practices.  When other species (aside from viruses and harmful bacteria) were no longer a serious threat to our existence, we had to learn to get along with each other, at least within towns and later in cities and nations.  We have not yet extended that practice to the world.

But that we are in keeping with Rousseau’s teachings all born good and only become evil through poor teaching there is no support that I can see.  Think of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  We as a species are capable of entertaining the anthropology of Golding’s novels while at the same time supporting modern educational practices consistent with Rousseau’s teachings.  And regardless of evolutionary discoveries, in practice any parent or teacher will today be on thin ice if he or she attempts to use harsh discipline to curb the bad behavior of a recalcitrant child.  We retain in stead, the Romantic views of Rousseau.  

Vikings and Anglo-Saxons

 I’m 39/324 through Cat Jansen’s River Kings and enjoying it.   References to the “Great Army” of the Vikings who after wintering in and around Repton, and then decided to stay, were hitherto described by traditional researchers as exaggerations.  Excavations didn’t give evidence of a very large number.  But more recently, better DNA analyses have shown that the Viking DNA could not be distinguished from that of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes the preceded the Vikings settling in Britain. 

“Both the terms ‘Viking’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ can arguably be seen as purely modern inventions: they are unlikely to have made sense to someone living in the ninth century. Here, the term ‘Viking’ is used to describe in a very broad sense the people and cultural traits that emerged and spread from Scandinavia during the Viking Age. The term ‘Anglo-Saxon’, while subject to a long history of misuse by racists and extremists, remains a widely understood frame of reference for the communities and kingdoms of England between the fifth and early eleventh centuries. Neither this nor Viking is used to imply ethnicity; they are, simply, the most useful, if inaccurate, terms we have available today.”

Viking-raid expressions

  In Cat Jarman’s River Kings, A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads, page 4, is the following sentence.

Repton was no different – the accepted interpretation of the bones that I’d been working on seemed to fit neatly into the traditional Viking Age narrative: that of the Norsemen and Danes who travelled west in the late eighth century, launching a savage attack on unsuspecting monks at Lindisfarne in 793 and kick-starting the Viking Age in the process; and that of the hit-and-run raids of the succeeding decades that eventually, in the ninth century, led to ambitions of political conquest and settlement.

Comment: A couple of expressions caught my attention The first is “kick-starting the Viking Age . . .”  I had two motorcycles that required “kick-starting” as opposed to electrical push-button starting.   In order to start a motorcycle with a kick-starter, one pulled out the pedal of the kick-starter, put one’s boot on it, jump in the air a short distance and put one’s right-legged boot on it; then one raised up and then kicked down with one’s boot one or two times until the motorcycle started.  If one’s motorcycle is in good running order, the motor will then start.

Is there another meaning of “kick-starting”?  Perhaps it is also applied to certain older automobiles or farm equipment, I don’t know.  But in the above passage, in what sense did Jarman mean it?  Perhaps Jarman never gave a thought to motorcycles.  Perhaps it is such a common expression today that she didn’t need to associate it with motorcycles or farm equipment:  The Viking attack upon Lindisfarne in 793 “kick-started” the Viking age.  

But I got the impression that she meant something a little different from the motorcycle original.  She seems to imply a violent as opposed to a peaceful beginning which is appropriate to a Viking as opposed to a motorcycle start.  

The second expression is “hit and run” raids.  “Hit and run” is a baseball expression, and nothing else as far as I know.  It applies especially in the case of moving a runner from second to third base.  The batter hits the ball into the outfield.  The runner waits until the outfielder catches it and then runs to third and gets there, hopefully, before the ball does.  One can appreciate how well “hit and run” fits what the Vikings did: violently raid Lindisfarne and then sail away before an opposition force could be raised to attack them.  

But what expressions were used to fit Jarman’s narrative before motorcycles and baseball, I wonder.  And perhaps the above such expressions are accepted, today, in scholarly writings without comment, except perhaps by the occasional octogenarian with little else to do and therefore without merit.

Further on The Werewolf Principle (with spoiler)

  I thought an unhappy ending was inevitable, but not so.  As Blake in a perfect spaceship is sailing out alone (as far as he knows) to search the universe for the intelligence behind it, he is surprised to learn that he has a stowaway: Elaine, the senator’s daughter, whom he was a bit in love with when he met her.  What’s this?  Is this the real Elaine?  Yes, it is, but as she explains, she is the other android.  The Senator’s real daughter committed suicide.  It would have been devastating to the Senator’s career if that were to come out.   Just then, the female android returned to earth, and she looked somewhat like the Senator’s daughter; so, the Space organization gave her to him.  She didn’t realize (somehow) that she wasn’t his real daughter until much later.  After what happened with Blake, she knew that when everyone found out she was an android, Earth would be impossible for her as well.  Space and the Senator intended these two perfect and immortal individuals to be Earth’s best and brightest representatives to whomever they will find out there.  

I do wonder, however, who Elaine’s Questor is.  I assume she wasn’t sent to the same planet Blake was so it wouldn’t be a wolf – I would hope.  

The Werewolf Principle

  After reading Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station, the logical next novel to read was The City, but it is about, so I’ve read, the aftermath of World War Two – or written in the aftermath of World War Two.  I decided instead to read The Werewolf Principle, and am at present 61% through it:

Mankind is at a point in the future where it has the means to colonize planets in our galaxy.  It is not to be done as independent investments, as I have surmised, but as world-government enterprises.  The predominate view is that the new planets be terra-formed, which is something I have assumed.  But another group thought it cheaper to change our settlers rather than the planets: change them into beings that could live in the existing environment of a given planet.  Studies in biodiversity had progressed to a point where such a thing was possible.

But it turns out that this was actually accomplished 200 years prior to the events in the novel.  Two androids were loaded with human brains from storage and modified in such a way that they were the equivalent of humans on non-human-friendly planet.  After the androids had been there for a while and had accumulated sufficient data, they returned to the spaceship, dumped their data and were restored to the condition of having just a human brain.  However, it turned out that the alien-nature acquired on the planet could not be utterly erased.  Thus, apparently (from as far as I have read), the androids, at least one of them, Blake, was “frozen” and stored in a capsule, while the main ship or ships traveled on for further investigations, experiments and adventures.

In the novel Blake is unfrozen and seems a normal human to the doctors checking him out, but he starts having blackouts, and there are reports of people seeing a wolf.  Blake is slowly reacquainting himself with who he really is, three personalities.  Blake, the Changer, Quester who became a wolf-like creature from a planet under investigation, and Thinker who is something like a biological computer with human quality understanding (not fully explained by Simak in my view).  The three elements can change from one to the other if they mutually agree which they always do. Things get out of hand when Quester as a sort-of wolf is threatened and fights his way through mobs of people killing many.  And so as one might expect, the humans chase after it, when it is in the wolf-like form, with the twenty-fourth century, or whenever, equivalent of pitchforks.  Good doctors will be trying to save Blake, but at this point that is not assured.  Elaine, the daughter of the Senator who opposed the biodiversity approach to inhabiting new planets, helps Blake escape.

In my currently befuddled state, I rather Identified with Blake.  I haven’t exactly turned into a Wolf but disgusted with the medical decisions and advice I’ve been receiving I undertook a strenuous workout program, day after day, so much work that everything ached, but inasmuch (I learned) as aspirin conflicts with the blood pressure medication (losartan) which is scheduled to be prescribed whenever I have my first meeting with my new doctor, I didn’t take any aspirin or any other pain medication.  I just ached, day after day.  But inasmuch as I have (tomorrow) an appointment with an optometrist in order to get new glasses (although he may try to send me to a specialist) I stopped my exercising two days prior to the appointment – in order to be able to think and speak coherently. 

The wolf is full of explosive energy which I have been, but he doesn’t think too clearly and needs Quester and Blake to figure things out.  That’s the way I have been.  I’ve just today begun thinking clearly.  Quester can enable Changer to change into any sort of creature.  There are little dwarf-like creatures (who came to visit earth from another planet, liked it here and decided to stay – living peacefully here and there in our forests).  I’m expecting Changer to be changed into one of those, but Blake no doubt would not like to remain one of these dwarfs – he’s a bit in love with the Senator’s daughter.

In Philip K Dick’s Do Androids dream of electric sheep, the beautiful android woman is raised not knowing she’s an android, much as Blake doesn’t know he is one.  Humans being in love with androids, and vice versa has been explored in the past.  Clifford D. Simak published The Werewolf Principle in 1967.  Philip K. Dick published his book a year later.  

In the meantime, I am working to determine my best configuration and have sought the pain of workouts in order to escape the hounding medical professionals and their pitchforks.  Looking back over my shoulder I have been at it intensely much as Quester and Changer worked together, but with the diminishment of this work preparatory to the optometrist and on the following day, the dentist, I shall attempt an appropriate disguise and hope to get back to my exercising as soon as possible.  There is still my first meeting with my new primary physician to arrange and another meeting with my oral surgeon, which I shall try to delay, but there are so many – their pitchforks are so very sharp, and Quester cannot figure out a path to something that can escape them, something that doesn’t have a crippled leg.

THE BODY ON THE LAWN

A couple of days ago I resolved to engage in some serious weight-lifting and other forms of exercise.  Dr. Agarwal, my heart doctor checked me over, did an electrocardiogram and decided to change my blood pressure medication in order to reduce the swelling in my ankles.   He had said my heart was weak, but all he worried about was my ankles.  The logic of that escaped me and so I resolved to take matters into my own hands.  My diet was okay, but I decided to drink more water and less coffee.  I subscribed to a Harvard Medical journal which referred to a study that found that coffee drinking reduced heart attacks by 30%.  More specifically, coffee drinking of no more than 3.5 cups a day did that.  Also, the 30% benefit accrued whether the coffee was regular or decaf.  Espresso wasn’t mentioned.   For 4 cups and more the statistics didn’t hold up.  And so I resolved to drink no more than 3.5 cups of coffee a day, half of them decaf. 

Today with the temperature outside at 107 degrees I nevertheless noticed that my legs were stiffening a little from sitting too long at my desk and so decided to do some yard work.  There was one particular branch that was hanging down most precariously.  I feared that in a heavy windstorm it might cause the main trunk to come crashing down, so I got a saw which when two parts were connected would reach up that high.  I didn’t feel particularly dizzy, but my balance wasn’t good; so I moved about to find more stable footing and continued sawing.  I thought I was far enough away so that the falling branch wouldn’t hit me.  I wasn’t fleet of foot enough to dash out of the way.  When it came crashing down some of its branches came close to me, but I wasn’t hit.  I put the saw away, got a trash barrel and began cutting the smaller branches up, then hauling the barrel over to the main green-waste barrels.  

I didn’t feel bad, but it was hot so I went back up stairs to read for a while and cool off.  I made three or four trips like that out back, stripping the small branches from the main branch, putting the small pieces in a barrel, emptying that small barrel into the larger ones and sawing pieces off of the large branch.  

After tidying up I decided to unwind the hose and water the back lawn.  As hot as it was I could see the grass was suffering.

While watering I day-dreamed about the past.  I was definitely pushing myself.  I was feeling a bit light-headed.  I recalled one time in my twenties that I had a pain in my chest.  I didn’t know exactly where my heart was, but thought what I felt might be a heart pain and so decided to go jogging as a kill or cure investigation – I did that sort of thing back then.  Later on I told my Aunt Dorothy what I’d done and she said my heart wasn’t where the pain was.  I later went to a doctor who said my upper transverse colon was pressing against my diaphragm.  It wasn’t serious but he gave me some red pills saying that if they didn’t help he would give me some green ones.  I had only recently started work at Douglas Aircraft Company and had discovered the food trucks that were out front in the morning had the most wonderful breakfast burritos.  I looked forward to having one every morning.  But after I had chest pains, I reflected that they were spicy; so I experimented.  I quit eating a burrito every morning, and the pain went away.

Maybe I was doing something like that today, working hard in the backyard, harder than I had done in months, on a very hot day.  I didn’t think I was doing a kill or cure sort of thing, I just felt good – as far as I knew.  

I finished watering, coiled the hose up, went back inside and started up the stairs.  Jessica was waiting for me with a strange look on her face.  She sniffed my leg suspiciously.  Why did she do that, I wondered?  I continued on but before I turned the corner I noticed she continued to stare out back.  Maybe I had died in the back yard, I thought, and that is why Jessica was staring out back.  How would I know?  I walked up to my study and peered out at my lawn to see if maybe my body was down there.  I couldn’t see it, and then looked back behind me and saw that Jessica had followed me upstairs after all; so I probably wasn’t in the back yard.  But if I had been, that would have been a pleasant way to die, I felt no pain whatsoever.

Comments on My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

I read some place that this book was the top best seller some place for some period of time – didn’t pay close attention to where, and so downloaded and read it.  Coming from reading about the most recent mass murder and hearing from someone something along the lines of “guns aren’t the problem.  You will know this if you think about previous generations who had even more freedom with guns but didn’t have the problems we have now.  No, the problem is that we have produced children who are homicidal maniacs.  It’s our deteriorated parenting skills that are at fault.” I found myself wondering whether this whimsical serial-murdering couple might foster a few more homicides.  After all, the lazy teen-ager might think, why spend a whole bunch of time learning how to be clever enough to get away with killing four or five people, when you can get an automatic rifle and kill ten or twelve people all at once?”

The narrator-husband of “My Lovely Wive” is clearly no match for feminist serial killing wife, and so is perfectly willing to help her do whatever she likes.  He doesn’t quite meet her standard for faithfulness, however, and so eventually finds himself in her cross hairs.  

The ending seemed to me weak.  The author couldn’t resist a bit of cleverness which doesn’t in my view work, but perhaps most readers will find it amusing.