Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Mammalian Politics
People ask me what "school" of psychiatry I subscribe to. I first said eclectic meaning some of many things. Then I said biological until that became the same as pharmaceutical. I now say evolutionary. We are animals and one week in Kenya or Tanzania looking at the baboons will tell you more than most of the books.
The title is from Timothy Leary. Yea the acid guy. But he was real smart and had plenty of ideas, some of them good. Telling everybody to take LSD was not one of them. But he wrote a book of that title and it was pretty interesting. I read it about twenty years ago as an impressionable undergrad. But I also read Desmond Morris "Naked Ape." This is much better. Still the idea remains. We are animals and act like such. Our behaviors are those of other species, particularly the apes. A trip to the zoo will confirm this quite easily.
So the point is that all our social and hence political life is based in our biology and evolution. Of course it is all dressed up in ideologies and ceremony, but underneath it is all the same.
Brute force still rules. The biggest meanest baboon. Nuclear missiles. Or be sneaky. Spies. Assassinations. Terrorism. A stick is better than bare hands. A sword better. I'll take an assault rifle.
And there is of course diplomacy and alliances. This is a less destructive and more clever method. Lost on Bush and Rummy. But the sly aspect of this is mastered by Rove.
People are hardly rational. They are limbic systems with a thin covering of cortex. Our emotions rule us and are easily manipulated. How else do you explain our recent elections?
Dominance. Submission. Pay your tribute, I mean taxes or else. Shitting and pissing to mark territory. Real estate, fences, property lines, national borders,... Territory is key. Food still rules.
The pecking order of the chimps is repeated in the schoolyard. The workplace. The military. Cop show standard is the pissing war between levels of agency. The city police dealing with the feds.
Sure we are more sophisticated. But at the root its still the same.
The title is from Timothy Leary. Yea the acid guy. But he was real smart and had plenty of ideas, some of them good. Telling everybody to take LSD was not one of them. But he wrote a book of that title and it was pretty interesting. I read it about twenty years ago as an impressionable undergrad. But I also read Desmond Morris "Naked Ape." This is much better. Still the idea remains. We are animals and act like such. Our behaviors are those of other species, particularly the apes. A trip to the zoo will confirm this quite easily.
So the point is that all our social and hence political life is based in our biology and evolution. Of course it is all dressed up in ideologies and ceremony, but underneath it is all the same.
Brute force still rules. The biggest meanest baboon. Nuclear missiles. Or be sneaky. Spies. Assassinations. Terrorism. A stick is better than bare hands. A sword better. I'll take an assault rifle.
And there is of course diplomacy and alliances. This is a less destructive and more clever method. Lost on Bush and Rummy. But the sly aspect of this is mastered by Rove.
People are hardly rational. They are limbic systems with a thin covering of cortex. Our emotions rule us and are easily manipulated. How else do you explain our recent elections?
Dominance. Submission. Pay your tribute, I mean taxes or else. Shitting and pissing to mark territory. Real estate, fences, property lines, national borders,... Territory is key. Food still rules.
The pecking order of the chimps is repeated in the schoolyard. The workplace. The military. Cop show standard is the pissing war between levels of agency. The city police dealing with the feds.
Sure we are more sophisticated. But at the root its still the same.
