Through a Species, Darkly

(Picture from here.)

We continually overestimate and underestimate ourselves. Our lack of ability to objectively evaluate ourselves is a source of serious problems for us as we try to navigate a future for which our evolutionary history has ill prepared us.

We are fully capable of considering ourselves the pinnacle of creation and lord of the world at the same time regarding ourselves as lower than any other animal. I've heard this in conversation. You probably have, too.

We are magnificent animals, emphasis on both words.

One of the terrific things about scientific thought is we can take its aperture and apply it against anything. We are only limited by-- well, our own limitations as stated above. The granular representation of ourselves to ourselves.

There was a terrific cartoon I saw in the seventies that I've not been able to trace down. The image is of a bunch of animals-- human, dog, giraffe, hedgehog, chimp, cow-- and they are all thinking, "And God made in his own image." That sums it up for me.

So, when we point the aperture of science at human beings we have to leave our own self-involvement at home.

We think of the future all the time and we build things. We are our own best metaphor for the rest of the universe. So when we think of evolution and apply ourselves to it, it's hard not to have a designer around. After all, a watch isn't much different then a flower, right? If you see a watch on the ground, somebody must have built it. Therefore, if you see a flower on the ground...

Of course, it doesn't work that way. Not even for watches.

If one had no knowledge of watches, it's not even clear we'd recognize it as a watch-- after all, the antikythera mechanism was built by humans but we didn't know what it did for years. But let's presume we can recognize it as built by something.

(Picture from here.)

Could it be like a diatom? Few things are more beautiful and complex than the cell walls built by these one celled algae.

Okay, let's say I spot you the watch was made by a thinking being and we might even know what it was. But even then it would be a creature that has the concept of time and number, used some sort of grasping appendage of particular dimensions and possessed perception of such a resolution that would make such a watch useful.

Pretty soon you either end up with a really odd watchmaker or evolution.

The history of science, along with everything else, is littered with the shards of people's hypotheses that were grounded not in good thinking but people's self-conceptions. Evolution is no different.

One idea that people have is the concept of progressive evolution. Yes, if the life of the universe were metaphorically represented as a calendar year, we would have come to light in the last five minutes. But that only means that it took that long to develop an entity as enormous of faculty as ourselves. Right?

Well, not quite.

Now there is progressive evolution but not in the way most people mean. Evolution is always about local adaptation to local conditions, whether those conditions are external to the species or are expressed within the species. But each species exposes its heritage to the selective pressure of the moment.

If we look at the evolution of the horse, for example, we start with eohippus, a tiny dog sized forest dwelling herbivore, and end up with Seabiscuit. However, that starting point was from the very beginning a herbivore, a hind gut fermenter with tiny hooves instead of claws on the edge of its pads. It had starting material. Evolutionary descendants of modern horses would encapsulate all of the evolutionary changes that happened since eohippus. They wouldn't be starting with eohippus.

Similarly, humans forebears started walking upright. The selection here was on the feet long bones of the legs and the hips. Look at that foot: big toe, toes in the same plane. Turns out the developmental mechanism that makes feet is closely associated with the developmental mechanism that makes hands. Big toes drove human thumbs. (See here.)

Wait, you say. Monkeys have hands that they use... as hands. Humans and monkeys derived from the same stock. That suggests that hands predate human beings walking upright. So there!

Yes! Absolutely. Brain studies of how the hand is controlled the brain suggests that all of the primates use similar mechanisms and, in fact, there is generally more CPU power dedicated to the hand than the foot.

So, our ancient ancestor got hands and feet as part of the primate package. He got brain organization to use them to make tools-- we know our cousins use tools as a matter of course. We have to presume that our ancient ancestors did, too. Then, as we moved toward upright posture, that modified our feet, giving a little push on how hands were made. That exposed thumbs to selection. Which allowed tool using to become a greater selection trait. Which started to drive hand selection.

Meanwhile, this brain behind the hands-- already pre-disposed to make tools-- also gets selected for.

And we're off to the races where we can send men to the moon but can't (or more honestly, won't) keep everybody fed.

Magnificent. Animals.

I admit I'm pretty much a materialist. By that I mean that I don't have any emotional attachment to any non-physical world. Whatever makes us human lives in our brain and our bodies.

That said, if we are the sum of all of the evolutionary decisions made before us, somebody-- in fact, a lot of somebodies-- made decisions that culminated in altruism, beauty, music, commerce, husbandry and a whole slew of other things that we do either uniquely or incredibly better than everything else. To the point where we take the very guts of living things, their reproductive and physiological components, and repurpose them to to our will.

No one can take that away from us and no one should even try. To paraphrase Olivander from HarryPotter, we have done great things. Terrible things but great.

The same species that wages war, creates hospitals. That practices genocide, feeds the poor. Yes, we are red in tooth and claw but we are gentle and kind as well.

It's time for us to accept who we are and what we can do. Not as the pinnacle of creation but as the most powerful vertebrate on the planet.

The first step, I think, is to see ourselves clearly.

State of the Farm

(Picture from here.)

It has been a long winter.

As I sit in this diner writing this I'm looking out at more snow falling. Enough already! We've broken the all time winter snow record. When will you Gods of Winter be satisfied with our misery? Must we sacrifice our children to appease you?

Hm. Ben's been seventeen a lot lately...



Okay. Winter on the farm. Gotcha.

Starting around Thanksgiving and up to about now we do winter activities around the homestead. This means cleaning out the greenhouse some. Making sure the turtles and tortoises have a nice place to sleep, perchance to dream of Terry Pratchett. (It's Terrys all the way down-- at least that's how I wish to imagine the afterlife.) Keeping the chickens warm.

Ah, the chickens. We lost Abigail and Beaker this winter. Abigail had been our oldest chicken. She survived a coyote attack, a racoon attack and a bobcat attack. Survived her peers when they were slaughtered like, well, animals. We now have Stalag 17 and I think they're safe.

She was a good chicken. Speckled black and white, she had a sort of Grande Dame grandeur. She didn't turn mean when she got old. Her last egg looked like it would have hatched into Quasimodo if it could have hatched at all. I think she kept the other chickens in line even more than the three roosters she outlived.

Beaker was a different sort. She was born with a deformed beak that twisted as it grew. Every year we had to trim it back so she could eat. Beaker was lively and quick. She was never mean, either, but she was smart. She figured out places where food had been brushed, which foods were better than other. It was Beaker that figured out how to get to the grass on the west side. Beaker was the first one on the railing in the spring and the last one to end up in the coop in the throes of winter.

Now we're left with Stumpy (whose leg doesn't work from said bobcat attack), Fish, the rooster, and the Brown One Whose Name We Cannot Remember. (BOWNWCR?) We'll need new layers in the spring and the debate now is to hatch them ourselves, buy some hens or get some hatchlings from one of the hatcheries.

The other thing we do in the winter-- appropriately in this time of Chicken Mourning-- is make wine.

I skipped wine making for a couple of years. Then, last winter, I got back into it. Over the last year I've made a plum wine, peach wine, Concord grape wine (don't laugh), Reisling, Alvorinho and an accidental Current champagne.

Over the years we've come up with a pattern that works for us. We do primary fermentation upstairs where we can control the temperature more easily. When fermentation is pretty much done, we move it into glass carboys and put it downstairs in our cold, cold basement. Right now we have a rhubarb cooking upstairs and I'm trying a lager which ferments at a much lower temperature. It's downstairs. We have a strawberry and another Concord in the glass carboys.

Wendy has cleaned out the freezer and set up a schedule of upcoming fermentation: Cornelian cherries are next. Followed by peaches. Then, a mango concentrate I got on sale a while back. Then, the grapes in the fall followed by cider. If I can get her to agree I might try something interesting like a Chardonnay from California juice.

By the end of the year we'll have about 40 to 50 gallons of wine in the basement. 

Hey. It was a cold winter. I want to be prepared for the next one.

Consideration of Works Past: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

(Picture from here.)

I have hesitated to visit Huckleberry Finn in this venue for a couple of reasons. For one, I've read the book regularly since I was a child so there's no real sense of "revisiting" it. Second, so much has been written about it what could I possibly add?

But I suppose that's never stopped me before.

I'm not going to discuss the plot directly here for a couple of reasons. If you haven't read Huckleberry Finn, you should. The modern novel pretty much starts there. Shakespeare and Huckleberry Finn are alike in that both inform fiction since. Reading novels and stories without having some familiarity with both is like having muscles without bone. Whether a writer has read them or not, his work is informed by them. They are in the language we use and the structure of the material we enjoy.

Besides, the wikipedia article referenced above has a good Cliff's notes outline.

Now, it's true, I have a special relationship with this book. My father was born in Florida, Missouri, about seven miles from where Mark Twain was born. There's a small museum in the Mark Twain National Forest where his birth house has been preserved. When Dad took me there he pointed out how the house he grew up in and the Mark Twain house differed. Dad's was a little bigger and they had a coal stove instead of a wood one. Not much else.

Most of Huckleberry Finn is written in dialect. These were dialects that Dad either knew, as he'd grown up with them, or could figure out. So when he read it to me as a child, he could read all of the parts. Some of it I can do but never as well as he did.

The book is fun and very funny. It opens like this:

You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

One of the best openings in the English language.

Huckleberry Finn is about a young boy named, appropriately, Huckleberry Finn. Huck is about fourteen living in a small Missouri town called Saint Petersburg around 1835-1845. At the time, Missouri was a slave state so Huck's life and slavery are intertwined.

There's an interesting way we talk about slavery in the modern day, as if it were something grafted on to life in the slave states. One of the things Huckleberry Finn makes completely clear is that the cloth of life in those times was completely composed of slavery's threads. It is in the roots, branches and leaves of everyday living. It was not grafted onto life; it was their life.

Huck and slavery, and by extension moral choice and understanding, dance through the entire novel. Sometimes Huck dances with it face on. Sometimes he's across the room looking the other way. But the dance is continuous.

Huck's relationship between himself, society and morality (Twain makes it clear these three are  distinct) is somewhat tenuous at the beginning. He's an outcast of sorts that's been taken in to be "sivilized." Civilization takes. Sort of. Ultimately, he is brought out of civilization and ends up on a raft in the Mississippi River with a runaway slave named Jim. From then on, Huck has to continuously wrestle with a moral point of view. But he's never actually conscious of it.

This is where Twain shows his genius. Many works would have the character agonizing over what to do-- and Huck does this. But never in a higher moral sense. Huck is attempting to determine the right course of action personally. What to do with his friend Jim who is also a runaway slave.  Jim is his closest and dearest friend. Both have risked their lives for the other. Jim is also a runaway slave. Another man's property:

Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm.

Huck is trying to be a good kid-- he's not yet a man in his own eyes. Jim is someone else's property. He should tell the authorities so Jim can be returned to his rightful master. Everything in his upbringing has told him this is the right thing to do. The moral thing to do. He can't do it and the fact that he can't trips him up regularly.

Many would call Huckleberry Finn a coming of age story. I can understand the point but I wouldn't for a few reasons. For one, Huck never admits to becoming an adult. Of course, he never admits to being a kid, either. He is changed by the end of the book and made decisions that will live with him and direct him throughout his life afterwards. But he doesn't dwell on it. Life isn't a lot better for him at the end of the book as it was in the beginning but he's completed his journey without regrets.

More importantly, coming of age stories bring a lot of baggage with them these days. Modern coming of age stories seem to have blended with political revolution stories. I'm not such a huge fan of this trend. Two me, moral revelation and political ideology are separate things. Though they affect one another they are not identical. Someone who votes against me is not automatically a monster.

And political revolution is not necessarily the best model for a coming of age story. Revolutions are complex things that people attempt for complicated reasons. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the conspirators embark on a revolution not because of any moral code-- they're adults and have figured that out already. They're doing it because in less than a decade they're going to be starving to death.

If you look at revolutions that have happened there have been children and young adults involved. Les Misérables has a lot about the tragedy of losing young life in the pursuit of an ideal. We have young people sacrificing themselves for such things every day. But they are on the front lines. They are fodder for the revolution. The people that make a revolution stick-- John Adams, George Washington, Ayatollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro-- are not kids. They are tough men. For good or evil they've determined their moral course and created their political ideology. They've made their choices and are now acting on them.

That's a huge burden to place on a kid just figuring out what's right and what's wrong.

It's also impersonal.

One of the important threads in Huckleberry Finn is that morality is personal. Jim is not a slave in the abstract-- Huck's met lots of slaves in his life. None of them moved him like Jim. But they are bound by a deep love for one another. (And by that word I do not mean sexual romance.) It is a deeply personal decision Huck has to make and because it is personal we feel it, see it and live it with him every step of the way.

By the end of the book Huck has made no great decision regarding slavery in general. He has not become an abolitionist in the political sense of the word. He's not going to go north and fight slavery or start helping on the underground railroad. He might some day though he never says so. As I said, his course has been changed and where he will end up is anyone's guess.

I suppose I could have said the same when it was first read to me.