Tag Archive for: evolution

We are Perplexing—by T.K. Thorne

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We are perplexing beings.

I just finished reading Maus, a graphic book by Art Spiegelman banned in Russia and Tennessee. The author’s words and drawings depict his attempt to capture his father’s memories of living through the Holocaust. The young man is conflicted, unable to stand being around his eccentric, obsessive father and overwhelmed by what he learns his father experienced. It is raw and honest. I recommend it.

What seems unthinkable and impossible to understand is people believing other people are not human beings but vermin to be used and extinguished. That is what the Nazis believed, what slaveholders believed, and what many neo-Nazi white supremacists still believe. I imagine some members of minorities feel similarly. I don’t understand what Christian Nationalists believe other than America should be for them only. I’m unsure what they plan to do about the rest of us.

And that’s the point. We are all human beings.

We think and do these extraordinary thoughts and behaviors because we evolved not as rational beings but as emotional ones. Fight/flight and survival are our primary, cell-level drivers, not rationality.

Rationality is an overlay, a wobbly gift of the last layer of the brain to evolve—the neocortex, which contains the prefrontal cortex, where we analyze, plan, and make decisions based on reason rather than raw emotion. Emotion ran the show before that development. Emotion plays a vital role in behavior. (Danger = run or fight.) But reason developed to increase our ability to survive. If we observe and learn what has happened in the past, rationality allows us to predict the future, and we have a better chance if we can prepare for the future.

But that can go sideways.

For example, people around us can believe wacky things. Those things may not make sense if we examine them closely, but we are driven, for one thing, to please those important to us. We need to be part of a group/clan/family. It’s a hard-wired survival instinct. At some point in our history, we could be kicked out for not complying with the group. “Kicked out” meant the wolves ate you.

And, alas, we are not Vulcans. We easily slide into tribalism and can believe all kinds of stuff, regardless of its basis in reality (whatever that is, but that’s another story). Science has proved that a brain under enough stress will break. Any brain. All brains. (Snapping, America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, 1978, 1995 Conway and Siegelman)

Humans are a fraction of the last second before midnight on the 24-hour clock of our Earth’s existence. And we “just” developed our cerebral cortex. We aren’t sure what to do with it except write books (Yes!) and play with our toys. That play has created some wonderful, amazing things. There appear, however, to be some “whoops” attached to  those wonderful things, like the possibility of screwing up the Earth and annihilating ourselves with our toys.

So, (1) we are not primarily rational beings, and (2) we are very young.

Is there hope for change?

Trying to apply rationality to answer that question (instead of my emotional instinct), I would say -YES. If it is true that we are not primarily or originally rational beings, it is also true that we are headed (however slowly) in the evolutionary direction of rationality. The fact that we are a very young species also implies that, with time, we will continue to add functional brain capacity that will nudge us toward traits that increase our survival ability.

The question is, will we survive long enough to get there?

In the current day, it is hard to imagine such change when terrorist organizations indoctrinate their communities with hatred from birth. Despair feels like the rational expectation. 

But then there is what happened in Germany after WWII. Although the Nazi doctrine is far from dead (either in that country or others, including the United States)—their ideals are no longer mainstream.

By all rights, Japan should hate Americans after we dropped two atomic bombs on their civilian populations. They do not hate us. We are global partners.

Maybe there is hope for change. 

But how do we change now without having to wait for evolution’s slow grind, the coin toss of whether someone pulls the nuclear trigger, we push the climate to a state of disaster, or maybe we all choke on plastic?

Jeddu Krishnamurti, an Indian philosopher, says we must first understand that we are connected to and, in a real sense, are all human beings. 

He writes:

“To bring about a different society in the world, you, as a human being who is the rest of humankind, must radically change. That is the real issue, not how to prevent wars. That’s also an issue, how to have peace in the world, [but] that is secondary. . . the fundamental issue is—is it possible for the human mind, which is your mind, your heart, your condition, is that possible to be totally, fundamentally, deeply transformed? 

Otherwise, we are going to destroy each other through our national pride, through our linguistic limitations, through our nationalism, which the politicians maintain for their own benefit, and so on and on and on.” 

Krishnamurti suggests that the path to transformational change involves deep listening—to others, ourselves, and nature. 

What is deep listening? I am not sure. I think I do it when I’m writing and allowing a character to truly be themselves. I think I do it when I pause to breathe in the scent of earth and bird song. When I allow the decision of compassion to guide me. I know a whole list of things it is not.

“Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique.” 

So, how do we find the truth that will free us from ourselves? 

Let’s begin by turning our attention and focus to deep listening. We may not know exactly how to do it because it is a pathless land. And we will need to try repeatedly because we are all flawed human beings. But maybe we really can change. The first step is believing we can, believing that humanity can survive to become wiser, use our tools, toys, and our resolve to improve the world, and learn to cherish it, ourselves, and each other.

Maybe.

I hope we can. I hope we try.

T.K. Thorne writes about what moves her, following a flight path of curiosity, reflection, and imagination. Check out her (fiction and nonfiction) books at TKThorne.com

Writer, humanist,

          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,

       Lover of solitude

          and the company of good friends,

        new places, new ideas

           and old wisdom.

The Forgivenss of Whales by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

Until recently, scientists thought humans were the only species with the specialty brain neurons responsible for higher cognitive functions like self-awareness, a sense of compassion and language.

They were wrong.

Fifteen million years before humans, whales began evolving these special cells*, and now a strange phenomenon is occurring off the Baja coast of Mexico.

Humans have been slaughtering Pacific whales there for a long time, first with harpoons, now with sonar from Navy ships. Whales live a long time, up to a hundred years. Some whales alive today still bear the scars of harpoons. Many scientists believe that it is implausible to think the whales do not remember this or associate humans with death and anguish.


Yet, in the same area where humans hunted them nearly to extinction, then tortured them with sonar, whales are approaching humans and initiating contact. A  N.Y. Times article detailed the experiences of the reporter and the stories of locals who tell about mother whales approaching their boats, sometimes swimming under it and lifting it, then setting it gently down. Almost all the stories involve the whale surfacing, rolling onto its side to watch the humans–reminiscent of the surreal moment in the movie, Cast Away, when a whale rises from the night sea to regard Tom Hanks with an eye cupped with starlight, an eerie intelligence, and a gentleness that moves us, for we know the massive creature could kill the castaway with a nudge or a flick of a tail fluke.

These real grey whales off Baja swim close enough that people invariably reach out to touch them, and they allow it. One person, reflecting on the experience said, “I have never felt more beheld.” It seems reasonable–given the position the whales place themselves in–that they seek the contact. In many cases, a mother whale will allow her calf to do the same. There is no food involved in these exchanges, only a brief interlude of inter-species contact and rudimentary communication:  I come as friend.

Why?

Where will humans be in another hundred years? I suspect we will be technologically advanced, but emotionally pretty much the same, even in a thousand years or ten thousand. But what about a million years? Can we evolve (if we survive) to a more sane, more rational, more loving species with a broader sense of our place in the universe and in life itself? Is it possible that these creatures with 15 million years of intelligent evolution on us, might regard us as a young species, children who don’t really know better,  and grant us leeway for our mistakes? Grant us . . . forgiveness?

If we humans could only do such a thing!  Beat our swords into ploughshares, at least among ourselves. It’s unlikely, but we might yet be targeted by alien invaders, so we shouldn’t throw away all of our weapons. Even whales have enemies, and they do not hesitate to defend themselves when attacked and even take the battle to the enemy! Recently, there are increasing reports of whales, specifically humpbacks, who are defending not only their own against attacks of orcas, but other mammals, such as other whales, sea lions, fur seals or walruses. They only attack mammal-eating killer whales, not orcas that primarily feed on fish. They feed and fight in a coordinated manner, communicating with each other.

There is proof that we humans are capable of realizing the power of peaceful cooperation and partnerships. Not long ago, for example, a team of over 2,000 scientists representing six countries worked to determine the human genome, all 3 billion parts, and then made that data freely available on the Web.

Perhaps one day we will stop slaughtering the fellow creatures on this blue-and-cream jewel that is our world; perhaps we will make friends and share discoveries, meeting whales on the mutual ground (or sea) of respect.

Our survival may depend on it.

*New research is indicating that glial cells may be responsible for imagination, creativity and probably play a role in consciousness. Einstein’s brain had an abundance of these cells, especially in the area responsible for spacial awareness and mathematics. Mice injected with human glial cells became 4x smarter. Glial cells can communicate with each other (via calcium waves) and with neurons, even signalling neurons to fire. Although whales don’t have all the “levels” of a human brain (and so their thought processes are probably distinctly different), whales have a much higher ratio of glial cells to neurons than humans in the neocortex, the area thought to be responsible for intelligence.

T.K. Thorne’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama.  “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” In her newest novel, HOUSE OF ROSE, murder and mayhem mix with a little magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch.


Both her award-winning debut historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, tell the stories of unknown women in famous biblical tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list.


T.K. loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, often with a dog and a cat vying for her lap.


More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”