An Ode To Our 50 Years On The Path Together
Every now and then, one encounters a piece of writing that explains a keystone aspect of the mystery of life in such elegance and profundity that it is remembered for a long time. Such is the following piece by Jeremy Sherman (a neuroscientist by day) that – through the device of an intricate, well-woven parable - portrays the roles of beauty and the endogenous love potion, in Mother Nature’s evolutionary design to ensure continuation of her human creatures.
I think I’ve finally figured out why the older we get the harder it
is to start new lasting relationships. I can explain it by way of an old joke
and a new parable.
An old joke:
A little girl, sitting on her grandpa’s lap asked “Did God make me?”
“Yes,” said her grandpa.
“And did God make you too?,” she asked.
“Yes,” said her Grandpa.
She reflected and said, “He’s getting better isn’t he?”
A new parable:
God was experimenting. She had made many fine creatures. Her first were
fully programmed at birth. They were like robots. She made large
numbers of them because, being preprogrammed, they couldn’t adapt. If
they wandered into an environment where their programmed behavior didn’t work,
they would die. As long as there were lots of them though, that wasn’t a
problem.
Her next creatures could learn by trial and error. If they had a close call
with something deadly they could learn to avoid that danger in the
future. They could only learn from close calls--near death, not real
death experiences--but that made them a lot more adaptable to changes in their
environments. These did well. God was getting better, and more
daring too.
God decided to see what would happen if he made one with hindsight, foresight
and sidesight, the ability to imagine back into the past, forward into the
future and really anything on any side, and from any side. It wasn’t just that
they could imagine anything. They could sew all of their imaginings together
into one big overview of God’s works, really a glimpse of what God herself
saw. This overview would make the creature highly adaptive, able to
anticipate danger not just from near death experiences but from weaving all
sorts of twos and twos together.
For the second time ever--God being the first time--there was a creature that
could ask and answer the question “what’s this all about?”
The trouble was that there was plenty of danger, behind, in front and on all
sides. Being able to see so much at once is not for the faint of heart. God
could handle it but that’s because she was above it. She was the one who
set up the game of life this way originally, with things falling apart, and
life resisting falling apart but only for a while, a competition in which each creature is both an individual
trying to survive in a dangerous environment and the dangerous environment to
other creatures.
These new ones were creatures who could remember terrible things that had
happened to them. They could foresee their own deaths. They could see
threats on every side of them. It made them anxious, clingy, quirky and
even a little more dangerous than the other creatures.
It’s true, God’s new breed were better at adapting. They were good at figuring
out what was dangerous and steering clear. Indeed, so clear, that they weren’t
very good at mating. Their foresight enabled them to anticipate trouble with
their fellow anxious quirky creatures. Their hindsight made them remember dating
troubles past. Instinctively they were drawn to each other, but then
their imaginings made them shy
away.
So God started playing around with the variables. She invented some
painkilling, bliss-wakening drugs
that would fire off just as potential mates were getting to know each
other. That helped. Then she started to play with triggers for the
drugs. For this she made the young ones drug-inducingly beautiful.
To look at one of these beauties set the drugs aflowing. It filled these young
ones with a false sense of security.
This beauty
triggered the drugs that made the creatures think they were looking at the
unconditionally permanent safe, true good and perfect but really it was
ephemeral, merely a cosmetic appeal that visited the creature’s bodies but did
not stay long.
That the beauty didn’t last long didn’t matter. The point was to cause an
initial union, that’s all. So long as it got the creatures over their
initial aversion, then their basic clinginess would keep them together, even
though they were anxious.
This new design worked fabulously well. God had found the formula. Make
the creatures visionary, even though it has the side effect of making them
anxious. Overcome their resistance to mating with each other with drugs
that make them forget the danger and feel great bliss and trigger those drugs
with compelling, convincing beauty.
As they aged the creatures became sadder, wiser and not quite as pretty. So
they would naturally approach each other with more trepidation, and less
first-blush rush. With their hindsight, foresight and sidesight they could anticipate
trouble and it would make them ambivalent about mating.
If they mated when they were young beautiful and drugged that wasn’t a problem
because the drugs and beauty were enough to get them over the hump and into the
groove. They could lose both beauty and drugs and still stay together.
But mating from scratch late in life was not as reliable. God saw the
problem with the older ones mating, but she was OK with it. Her design just had
to ensure that there would be babies. For that you just needed the young ones
mating. It didn’t matter to God whether the old ones mated. But it
mattered to them, because with hindsight they clung to the joy they had in
matings past and wanted more of that. With sidesight they saw other
people being beauty-drugged and they could imagine themselves back in that
state. And with foresight enough to see their own deaths, they clung. They
wanted to feel what it is like to be blissfully alive while they still could.
While usually only our own stories and dialogues are posted to the “Our Stories” section of the Remedy website, because of its relevance this piece will be posted with the dateline April 14th, 2010 – a date of special personal significance to us.
Post-date
K&M 14-04-10
Keith and Marnie
Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site
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