on humanism and environmental crisis

Archive for the ‘origin of self’ Category

“An ultimate culprit for the environmental and social crisis”.

Introduction

  1. There is a crisis. Humanity more mature, wiser, and more reflective wakes up to see a tragic regression and looming disaster. Media lies are mixed with environmental and social problems. Personal anxieties are mixed with the suffering of millions. Conspiracy theories and overwhelming avalanche of facts are racing for attention of our confused and bewildered minds.
  2. I see the invention of language as the ultimate cause of the crisis. That invention saved us from extinction by giving us communication tools and an unbeatable advantage over all living beings.  But the same tool through the invention of things made over millennia the obsession with power possible.

Power involves the ownership of material goods, but also

  the ownership of the people’s freedoms, on the level of the individual, business, national and religious systems. Slowly but surely, lured by this myth of power we developed a thin, filthy layer of fear and greed.

  • This greed is just cultural and psychological and is too recent to be evolutionary or biological. It is not in our nature, which is why my proposed “no greed parenting” systems can shift our worldviews, desires, and habits in one generation.
  • My solution for these problems is based on the evolutionary explanation of some crucial ethological and anthropological facts in our prehistory.

   Human ancestors evolved from apes: huge brains with a prodigious mixture of sensory capacities-smell, sound, vision, touch.

 These already very social animals, great apes, splintered just 8 million years ago again into a new avenue even more brainy, “betting” on continuous growth of memory and communication, “neglecting” the body’s adaptability to changing environment. They were early humans with their empathy, friendship, and social networks, but without language, without syntax, there were no names or selves. They were living in an instinctual world. We can not imagine that like we can’t imagine “how it is to be a bat”.

In 1976, Julian Jaynes wrote a seminal book called “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”. (His work was analyzed in Marcel Kuijsten’s book, “Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes”.) Jaynes tried to imagine these humans as  “listening to the gods”. I would compare their wisdom to insect nest intelligence.

Ethologists and anthropologists understand the “consciousness” of animals and early humans as an instinctual intelligence governed by neural networks interwoven into evolutionarily developed algorithms, a set of “rules” or procedures to be followed in certain critical situations involving choices. Some instincts can be extremely sophisticated (“how to act as the leader of the pack of wolves” or “disgust with eating your own children”) some simple: the eels following electrical potentials.

From the onset, early human intelligence in groups of people such as a family or tribe evolved into a pattern where it was dominantly allocated to an individual: for example, the alpha male or female. All other eusocial species, that is, species showing an advanced level of social organization, evolved into socially complex systems because of group intelligence. For example, bees are a eusocial species; Each bee has limited intelligence, but the bee hive as a whole is incredibly smart.

Reality Models

.Now, with our intellect we, humans, are trying to understand our place in the Universe– so, we are making models. Curiosity and understanding grew into “knowledge about the world’ and from that sprouted “science” with its logic and objectivity principles.

But, alas, we are using “obsolete equipment”, the great ape’s nervous system evolved in the process of working on our niche, making maps of the environment, and creating a “theory of mind.”

Our understanding is made of these animal models, but we described them using our human language: dolphins “playing, singing, chasing the boat” and squirrels “outsmarting us” in the yard. As over the epochs and civilizations our language evolves, so do these models.

I see just three overlapping sets of models of reality.

  1. Ancient, pre-animal ground of being. Like forest intelligence, the spirit of the mountain, Gaia, Sun and Gods. It is a primordial, unexplained, “aha” of existence.

It is also our deepest understanding of physics, mathematics, and cosmology. (For example: in the forest one experiences a myriad of criss-crossing forces creating the forest as we see it. The trees, the fungi, the animals, but also, water and sun exposure, the history of volcanic eruptions, and human exploration, all according to thermodynamics and the laws of entropy.)

Our language can not explain it, (how could it?) but we can feel it. We share this wisdom in our bones, literally, but we know it is beyond us.

AI can’t have this data, and can’t learn it. AI is based on self-learning algorithms, without animals there is no nervous system, and no algorithms to evolve.

2. Pre-linguistic, animal-like, instinctual, emotional, and intuitive.  These models are based on the neural networks in the brains of animals and humans. In the process of strengthening its niche, each species accumulated data in the form of brain algorithms, starting about one-half billion years ago. We observe animals and ourselves, but most of this data we also will never know. It includes our own instincts, pre- linguistic part of unconsciousness, and “collective consciousness”. It’s huge: no sharing of the wisdom, each organism alone, trillions of them.

3. Our tiny human reality, built by each human baby from the ground up, from babbling, grasping, pointing, playing, “bathing” in words, names, and relationships, then, starting in the second year of life, in “things”. It originated in animals acting, and manipulating the material world. The skills are located mostly in the left hemisphere leading to the symbolic, shared language. An Aboriginal Australian man, the famous Captain’s Cook Indians from Tierra del Fuego, you and I, we all share the same one unique reality. It is why we can play charades and chimpanzees or AI can’t.

(Of course, if you attempt to describe the cosmos (#1 model) with human language (#3 model) you’d be literally “lost for words” and justly feel “there is something more”)!

 For every modern human, these models resemble “Babushka” nesting: my own objective reality described by language, consciousness, and reason in the center. (see:#3)

    Outside of that, there is the unconscious instinctual world, a sum of experiences accumulated in neural networks during half a billion years of animal evolution. (see: #2)

     And then we know there is even bigger ground of being, sacred, energy fields, that we know intuitively but also attempt to imagine and meditate about.

When I die, all my ”Babushkas” disappear, when we all die, everything is gone.

Origin of language

This simple, even if startling, concept of reality explains also consciousness, the Holy Grail of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy.

But before that, we have to remember how language was built.

It helps to see the language as a survival communication tool, it is what saved us from extinction, just 50,000 years ago. We built this tool in a similar way a one-year-old baby learns about the world: metaphor over metaphor, over metaphor, each receiving a name and becoming a thing. And the reality was growing as we learned more and more of them. Round things can be eyes, or balls, or apples, or stars… Happy things; Mom, food, toys!

This incredible innovation of communication was similar in its importance to the tool of preserving the structure of the organisms through the nucleotide chains- DNA.

It was based on the concept of eusocial sharing of meaning attached to name (sound)  and perception (things).

Out of these three crucial elements: sharing, sound, and perception, actually only the first- sharing, was really new and very revolutionary. Somehow mother/baby sharing was shifted to the grown-up world. Sharing included the concepts of “you” and “I”. This we later called “self” “reflective” and “consciousness” in different contexts.

Each word is a metaphor, it has similar origins in “social agreement” (context) and contains perceptual, “old” data and a declaration: an agency naming this old data. For example, I say “ocean of your eloquence” or ”apple of your eye”. All words in each metaphor are already simpler, older metaphors.

Sharing metaphors (words) is unique for humans (like DNA for living things), our reality is completely separate from non-symbolic beings. What we see as the mind of animals or AI, with all appearances of intelligence, language, friendship, and happiness are all anthropomorphisms!

No language, no names. No names, no things. No things, no reality. No reality, no consciousness.

See : the “Origins of Language “and ” Triangle of Agreement” diagrams in the next post: “The stories that help us understand ” The invention of language…”

Consciousness

 It is really simple: The reality is everything around you (I mean everything, past, present, and future, down to each of your bloody cells, and each of the distant stars!), the self is you, and the connection and action between the two is the consciousness. These three big concepts are really one.

They are all the gift of language, naturally one can not exist without the others, all just about 50,000 young.

   So, we call this unique feeling, this connection between self and our reality, the state and knowledge related to my active being “consciousness”, but do not fuss about it. You know what I mean, but if you ask me to add some precision, say, into the level of my alertness, it is fine, be my guest. But there is no “consciousness” floating in the universe of information and hominids trying to match it better or worse. Words are just communication tools.

 All animals have some evolutionary wisdom in their nervous system and their group intelligence so they are sentient but not conscious. Some are very, very sentient, they look like us, act like us, maybe feel like us, and we should not harm them.

. Only humans are conscious, by this ancient agreement solely, repeated with every baby, they operate metaphoric, symbolic language, this unique communication system, learned in infancy with names, agents, and things. Most of the time we act instinctually, sharing the sentience wisdom with the rest of our sister beings, sharing the love to nature and to the Earth.

Only humans can at will move one’s attention froma reflection on the meaning of this essay to laughter or crying to the basic certainty of existence. We are the metaphor experts, jumping domains and shifting the reality models in our minds.

. Only we, humans, have a planetary vision, responsibility, and capacity to save us… from ourselves.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, materialism, nature of reality, origin of self

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Danka’s Farewell

HomoTranslensis

It seems that this simple but allegorical story requires some explanations.

    The subtitle is Homo translensis (human that translates), with pseudo-Latin adjective I invented as distinctive from other names we called ourselves: “sapiens” (wise), “faber” (working), “ludens” (that plays), and “historicus” (the one with a sense of history), etc.

     I think that acquiring the symbolic shared language was a magic trick that made modern humanity, and saved it from extinction. And, as this essay digs deeply into the process related to talking, we will see that some of the events are very close to what we know as “translating”.

To translate you have for a moment to see or understand something in the old way and, at the same time, see or understand the same thing or concept in the new way (or “your way” and “my way”).

      This essay is also a double take. It describes Danka with the burden of the Promethean knowledge –humanity getting the language. Astonishingly in 3 generations, nobody can even imagine “not talking”. ( compare this with the famous Nicaraguan deaf orphans and their sign language,) As Danka struggles to preserve this story, I, the author, am struggling hopelessly with explaining the same thing.

      How can we imagine ourselves as smart, hominids, with huge brains, culture, social structure, cooperation, empathy, love, and planning, but without symbolic language ( they are on the brink of getting it)?

Neanderthals did not have it and they went extinct at only 40,000 years ago. It makes it likely that all of at least 30 branches of hominids died away without talking.

     How can we imagine? Well, modern ethology might help. In the kind of reverse thinking, we are learning so much about animals, our not-talking fellow creatures, who feel, think, are sad and glad, relate to us and we to them. But the smartest parrot or bonobo can not be trained to pass the

level of communication of an average toddler. I hope this essay will help us

imagine how close we are to them. Also, how symbolic language, by ushering us into shared reality creates an unbreachable abyss between our worlds.


Danka is an old woman. 

Many years ago, when she was a curious toddler, she asked her older sister, The Beautiful, “What’s that?” and pointed to an apple. Her sister answered: “Apple”. It is a part of the story “The Last Neanderthal”.

Then, she grew up to be a dancer and a visionary — griot (“Danka’s Self”).

Now she is an old woman. The children, grandchildren, and husbands are all done.

The dances and singing are all done too. Except for the last one.

She has had a great life, five children with Andy, her first husband, her beloved with freckles. The trickster and cave painter. He gave her rings and necklaces and beautiful gowns. He built the biggest hut in the village, the envy of every woman. He was a shaman, and the people gave him presents and jewels to buy luck and protection from evil spirits.

Andy and the second husband are dead and some children are dead and some grown up, gone. She feels in her bones that her time is up and plans for the last dance. Before that, she has to make some visits. 

Her first visit is to her oldest daughter, Ada. Ada is the village teacher. 

“Do you like being a teacher?” Danka asks. They sit at the glowing evening fire, Ada’s children asleep.

“Yes, mother, I do. Sometimes it is tiring, but there is nothing in this world I would rather do. Every day I am learning new things and I am getting to know my pupils better. I teach them about herbs, the weather, and the stars. Also, about our people, I tell them the ancient stories about our ancestors and everything I learned from my travels”. 

“Good,” says Danka. “I am glad to hear it and I am proud of you. I have a lot of jewels, but you are my brightest jewel. When I walk next to the school and hear the kids, I smile. I know they are well taken care of by you.”

Danka pauses a moment, her face turns toward the fire. “Ada, my dearest, I am going to die soon. I came here to remind you: that in daily life, full of struggle, one forgets where the happiness comes from. There are your students and friends’ smiles and your curiosity and awe in front of the unknown. And, trust in the village.” 

Danka continues as if she is about to reveal the real reason she came. 

“Before she died, my older sister, The Beautiful, told me these words, and I need to pass them on to you. You need to know the story of talking. This is what she told me:

     After Adam recovered from the fight with the tiger, he tried hard to understand us. You, Danka, were 2 years old, very curious, into everything, a very bright toddler. You wanted to know everything.  One day you picked up an apple and asked me: What’s this? I said “Apple”. Adam wanted to know: You said “apple”? And I said, “Yes, Adam, I called it apple!” The three of us knew it had a name. Then the three of us started to play the naming game.* You, Danka, kept pointing and asking and I kept naming other things. Very soon other children joined, then my older teenage cousins. In a few years, when Adam and I had three children, they learned talking from us right away. When you, Danka, were a teenager, the village was divided, I know, you don’t remember. The older people communicated in the old way. and our family and the young people talked more and more the new way. Ak’s clan, the village chief’s people, were the last to start a new way of talking. Now, after Ak died and his son Max died, everybody knows how to talk and the story is forgotten. “ 

*Foot note: In this new game: the objects, by “naming” them, appear to exist separately from tasks or instinctual knowing. In every “name” sits the original, but quickly forgotten, the naming action of agent or “namer”. To have a thing you need its name, to have a name you need a namer. 

Then, the names become objects and the game becomes reality.

      “What is the difference? Why does it matter if we remember as long as we are talking?” asked Ada.

      “You are a teacher, Ada. You know how babies are learning how to do things, crawling and grabbing and putting things to mouth to learn the taste, like little monkeys do. They learn about fears and wishes but no “I” or “you”, the same but so, so different. What is out there is part of them. I do not remember well, but it seems in the old days everything was part of the way they functioned, had a… a way to do it. Now our babies “bathe” in our talk. Everything around has a name! Watch them, they are so alert! They live in a world of objects. They manipulate toys and food, better than feelings and relationships. And yet, children grow as in the old days. They do not know anymore that they live in a different shared world. Will they love their Mother the same way they love their toys? Can the desire for a relationship be switched for the desire for play-things, and then for grown-up things?

“But Mom,” Ada was trying to understand this crazy old woman she loved so much. “Of course, they will love us the same. They will learn how to talk well and about the shared world of things, but their parents, their friends are the most important. And for kids- the laughter- they need to play and laugh and laugh”.

“And sing and dance and tell old, old stories like mine,“ said Danka. 

But she thought: Ada cannot even imagine. She doesn’t remember. My eyes are almost blind, but I see the future. In my mind I see kids loving their dolls and toys, and grown-ups loving their houses and jewels.

The two women hugged and cried. They loved each other, it was a sweet farewell.

     The second visit was much more difficult. It was with Ar, from Ak clan, the village chief. He was sitting stiffly on his tiger’s fur.

“What do you want, old griot?” he barked.

“I will dance last time tomorrow and I need to talk to you before that”.

“Talk then and be brief!”

From her pocket, she pulled a gold chain.

“This is for you.”

She observed Ar, his eyes bulging as he grabbed it.

“Hrrr”, he groaned,” big gold”.

“Ar, son of Great Max, I want you to know the story of talking”

“What???”

      “Your grandfather Ak wanted to kill the Beast,( it is how Aks called Adam) and my sister, The Beautiful, to marry your father Max.  But Adam survived, and he saved me from the tiger- this is the scar on my neck. Adam and my sister figured out how to talk to each other and then taught us, kids, how to talk. Your people, Aks, hated this, it is why they were late to learn talking…”

“Shut up, woman, it’s a lie!”

She looked gravely, Ar was getting mad, jumped up, he will be violent…. She gathered her strength and will, stepped forward, stretched her arm like an eagle, and absorbed anger. Ar, the big heavy man was frozen. She knew she had only a moment while the surprise lasted.

“You will not understand it. This golden chain should remind you. This golden chain exists because you are… we are… talking*. Without talking there is no golden chain, no silver chain, no tiger fur, just your anger.

This is the story of talking- for you.“

And she ran out.

“One and two and three “she counted and jumped sideways. A heavy, deadly axe missed her by inches.

“It’s a lie, stupid whore” roared Ar, but he did not chase her.

    She cried all the way home. People do not understand and do not want this story.

She felt like a failure, she’d die and the story would die with her.

The whole night she prayed for wisdom, luck, and fate.

When the sun rose, she knew it was her last sunrise here. She walked out and looked at the village still asleep. The magical place, her love, her life.

Somewhat she found herself at the end of the village.

The last shabby dwelling, and the noise. What is it? Ah… yes.

 Lin was the first potter in the village and he was trying to use the wheel. He came many years ago from far, far away, from beyond the Dawn Mountains. He married Danka’s cousin Emma, a big, strong woman. Emma gave him two children and she made him stay. So, he stayed, learned the local language, and tried to make friends. People did not like him and called him Strange. Danka tried to like him, to know him, but it was not easy. He made a lot of ugly pots and some not-so-ugly. They were poor.

Danka stops.

She is dead tired and dead sad. “Why I am here?” She thinks “Nobody will understand my story”.

Lin comes out from the hut and he smiles “Danka?”

She is still all in her head-” nobody will understand the transition, about learning and naming things. And if she does not tell this to anybody, the story will disappear. Humans will never know that three generations ago they were …animals.“

“Listen, Lin, good morning, I really do not know why I am here, I am sorry…”


“I know why you are here, Danka. I was waiting.”

“What?”

“You came to tell me the story, the incredible secret of talking. Sit down. You look awful, have some tea”.

As he prepares to pour some tea into one of his clay cups, he begins, “My people did not talk.”  He hands her the cup. He is thinking hard, as if trying to understand what he wants to say. “The father was a father, the son was a son, and the wife was a wife, but, “– Lin paused as she took the cup from him in astonishment. “They couldn’t tell about being a father or son or wife, they just lived that.”

“ Alone, each one alone ?” Danka follows Lin’s thoughts.

“Yes… No, not alone, alone was bad, very bad, it was normal, like always, but . . .”

Lin is at a loss for words. 

Danka tries to help: “Without talking you have to understand others… without talking”

Lin tries again: “Not alone, you are with people, but how? You cannot say, I don’t know”

“I remember now,” adds Danka with a sigh, like pushing, dislodging some heavy burden that has been in her way. “When I was young, we were just learning to talk. Adam and Beautiful talked some and they taught children and young friends wanted to learn, especially when they built a dam across the stream to get fish. Old people laughed, making fun of them, saying, “You are babbling like children, squeaking and pointing all the time”

Danka suddenly realizes: “And when my children were born, they lived differently, like, like in a different world.” Danka is looking at Lin surprised, like she’s seeing him for the first time. *

“In my old home, behind Dawn Mountain, I recall some sounds we made, to warn about the danger or to go somewhere. But now, if I go back, I would call my brother: “Brother!”, or “Hey, you!”, or “I missed you!”. Would he understand?”

“No, you’d have to teach, little by little, kids first. They might not like it, like Ak’s and Max’s clan here. They did not want to talk at first, but what could they do if their children talked?”

Danka’s breathing easier, maybe there is some hope, she thinks.

“I want you to tell this story to your girl, Ann, she is the brightest.” 

 “Danka, I will, but she might not understand. I understood because my people did not talk, I was here with Emma and I had to learn myself, like a baby. I am still learning words from my children… and from your singing, Danka. I remember the story of the freckled, is it the right word? Yes, the freckled boy who was killed pretending to be a monster!”

“He was my husband, my love, I told this story when I was 16 years old!” she whispers.

“I am sorry, I did not know,” says Lin.

“It’s fine. I still love him after 60 years.” she smiles, holding Lin’s hands, “Thank you. I did not expect this…I have to go.”

Exhausted, she slept. When she woke up the sun was low. 

“Why am I doing that? For whom? The only way for my grandchildren, the other grandchildren, and their grandchildren to know it is to get it from me.

 And the only way to do it is to sing and dance and then disappear, to die.

Will they remember?  And if not, so what?” she sobs.

Then she knows it has to be done, even without clear answers.

When evening came, she was ready. She gave away all her possessions, jewelry, clothes, and the house. At the fire, she danced and she sang the story of talking. 

But Ar told people not to go and they were afraid and did not go. Only a few old folks and some orphan kids she taught. And they did not understand the talking story. There were no right words, no images. She ran from the place ashamed and devastated.

At home, she prepared the drink that would kill her. She did not want to die. Then she heard footsteps. It was Lin. 

“I talked to Emma and talked to Ann, my daughter,” he said to Danka.

 “I was thinking about that for a long time. Let’s go to my people behind Dawn Mountains and teach them to talk.”

And they went.

*******

Category:

Evolutionary Reality, human nature, materialism, nature of reality, origin of self

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Danka’s Self

    This new essay is similar to the “Last Neanderthal” – it has a narrative, a story, and an explanation of the allegory. That is a philosophical and extremely controversial part. It is actually a continuation of the thought experiment, as it assumes that events from the previous essay- the story- actually had happened, and -again- assumes that my interpretation of them is correct.

 Let me remind you and summarize the story. 

The time is about 50, 000 years ago, somewhere in Europe. Neanderthals are on the brink of extinction, and we follow the fate of one of them. The cold and hunger killed the last two members of Adam’s family, his wife, and his son. They did not have modern language or the ability to start a fire, but otherwise, they were very smart and strong.

  Adam is rescued by Old Woman from the Homo Sapiens tribe and nursed to health by Eve the Beautiful. Adam saves the little girl from the lethal attack of a saber-tooth tiger. This little girl, Eve’s 5-year-old sister, Adam and Eve are creating a shared communication system that (my hypothesis) is growing into Language, Self, and Reality. ( “You called it apple”- it was the first hypothetical sentence understood by these 3 people, it contained: “you called” – the agent, the person, “it”- the thing-perception, sensory firing, a  piece of the old behavioral code, with its name:  “apple”.)

   To continue this thought experiment, we moved a generation forward. The three people who started to use agents and simple objects in communication were bonded by a prototype of a social unit: the shared magic of childhood, love, and of desperate will to communicate. In about 15 years this group grew and their shared vocabulary rapidly expanded. Summers were warmer and there were a lot of fish in the river and berries in the forest and babies in the tribe. Adam and Eve had 3 children Mel 8, Fiona 6 and Sophie 4. The” little girl” is now 16 years old and has the name.

                                           ***

‘My name is Danka, but people call me Dancer. I love to dance. I play the flute, the horn, and drums. I made my instruments with my Uncle Adam’s help and I taught myself to play. 

I go fishing and pick fruit with others, but I am busier and busier with my music.  When I sing and dance the world around me changes. 

My family and others from the tribe come to listen to my stories and to dance with me. Mel, my 8-year-old nephew can play the drums well, but only I can play flute and horn well.

 The stories come to me, I do not know where from, they just come.

Sometimes they come from my dreams and memories of winter and fighting with tigers, and sometimes from flowers and jumping fish. I am teaching kids how to sing and dance and about flowers and animals and seasons.

   Lake Cave Summer Feast is coming up. 

Each year before the midsummer Full Moon young people go to the cave. It is a difficult trip, it takes three days of hiking through treacherous mountains and into the cave. You need to be brave and curious and strong to get there. Last year was my first year, but this year I will lead my people. 

Eve tells me:

“Danka, to make a strong drink we need special berries from the Western  Forest. Take my kids to help you, but be careful, other people live in the West.”

I run like a wind, light and happy and strong.”

 “Who needs the berries

   We need the berries

We find the berries 

    In jungle!

We pick the berries

Magical berries

The sweetest berries 

That dangle!.”

***

Eve’s three kids follow bellowed Auntie, trying to catch up with her, laughing and tumbling. Mel, Fiona, and little Sophia who is just 4 years old.

Danka runs and sings her song “who need the berries”. On the “jungle” and “dangle” she jumps very high, landing on both feet into a deep squat.

Other kids are tripping, trying to mimic her.

Then she skips, then she twirls, still running, three kids after her in the narrow path among giant acacias and prickly raspberry bushes.

Mel is the drummer. He beats the rhythm with his left hand hitting his leather bag. This is not easy because, on his right shoulder, he carries his weapon, a 5 feet long spear. He is also an expert thrower, ready to protect the girls against any danger.

“ But,” he laughs,” all the animals will run away scared from Danka’s singing and jumping”

As soon as he finished his thought he noticed a movement of a shadow among the trees.

Then there is a strange, terrible roar. He has never heard anything like that before.

“WWRAOOOW”

He is ready to kill it.

“ As soon as I see his chest- the beast is dead- whatever it is”- Mel killed a bear and hyena before.

He sees the huge hairy head in the bushes.

“It is mine”, his right arm takes back, and the hips and torso recoil like an enormous spring.

“Wait, wait”- whispers Danka-and he stops at the last moment.

The “beast” jumps out, under the big head there are blond curls and a boy’s laughing face with the funniest brown dots all over it, but most on the nose. 

“What’s your name?!” Danka yells.

But he runs away and he is fast, waving with his “beast” head.

Danka laughs “ Mel, make sure you do not kill silly boys, it was a close call”

She likes this boy. A trickster. She remembers him from the last year, in the cave, he was really small and skinny then. But she remembers the laughter, the freckles, and the funny shadows he made with his hands across the fire in the cave.

 “I hope to see him again next week- if he is not killed by somebody by mistake”- she sighs and smiles.

Next week she will lead her tribe’s youth to Cave Lake. They will eat mushrooms and drink magic foods and potions and then they will dance.

She will dance with them, but her dance is different.

Eve worries about her little sister. 

“ Danka, you’re too much, you just don’t care, you just sing and dance, how can I protect you? Elders are not happy.  Big Man’s older son wants you to be his woman. It is an honor to our family”.

Danka doesn’t care for Big Heavy Max.

Eve sighs and hugs her sister. “Be careful, but when you find the boy you like, go for him”

Danka laughs “ I will, sis”, she twirls with her, then runs away singing and skipping: “I will, Oo-oh, I will, Oo-oh , how I reeeeally will!”

Old women and Eve send them off. About two dozen of young people, boys and girls run away from the village. They run towards the Western Forest and The Mountain. They carry food and drink and wood for fire and they run. They run for hours and hours, then they sleep for a few hours and they run again. Exhausted, and excited thy see The Mountain. And they find the small mountain lake and the cave on the shore. Danka leads her people into the sacred chamber. There are other young people from other villages. 

They are exhausted after a long run but they start a fire and then the drums call them to dance. Their dance is powerful, it sounds like a jungle, like a waterfall and thunder. It sounds like a buffalo stampede or the lion’s kill.

The drinks and food are served by girls, and boys do more dancing and showing off their skills, jumping over fire, and wrestling.

 Soon nobody remembers that they are tired and the dance, shouting and competition becomes more fierce.

 Then Danka jumps out, climbs the elevated flat stone, and blows her horn.

She sees the boy with freckles. And the boy sees her.

She wails and she sings. They understand some but not all words. 

But it is so different, so beautiful. They never heard anything like this: she sings the story.  She shows it, and dances and sings it. They know it, they see it. It is about the buffalo hunt. But also about one hunter- it’s a boy, or is it a buffalo? And he is pierced by the spear, and he falls. He is killed. 

The woman, yes, they see the woman who loved him, she runs and embraces the dead man. 

They scream and then stop and there is silence. The woman, The Dancer, shows how “she lifts the dead body”, and the bloody head mask stays on the ground.

They hold their breath, stunned.

She plays the flute: how beautiful the boy is now and how she loves him.

And then she carries his bloody body and begs and cries.

Wow, she is talking to Sun and Moon, she begs Them- “bring him back for me”.

And they see; that death is final and the only way to be together with her love is..

Is to die. She falls. There is silence. And then… she wakes up, she rubs her eyes- was all this but a dream??

The boy with freckles  runs to her and shakes her,  he wants to tell her: ”I understood, it was me, and it was not!”

Will she understand? He knows what to do.

Andy, ( he has a name now) takes her to his secret place in the cave.

He makes fire- he shows the same story with his hands and shadows on the cave’s wall. He takes her hands in his hands and makes her hands show the boy with a big beast head.

She understands! He says “AAN- DY” She repeats, laughs, and points to him “Andy”. Then he makes shadows of young women.  “She dances”. He looks at her and she says: “DAN-KA”, he repeats: “Danka”.

Their hands do not part, they stay together. They slowly quit wrestling and showing shadows, but start showing young bodies what they want. 

 After they made love, hands still together, they fall asleep, and the campfire’s red ashes glow slowly dying away.

Andy wakes up and a tiny ray of sun lits the stone wall where they played with shadows. Was it a dream? No. He sees a beautiful woman happily sleeping next to him. He gently frees himself from her embrace, gets up, and stretches.

Then he brings the paint they used to make hands prints-thousands of handprints, generations after generations- time signatures, nothing more.

In his head, he still has Danka’s story. In his disheveled, half-woken head.  He shakes his blond curls, curses quietly, and starts painting. 

The world disappears and the pictures come alive on the stone wall.

It is hours later when he looks behind his shoulders.

She is awake, sitting, looking at him and at the paintings, smiling.

She starts to sway into slow, dance-like moves. She sings sweetly and quietly. 

“Andy, Danka, Aaaandy,

Playing by the fire, 

We live and love and liiii-ve,

And then we die.

                                   ***

The real language i.e. the communication between people as a sine qua non for the experience. Shared (?”selfed”?) narrative, music, and visual art as the simple beginning of our reality.

What is an Agent or SELF? All words have human origins. It means that at some point in time, there was a social agreement (usually unconscious) between some humans about a word and its meaning. Because of these social and pragmatic origins, over time these agreements shifted and shifted. I expect that about the word and meaning of say “an apple,” there was no need for much shifting, but such concepts like self or consciousness or soul or ego the agreements shift and shift and for every discussion, it is very wise to renew the such agreement. 

How about attaching “participants, selves or agents” ( “self” as the common language equivalent of “I” and “you” and “he/she”,  while using “agent” to denote “action of an observer”) to the concept of experience? 

Self and experience. 

Self experiences an experience. To have experience is to have self. No self, no experience. Simple and elegant. Again, it harks to the origins: we use language for conversations. That’s what makes an experience. Each conversation has agents (selves), content, and context. But context can only be described by additional conversations. How about the events that look like experiences? Pre-linguistic music, images, emotions, dreams, animal behaviors? Remember the last Neanderthal from my story? He was hungry, dying, and grieving the death of his son. But, by the will of the omniscient author, he had no language yet, then no self, no experiences. (of course- the author and readers- did experience that). He was using his sophisticated instinctual system to survive. Later on, with the magic of love, childhood, and translation, he, the Beautiful and Little Girl acquired the socially shared first word- “apple’ with its meaning of red round fruit (the first thing!). So, later on, he could try to explain his past, using his budding language and self to describe past experiences. It is a dramatic fictional illustration of a hypothetical event. But we live with hybrid minds. Your anger is a mixture of primordial, instinctual sensations and all language/self-saturated memories and concepts. Also: Your awe, love, headache, and friendship. Any difference between conversation and experience? Not much: more emphasis on “from you to me” versus “me with me”- both are social and “selfed”- i.e. language-loaded.

This agreement would also help with understanding, among other mysteries of the universe, our hybrid mind. 

The old part makes almost all nervous system, similar to animals, octopuses, and all. Peripheral nerves, autonomic nerves, whole brain with all myriads of codes, and algorithms. This old mind led us to get more and more complicated through the perils and challenges of evolution, it contains all mechanisms to survive, to outwit others, all instincts and gut feelings, altruism and competition, and anger and love.

It creates a sophisticated world, with emotions and feelings but this world belongs only to this organism. It is not shared and it doesn’t have things. It is extremely difficult to imagine such a being. All feelings and drives but nobody to feel and be driven. All fear, trembling but without anybody to fear. 

And then Homo Sapiens invented language. I described possible scenarios. Most likely I am wrong, but it helps with imagining the process. It started with sharing simple sentences like “I called it apple”

Strange, it had an agent, “self”
But no emotions, no value. The “stone” or “buffalo” is not good or bad. Revolutionary, it had things. The incredible advantage of things over the old system ”behaviors” is that they can be easily controlled! They practically “ask” to be controlled. The “self” controlling “a thing”: the consciousness is born.

The new ( maybe 50.000 years old?) system propelled Homo Sapiens to where we are now. The shared material world was controlled. Greed was born and it challenged more and more evolutionary-developed altruism. This is the core and deep origin of our environmental and social disasters. 

It also points toward the only way we can reverse this.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, human nature, nature of reality, origin of self

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