Stuffed animals, bat evolution, individual choice versus social system making things easier or harder

1:29 PM 1/9/11

This is one of my 'underemployed' days. Instead of working two jobs, I am working at one job where they've cut my hours way back, like they've cut everyone's hours, simply because business is slow when the college students are out of town. So I'm going in to work, but it's way later this evening. I was tired, so I slept in.

tigers
individual choice
bat evolution, multi-use tools, myers-briggs

Yesterday at McD I stole a Happy Meal toy and brought it home with me. I walked out the door with a little tiger clinging to the string of my hat. No one said anything. I don't usually do that, but I decided I liked the 'Only Hearts Pets,' the miniature ones, especially since I've been thinking lately about how I've often fantasized about making my own stuffed animals. I looked them up online to see how much they cost. I don't really like them A LOT, and I wouldn't actually BUY one, but I liked them enough to steal one from our Happy Meal Toy kits.

I've wanted to make fantasy animals instead of real animals. They wouldn't have to be 'a cat' or 'a raccoon' or whatever, although some of their features might be inspired by those animals.

A few days ago I heard something on the radio when I was listening to the Christian station. I listen to them every once in a while, especially when I'm not using any caffeine and I'm calm enough to listen to slow gospel music. Some of the music is very beautiful, but there's also a lot that I don't really like. So when I'm hunting through the radio stations, I often give them a try.

In reality, I don't want to listen to the radio while driving, but I do it to get the song out of my head. Every day when I wake up, the murderers have chosen a song to play continuously in my head, over and over and over, constantly, and I hear it and it never stops, all day long. When I'm on particular drugs or in withdrawal from them, I sometimes get enraged about the song playing, but when I'm mostly off drugs, I tolerate it with the proper attitude of 'learned helplessness.' You just sit there and endure it because there is nothing you can do. There is no use getting angry, there is no use feeling anything or reacting to it at all. They never stop doing it because the murderers don't care how I feel or what I want. Human feelings don't affect their choices and actions.

So I listen to the radio, hoping to find a different song. In reality I'd rather just drive to work in silence, and have silence in my mind as well, instead of listening to the terrible music on the radio.

Anyway I heard one of those Christian advertisement things, and it's not really an ad, but it's a few moments of people talking instead of music playing. They talk about amazing things in evolution, which prove that God exists, because evolution couldn't possibly have made these things. And it's true, they do talk about things that are fascinating and wonderful, but I disagree that it proves God created them.

This time, they talked about bats using echolocation. Bats can follow flying insects, and bats can find their way in the dark, by listening to the echo of their own high-pitched squeaks bouncing off things around them. The ad said, 'But I see a flaw in the idea of evolution creating echolocation. The bats would have starved to death if echolocation had evolved gradually!' I instantly felt contempt, annoyance, and impatience at the naivete of that argument. It somehow seemed even worse than the usual ads. Many of them just focus on how wonderful and amazing these 'God's creations' are, and they don't get specific about WHY it couldn't have evolved gradually. This particular ad tried to get more specific about it.

Often I just listen to these little ads and I don't argue about them, because I don't feel like I need to fight against them. I'm not in a situation where it does me any good to argue against Christianity. So I don't bother arguing, but I feel like I could if I tried. This time 'the voices' decided to get involved in it and they were discussing it with me afterwards.

The argument seemed so weak that I felt as though I could instantly see through it and totally destroy it, but I didn't have the detailed explanation right away. That's why 'they' were asking me why I felt so certain that I could see right through it. It was an intense feeling of contempt at a weak argument.

'The bats would have starved to death.' That crossed the line into 'laughable.'

The bats were finding some OTHER way to catch their food BEFORE they had echolocation. They might not have even been bats at that time. They might have been flightless rodents like little mice, back then. They chased their food the old-fashioned way, the hard way, by seeing it and hearing it and smelling it. Perhaps they could hear the buzzing of insects' wings. Perhaps they already had better hearing than average. And like all rodents, like mice and other rodents, they emit high-pitched squeaks. Mice squeak, too. Mice might even use echolocation as they listen to the sound of their own squeaks. But they're not as 'amazing' about it as the bats are.

When humans go blind, they sometimes adapt to it by using echolocation. Human beings are able to emit high-pitched noises that bounce off walls, when they go blind, and they have an idea how far away the walls are. It's a learned skill. Isn't that an amazing piece of evolution? Humans must have been created by God to do exactly that. Humans would have starved to death without that skill! They would have been stuck in their houses all the time, unable to move. Huh? But it's a learned skill! It's a compensation for a weakness! It's something only blind people do!

(Maybe bats are annoyed about the fact that they can't see in the dark! There are other animals that are able to see in the dark. Why can't bats? It's like a weakness. It's like being blind. They're using echolocation, but only reluctantly, only because they have to use something to compensate for a weakness. They'd rather not have to. If bats had been designed by God, then they would be able to *SEE* in the dark. Not only that, but if God had designed them, they'd have nuclear weapons so that they could fight back against the human beings invading their territory.)

This concept is: 'There is always more than one way of doing things, but some ways are easier than others.' This is also 'There is always more than one use for a tool.'

The Myers-Briggs types talk about this. David Keirsey goes into detail in his books. The SP artisans, and also the NT Rationals, both view tools as objects that can have 'more than one use' or that can be 'used in a way that they're not supposed to be used.' You could use a hammer as a screwdriver, if you absolutely had to, if you turned it backwards and stuck the very tip end of the 'claw' part of the hammer into a large screw. You could use a hammer as a support beam in a dollhouse, just for the purpose of holding up the walls and ceilings, the entire hammer becoming an object used for 'support' and nothing more, ignoring the heavy metal end of the hammer and only using it for its weight. That was one of those totally random ideas. But it's like playing the old video game, 'Sid and Al's Incredible Toons.' (A couple of sequel video games came afterwards, but they weren't as good, in my opinion - I never liked 'Contraptions' as much as Sid & Al.)

(If you try to play Sid & Al on a modern Windows computer, you will need a way to 'emulate' a DOS environment. I can't do it on this Windows 98 computer. I used to play it on my ex-boyfriend's Windows 95 computer. Later versions of Windows have special ways to make it pretend it's using DOS to play old video games.)

In Sid & Al's Incredible Toons, you have to make something that will function to achieve a goal. There are all these complicated machines that have a specific purpose. However, sometimes by accident, and sometimes on purpose, a 'complicated machine' gets used as 'something to walk on' or 'something for a ball to bounce off of' or 'a heavy weight used to bump into something else,' and that kind of thing. It wasn't 'designed' for that. But in order to play the game, it's best if you understand that every object can be used for something that it might not have been 'meant' to do. It's kind of like when you have an outdated old piece of technology, and somebody says 'I have a really expensive paperweight.' You're not using the technology for its original purpose anymore, but it makes a good paperweight.

Evolution works that way too. Humans evolved feet that are good for walking, but in the beginning, we might not have even used them for much of anything. We might have still been trying to climb trees. In fact, these weird feet might have been a handicap, a curse instead of a blessing. In the beginning, maybe we didn't even LIKE our specialized feet. Maybe we thought we were inferior to the other apes. The other apes have FINGERS on their feet, and they can use those to hold onto tree branches. Wouldn't that be cool? Don't you envy the apes? Doesn't that make our feet look pretty pathetic? So maybe we didn't even like our feet in the beginning.

But after a while we found out we could run, and swim, with our feet. And we found out we could do special things, like kicking, and dancing. God never meant for us to tap-dance, but we're able to do it really well. Our feet didn't 'evolve for that specialized purpose.' We just decided to USE them that way, after discovering that we had them and needed to use them for something. God didn't think ahead and say, 'I want these apes to be able to tap-dance.'

The SJ Guardian types, and the NF Idealist types - both of whom tend to be religious believers - view tools as specialized things that have only one purpose, the special unique purpose they were designed for. You can't, and shouldn't, use tools for anything except those special purposes. Some people do, but those are bad people. (Hackers.) (*Note. SJs and NFs are not ALL religious believers. But the religion that you hear on the radio, and in the books, and the personality that characterizes religion most strongly, resembles those two types much more than the other types.*)

I have an example. At work a few weeks ago, I was trying to open a container of pickles. The pickles come in a thin plastic container with a thin plastic covering on top. It isn't a glass jar. You only have to punch holes through the plastic cover and drain out the liquid and tear off the plastic cover.

So I didn't have anything sharp with me. I was standing back at the sink. I pulled out a ballpoint pen from my pocket, and I stabbed the plastic cover several times with the ballpoint pen. It worked just fine. I had holes in the top and I started draining the pickles into the sink.

But a helpful co-worker watched me do this, and he took the pickles out of my hands, pulled out a knife (the official tool used for cutting), and cut some official slices into the plastic cover. He did this to be nice, and to be helpful, and I appreciated the feeling behind it. I wasn't mad, I was just mildly amused and mildly annoyed. I was doing fine on my own.

So when they see a unique specialized feature, a 'tool' used by an animal, part of its body developed in such a way that it can do an amazing thing, they don't understand that maybe it evolved without being 'meant' to do that special purpose. It evolved, and then the animal accidentally discovered that this was a 'feature' instead of a 'bug.'

Maybe bats didn't even enjoy having echolocation in the beginning. Maybe they didn't like always being so sensitive to noise. Maybe they were always telling everyone to turn the radio down. If you made a cartoon about bats then you might portray them that way. (Yes, 'they' are making jokes.')

Have faith in the ability of animals to find food and survive somehow, even without their 'specialized tools.' Animals will struggle to survive no matter which tools they have or don't have. They will still hunt for food even if they can't use echolocation to do it. It's like 'The Free Market Will Take Care Of It,' the Libertarian's answer to every question.

The ability to survive isn't infinite. If you take everything away, eventually there is no hope. But people can keep struggling to survive no matter how hard it is. In fact that is how people respond to government regulation. Life gets harder and harder as they nickel-and-dime us to death, as they take away more and more of our specialized tools and abilities. But we still try to survive. It's just much harder. People still survive in Korea, in the dictatorship. They don't live very long, and they don't live safe happy lives, but still, they keep having babies now and then, although the population might be declining - I don't know if it is or not.

Bats without echolocation would be the same thing. Imagine if bat society decided that echolocation was an unfair hunting method, and declared it illegal. The insects are going to go extinct because of echolocation. We are going to run out of insects because of this unfair hunting method which is too effective. Bats would be required by law to hunt for insects the old-fashioned way, the way God intended, to make it harder for them and to protect the insects from going extinct.

So that's what the voices were talking to me about last night.

We were also talking about the 'individual choice' and 'free will' paradigm of good and evil. What is the root of evil? What causes all the evil in the world? Some people say that individual choices are what causes all the evil in the world. I was connecting this discussion with Ichazo's instinctual stackings, because a 'social' view might say that a bad society makes it easy to commit crimes and hard to do the right thing.

I was also having a discussion about 'reward and punish' versus 'easy and hard.' 'They' often use the 'reward and punish' paradigm on me, and I get very angry about it. 'Reward' someone for 'desired behavior' and 'punish' them for 'undesired behavior.'

I believe instead that the system makes it easy or hard to do something. If you have more social support for desired behavior, more positive peer pressure, you're more likely to do it. If you have all the tools and resources you need, you're more likely to do it.

But if you're struggling every day of your life to get through a fifteen-hour workday (plus travel time!) just to pay the rent, you can't do much except fall asleep when you get home. The system makes it very hard for you to do 'good works,' like going out and helping the poor or giving money to starving people. You can't do those things because the system has made it almost impossible to do. It isn't 'punishing' you. It isn't a 'lack of reward.' It's the fact that the whole system makes it almost impossible to do good things. So all those greedy, evil, apathetic people sitting around watching TV instead of giving money to the poor, it's because they're so sick and exhausted that they can't rouse up the energy or the motivation to do anything else.

'Possible' versus 'rewarded' are two completely different ideas, not the same idea at all. The government regulators are always talking about 'Let's find ways to give people incentives so that we can reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.' They don't understand that it has nothing to do with rewards and punishments, and everything to do with easy and hard. And those are *NOT* the same thing.

Culture can encourage or discourage you to do things. I know this from working at two different McDonald's stores. (I occasionally worked at the College Avenue store too, in town, overnight after football games, so it's really three stores I've worked at.) At the Nittany Mall store, there was a very different corporate culture than the one at the Hills Plaza store. In addition to that, the culture was very different back when our stores had an individual franchise owner. After I was working there for a couple months, the franchise owners gave up and sold the store back to the McDonald's Corporation, so we didn't have an individual owner taking care of us anymore. Everything fell apart after that. There was no spirit for anything. New managers came in and did crazy things. Routines were neglected. Everyone became apathetic. And that happened at all the stores, but the store that I'm working at right now, Hills Plaza, is the worst of all the stores in town. I saw the difference in culture with franchise versus corporate owners, and I saw the difference in culture between Nittany Mall, College Avenue, and Hills Plaza.

It's not just about 'reward.' It's not that simple. Sometimes, you are expected to do something because it's a routine. There's a social pressure. The managers tell you to do it. The employees are familiar with the routine. We used to stock the cooler every day at a certain time, no matter what was happening, no matter how busy we were (unless it was EXTREMELY busy). That was a routine. You got used to it and you expected to do it. People didn't explicitly 'reward' you for doing this routine. We did it for a reason. The consequence was its own reward: the cooler would have enough food in it for later on, and we would use the food. You wouldn't get paid higher wages if you stocked the cooler. (Although if you consistently refused to do lots of things people expected of you, you wouldn't get a raise, that's true. Or you might get a very small raise.)

But no matter how heroic you are, no matter how your 'individiual choices' would like you to stock the cooler, no matter how virtuous you are, you won't be able to stock the cooler if you're the only person there, if you're the only one scheduled, and you're in the kitchen running around cooking the burgers and making the sandwiches. This happens because wages are too high and the cost of doing business is too high, so they keep only a 'skeleton crew' of people in there, and a lot of routines get neglected. Over time, more and more routines get neglected because there aren't enough people to do them. Everyone is busy dealing with urgent emergencies, like making the food for dozens of customers. You do the bare minimum that you can do to get by.

This type of thing is the reason why products imported from China are toxic and contaminated with poisons. We've had several big famous incidents where we imported something from China only to find that it was contaminated, for instance, the pet food was contaminated with some toxic poison that caused lots of animals to get kidney failure and die. Somebody somewhere was too rushed and hurried, dealing with their urgent emergencies, and they weren't able to take the time to thoroughly inspect the factory for 'quality.' Quality is one of the first things to go when you have only a skeleton crew of people there rushing around doing all that they can to deal with the most urgent emergencies. This is one reason why 'they don't make things like they used to.' It's too expensive to have lots of employees walking around checking on the quality of our products. High-quality parts would be too expensive. The system makes it impossible, unaffordable, to run a business, to make a profit, while worrying about 'nonessential' things like 'quality.'

So the talk that I was having with 'them' was about my belief that the social system makes it much harder, or much easier, to do 'good things' or to do a good job. Whereas religion teaches that 'good' and 'bad' are individual choices that a person makes, all alone. They are focused on whatever is going through one individual person's mind. Like a psychologist wondering if you had traumatic experiences when you were younger. They are going to focus totally on you alone. I was connecting that with the Ichazo's Instincts. If you are a Sx/Sp, or an Sp/Sx, you tend to see things as being totally focused on the individual and having little or no connection to a larger society. There are benefits and drawbacks to seeing things this way. ('Sx/Sp' is listed as being the most typical 'religious' person in the enneagram type Ones, if I recall correctly.)

And in fact, I value that point of view and I would like to see more of it in my own life. I am never alone - I hear voices 24 hours a day - I am constantly bombarded and attacked, and I am never, never alone. (Like Quirrell with Voldemort on the back of his head.) No matter how much I would like to, I'm not able to look inwards, to look inside myself, to understand myself alone, to ask myself what I want and what I care about, because of the constant attacks. My life is constantly 'social' whether I want it to be or not. It's like, imagine if you had these servants that followed you around all day and went from room to room with you. Or bodyguards. Imagine never, ever being alone, not even for a fraction of a second. Imagine living in a cage at the zoo and all the people are walking by and talking to you and tapping on your cage.

I should probably finish this up for now... I'm too hungry to write much more. There's actually a lot more to say but I might say it some other time.

*****
omg. After I saved this draft, 'they' suggested that we should do 'Only Hearts Pets: The Slime Mold,' or 'Only Hearts Pets: The Tardigrades,' or something. And it would illustrate the amazingness of evolution, too. I read about tardigrades because they were mentioned at the very bottom of the wikipedia page about the TARDIS from Doctor Who. "Tardigrades In Space (TARDIS)" was a totally different project that happened to match the word 'TARDIS.' Tardigrades are an example of 'something that can adapt to almost any environment.'