August 24, 2010

• The Naked Ape in a Cesspool

  I was in Orlando last week on business and was reminded again what a cesspool it is.  On the plane ride out I re-read the book, “The Naked Ape”, and even though it was first published in 1969, it’s amazing how relevant it still is. 

  “A startling view of man, stripped of the facade we try so hard to hide behind.”  In view of man’s awesome creativity and resourcefulness, we may be inclined to regard him as descended from the angels, yet, in his brilliant study, Desmond Morris reminds us that man is relative to the apes–is in fact, the greatest primate of all.  With knowledge gleaned from primate ethnology, zoologist Morris examines sex, child-rearing, exploratory habits, fighting, feeding, and much more to establish our surprising bonds to the animal kingdom and add substance to the discussion that has provoked controversy and debate the world over. Natural History Magazine praised The Naked Ape as “stimulating . . . thought-provoking . . . [Morris] has introduced some novel and challenging ideas and speculations.” “He minces no words,” said Harper’s.  ”He lets off nothing in our basic relation to the animal kingdom to which we belong. . . He is always specific, startling, but logical.”  Source: amazon.com

  On the flight home, I read a short little book called “Between Barack and a Hard Place – Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama“.  The first half of the book was a little too heavy on statistics, but overall it was a relevant voice of reason, especially in light of all the Muslim nonsense.

  Even though I was only in Florida, the wackiest of purple states, for a few days; the political ads for today’s primaries were disgusting.  Luckily I was surrounded by a bunch of good friends from Portland who were mostly of the same political persuasion.  We discussed at length, this research from Social Psychology Quarterly:

  
  

  Higher intelligence is associated with liberal political ideology, atheism, and men’s (but not women’s) preference for sexual exclusivity

  More intelligent people are significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

  The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years.”

  “Evolutionarily novel” preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are “evolutionarily familiar.”

  “General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions,” says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles.” 

  An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.

  In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.  Read More…

  I was pleased how nicely this all tied in with my choice of reading material for the trip.  I came back to the liberal wasteland of Hollywood, content in the fact that I’m smarter and more evolutionarily advanced that the simpletons in Florida who gave us George W. Bush.  The one good thing I can say about Orlando, is that they have pretty clouds!  Too bad there’s no heaven!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  I guess Disney World isn’t the “Happiest Place on Earth” for dragonflies, as I found this one dead on my bed! 
  I wonder if his dreams came true?? For a few more photos, click here.

  
  

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