Category Archives: Primitive Man

Hidden

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Treetop came home. Staghorn saw her dart furtively into the burrow under their leaf-tent, and lay down on the bed of leaves with her back to him. He knew she was hiding something. He did not want to talk to her though.

He sighed in frustration: Gods, she drives me crazy! Well, there’s no avoiding it. So he went over to where she was and squatted down.

Then he saw it. The tiny wolf cub latching on to her breast, suckling.

“What are you doing!” he spat, reaching for the cub. She slapped him away.

“Shhh!” she hushed. “If they see her, they’ll try to kill her.”

“I want to kill it too! Give it to me!” Staghorn demanded.

“No!” She pushed him away. “The cub is mine. I have lost my baby now. I love her, and I want to keep her.”

Staghorn could not believe what Treetop was saying. His mind spun. Has anyone ever tried to keep a wolf cub? He could not remember anyone doing that.

“Are you insane? No one has ever kept a wolf cub. No one ever will. The wolf is our enemy. The wolf kills our people. We have to kill them. If you raise this wolf, it will simply turn on us and kill us too.” Staghorn shook his head.

“I don’t care. I want to keep it and I will. If you love me, you will help me hide her.” She kept her back to him.

He thought to himself: “That’s it. I cannot stand her any longer.” He turned to walk away.

But he knew: He could not live without her. This was just another one of those things that drove him crazy about her. But when he thought about it, how she would not bend to his will, how he wanted to mate with her then!!

Gods! It was annoying. But if it wasn’t Treetop, it would be some other cross woman.

“Alright. You can keep it. For now. But how will you hide it?” he asked.

“Stop calling her ‘it’!” She insisted. “I don’t know. I need you to help me. Say that I am sick. Bring me food. I will keep her here with me and feed her. After a few days, maybe we will think of something.”

And so it was. They kept the little thing, who eventually he started to call “her”. And then an amazing thing happened. When he lay in the burrow with Treetop, spooning with her, watching her feed that tiny cub, he began to hate her a bit less. Gradually, she opened her eyes and began to gaze into his. He saw his soul in there, sometimes.

He found himself after a few days hopelessly in love with her too. He knew, crazy as it sounded, that if someone tried to kill this cub, he would have to kill him.

Hated

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ClosedFist hated wolves.

Everyone he had ever known, ever cared about, had been killed by wolves. He knew they would kill him eventually. The moment the wolves took him often haunted his dreams. He feared that moment more than anything.

This is the way he thought: The people of the tribe did fine, mostly. We could find food very well. The land where we live is good and keeps us fed. We make our leaf tents, and burrow under them. We sleep with our women and make our babies.

Life is good, mostly.

If it wasn’t for the wolves. The wolves are always there. So many! Impossible to escape from them, either. They run much faster than we do.

Often he wondered why it was that the gods decided to make people walk and run on two legs, when the wolves and other beasts have four. It is so much faster to run on four legs!

But then we would not have hands. And hands are wonderful! We make our spears, our flint tools. Sometimes if the year is good, and we take some game, we can make leather. We take the skin, dry it by the fire, and all the men take turns pissing on it. Then we take the fat from the meat and rub it on the skin until it becomes soft.

BuckHoof had taken some leather and cut it with the flint tools into long strips. Then he twisted it together. He was trying tangling the pieces together in all sorts of ways. ClosedFist did not understand the purpose of the thing that BuckHoof was trying to do, but it was interesting. BuckHoof called it rope.

So, maybe hands are good. We get to make things, do things which other beasts cannot.

But wolves still kill us all, eventually. Except Oroco. The people kept him alive. He remembers the old stories, from the priest who came before him. That was important to the village. We need to remember the old stories to know how we should live now.

So we keep Oroco in the center of the village, away from where wolves would come.

But Oroco was the only one. Everyone else always died from wolves. There were no exceptions that ClosedFist could remember.

ClosedFist

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ClosedFist was Staghorn’s friend. He knew this was his function.

He was there with Staghorn, always. What Staghorn wanted, that was what they got.

Staghorn was simply the most important man in the village.

But, of course, Oroco was the chief. He always would be, until he died.

He was old now, though. Although hale and in good health, he was stiff and tired a lot. He slept, mostly.

They brought him food. All of the tribe looked after him.

He was the most respected man in the village, and obviously he was still the priest.

But he was not the most important. That was Staghorn.

Staghorn was simply the most useful man in the village. He was the best at everything. He was always catching game. They would be out on a stalk together, just the too of them, daring the wolves to attack, driving them off with spear thrusts until they tired of the chase.

Then, they would hunt together.

But always, it was Staghorn who would find the food. Sometimes even a pig! They had been the chiefs together that night. They had brought back a male boar – with tusks! How they had feasted!

They ate the cooked pig flesh, roasted right in the fire, until their bellies bulged.

He was Staghorn’s friend. He was OK with that. He was the second most important man in the village that way.

Staghorn

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Staghorn was enraged.

He sat in front of his tent, where he and Treetop slept, with is closest friend, ally, and second-in-command, ClosedFist. His head in his hands, between his knees, he trembled.

ClosedFist knew not to try to touch him now.

It was the wolf, he knew that. The wolf had taken MonkeyHand, his son. So many people they had lost to wolves!

He remembered them all. AngryMan had gone into the forest. He had not returned. They found his gnawed corpse later, strewn through the forest.

He had wept. He wished he could weep now. Maybe later he would grieve.

Too many. Too many gone. Always, it was wolves.

But Treetop! He could not help himself: He hated her, a bit, for her betrayal, her disobedience in following the hunting party earlier tonight.

But he knew. His problem was simple: He loved her. It was the true love, the once-in-a-lifetime love. And his love for her was because of this very thing.

He loved her because she disobeyed. He could not imagine being with a woman who would obey him. He would not respect her! She needed to have her own mind, to tell him what she wanted.

He knew it was not a good thing, that he was like this. But there it was. He could not help it. He loved her.

He remembered when he first saw her, when she was just a small child. He was a very young man then, only fourteen summers or so. He was smitten with her. He noticed quickly how strong willed she was. She was always in trouble.

Later, when her breast began to form, he found himself staring at her. She soon noticed his attention. It turned out that she loved him too. Once she understood, finally, that she was the kind of woman he wanted, they had mated, and had been together ever since.

Now he knew that small hatred, the hatred of betrayal, for his beloved. Treetop would always bear some shame for this. He would never mention it to her again. He knew it would only anger her, and he had nothing to say. There was nothing to say that would change anything.

The problems is wolves. What to do about the wolves.

Treetop

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Treetop was pissed. Her man, River Monkey, had snubbed her, shouting at her to stay put. Going on and on about the prattle that Oroco spouts: Protect the open womb. Protect the baby.

So it’s too dangerous for her to go out with the hunting party? We’ll see about that.

She picked up her baby, MonkeyHand, and stuffed him brusquely into the leather pouch that River Monkey had given her, and strapped him on her back. By now, MonkeyHand knew not to cry: She would simply smother him if he did. He hated that, so he stayed quiet as she left the tent, and started following the men.

Such noise they were making! She sniffed derisively as she followed silently behind them. They were completely unaware of her, of course. No one could move through the forest better than Treetop, with her long, gangly legs. She was a woman of 19 summers with a man of her own now. Likely to be chief someday too!

River Monkey spotted the wolf as it began its kill run. It was moving in from the North, coming fast, hunting something, but not them. Then suddenly his heart was filled with fear as he saw Treetop take off running with MonkeyHand, their baby son, strapped to her back. He shouted for the men to follow, and took off after her.

Stupid! Treetop knew she was stupid! She was so busy in her own mind criticizing the men, that she had missed the wolf, and now she was being hunted. And she had the baby!

She felt more than saw the wolf pounce on her and MonkeyHand. She went down hard. She heard the sickening sound of the crunch of bone, as the wolf grabbed MonkeyHand by the head and shook him.

She heard Staghorn come in with his spear and end the wolf with a thrust through the heart. Then she reached down and picked up her dying infant son. She held him and watched as he struggled to breath, but she knew it was no good. Broken neck. Within a few seconds, he was gone.

He was gone. She felt the blow physically, as she fell to her knees sobbing hysterically. She looked up and met the eyes of her man, as she held her infant son’s body.

That moment was searing. She saw in his face the rage, the fury, at her defiance. And she knew that it was her fault that MonkeyHand was dead. She was wrong all along, and should have obeyed. Yet she also knew that is was not her nature to obey.

Desperately she looked into her man’s eyes and searched for some love, some forgiveness. And then she found it there. She knew that he was beyond anger, beyond words, for her stupidity. But she also knew that he still loved her. In that she found some small comfort.

And that was when they heard it: A soft scuffling, scratching and whimpering sound. Nearby they found the den, filled with five newborn cubs.

She reached out and grabbed his arm and said: “She was defending her cubs. We would have done the same.”

River Monkey turned and gazed at the female mother wolf, lying dead on the ground with his spear through her heart. He walked over and roughly pulled out his spear. Grinding his teeth he said: “We have lost enough of our people to wolves. I am not in the mood to forgive this one. Pebble! Kill those cubs. Let’s get out of here.”

She collapsed onto the forest ground and began to grieve. Dimly she heard the men’s spears pounding as they beat the cubs to death. And then the men, sensing that she needed to be alone with her son, began to withdraw.

She lay there on the ground alone for a long time, how long she did not know. She was lost in grief, self pity, remorse, and guilt. She wanted to undo what she had done. She wanted her son back. But she knew there was no going back now. What was done was done.

Gradually, she became aware of another sound, coming from the den. Reluctantly, she went to the den, and there she found a sixth cub, a female, lying hidden in the back, behind a rock. She was quite unharmed and helpless, her eyes still closed.

She hated this cub. With all her might she wanted to rip her throat out with her own teeth. Or she could simply leave her there to starve. That would be crueler anyway.

But as she looked at the small, tiny, newborn cub, she began to pity her. She realized, again, that the mother wolf was protecting her den. She understood that. Finally, she found that she could not bring herself to kill the tiny creature.

But what to do? Without a mother to feed and protect her, this cub would die very quickly. The solution was right there on Treetop’s chest: Her breasts were still full of milk.

Impulsively, not realizing what she was doing, she put the cub on her breast. The cub nuzzled, latched on and began to feed hungrily. Holding the cub in her arms as she fed, she made her way back to the tribe.

Treetop never knew it, but that one decision, the choice to nurture and feed that wolf cub, is the most important single thing that has ever happened on this world.

Like-A-Wolf

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I am beginning a series of blog posts that will read much like a novel, with each blog post reading like a chapter. I call this book “Like-A-Wolf”.

The basic subject is the domestication of the dog. I regard the invention of the dog (I use the term “invention” very carefully – more on that later), as the most important single event in the evolution of human culture, for reasons which will become clear.

Sooo, why do I say “invent”?

First, many of the organisms which we consume as agricultural products are human inventions. Wheat for example. The ancestor of wheat is very different from the organism which we know today. We selective bred wheat to be what we wanted: A sweet, large seed grain with specific properties.

In a similar manner, dogs were effectively selectively bred by paleolithic humans. The mutation which makes dogs different from wolves is known as empathy. As Jeremy Rifkin points out in his post The Empathic Civilization, empathy, is the most powerful aspect of our consciousness, and really defines us as humans. We have a form of hardware in our brains which enables empathy, called mirror neurons. This causes our brain neurons to fire when we see suffering in exactly the same manner as the organism which is experiencing the suffering. Hence we “feel the pain” of an organism we observe suffering.

Other organisms on the planet do not generally have empathy. Wolves, for example, have a psychology which is very similar to what in human psychology is referred to as a psychopath: Basically an insatiable killing machine. Wolves normally have empathy during the period up to adolescence. (All mammals have some form of empathy when being suckled by their mother, as that is required in order to live effectively in a den of other cubs. An insatiable killing machine would not work in that context.) Once a wolf goes through adolescence, however, the psychopath mentality eventually takes over, and the wolf ceases to make eye contact, and becomes devoid of empathy.

Once in a while, though, a wolf is born with an interesting mutation: It is permanently capable of empathy. We refer to this as “tame”. The normal fate for this cub would be to be killed by the other wolves in the pack after it goes through puberty. Empathy is definitely not an adaptive trait for surviving in a wolf pack.

What happened then is very interesting: A woman made the choice to suckle a wolf cub. (I weave this idea into the story, in which a 19 year old girl who recently lost a baby and has full breasts finds a wolf cub and decides to suckle it.)

Hence the “invention” term: Many human inventions are not intentional, but rather accidental. What makes them inventions is the human aspect. Undoubtedly, there were wolves being  born with this mutation. But a human never decided to nurture one until this point.

Once that happened, the paleolithic tribe where that occurred would quickly discover that they had a devastating weapon. Not only could a pack of domesticate wolves be used by a human hunting party against all kinds of game. (Paleolithic humans after the invention of the dog were able to bring down all kinds of big game, up to and including wooly mammoth, and at that point become the dominant species on the planet.) Dogs enabled humans to capture and domesticate the goat, sheep, horse, cow, donkey, and so forth. The dog was first, though. Effectively the neolithic experiment (i.e. the invention of agriculture) begins with the dog, which was the first domesticated animal.

Eventually, the dog was used as a weapon against neighboring tribes, with devastating effect. That resulted in the rise of the first neolithic empire, the invention of slavery, and all the rest.

We are who we are  because of the domestication of the dog.

Bad Sin

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Sin is bad. I know what you are thinking: No kidding. Like I didn’t know that!

But that’s not what I mean. I need to be a bit more clear here.

What I am saying is that the concept of sin, i.e. the idea of a vengeful, legalistic God, who puts concrete requirements on human behavior, and punishes disobedience, is a pernicious, evil concept which leads to terrible consequences. Thus, it is the idea of sin that is bad, not any specific sin itself.

I have been living in the “no sin” state for a while. Bear in mind, I am not saying that I live a life of sinless perfection. (That would be delusional!) No, I am merely saying that I have abandoned the sin-based way of thinking. I no longer believe that there is a divine law which I am required to obey, or face divine justice.

In the process of abandoning the concept of sin, I have become aware of the effect that consciousness of sin had on me. If you believe in sin, you believe in a divine law. Thus, there is an objective, non-cultural standard for right and wrong, good and evil, etc. Here’s the rub: How do you decide what is the content of the law of God? In other words, who decides what is and is not legal?

Typically, in our history, that has been left to religious leaders to decide. And I was no exception. I bought what religious leaders taught me was right and wrong. I attempted to live a relatively sinless life, as that term was defined by my cultural context, in that case Evangelical Christianity. Other religions which assume the existence of a legalistic God are no different, though. Islam, from what I can tell, leads to a very similar place.

Giving someone else the power to decide what is and is not in compliance with the divine law is a very dangerous thing indeed. Especially if the law you are attempting to follow is from a completely different culture, geographic region, historical era, etc. Inevitably, you end up attempting to adapt the putative divine law from those conditions onto your current conditions, with often disastrous results.

Take slavery. Slavery is a well-understood anthropological phenomenon. Once neolithic cultures arose from pre-historical, paleolithic environments, then there was a huge increase in the number of available calories. That meant that part of the human society no longer needed to work on gathering food. This led to the development of government, religion, and the military. Early neolithic empires used soldiers armed with metal weapons to conquer and enslave the surrounding paleolithic humans (whom they regarded as “barbarians”). In the process, neolithic empires obtained access to a large number of captive humans.

What can you do with a captive human? You can kill him/her. But that has limited utility. How much better to force them to hang around and do stuff! Thus, slavery arose almost immediately in human history, following the neolithic revolution.

Once slavery took hold, it became a required part of life. The Roman Empire famously ran on slaves. Once all of the available surrounding cultures were conquered, and the supply of excess slaves dried up, Rome began to collapse. With slavery being the dominant way of organizing human activity in the ancient world, making it illegal under the “divine law” would be unthinkable.

Sure enough, various religious cultures have used their version of the divine law to justify the conquest and enslavement of surrounding primitive cultures. The Western European colonial expansion into the New World was depressingly typical. The annihilation of numerous primitive cultures was justified with the idea of winning new converts to Christ. Columbus’s voyage, for example, was underwritten by Queen Isabella of Spain, a devout Catholic. The explicit goal of the voyage was to find new converts to Christ, thereby increasing the glory of God, and of His faithful servant, i.e. Queen Isabella herself.

Further, the enslavement of Africans during the colonial period was justified using a silly and ridiculous reading of the book of Genesis. In Genesis 9:20-27 Noah prophesies a curse against his grandson Canaan, which includes these statements:

25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

The Christian European invaders regarded the Africans as the descendants of Canaan, and thus naturally slaves to the other sons of Noah (notably themselves).

So there you have it: Giving the power to a religious leader to decide what is and is not in the law of God directly led to the institution of slavery, and the resulting enslavement of millions of primitive humans.

If that ain’t bad, I don’t know what is.

Empathy

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Empathy is an interesting thing. It causes me to behave in a way that seems at first glance to be against my own self interest. But it is?

I have been pondering this. Empathy is at the core of what makes us human. We are so social, as social as any creature on the planet. And we are fairly unique in having empathy.

One guy I love to listen to is Jeremy Rifkin, who talks about empathy a lot. As Rifkin points out, empathy is something we are quite selective about. We tend to have more empathy for some folks than others. In the beginning, humans really only had empathy for their own family group, and regarded all other humans as hostile. (Paleolithic humans still live in pretty much this same way today.) These humans had tremendous empathy for their own family members. But for others, not so much.

Enter religion. As Rifkin points out, religion gave humans a way to expand their empathy set: By identifying another creature as being part of my religious group, I get to have more empathy for that person. I have seen this play out in my own life and the life of my family. For example, there was recently a flood in our area, and some folks we knew lost everything. My wife and I know these people because of religious affiliations from the past. As a result, we gave them clothes, food, etc. Another family down the street who was not in our religious group, we did not even care to look in on them.

So, this family is inside our empathy set, which is defined, at least in part, by religion.

Given that empathy causes me to give away things I need and make other sacrifices, the question is: How did empathy arise in human consciousness? I think I have an answer for that one.

Assume a proto-humanoid male is in the rain forest in some ancient time. He has an interesting mutation: He has developed what Rifkin calls “mirror neurons”. That is, when he sees another creature who he identifies as being like him who is having some kind of experience (say intense pain), his neurons light up in exactly the same manner as the creature who is suffering. In this way, this individual experiences (to a certain extent) the suffering of the other creature.

This causes our male humanoid (we will call him Lim) to suffer more than other humans around him. But he is also able to relate to the experiences of other humans better.

One day he comes upon a female. She is badly hurt! Her ankle is seriously twisted and bruised. She cannot walk at all. Worse, she has been stranded here for some time. She is very hungry, thirsty, and tired.

He finds that he feels some of her distress as well. He ponders what he has done when he has been in a similar situation. Suddenly, he has a remarkable idea. He will bring her food! So he goes to a place where he knows there are some ripe berries, and uses a large leaf to carry a bunch of these back to the female. She hungrily devours them with great joy.

Then he goes to the river and after some fumbling finds a hollow gourd that he fills with water. Again, she receives the water gratefully.

Finally, he lies down beside her and cuddles with her for warmth. In this manner, they fall asleep together.

The next day, she is feeling much better. She finds that she likes him, so they have sex. She continues to enjoy his company, so she stays with him, and they have several children, which inherit this odd mutation. Because these young children are able to exercise this new-found ability to form empathetic bonds, they make exceptionally good mates, and they easily find a partner, and in turn reproduce again.

And so on and so forth, until the entire human race runs on empathy.

Remember this, please: Evolution encourages one thing, and one thing only: Reproduction. Whatever improves the chances of reproduction (including the rearing of competent, viable adult offspring who can in turn reproduce) will be selected by evolution. Thus, although empathy seems to be against my best interests (in the sense of material belongings, time, etc.) it dramatically improves my chances of reproducing. In this way, the development of empathy is fairly obvious.

More later.

Evolving Culture

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I have been kicking around the question of how culture evolved. Near as I can tell, this is the mechanism, but please let me know if you have another view.

Basically, human beings are general purpose computing machines. I have pointed this out previously. That distinguishes us from other species on the planet, for sure. No other species is even remotely close to us in terms of demonstrated abilities to solve problems.

We refer to this as human consciousness. Our ability to think, reason, debate, justify, rationalize and so forth. I call this the Human Consciousness Program (HCP), which I liken to a piece of software.

Turns out other organisms on this planet are running bits of genetic software too. Take for example the worms that infect the brains of ants. These nasty little buggers manipulate the ants’ thinking patterns, and basically force them to imitate a berry. This in the hope that birds will eat these poor ants, become infected with the worms themselves, and allow the worms to complete the next phase of their life cycle.

While all this is incredibly bizarre, it points out that the ant is simply running a piece of software, which the worm has cleverly learned to hack. (I say cleverly in slight jest, because calling these particular organisms worms is rather charitable: They don’t even have a brain.)

So, assume for the moment that all of the various organisms on this planet (especially the ones that tend to move around and do stuff) are simply running bits and pieces of software of varying levels of complexity and sophistication. Thus, a lobster has (likely) a bit less in terms of software than a dog. Each of these bits of software lets the organism do what it needs to survive and reproduce. Otherwise, of course, that software wouldn’t be there. Because, again, evolution only promotes one thing: Reproduction. Thus, the lobster is very good at doing all of the things a lobster needs to do in order to eat, excrete, rest, defend itself, and find a mate. It has all of the software it needs to do so, and so does the dog.

Now, with humans, the organism took an interesting direction. We have the ability to find food, and adapt our eating patterns to exploit that food, in virtually every single environment on this planet. Thus, the Inuit are a paleolithic hunter/gatherer culture that exists to this day in places like the Alaska North Slope, deep into the Arctic. The Inuit survive almost entirely on things like whale blubber. Likewise, the Khoisan live in places like the Kalahari Desert in Sub-Saharan Africa. These two environments are as different as is possible on this planet while still being above the ocean’s surface, and yet human life has managed to thrive in both of these locations.

How is this possible? No other species has achieved even remotely so great a penetration of this planet. The answer, I believe, is that human consciousness allowed us as an organism to problem solve in each potential location. To figure out through a process of intelligence how to take the organisms that live in that space, exploit them, make them edible, and survive in that place.

This is what we call cuisine: The use of locally-appropriate ingredients to make food that humans can enjoy and thrive on. We have many regional cuisines, and they are each appropriate and adapted to the local conditions of that area (assuming they have not been wildly distorted by modern processed foods).

Thus a form of culture (cuisine) is what we have used to become the dominant species on this planet, at least in terms of dietary choices. Culture is the key: Through the use of culture (and that includes things like modern technology), we have managed to exploit the resources of this world.

Now, follow me here. Assume there is a general purpose organism loose on this world. This organism has the ability to exploit pretty much any environment on the planet. It simply figures out how to live in that area, using locally available resources. In this way, this organism spreads and thrives everywhere. Would this not become the dominant species on the planet?

More later.

Rethinking How We Think

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Human consciousness is a piece of software. Highly evolved, messy, counter-intuitive, massively patched, and so forth, yes. But still a piece of software nonetheless. I have observed this before, but as I decompile the HCP (Human Consciousness Program, please keep up), and as I figure out more and more about it, the more interesting this idea becomes to me.

Take inebriation. I have been an alcoholic during several periods of my life. Now, I barely touch the stuff and it does not appeal to me. Largely eliminating alcohol from my lifestyle has had huge health benefits for me. I have lost around 90 pounds, and many of my chronic health care problems have simply resolved since I made this simple lifestyle change. Which leads to the question: Why does mankind consume alcohol since it is obviously harmful to our health?

Simple: The force of evolution favors one thing, and one thing only: Reproduction. Inebriation leads to sexual activity, which leads to reproduction. Hence, mankind loves alcohol, marijuana, opiates and all the rest. Anything that makes us less inhibited, more inclined to relax, that will be preferred in evolutionary terms, because those who get inebriated will breed the teetotalers out of existence.

It gets gnarly when you talk about things like marijuana and opiates. Marijuana is also referred to as cannibis, and we actually have physical structures in our brains called canniboid recepters. These puppies receive the THC released by marijuana and causes the effects of marijuana which we experience: Increased sensory sensation, euphoria and all the rest. That same thing is true with opiates: We have opioid receptors in our brains as well.

So, obvious question: Why do we have these structures at all? I mean, again, inebriation is harmful, right?

Wrong: Inebriation using marijuana definitely increases sexual activity. So do opiates. Given two proto-humanoid primate family groups, one with canniboid receptors and the other without, assuming that both have access to cannibis, the group with canniboid receptors will breed the other group into oblivion.

Hence: Evolution favors anything that increases reproduction. Nothing more.

Which leads to my original thesis: The HCP is a piece of software. That piece of software includes features like inebriation, all of which got built in for various reasons, all related to enhancing chances for reproduction. Survival at least until successful reproduction, and rearing of viable offspring.

Here’s the problem: The HCP is based upon incorrect assumptions. Like any piece of software that becomes obsolete over time, it needs to be fundamentally rewritten. The assumptions of the HCP are the ancestral environment: Paleolithic, pre-agricultural man. Hunter gathers, in other words. We are about as far away from that as you can possibly imagine.

It reminds me of the Chicago project. During the mid-1990s, Microsoft launched a project they called Chicago. At that time, Microsoft was one of the largest and most successful businesses in the history of planet Earth, largely based upon the success of one product: Windows. Despite this, Microsoft made the odd, counter-intuitive decision to completely rewrite Windows from scratch, starting with a relatively clean slate. In the process, Microsoft somewhat trashed the work they had done before on the existing version of Windows.

The result of the Chicago project was Windows NT, which eventually led to Windows 2000, and ultimately the versions of Windows we have now. This was the most successful and profitable software project in the history of Microsoft, and maybe the entire world. But it was based upon one simple reality: Windows was dying. It was crippled by an obsolete architecture based upon assumptions that were no longer correct: Memory was scarse and expensive, networks were slow and tiny, disk space was cramped, CPUs were terribly slow, and so forth. The IT industry even has a word for this type of software: They call it “crufty”. Crufty means a piece of software that is old, obsolete, difficult to rewrite, and just needs to be scrapped.

The HCP is crufty. We need to rewrite it.

More later.