Stotting in Civilized Man

The gazelle on the savanna senses a predator. The gazelle is built for speed, and for leaping obstacles. So is the predator: both pray and predator co-evolve together, there's no such thing as one species, independent of others, independent of an ecology. The behaviors relate by a complex "tree" that only science can begin to simplify while mapping with any accuracy. Anyway, what does the gazelle do? The gazelle stops munching, pricks its ears, sniffs the wind ...

And if the gazelle sniffs lion , or sees so much as a claw, or a paw, or a haunch of lion, why it runs like hell in another direction, right? No. Not quite. Commonly, just before running, the gazelle will hop up and down a couple of times: then run like hell.

What? It is crazy? A human male will jump off a cliff to impress his buddies, though the behavior, as any biologist can explain to us, is actually intended to impress the female: to get her to lie down and open her legs: so that the guy can get off: that is, mix his genes with hers, make a new guy who will jump off cliffs, or a girl that will still convey his courage to a subsequent male offspring. And so on. But ruminants have no investment in courage — courage is for social predators: they, ruminants, survive, or try to, by running away, by being quick, fast, alert, agile ... What could possibly "cause" crazy, wasteful jumping in place to allow a whole class of species to still be doing it and still be alive?

Jared Diamond explains: combining his brilliance with the wisdom of his disciplines: biology, zoology, physiology:Ruminant species have learned over eons that wasting a moment or two can actually gain in survival chances. The lion sees the gazelle, sees that the gazelle sees the lion, sees the gazelle waste time, energy, movement, not running away ... and the gazelle may "cause" the lion to pause, and think, Well, if that gazelle is so confident it can escape me that it wastes time showing off, maybe it can escape me and I'm wasting my time chasing it.

Some gazelles will get caught, become lion-lunch, but enough other gazelles discourage the lion that the species benefits: all ruminants benefit: for now.(Never assume that what aided survival yesterday will aid survival tomorrow.) OK, that's stotting, also known as pronking: in ruminants: as explained by contemporary zoological sciences (and paraphrased by pk). I mention it not only because I think it's neat, but because I find all sorts of analogies in it beyond the one that Jared Diamond mentioned it to develop: specifically, Diamond introduced stotting and its scientific "explanation" additionally to explain human behaviors that at first glance seem wasteful, stupid, dangerous: such as substance abuse — drugs, alcohol ... (Apparently paleo-evidence supports a theory that humans have been drug-chewing drunks for a very long time now.) But back to the gazelles: the stotting gazelle is telling the predator, Don't waste your time, I'm too fast for you; the human is telling her candidate bed-partner, Look at me: I'm such a great specimen of Homo sapiens that I can drink myself stupid and still have men buy me furs, a Mercedes, and send my kid to Exeter, while the male is trying to convey analogous advertising lies.

The strategy obviously has pitfalls. A lot of gazelles have become hors d'oeuvres for a lot of predators; a lot of human drunks and junkies have wrapped themselves around a tree whether or not they impressed the girl.

OK. Jared Diamond's extension of stotting as an explanation for substance abuse is brilliant, profound: but pk says it doesn't stop there. It may not explain everything, but it sure can be used to shed light on other otherwise incomprehensible behaviors: like why civilized man has devoted 99 calories to ignoring over-population, global warming ... any number of concepts intended to make us wake up and take stock to every one calorie devoted to understanding and responding to the danger.

How about civilized man making life impossible for anyone who doesn't go along with the idea of a God who'll bail us out no matter how drunk, stupid, or depraved we become ... All we have to do is say, "I believe," and light a cheap candle, the quarter going not to God, but to some priest? Isn't that like stotting? Isn't that a way of saying, Existence so favors us humans, the cream of life, the point of everything, that we don't have to be alert, or agile, or truthful, or speedy ... and mostly, we don't have to be honest: with ourselves ... about anything.God is such a sap: he'll buy any horse-shit we feed him, he loves us so. (And if he weren't, we'd get ourselves a different god: pronto!What other explanation could there possibly be for civilized many tolerating a governmental hand in its pocket to fund thugs with guns called cops, illiterates displacing thinkers in pens called schools ... If anyone tries to point it out, as I did, his university can interrupt him, postpone his advancement, make it impossible for make a living (without jettisoning all plans, hopes, investments) ... Finally I was arrested, given a kangaroo trial ... censored, wanted off restoring destroyed information to the internet: stolen from me, Illich (... Jesus) in the first place!

Is civilization a form of stotting?

Look God, We don't have to be smart. We can dance on the edge. You'll bail us out, you won't let us fall. (And if you do, the US will bail our ass!)