Through countless births in the cycle of existence
I have run, not finding although seeking the builder of this house;
and again and again, I faced the suffering of new birth.
Oh housebuilder! Now you are seen.You shall not build a house again for me.
Siddhārtha Gautama
All your beams are broken, the ridgepole is shattered.
The mind has become freed from conditioning:
the end of craving has been reached.
Do you remember when you first took on the responsibility of owning a house? Do you remember how it felt when you signed those mortgage papers and someone handed you the keys and it was all yours? Not yet a home; somehow an empty walled echoey shell of a place, lacking furniture and warmth and connection, but great acoustics if you like to sing. So full of not-yet realised potential, so naked of everything else.
I remember feeling both exhilarated that I had reached such a “grown-up” milestone in my life, and at the same time horrified by the commitment and “end-of-youth” implications of settling down in this place. It wasn’t even a house. It was a third-floor, 3 three-bedroom flat in Hampstead, London. No garden, a kitchen you could just about swing a cat in (and I would have if one of those cold-hearted buggers had ever made it into the kitchen), and a living room with pitched ceilings and a wooden beam that managed to give the place a little touch of character.
“You oughta be an estate agent Creasy wiv all dem fancy descriptions of rooves and beams and whatnot!”
From that moment on, for most of us, the trajectory of our lives can be pretty accurately mapped.
“Bloody Hell Creasy, that’s a bit bleak and cynical isn’t it?”
Is it?
Is it though?
I don’t think so. Not really. Maybe a bit. I may be working out some personal issues here, but the reality is that every adult in the western world spends their days churning away at the same old shit like a lab rat on an exercise wheel, and why?
“You want the truth?”
“I think I’m entitled to the truth!”
“You can’t handle the truth! Son we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be paid for by people with jobs. Whose gonna do it, you? You, eight-year-old life-sucking kid? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for me having to work all the time and you curse the crappy presents you get at Christmas. You have the luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that my job while tragic, probably pays the mortgage; and my existence while grotesque, and incomprehensible, to you, pays the mortgage. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wheel, you need me on that wheel! We use words like hard work, long hours, absent parent. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent paying the mortgage, you use them as a punchline. I have neither the time, nor the inclination to explain myself, to a child who rises and sleeps, under the blanket of the very house that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said ‘thank you’, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you get a job and help pay the mortgage. Either way, I don’t give a damn, what you think you are entitled to!”
A Few Good Men
“And that’s the truth, man! That’s the truth. Can you handle it? It’s just a question between friends, you know? Oh, and when they call you ‘shrimp,’ I’m the one who defends you!”
Jerry Maguire
Where was I? Oh yeah, houses. The greatest symbol of “success and security” there is barring a Sunseeker 131 or a G550 (look ’em up). Also, the best investment you’ll ever make over a 25 year period. The downside? You’ll be almost dead before you can realise and enjoy the fruits of your investment, but at least you can leave it to your kids so they can unwittingly take over your wheel by getting on the housing ladder.
“But it’s always been like that hasn’t it Creasy? Ever since Humans have been around?”
No, it hasn’t always been like that and in some places, it still isn’t. I was having a busy day watching YouTube the other day and came across a video on a channel called Fearless & Far called “Asking Hunter-Gatherers Life’s Toughest Questions”.
In this video, the commentator introduces a Tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Hadzabe in Tanzania. There are only 1500 Hadzabe people left and their numbers are declining. Their way of life may only survive a few more generations. When asked what the most important thing in life was, this wizened badass of a Hadzabe called Sokolo, thought for about three seconds and said, “Meat, Honey, Corn Porridge” and then he added “hunting Baboons, Antelopes and Zebra”. Personally, I thought this was a bit redundant given the whole Meat is the most important thing, but I’m probably nitpicking. At this point, one bright young chap interjected that Water was pretty important too. “Quite right” replied the badass (or words to that effect). I might have added shelter to that list but I think Sokolo was a bit of a foodie who really didn’t get on with Baboons.
Now whilst I can neither Hunt nor Gather or spear a Baboon to literally save my life, there was something compelling about Sokolo’s simple assessment of what is truly important in life. I also found myself reflecting on the fact that over the years I had often found myself trying to figure out what mattered, but unlike Sokolo, whose worldview is ultimately positive despite the carnage he wreaks in the Baboon community, I have always considered what matters in the context of worst-case scenarios. A series of “What-ifs” if you will, that ultimately end up with me being homeless and destitute. What would I do? How would I survive? Where would I live?
I’m quite fond of the idea of living under a bridge. It strikes me as the sort of place that homeless people might live under. Natural shelter from the elements but not so great in an earthquake. Not much going on. Easy to build a cozy cardboard shelter against one of the concrete stanchions and very convenient if for any reason I wanted to get to the other side of whatever it was the bridge was bridging. I think I would try to find a bridge in a sunny place.
“Don’t Trolls live under bridges Creasy?”
Only the one’s where Billy Goats called Gruff cross.
As to what I would do?
“You really thinking about quittin’?”
“The Life?
“Yeah”
“Mos’ definitely”
“Ah fuck. Wachu gonna do then”
“Well, That’s what I’ve been sitting here contemplating. First, I’m gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I’m gonna walk the earth.”
“Whachu you mean, walk the earth?”
“You know, like Caine in “KUNG FU.” Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.”
Pulp Fiction
There’s nothing written that says I have to stay under the same bridge. When I live under a city bridge, I’d wander about looking for coins on the floor, or lie on the ground looking for coins under vending machines. Apparently, this strategy fed my son throughout his University days. If anyone came in he would exclaim “I just dropped a quid under here” to hide his shame. If I moved to a bridge that was more suburban or rural, I might try my hand at a bit of hunting and fishing in the fields and rivers (I have watched as much Bear Grylls as the next man).
When you take all this into account, I calculate that I could probably survive on £1 a day. £1 will buy you a loaf of bread and water is free (there are loads of places you can get fresh water for free if you think about it). This is reassuring. Not because I am worried that I might suddenly be skint and homeless, but because if I wanted to be skint and homeless, I know I don’t need all of the things that I have been conditioned to “need” to survive. More interesting, was my emotional response to the idea of living that way. It made me feel happy with a big dash of precognitive relief. Why relief though? Where does that come from? It’s in the letting go. Just the process of thinking about this simpler “being” creates a sense of being in that state already. Stress falls away like chainmail after the siege. The need to compete and win and show that I have won, a need no more.
“That’s just nutso Creasy! Who would want to be skint and homeless and living under a bridge?”
It depends on how you define “skint” and how you define “homeless”.
I suspect the Hadzabe, by our standards are proper skint, but money has no purpose or meaning in their society. Now dead Baboons? Well, it goes without saying that a man with 10 dead Baboons is way wealthier than a man with say, 9 dead Baboons? All joking aside (although Sokolo doesn’t strike me as a man who jokes about Baboons), their currency would be skillsets, which when used in co-operation enable a very simple, uncomplicated, unfettered and sustainable way of life within a small and very related community. If you can hunt, great! If you can collect berries, fantastic! If you can tell stories, well who doesn’t love a good story? An individual’s worth would be less than the collective’s but a function of how many berries you could gather, how many songs you could sing and how many Baboons you could hit with a brick.
As for being homeless, how many times have you heard the phrase “Home is where the heart is”. How do you find a home in such an anonymous and heartless society? Our homeless people are not homeless because they don’t have a house, but because they can’t find their individual worth in the kind of society we have built and because kin are far away.
“Creasy, surely you can see the good in our society too though? what about the homeless shelters or the soup kitchens or the many charities that help people in need?”
When did you last go and work in a soup kitchen? When did you last offer one of your spare rooms to a homeless person or refugee? When did I? Do you know anyone who has? Sure, we’ve all dropped a dime in a charity bucket or make a donation every month to our “favourite” charity, but when did you actually directly do something for someone who is not actually related to you?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising. Really I’m not. After all, rB > C, right?
“Wassat? Say what now? Hmm?”
C’mon, you know rB > C, right? Hamilton’s equation for the evolutionary development of an altruism gene, right?
Well, there you are then. No need to explain. It’s all there in rB > C.
“No, I like totally get it Creasy, but maybe you need to clarify a bit for the others?”
Ok fine. Here is a useful wee article by Jonah Lehrer that will get everyone up to speed.
By way of summarising the article, it wasn’t really Hamilton it was this bloke called Charles Darwin. Darwin had a problem. He had described Natural Selection, or Evolution, as a cruel mistress who ruthlessly removed the weakest links in an evolutionary chain. His whole theory depended on the notion that one specimen of a species will selfishly seek to propagate its genetic code to the detriment of all others. How could altruism, therefore, exist; a selfless act of generosity from one specimen to another? The fact of the matter was that altruism was observable everywhere in the natural world across a broad swathe of species. Didn’t that stick a dagger into the heart of Darwin’s theory?
To a lesser man, maybe. Darwin simply tagged this as a paradox and moved on. Evolutionary scientists spent the next century or so trying to figure out this paradox until a pissed up chap called J. B. S. Haldane (a biologist), who when asked in a pub how far he would go to save the life of another, replied
“I would jump into a river to save two brothers, but not one, or to save eight cousins but not seven”
Later, and because Haldane never tried to develop the proof of his drunken theory, another chap called William Hamilton, a young graduate student of UCL, spent years doing the mathematics and in 1964 came up with rB > C . Lehrer explains:
“In other words, genes for altruism could evolve if the benefit (B) of an action exceeded the cost (C) to the individual once relatedness (r) was taken into account. The equation confirmed the truth of Haldane’s joke: once kinship was part of the calculation, altruism could be easily explained in genetic terms.
This basically says that if you are related to me by blood, the action I will take to save your life will be directly proportional to the amount of my genetic material you have. The closer the genetic tie, the more action you can expect. Indeed, by not acting to protect you, I would be working against my most primal need to propagate my genetic code to the next generation.
This proof has been widely accepted in the Evolutionary Science community (now that’s a club I want to join!), as the origin of altruism, not only in humans but in other species too. It’s not kindliness or generosity, it’s simply survival of the fittest in its purest form.
No wonder then that in small tribal communities typified by the Hadzabe, we see high levels of altruism within the tribe where many families are related by blood. Collective hunting and farming and gathering make complete sense in this context. Equally, no wonder that we did nothing to arrest the genocide in Rwanda. Biologically, we didn’t and don’t give a shit, especially as there were no economic benefits for us intervening. Put another way, my Dad didn’t fight in WWII to save the Jews from the holocaust, but to prevent Gerry from marching up Whitehall and threatening the life of uncle Bernie.
The more distant the genetic relationship, the less we care. It’s our nature. It doesn’t make us bad people. It’s biology. In our globalised society where families disperse to achieve economic improvement, we have built societal structures that provide no reason to be altruistic to one another, and every reason to not give a shit about, or even talk to, our next floor neighbour in London. Altruism in this context is basically Virtue Signalling. It’s the act or pretence of showing generosity, typically through the banking system, in order to promote our social standing. A social standing that is further enhanced by increasingly extravagant shows of wealth; houses, dogs, cars, boats and planes. A social standing intended to attract a mate rather than protect the tribe. A Peacock society.
Industrialisation destroyed our rural way of life and led to urbanisation. Urbanisation dismantled the village where altruism thrived in the extended family and replaced it with the nuclear family unit and very low levels of altruism. Personal wealth and competition have replaced community sustainability and cooperation. Philanthropy pretends to be altruism, but is the domain of the super-rich and therefore a platform upon which to display wealth no matter how good the underlying intention. Globalisation, is this societal shift to the 10th power.
Conclusion?
It cannot sustain. It cannot survive. Not because I say so, but because evolutionary science is not simply saying that it’s a surprise that the altruism gene exists, but that without the action the altruism gene enables toward closely related specimens, the mechanics of evolution will not work at all, and we all become the weakest link in the chain.
Oh, and if you are wondering why you can’t stop yourself from buying that pre-wrapped-in-plastic bunch of bananas to help save the world, it’s because biologically you, like me, don’t give a shit about either the bananas or the environment and it seems biology often wins out over intellectual reason. I too buy the wrapped bananas because the supermarket app I use as I shop can’t handle unwrapped produce. I could handle it when I go to checkout, but then I would be wasting three minutes of my time that I don’t use for anything else whatsoever, weighing and bagging my unwrapped produce. So whilst intellectually I understand that the plastic will either end up in a landfill for the next 1000 years or the ocean, where it will strangle a baby seal, biologically I don’t give a shit. If I thought for one second that the plastic bag would suffocate someone in my family (including Bob), I would stop. No matter how much I try to rationally link the macro effect on the environment back to my local micro context, my biology and my societal conditioning won’t let me and so every now and again, when I’m not using the app, I buy the loose bananas and the rest of the time I don’t.
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness”
Martin Luther King Jr
Martin is of course spot on. Every man, woman and child must choose, and every day we do. Every day we choose the darkness of destructive selfishness. It’s not that we are all bad people, it’s that we are too many people. We’d like to think that we are more than the sum of our biology but the evidence says differently. When you create distance between members of a broad but genetically close family unit, altruism (acting for the benefit of others) is diluted and the inverse (acting for the benefit of oneself ) gains sway.
When there were only a couple of million of us wandering around hunting and gathering, our lack of give-a-shittedness didn’t matter because a) our way of life worked in harmony with our environment b) we were naturally culled by nature via climate, disease or predation and so c) there were too few of us to make a material difference on a global scale.
Other species don’t give a shit either, but they have not industrialised, urbanised or globalised. Where they are too many it’s because we have bred them to eat, and where they are too few it’s because we have destroyed their habitats. All species, in a natural setting will display altruism to protect their genetic progression. We don’t, because too many of us aren’t in our natural setting. Humans are tribal. The vast majority of our history on this planet (about 5 milliion years or 200,000 years of “modern” man) was spent living and working in small tribes. For the past 200 hundred years we have simply dispensed with that way of life in favour of a way of life that is purportedly better but which is evidently not. We have tried to mimick the concept of tribe in companies, markets, and societal structures and have failed miserably. We have encouraged individual security over tribal or genetic security and in so doing sacrificed all that is at the core of who we are.
And that’s why if we don’t let go of the way we have chosen to live, sell our houses, go live under a bridge and hunt Baboons, we are all going to die!
Je vous remercie!
