Opinion Editorial

Deep Impact

by James Strauss

Why is it that we (members of the human species) crave attention from other humans so badly?  Human beings will do just about anything for attention, including risking our lives to perform ridiculous life-threatening stunts; participating in humiliating personal revelations; and even making public admissions of low or damaged intellect.  What is it that drives this ever-present, unceasing, and most times lied-about, motivation?

It’s all about sociobiology.

That’s right, it has little to do with familial, business or social relationships that don’t pertain to the reproduction of the species.  Procreation is built into the human body and spirit so foundationally, that its overwhelming pervasiveness has become disregarded and ignored.  The grand gorgeous beauty of an architectural wonder of a skyscraper is never attributed to the nearly invisible solidity and soundness of its foundations. The same is true for the human condition.  How does coming to recognize procreation as the the founding source for all conscious human thought and subsequent action help anyone better accommodate the vagaries, challenges and threats of everyday existence on the surface of modern day planet earth?

Because it explains so much.  It allows for the forgiveness of so much.  The understanding, converted into use, also allows for those humans who ‘get it’ to enjoy more success in cultural circumstances wherein the competition is fierce, never-ending and merciless.  The current presidential candidacy races can be easily understood if one will simply apply the conclusions come to in the almost totally disregarded and ignored discipline of sociobiology.  Donald Trump is a huge glaring neon sign advertising his ultimate alpha male blustering and display in order to demonstrate his ability to be the great impregnator of females.  His untruthful, disparaging and hunter/killer attacks on his opponents are easily explained if one has studied the conduct of members of a baboon troop in Africa.  Sociobiology applied, by the way, has nothing to do with awareness.  It is quite likely that this example of a great alpha male baboon is totally unaware of what is driving him to do and say the things he is doing and saying.

And the public remains almost entirely unaware, as well.  Sociobiology was set aside as a social science discipline in the nineties, by academic studies throughout the world.  It’s conclusions were too revealing, too harsh, too truthful and way too predictive.   This article is not being written to disparage Donald Trump or his efforts to become the ultimate tribal leader.  The Trump run toward dominance is going on every minute, of every day, in every pursuit taking place in the human condition.  Sociobiology explains why nepotism is so prevalent (it’s about the maximization of success favoring one’s own spawn), why cronyism is everywhere (the ‘bravo’ males supporting the alpha male until he weakens), and  how the corporate, military, governmental, religious and even scientific organizations are structured and function.  There’s always, in every one of the organized systems, an ultimate alpha male.  Even when the alpha male is a female, the female is co-opted into giving every resemblance of being an alpha male to acquire and hold the top position.

How can anyone use this information to maximize  success?  The first advantage is the simple emotional satisfaction of knowing.  It is satisfying to finally know and understand that this brutal competition for tribal leadership has little to do with the relative value of one human over another.  Most dominant leadership success is arrived at through the power being handed down from the alpha male to the bravo male with the greatest potential (almost invariably related by blood, and this again points to the success of the example of Donald Trump, whose father gave him millions and kept him out of military service).  The second advantage of understanding sociobiology comes through being much better equipped to deal with the alpha males running most organizations.  Direct confrontation with alpha males with real power always ends in failure, or even death (physical or economic), so once the alpha is identified then intellectual understanding can be used to pause, consider, redirect and work around such dangerous leaders, and provide any necessary emotional and physical distance from their actual being as well as their thought processes.  Finally, the understanding of genetically driven dominance among all groups of the human species, allows one who knows about it to use the information to support a continued life-long feeling of happiness and bliss.  To control, to dominate, to lead and to procreate more than others is meaningless without a sense of satisfied bliss unless, of course, one has no capacity to understand what bliss is.

Early in the study and presentation of sociology the academician Noel Burch postulated about the perception of competence in the business world.   He called his results the competence matrix.  There are four stages making up this matrix:  conscious competence (knowing you are good at something), unconscious competence (being good at something without really understanding why you are good), conscious incompetence (knowing you are doing something you aren’t good at) and finally, unconscious incompetence.  The unfortunate part of the matrix that is so prevalent in alpha male dominance situations is that last part of the matrix.  Using the example of Donald Trump for president, it becomes undeniably obvious by expression and presentation alone that the man remains unaware that he’s functionally incompetent.  However, his success is not founded upon either knowing or not knowing about his own competence or lack of it.  It’s founded upon getting rid of any other challengers regardless of whether they are competent or not, or whether they understand their condition or not.  Survival of the fittest dictates not just motivation, but recognition of being in a state of direct competition for personal survival at any expense. This competition is one of the most difficult obstacles potentially impeding the continued ascent of humans over the beasts they evolved out of and among.

The fight for survival, and the changing definition of what survival has come to mean, must be understood, and the matrix of competence internalized with intellectual clarity before mankind can continue its pursuit of what is called the development of civilization.  The selection of the world’s foremost leader has little relevance in mankind’s quest for sociological success.  Cultural development can be metaphorically compared to a form of catch and release fishing.  A large fish is caught, and then reeled in for a certain period, and then the line is allowed to go slack to allow the fish time to recover before the next attempt to draw it into the future.  Selecting a bad leader, given total annihilation isn’t the result, simply means that a culture is going through a period of slackness, before again being allegorically dragged into the future.

The importance of the human species in the universe is, as of now, undetermined. However, the human belief that its importance is as great as the existence of the universe itself is fully evident, although also fully deniable.  Humans search voraciously for attention from other humans, while denying they have such an overpowering need for that attention.  The deep impact of human attention is one of the most overlooked forces driving the survival of the species.  The need for totally ferocious competition lessens if the need for human beings to propagate is redirected. Such a lessening of competitive strife runs against genetic programming that runs backward for over three million years.  Can men and women of today come to understand the deep impact of sociobiological forces and diminish or redirect them to prevent self annihilation?  Can men and women come to accept that the ‘being’ of mankind has become much more important than the ‘doing’ of mankind?  That the ‘thinking’ of men and women far outweighs the value of the ‘acting’ of mankind?  If the human species is to succeed, then the word work may need to disappear into the realm of machines designed by mankind.  The word profit may be converted into contribution.  The word belief could eventually be replaced by the word understanding.  Deep impact may come to be a phrase that is itself ‘lightweight’ compared to the galvanic changes in store for coming generations.    ~James Strauss

 

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