Category: Philosophy

Why Do We Fart?

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Farts are funny. It’s immature to laugh at them, but we can’t help it. We’ve all dealt it, and we’ve all smelt it. Its universal appeal stretches across demographic lines, income brackets, and various levels of sophistication and intelligence. We might laugh out loud, behind a hand, or wait until the alleged perpetrator has left the room, but sooner or later, most of us will be laughing. Depending on how bad it smells, flatulence might be the one bodily function that offends everyone and no one at the same time. It embarrassed us (most of us) when we do it, but most of us don’t mind laughing at ourselves most of the time. The jokes we tell about them play as well in the seediest bars as they do in the most refined churches. They’re funny, and we laugh, but are we laughing so hard that we forget to ask why we have at least some ability to control this biological quirk?

Those of us who have a layman’s interest in evolution find it fascinating to read scientific theories regarding the most basic bodily functions we all take for granted. The theories are based, in part, on evolution and natural selection, but they are just theories. Most of these discussions involve relatively trivial, yet fascinating theories regarding why we have the ability to blink, fingernails, earlobes, and goosebumps. We don’t analyze these actions, because what’s there to analyze? Have you ever met a person who couldn’t blink? A friend of mine had this problem, due to necessary surgeries, and she had to regularly drop saline into her eyeballs. I didn’t value my ability to blink before I met her, and I never appreciated the greater mechanization of the human body before I met those who have a deficit in the basic functionalities we all take for granted. 

Most of our functions were born of need. If animals didn’t have levels of functionality necessary for survival, they either developed them or went extinct. When the species found a way to survive, a level of natural selection occurred, in which the animals passed their adaptations along. How has the otherwise indefensible ball of mush, we call the octopus, managed to survive hundreds of millions of years? They adopted and adapted various intricate survival techniques that are almost inexplicable to science.

At one point in human history, early humans realized they were near the bottom of the food chain, and they tried to find ways to neutralize the other animals’ dominance. In the course of developing weapons and other techniques necessary for survival, they developed the most complex organ in the animal kingdom, the human brain. Fossil records indicate that the human brain grew in size, relative to the body from early primates to the current Homo Sapiens. The need to survive, in other words, dictated our brain’s current size and complex level of functionality. The owl needs acute vision to see small prey from their perch high up in trees, and they need to be able to fly down to catch them. Due to the complexities of the human brain, we didn’t need either of these abilities to survive, so we never developed them.

We don’t need goosebumps, but according to some theories, humans may have needed them at one time to ward off prey. When man was more hairy, the goosebumps made their hair stand up and appear more abundant, so they would appear larger to the prey. The other, more widely accepted theory is that our hairier ancestors strengthened their hair fibers to stay warm, and the scientists suggest that raised hairs trap air to create insulation in a manner we still use. Thus, when we’re creeped out or cold, our brain still sends a message to the body to raise the hair fibers or strengthen them to make what we have more abundant, or appear more abundant. The point is that there’s nothing really interesting about basic, common bodily functions, until we delve into the idea theories regarding why we have them. 

If we have scientific explanations for why we might have needed something as trivial as goosebumps, why no explanation for the control we have of gaseous releases? Ashley Cowie wrote an interesting, historical guide to famous flatulence in history that includes stories of fart gods and various other spiritual connections to the breath between the legs, and the idea that if a person pushed too hard they could “fart out their soul”. Other articles list some scientific theories we have to explain the biological need to release gas from the system. There are scientific explanations to explain why some flatulence smells and others don’t. There are even scientific explanations to explain why some farts are louder than others are, but there are no scientific theories I can find to explain why we can control (for the most part) the force and volume.

All animals have this ability of course, but humans are the only ones who voluntarily deploy it on a regular basis for entertainment purposes. Watch a young wild animal let one go, and the force and volume is apt to startle them. Older animals, like older humans, are unmoved by them. Some humans say they do it to gain relief, others suggest they require it for medicinal purposes, but most of us just do it for fun. Was there ever a reason for this ability, a source for it that would define its need in such a way that we enhanced it?

The science behind it suggests that the volume of flatulence depends on how much gas we have bottled up and/or how tight the sphincter is. The digestive system needs to remove/release gas, and if it served that biological need alone, the rectum would be similar to a building’s exhaust flapper. Instead, we have muscles that we can voluntarily (for the most part) expand and contract to release anything we want, at any volume, to disrupt or enhance social gatherings, and no one has come up with a sufficient explanation why.

Some have theorized that louder flatulence might be equivalent to some sort of biological alarm to warn us when there is too much CO2 in our system. The louder the flatulence, the more CO2 buildup we have, and the greater need for one to switch to a healthier diet. If true, that might explain why some flatulence is louder, but it doesn’t explain how we arrived at the ability to control it, and if natural selection ever played a role in it. We don’t need the control now, but we don’t need goosebumps either, so why do we have these abilities? Is it possible that at one time, a time when modes of communication weren’t what they are now, prehistoric man manipulated their flatulence to communicate coded levels of alarm to their fellow man? If a wolf was near, they let loose some silent killers to inform those in their clan, by scent, that a wolf was near, stay still, or prepare the weaponry for the hunt. If a sabretooth tiger was near, they let her rip. Is it possible they communicated with flatulence in a manner similar, but different from the Native Americans’ smoke signals, and that which the military would later use with the Morse Code in WWII, and the predators couldn’t figure out our secret signals to one another in time.

Seeking answers for why we have this ability might also help explain our individual view of God. Most Christians believe God created everything from life to the universe and everything in between to support the harmonious relationship between the heavenly bodies. If God created everything from the Sun to Jupiter to the flagellum and the atom to serve a purpose, what was the purpose behind giving us the ability to control the force of our flatulence? Both literal and contextual readers agree that God gave us autonomy, but they disagree on how much. Literal and contextual readers of The Bible both agree that God is of unlimited omniscience, so the only conclusion we can arrive at is that He knew how we would use this ability. Some might consider it heretical to suggest this, but did God design the intricate anatomy down to the smallest, most insignificant elements of the anatomy, or did He allow for some autonomy on the part of the being in the same manner he provided autonomy of belief? Was the control of the force and volume of our flatulence a gift that He gave us, knowing how we’d use it, and an indicator that He has such a wonderful sense of humor? Did He decide to give us some wholesome fun with our body or, was the ability to control our flatulence a biological quirk we discovered on our own in the process of forcing waste out?  

The answer most gastroenterologists would provide is how we can control the sound of our flatulence. They are not as concerned with why we developed such control. They say it has everything to do with our internal and external sphincters. The external sphincter is under our conscious control, and we can tighten and relax it as needed, which affects the sound amplitude of gas passing through. Gastroenterologists suggest that the loudness of flatulence is more of a physical phenomenon, as opposed to a biological adaptation. The sound is produced by a vibration of tissue as gas is forced through a narrow opening, similar to a reed instrument.

Again, those explanations focus on the how this biological quirk came to life, but there are no explanations why we began using this power. The answer gastroenterologists arrived at is there is no answer. There’s no reason. It’s just a quirk in the system. My question, related to long evolution of man is when did loud flatulence become funny? My guess is that cavemen never considered flatulence funny, because they never asked why. I don’t think they ever asked why questions, because they were too busy surviving. As man progressed and no longer needed to focus on daily survival, they had more down time to sit and think about stuff, but they were more concerned with their origin, the origin of the universe, and more prominent biological functions. As man progressed even further, they corrected previous errors and progressed into delved deeper into understanding how life was created and continues to thrive. In our current technological environment, we’re allotted the most comfortable state that allows us to spend our days behind a computer t-y-p-i-n-g out what others have discovered and failed to discover at this point. Yet, we still have no answer regarding why we developed this control, and that’s what makes it funny. We adjusted our leg in just such a fashion that it caused a level of vibration of the tissues through a narrow opening, that led to an effect similar to a reed instrument. Why did this happen? We don’t know, and such confusion causes us to either laugh or cry. The embarrassment of such an act could cause a person to cry, but there are no dire consequences to flatulence, so our confusion to understand why leads us to just laugh. It’s not detrimental to our health, and it’s not much of an indicator of good health. It’s just funny. 

The Complex Art of Lying

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Are you an unusually good liar? Can you deceive people without much effort? As with anything else, we all know that effectively misleading people requires practice and trial and error, but if you believe a study by Theodor Schaarchmidt, summarized in Scientific American, not only does lying require peak cognitive function, it also involves cognitive peaks and valleys similar to those in our physical abilities.

“Lying is among the most sophisticated accomplishments of the human mind, and the complexities involved often require peak capacity of the mind.

“Young adults between 18 and 29 do it best,” Schaarchmidt found, “and after about the age of 45, we begin to lose this ability.”

Our physical peak is relative, of course, but even elite athletes who work out for hours a day, every day, will admit that their physical peak occurred somewhere around 25th birthday. Those who extend their professional careers, learn how to compensate for the fact that their ability isn’t what it once was, but most of us recognize a relative physical decline as we age. Those of us who aren’t as reliant on physical ability as a professional athlete, might not recognize our decline, or how we’ve compensated for it. If one of our eyes loses some functionality, for example, we learn how to compensate for it so well that we might not notice it for years? Does the same apply to our mind when it comes to the ability to lie? 

We’ve all witnessed seven-year-olds try to lie, and their tells are often so obvious when they do that they’re hilarious. They need to learn how to do it, and that knowledge only comes with experience.

When elderly people display the fact that they’ve lost some of the complex functions required to lie, we might make the mistake of believing they’ve voluntarily disregarded the filters we all maintain for polite conversations. “They’ve been on this earth 85 years, and they don’t care what anyone thinks anymore,” we say. “They’re done with trying to spare our feelings with the little white lies we all tell ourselves.” We think it’s funny and intriguing to see this live, but studies cited by Schaarchmidt suggest that there might be a U-shaped curve to truth telling, or an (‘n’) shaped curve to lying, and it’s all based on the complex functions of the brain that operate in some of the same peaks and valleys of our physical abilities.

It seems so odd to suggest that lying requires advanced cognitive function. Lying seems as easy as telling the truth, as it all comes down to a simple, snap choice. If we ask them, “Did you steal my copy of Journey’s Escape?” that’s a simple yes or no, regardless the truth. How about, “Do you think your nephew Mike has a bright future ahead of him?” That question requires careful consideration, as it’s entirely possible that Mike can turn it all around, regardless how it appears right now. Not only that, but most of us know that our answer will likely get back to Mike and harm future family relations. Our aunt obviously didn’t consider any of that when she said, “No, he’s a lazy, ambition-less, privileged piece of junk.” Wow, where did that come from?

How does advanced cognitive function affect our ability to lie? The Scientific American piece cites an illustrative story involving a man Theodor Schaarchmidt nicknamed Mr. Pinocchio. Mr. Pinocchio was a 51-year-old who “was a high-ranking official in the European Economic Community (since replaced by the European Union), and his negotiating partners could tell immediately when he was bending the truth [lying]. His condition, a symptom of a rare form of epilepsy, was not only dangerous it was bad for his career.” The article states that doctors found that a walnut-sized tumor that caused seizures whenever he told a lie. “Once the tumor was removed, the fits stopped, and he was able to resume his duties [his lying]. The doctors, who described the case in 1993, dubbed the condition the “Pinocchio syndrome”.”

Some, like Mr. Pinocchio, lie to serve an agenda, some tell white lies to be nice, and some BS to make others think they’re more successful, more adventurous, and happier. If we catch them in a lie, we’re likely to hear something along the lines of, “Everybody does it,” or “if you say you don’t do it, you’re lying.” Those lines are effective, because there is some truth to them. We all tell harmless white lies occasionally. We fabricate, and some of our lies require more creativity that truth telling does. Yet, we all know the difference between stretching the truth and lying, and we fear that greater acceptance of small, white lies can affect our relationships with these people, our society, or our culture. The latter might seem exaggerated hyperbole, but we fear that the society and culture cannot operate properly without some demand for some level of consistent honesty from our fellow man. We can’t help but think that such lines also give liars license to continue to lie without guilt.

***

“A lie is not a lie if you believe it,” the writers from Seinfeld wrote for the patron saint of all untruthers, George Costanza. The implication in this line is that the art of deception requires some effort on the part of the liar to convince himself of a falsehood if he wants to convince another party effectively. That line, right there, summarizes the theme of this article better than any of Theodor Schaarchmidt’s scientific studies, because convincing yourself of a lie you’re going to tell others obviously requires advanced cognitive abilities. How are you going to introduce your lie, how are you going to sell it, and what face are you going to wear to sell it? Liars also know that the art of deception lies somewhere between effectively selling it and avoiding the dreaded over-sell. They know we can see someone over-sell a lie, and they know we can see it. So, they might study their own delivery, in the manner an effective Major League Pitcher does to keep the batter off balance by making the delivery of their fastball appear exactly like the delivery of their curveball. The difference between the two, if you can spot it, for both the pitcher and the liar, is often called: “A tell.” A tell, often used in poker parlance, is the subconscious physical actions we make when we are trying to deceive. The final stage for the liar to execute, and that which most without peak cognitive function might fail, is the backdrop. When we create a new base, based on a lie, it forces us to create Shakespeare’s tangled web, and that, needless to say, requires even greater cognitive abilities. 

Schaarchmidt’s piece suggests that if the liar is between 18 and 29, they might not have to put forth as much effort, as the lie will flow more fluently, if there is no damage to the area of the brain required for the convincing lie.

Who’s lying, and why are they lying? How about we take the Costanza lie one step further and suggest that the liar believes what he’s saying with every fiber of their being. Is it still a lie? The separation of the two is, of course, that the liar doesn’t have to convince himself of the lie. He believes it. Even if it was technically a lie and we can prove its lack of merit beyond a reasonable doubt, it would be difficult to prosecute or persecute them in just about every court in the land, including the court of public opinion.

Perhaps, the liar is guilty of the “blind spot” lie. Blind spot lies are often momentary blotches on the liar’s otherwise stellar record of honesty. Blind spot lies are born in the bath water of the loathing they have for their adversaries. They loathe them so much that their competitive spirit gets the best of them. They cannot see the hole until they fall into it, and some of them cannot see even see it then, but their followers wonder if he hates his opponent so much that he can no longer see the truth with regard to their opponent. If he can see it for what it is, the blind spot lie often permits its purveyor to lie without compunction if it serves his goal to do so.  

Regardless, he can no longer view simple disagreements with his opponents on how to resolve pressing matters in an objective manner. He can no longer see an honest disagreement as a simple case of differing values. We don’t know if he has a personal grudge or a professional one, but it’s obvious to everyone but him that his is an emotional pursuit as opposed to a rational one. He is convinced that nefarious influences affect his opponent’s agenda. He views his opponents’ motives as impure. He views his opponents as uninformed, incompetent, selfish, and divisive. He does not view any of his opponents’ mistakes as genuine, of if he does, he capitalizes on them and characterizes them as intentional. He does not think that his opponents are prone to human failure, or if they are, he seeks to characterize them as some sort of institutional failing on their part. In his quest to seek motive, he incidentally accuses them of matters for which he has the most guilt. If he accuses his opponent of thievery, in other words, chances are he knows the thief’s mentality™ better than his opponents. Whatever form of deception lines his accusation, pay careful attention to the particulars of his charge for it might say more about him than it does his opponent. We call this psychological projection.

This blind spot is most disheartening to the liar’s believers, for they believed in him, and they might feel disillusioned and disappointed by his actions … if they find out the truth one day. If the blindspot liar is good at what he does, and he’s unusually charismatic, the chances are his followers will never want to see how he seduces, dominates, and exploits them for his gain. We enjoy it when “our guy” calls their guys names, and we might even repeat those names and those lies, until we arrive at the Svengali-effect, which is defined as “a person who manipulates or exerts excessive control over another.” As we all know, only “their guys” do this. Our guy never would. 

When “our guy” does it, We might enjoy the name-calling, and we might even believe it, but on some other level, we thought “our guy” was above such street games. We thought he was an intellectual, and that no other intellectual would dare seek battle with him. When we witnessed others challenge him, it shocked us to see him use his power to shut his opponents down to shut them up. He then called upon others to help him shut down dissenting voices, and it shocked those of us who thought he was a fellow dissenting voice. We didn’t think he would stoop to the other guys’ tactics of corruption, lies, and the ‘whatever it takes’ mentality to bring his foes down, but we found some of his actions troublesome. Some blind spot liars knowingly engage in wanton deception, but others have such an emotional blind spot of hatred that they can’t see it for what it is. Most of the times, it is difficult to see the difference, as we can’t know what’s in a man’s heart.

We all know that “the other guys” lie, and we all know an idiot who falls for it, but aren’t the lies our beloved guys tell more destructive? Some of us don’t see it, and others won’t see it no matter how often others show us. They’re our brothers, sisters, peers, friends, co-workers, and politicians. They are “our guys”, and we know them well enough to know that they wouldn’t lie to us, so we repeat what they say, and we learn to live the lie, because we know the other guys are lying to us. 

Some famous writers suggest that it’s preposterous to suggest that even the most fair-minded among us are objective, as we don’t have the capacity for it. Our opinions, regarding the other side, are so emotional that they colorize how we view their lies. Our emotions, on the matter, blind us to facts, thus the term blind spot. The term blind spot and blind hatred are different, of course, but they intertwine when the former provokes the latter to view the other side as the most dastardly demons who are incapable of truth, and we write pieces like this with a certain person in mind, but we run the risk of having a reader read this piece with one of “our guys” in mind.   

We choose sides. In the never ending quest to determine who is being deceptive or virtuous, we believe our guys. Regardless how many white lies, and egregious deceptions our guys engage in we have reasons to believe them, whether they’re the Hatfields, the McCoys, the New England Patriots, or the Democrats, we choose to believe our guys over the other guys. Our side is right, and the other side contains villainous liars and corrupt cheats who are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. The other guys don’t care about us. We can guess that disinterested parties chose sides during the infamous Hatfields vs. McCoys feud, and they proceeded to follow the newspaper stories from a specific angle. They probably developed loyalties that led to their own blind spots on the matter. Even though most of them never met a Hatfield or a McCoy, or ever saw one speak, we can guess that their interest in the story spawned certain loyalties on the matter that let them to believe “their guys” were incapable of having blind spots, lying, or any form of corruption bent on destroying the other side. We still have matters that divide us in seemingly trivial ways, as observers around the nation were intrigued, and divided, by an episode in history. We might never know the truth of the matter and in some ways, we don’t care. These episodes rarely affect us directly, so no one really suffers, until it dawns on us that everyone does when it becomes apparent that by picking sides we forego a quest for truth.

Gorillas and Lions and Wolves, Oh My

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When I watched a gorilla scoop some dung out of his brother’s anus to eat it, it modified my thoughts on taste. This gorilla didn’t just ingest his brother’s dung, which is disgusting enough, he did so in such a deliberate process that the observer couldn’t help but note how much he savored that moment. He ingested that dung in the manner I might that one perfect strawberry I find in every bushel. We might think if he loved his brother’s dung that much he might suck it down quick to go in for another scoop before the other gorillas find out about it. He didn’t. This gorilla stopped for about three seconds moving it around his tongue to touch every taste sensor, with his eyes closed. And he closed his eyes slowly, and they fluttered. I didn’t imagine it. I saw fluttering. We all hate it when people assign human characteristics to animals, anthropomorphizing them, but there was no mistaking the idea that this gorilla was savoring the taste of his brother’s waste matter before going in for more. 

They’re our distant cousins right? How far removed from this species are we? We go on primal diets, like the paleo diet and the primal blueprint, and those diet entrepreneurs pitched their diet by saying that early humans had lower rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions due to differences in diet. Dietitians now state that one of the problems with the paleo diet was that it can lead to cancer, heart disease, loss of bone density, and fatty liver. What’s the difference between the diet of modern man and Paleolithic man? What if we found that one key element to Paleolithic man avoiding such maladies was eating each other’s bodily waste? And did we invent toilet paper to keep our backsides clean, or were we trying to remove temptation? Out of sight, out of mind.

How far removed are we from scooping dung from our brother’s anus? If we listen to science, we’re not as far as we choose to believe. We all marvel at the good things they do, and we associate with them in this vein. When they do awful things, like eating the product of another’s bowel movements, we don’t claim them as one of ours.  

Why? Well, it’s disgusting. Who would want to associate with a species that eats another’s waste? What this points out, more than anything else, is that taste, flavor, and preferences are relative concepts. What sounds and looks disgusting to us is something to savor for our distant cousins.

Everyone is trying to appeal to our taste when they write, painting, cook, and changing their lifestyle to try to appeal to our taste, but what do we find appealing? Something that makes our brain tingle, does not do anything for our brother. Do you have this brother, raised in the same home, talk all the time, and he’s almost 180 degrees different. That’s an entirely different article, but the point is that taste is so relative that it’s almost impossible to create a flavor that has widespread appeal. The word flavor should have a capitalized (‘F’) on it, as it focuses on such a wide spectrum of taste. Food and drink have a flavor of course, but so do music, literature, and all of the arts in the sense that some of it creates the same but different brain tingles. 

Our own tastes are relative too, relative to need. Does water taste great? I don’t think so, most of the time. If you played through a particularly grueling athletic contest, you know how great water can taste. Anyone who has run in a marathon knows water can taste like liquid gold. My guess, just looking out in the audience today, is that nobody here knows anything about that, but you do know what water tastes like after a night out. It’s the same but different, but the point is that need often dictates flavor. The polar bear prefers the seal over the fish, because of the fat content of the seal, something the polar bear desperately needs. 

Animals eat for survival right. They don’t enjoy taste, or if they do on some level, they don’t savor. They eat to fulfill their need to sustain life. Savoring requires a level of cognition that recognizes the limited quality of something extremely enjoyable. We all love the taste of a perfectly prepared rib eye, the perfect strawberry, and the clean, smooth taste of a cold drink of water. I think we can all agree that the strawberry is one of the best tasting fruits in nature, but there are always a few, in every bushel, that are perfect. Savoring that perfect strawberry, for just a second before eating another one, recognizes that limited supply. This gorilla not only ingested the dung slowly, he appeared to pause for just a moment to savor whatever that other gorilla ate and whatever that other gorilla’s digestive system added to it. That elongated, almost spiritual closing of the eyes might have been a coincidence, but I thought the gorilla enjoyed the concoction so much that he wanted to savor it for moment before going back to the dispenser. There was a full tray of food awaiting this gorilla, in the southeast corner of his enclosure, but he preferred to go back to the dispenser before him. Watching that gorilla appear to so enjoy it so much that he went back for more, I realized that individual tastes are so relative to the flavors we create that it’s pointless to try to fashion our work in such a way that it pleases everyone. We can only create whatever it is we create from our own dispensaries and hope that others enjoy it for what it is.   

The roles those two gorillas played in this enclosure defined for me what proved to be what I consider one of the most unusual and artistically successful pairings in music history that of Ben Folds and William Shatner. I’ve been a fan of Ben Folds for a long time, but my taste in music is such that I’ve never listed him one of “my guys”. He has some fantastic songs, but if I were to run into Ben Folds, and I informed him how frustrated I am that he comes so close to reaching me, I’m sure he wouldn’t care. Not only would he not care, he shouldn’t care. If I met him and told him that most of his music misses the mark for me, he should say, “That’s on you. I can only do what I do. I can’t worry about pleasing you, offending you, or entertaining you. If it pleases enough people that I can make a living at this game, that’s great, but I’m not going to change what I do to please you or Betty Beatle from Idaho.”  

William Shatner is not one of “my guys” either, but he’s always around. He’s the green bean casserole of the entertainment world. I doubt anyone who has yet to try green bean casserole would look at it and think, “Yum!” but it’s at so many family get togethers and potluck dinners that we eventually “what the hell” it, until we discover it’s ain’t too bad. As long as we don’t overdo it, repetition can even lead to a level of fondness for it, until we look forward to the next get together or potluck dinner that has a tray of it. Similarly, William Shatner has been in so many movies, TV shows, and other formats that we now look forward to seeing him in various productions.

No one should confuse the term “my guys” with a description of talent. I’ll drop the typical line that people drop to explain the discrepancy. “I respect the heck out of what Folds and Shatner do, but it just doesn’t reach me on a personal level.” I know people who love John Lennon so much that they suggest Paul McCartney is not talented. I understand that we all take sides in any rivalry, but to suggest that a talent on par with Paul McCartney has no talent is ludicrous. The Silly Love Songs vs. Important Songs debate rages on in some quarters, as Lennon fans suggest Lennon was not only more important he was more creative. These people relate more with Lennon, and because of that Lennon is “their guy”, but to prove that point, some try to so by belittling McCartney’s Silly Love Songs talent.

I missed Folds and Shatner’s collaboration for years, because they weren’t “my guys”. When I eventually heard the album Has Been, however, I was blown away. It reminded me of one of my favorite concoctions: cranberry granola and banana flavored yogurt. Banana flavored yogurt is too sweet for me on its own, and while the cranberry flavor of granola is tasty, I probably wouldn’t eat it as a standalone. When I put the two together, however, I enjoy it so much that I’ve considered submitting it to the overlords as my reward for living a decent, moral life. When I pass on, I want to meet my long-deceased relatives of course, and I wouldn’t mind it if someone played a Brahams Sonata on the harp to signify my entrance, but if you’re wondering how best to reward me for a life well lived, might I suggest that the floors and walls of my reward taste like the banana-flavored yogurt and cranberry granola concoction I created.

When we eat concoctions like these, we spoon too much of one flavor most of the times. Some of the times, we spoon too much yogurt, and some of the times, we spoon too much granola, but there are occasions, at least once a container, when we hit a Goldilocks spoonful. The album Has Been is the Goldilocks concoction of talent for me, and when I listened to it often enough to recognize its brilliance, I closed my eyes and savored the moment. I did so, figuring that this production would be a one-off. I loved Has Been so much that I went back to the other concoctions they’ve made together, and I went back to their solo work, but neither of them hit the mark in the same manner. On their own, Shatner and Folds create interesting, quality material that doesn’t quite hit that Holy Crud, brilliant mark, but together they created what I consider their Goldilocks moment. I would think that such moments are so fleeting in any artist’s career that when they hit one, they would immediately run back into the studio to dispense another collaboration, but perhaps they don’t think they can create another Goldilocks moment together. I know they did singles together before and after Has Been, but that album was so good that I would think it would drive them right back into the studio to do another collaboration. We know that Folds’ affinity for Shatner brought them together, and that their work together impressed Shatner so much that he called Folds a genius, but we don’t know why they never made another album together. Perhaps they think that fate and whatnot only permits one one Goldilocks moment a life.

Carnivores in Cartoons

Yesterday, I thought carnivores were the mean, bad guys of the wild. Today I realized that the cartoons we watched conditioned us to believe that when a lion, shark, alligator, or any animal at the top of the food chain eats one at the bottom, they do so with some sort of evil intent. We can find a definition of this in Aesop’s fable in which a mouse removes a thorn from a lion’s paw. After the mouse removes the thorn, the lion states that it will not to eat the mouse as a display of gratitude. The mouse does something nice for the lion, and the lion, in turn, agrees to do something nice for the mouse. The inference is that if the lion betrays this agreement, and the lion follows its instinct and eats the mouse, that means the lion is mean.    

In another fable, on the theme, a frog agrees to assist a scorpion across a pond. Before doing so, the frog says, “Wait a second, you’re going to sting me.” 

“If I stung you, we would both drown,” the scorpion responds. 

The frog reluctantly agrees to help the scorpion across the pond, and the scorpion stings the frog. As they’re both drowning, the frog says, “I thought you said you weren’t going to sting me.”

“What do you want me to say, I’m a scorpion. This is what I do.” 

Some allege that the moral of the story, for young people, is that there are vicious people in the world who, no matter how nice you think they are, will stab you in the back. While I think that is a valuable lesson to learn, the more valuable lesson is that which exists in nature. No matter how nice and cute that wild animal appears, and no matter how many cartoons we watch that display that animal as cuddly, they will probably scratch and bite us if given the opportunity. They might not understand why a seven-inch gash in our skin prompted our decision to stop playing with us. If they could talk, they might say, “C’mon, I was just playing.” The point is, in most cases, they did not intend to hurt us, and they’re not being mean. They’re relatively brainless creatures, compared to us, that operate almost entirely on instincts. Biting and scratching is just what they do. 

Think about all the cartoons we watched and books we read in our youth. They depict carnivores with jagged teeth and menacing growls. As we often do, we confused being scary with being mean or bad. Today I learned that they’re not mean, or bad, they’re just hungry, and like all other animals, they eat when they’re hungry. Regardless what it does to their reputation as a beautiful animal, wolves enjoy eating fluffy bunny wabbits. They do awful things to bunnies if they’re able to catch them, but that does not mean they’re mean or evil in the manner we define such terms. By teaching young humans lessons, using animals as main characters, some of us anthropomorphize these characters to such a degree that we assign them human characteristics. Lions, tigers, and bears aren’t nice, they aren’t mean, and they don’t make decisions on what to eat based on how other animals interact with them.   

Yesterday I learned that even if the animals at the top of the food chain are not the meanies we thought they were when we were kids, we should still consider doing everything we can to avoid one in the wild.

After watching videos that focus on animals biting humans, nature lovers qualify the instinctual actions of these wild animals by saying, “We are not on their diet.” The nature lovers then provide a number of theories regarding how these incidents often involve nothing more than a case of mistaken identity. These theories are true, of course, as most animals in the wild, and in the ocean, have never seen a human, and self-preservation is more important to animals than eating in most cases. Animals often take a pass on eating anything unfamiliar if they think they could get hurt in the process. Sometimes, however, they’re so hungry that they’re willing to eat anything that moves, especially if it moves slower than other prey.

Most animals don’t know what a human is, and that’s why they fear us, but we are also a point of curiosity for them. Thus, when they see us walking around in their domain, or floating on the surface, they’re curious, and that curiosity is almost exclusive to considering whether they should consider adding that slow moving case of meat to their diet. Yet, seeing, hearing, and smelling us might not be enough to satisfy their curiosity, and they obviously cannot communicate with us, so their last resort is to taste us to try to figure out what we are to determine if we are a delicacy they’ve never considered before.

The nature lovers further their argument by opening up the belly of a bull shark. “When we open up the belly of a bull shark, we find everything from license plates to cans of paint to packs of cigarettes. The bull shark, unlike other sharks, is not very discerning. They’ll eat anything they see floating on the surface of the water, even if it happens to be a human on a surfboard.” Translation: They do not intend to devour us. They’re just curious. They just want to taste us to see what we are. I see the nature lovers working here. I know they’re trying to relieve our fears about sharks, and in turn preserve the shark population, and I know wild animals are not bad or mean in the context humans define the terms, but it does not comfort me to know that all they want to do is taste me. If I happen upon one of these carnivorous beasts, and it’s clear that all they want to do is taste me, I’m still going to do whatever I can to get away. If I fail to escape, I’m probably going to shoot it, because I have to imagine that even though they’re just tasting me, it’s still going to hurt like the dickens.