Laziness is in our genes! Or is it??

My primary motivation to go out and meet interesting people and talk to them is not limited to just what they have to offer to me as fully formed opinions in terms of intellectual exchange. While that is surely unique, a few days back I re-discovered, to my pleasant surprise, that the real dark horse of the interaction is the tangential thought process which the other person's thoughts trigger off in your own head. Now this particular conversation was about Global Warming, and here is the outcome, about Evolutionary Bio-psychology! Yes, I just made that word up.. :P

Anyway, here goes:

Where does Laziness come from?

They say a new-born baby is like a clean slate, and the first few hours and years of experience will mould the human being that they will be for their whole life ahead. Some people say the experience starts with conception, or as I like to call it, biological birth. Do we really learn EVERYTHING after we are born? Or is it possible that we hold something within us that comes from even BEFORE biological birth?? For example, its anybody's guess who/what teaches the baby to swim around or kick while in the mother's womb, or breathe after physiological birth.

Emotions are one thing precariously perched on the fence between numerous fields of research. So is instinct. A sceptic's view (read, MINE) begs the question: where do we pick up laziness??

For a moment, turn the clocks in your head backwards to a prehistoric point in time, long before human had trifle chores (such as blogging). The priority of the day was evolving into complete humans in the first place! One can easily see that there were two basic things that a prehistoric average guy on the (yet-to-be-invented) street would be concerned about, just like every other organism around him:

a. To survive

b. To replicate

Makes for a pretty short to-do list, doesn't it? What wouldn't I give for a situation like that. But I digress..

No matter what lofty goals humankind was chasing, surviving was and is obviously step numero uno. I'm pretty sure that just like modern society, endeavours directed in the direction of accomplishing 'task b' often caused the candidate to fail in accomplishing 'task a' !  Now consider the woolly mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger competing with the girlfriend's father for shelf-space on the Rack of Mortal Dangers, and its obvious that EVERYTHING our protagonist would do would be basically directed towards survival at some level.

The point I am trying to make, in my admittedly laborious and tangential fashion, is that over a period of time, humans isolated and inculcated a set of behaviours and abilities which helped them accomplish these tasks. Complicated processes such as formation of society and hierarchy of social structure, development of languages, arts and indeed all science and technology have their roots back in this simple necessity. To survive.

Next, look at the basest necessity to survive. Energy. HUMAN Energy. Energy derived from the food we eat, but more importantly, energy saved by NOT exerting oneself. These are both two sides of the same coin, and are ingrained into the basest instinct. A lion knows that it must not over-exert itself in a chase when it looks like the deer's got a new pair of Reebok runners, simply because it will be too tired for the next chase, which it must anyway run if it wants to feed. Ergo, it should come as no surprise that man, with his developed (developing?) brain not only understood this at a gut level, but also found ways and means to proactively implement energy-saving strategies. Social hierarchy, barter trade, the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel etc., are all means to this end. Some of these means are a way of utilizing another human's energy, while others are means of compensating human energy with another form of energy. This is a crucial difference, as expending someone else's energy to get your job done has the additional benefit of increasing your chances of survival against theirs.

Watch natural selection and human development stroll hand in hand on the beach of time for just a few thousand years, and the tendency to conserve human energy has already been hardwired into the human DNA irreversibly. This has simply occurred because the folks that managed to conserve their energy are the only ones that survived and replicated! Zoom in on the process and you see the drivers of technological advancement gradually metamorphose from the necessity of saving energy to the luxury of saving energy.  Technology has bestowed man with powers far beyond the ones that could have evolved through a natural process. While flying in the sky or crawling on the ocean floor, the impetus is still on minimizing the human exertion. Minimizing the energy loss during a task that is anyway beyond natural human physical capabilities!

Wind the clocks back to the present day, and we have a natural tendency to not exert ourselves, and use sources of energy other than humans, without realizing that we are, at an instinct level, only saving our energies to run away from this sabre-toothed grin, which by the way hasn't been seen for a while now!

Anybody who doubts what I call 'DNA-hardwiring', or the ability of evolution to influence the actions of a  species should do good to think why a domesticated dog sleeping on a rug will turn round a few times before settling in, just like its brethren in the wild. :)

What do you think? Tell me!

Luv-n-Luck,
Av

A picture, a story, a song, a theory, a thought and a poem!

Once upon a time on a very cold winter night (unlike what winter pretends to be, here in Pune), a group of hedgehogs was shivering in their little hole in the ground. Misery written all over their little snouts, they were praying for the first sign of summer and huddling together for some warmth. This was when an interesting situation presented itself. When they were apart, they would feel cold, and when they came closer to share their heat, their spines would hurt each other. So they had to choose either cold over pain or pain over cold.

Kelly Rowland and Nelly collaborated on a totally awesome rap/hip-hop song called DILEMMA, that I absolutely love. It won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Its one of the most groovy songs I've ever heard and makes me wanna dance every single time I hear it. Check it out!

But I'm sure you wonder why am I talking about this odd combination of a creature and two crooners?? Well, that needs yet another pic, and here it is!

This (not-so-friendly-looking) gentleman was named Arthur Schopenhauer. His work has influenced people right from the composer Richard Wagner to the psychoanalytic psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Mr. Schopenhaeur was the first one to refer to a social psychology phenomenon called the Hedgehog's Dilemma, in his book called Parerga und Paralipomena. The theory basically refers to a metaphoric situation described in the story above, with the argument that even with the best interests in mind, intimacy in human relations can not occur without harm to both the persons involved. This leads to over-cautious behavior, which is directly responsible for fragile relationships. A corollary to this, also proposed in the same book is that if one posses enough internal warmth, one can avoid society and subsequently the psychological discomfort (argued to be) inevitable from social interaction.

To me, the paradoxical part of the theory is that such behavior is actually in the interest of both the people involved, because it protects them from the risk of getting hurt. Another funny part is that the behavior occurs inspite of sharing a goodwill and intention of a close relationship.

Secondly, the corollary is used to explain introversion and isolationism. I might be wrong, but somehow I just can't bring myself to believe that most of the people who exhibit these characteristics are really 'internally warm'. To make things complicated, I myself display traces of both the behaviours (though I've managed to tone things down over the past few years). I can surely vouch for the fact that a lot of times, it is not because you are feeling "warm enough' or for self-protection, but just because you are in a brainspace where you don't want your thoughts to be disturbed. Sometimes it might also occur because you dont psychologically percieve the interaction with or the company of a set of people (or society in general) as a high-value proposition. Then again, is that exactly what Mr. Schopenhauer refers to as "warmth"? Am I contradicting myself? Tell me what you think about this. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Just in keeping with the theme of this post, I want to end it with an anonymous poem titled

The Dilemma

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk rejection.
To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.
Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave.
He has forfeited his freedom.
Only a person who takes risks is free.

Luv-n-Luck,
Av