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I'm painting you Mommy!
Tuesday, June 26 2001
Intelligent life is the result of two forces. One of these is a propensity to organize and the other is a propensity to propagate information about those organizations. The second of these forces is the basis of Darwinism and is well understood. And while it's true that the first of these forces is probably just a means to achieve the second, still, gregariousness is essential for life rising above the level of single carbon atoms. Carbon, the basic element of life, is more social than most atoms, being most comfortable when bonded with four others. This cohesiveness sets a pattern for all levels of organization above this: organelles (de-individualized bacteria), cells (de-individualized cells), and employees (de-individualized vertebrates). The social organizations and complex communications methods in humans are directly responsible for everything we understand as intelligent life. If humans were somewhat less social than they are (but every bit as an intelligent), it's doubtful technology would have advanced beyond primitive stone tools of the sort that your average suburban housewife would make if stranded on a desert island. Possibly the underlying reason for the rapid technical advancement of humans beginning 40,000 years ago was a sudden increase in social cohesiveness among a particular group of humans whose rapidly expanding numbers eventually overwhelmed all others.
I drove the Punch Buggy Rust down to OSH Hardware this evening to pick up two of the paint colors I hadn't been able to get on Saturday. I found myself in the unfortunate position of waiting in line behind a young mother who had lots of different colors to buy. All her colors were disturbing pastels, both purple and green. She was good natured about everything, but her demands were fussy and exact. One of her pastel purples, for example, required a "touch of grey." Preparing these esoteric Brentwood-bound colors took lots and lots of time, and I sat there on a large plastic container waiting patiently.
The woman's son, a little boy of about five, was considerably less patient than I. He started out eating a small bag of corn nuts, but didn't like them too much, so he eventually dumped them all over the floor, completely without apologies. "I don't like them!" he shouted with glee, shaking the empty metallicized wrapper. Eventually he flung the wrapper into the air and it fluttered down to join the corn nuts on the floor. At this point he demanded, "I want my airplane!" and his mother dutifully stooped down and retrieved it, first making the kid promise not to drop it again. "I promise, I promise!" he pleaded. But the moment he had his "airplane" back, the kid flung it into the air. Meanwhile the mother was sheepishly scraping the corn nuts into a discrete pile in front of the counter.
Later the kid demanded to be let down, and his mother complied with his demands. At this point he started grabbing paint brushes, particularly little paint rollers, and pretending to undertake aggressive home improvement. Most of this was directed abusively to the back of his mother's legs. "I'm painting you Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" he shouted. I couldn't believe how indulgent the mother was being in the face of this tyrannical behavior. I think the easiest way to end up with a kid like this is to tolerate this sort behavior, and that's exactly what the mother was doing. Back when he was a school teacher, my housemate John was full of stories about the spoiled children of Beverly Hills. I wonder if George W. Bush raised in this fashion.
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