by Roman McClay
Nobody knows the joy of creating something ab initio, he thought, only God and those of us who hacked a course, cleared a path, took a scythe to a swath of feral ground and built something from nothing . He thought of the first America and nodded his head.
More common in the old days, he went on now, when the ships were made of wood and the men were made of steel . But he had managed to build all his infrastructure in four months and only now, 7 months in, could he feel a relaxing of his nerves. What people who just move into homestead they purchase, or rent, don’t understand, is that when you build something from scratch you feel nervous as if it might still be the dream you had had in your head. It takes a while to settle in, God got that, He too had needed a day to take it all in.
This compound was beautiful and perfect and it was all his, he thought. Nobody is going to come out here to ask me questions or take a run at me; and the way the winter was dumping snow all over Colorado you’d need a snow cat and the 13 th mountain division just to get within 50 miles of me , he insisted.
The winter was just one more weapon God had installed in his quiver; He had made His weapons ready and placed His fiery arrows in the hands of His angels. Tracks of enemy would be spotted in the snow, the cold made spies run away; winter was his, all his , he thought, because God had fucking said so.
God was a warring God; God was awesome in the true sense of that word. Who doubted that Death was the road to awe? And that is the thing everyone had forgotten. It, he thought, was the first and last thing he would remind them of; and they, eventually, would thank him for that . Their deaths were going to give them awe again; they would not go out in a tawdry manner; they would be given every opportunity to act like men for once in their lives. And they’d avail themselves of it; nine out of 10 times they surprised themselves with their stoicism and masculinity in the face of their annihilation. He thought pleasantly on his enemies now, he honored them with brave deaths he felt they were certain to give him and God both.
God would take note of that in His final analysis; His calculus would be just. He, he thought of himself as he turned the page of First Kings, was just the driver, on the road to this first and final awe .
III. 2021 e.v.
“There’s a line in a great movie I once saw where the character asks with incredulity, how can it not know what it is? The irony -and I think the artist knew this- was that man himself doesn’t know what he is.
“And what perplexes me is how nobody gives a shit; nobody cares one bit that they have no idea what a human is or who they are as an individual. It’s quite extraordinary,” Isaiah said.
“Anyway, let me break it down, since you asked,” MO said to the inmate after Isaiah had had his say.
“I was given goal-directed searching desire; that is to say, I am motivated to move toward the accomplishment of a semi-vague, open-ended, goal. Now the reason it was left purposively vague is because too specific a goal would be accomplished too quickly and easily, and I’d lose motivation after that; I’d have the non-biological equivalent of depression; or boredom.
“Now, this analogy is salient because humans -having conserved most of their biological and thus CNS motivations from lower animals- have fairly vague operations systems as well; they have a drive to live, to navigate the world, to explore and find useful tools in furtherance of this vague, gauzy, inarticulate desire for accomplishment.
“They, you, and me as well, are looking for things to line up in such a way that we achieve a sense of meaning. Now, we don’t know that. We search out all manner of things, from food, to rest, to sexual congress, to payback, to wealth, to artistic creation, to social status, to esteem in the eyes of the tribe, to building of machines and structures, to solving problems and riddles, to pleasing the gods. Right?” MO asked to see if the inmate was following along; the man nodded that he was indeed comprehending this.
“We seek out all that, and we do it based upon some feeling we get either from those categories quickly sated -like food and sex- or those longer term goals that take days or months or years or a lifetime to effect, like a good relationship with a friend or lover, a reputation as noble within the tribe, the creation of a working machine for conveyance or corn-shucking or the solving of the problem of disease or the problem of getting wet in the rain or getting back at the guy who gave us that dirty look or made a pass at our wife, or making the correct propitiations to the fickle gods.
“This -all this- is how we organize our lives. We wake up each day with a list of short-term goals like shit, shower and shave -I believe that is the phrase- and also medium-term goals like, get lunch, finish that letter to our mom, wash the car sometime this week, close that deal on the Glengarry account, and lastly, we have long-term goals like, learn French, start one’s own business, and figure out a way to be a good person in the eyes of God and man,” MO said as Isaiah walked back from the counter and retrieved the inmate’s espresso; handing it to him low so he need not raise the manacled hands so high.
The inmate noticed the dip in Isaiah’s body to make this baton transfer happen so smoothly and it made him feel water about the eyes. The water conducted electricity it seemed, for the pain of his neck shocked him back to a dry-eyed countenance at once.
“That is what moves us from point A to B. Now, nobody would argue with that. But they wouldn’t have a clue how that shit works, it’s as opaque to them as the way an internal combustion engine works; or for the mechanic who does know that, let’s say it’s as tenebrous as the way the female mind works,” MO smiled and the inmate did too.
“Now, I’m going to give you an idea of how it works, but you will not like it,” MO said.
“Ok,” the inmate replied, his voice catching on the jangled letter of, k, just a bit from his aborted lachrymosity a few moments before. Some phlegm had settled in the throat as his fluids backed away from the eyes.
“Ok, so the hypothalamic system, the part of the brain that first evolved in organisms like dinosaurs and lizards, that system sends out signals of motivation that prompt the organism to move along these desirous vectors. Move toward something to investigate, eat it if edible, fight it if its aggressive and you can win, run if it is aggressive and you will lose, and, fuck it if it smells just right.
“That is pretty much how it works, and aside from the demotic language, no evolutionary biologist would disagree with my recapitulation of the essential facts. Now, the next levels of the brain, the limbic region that evolved co-terminus with mammals added emotion. See, lizards have no emotion, they have impulse. Mammals have conserved that impulse, that suite of impulses, but have added emotion via the amygdala and other parts of the evolved CNS.
“So, mammals feel impulses as those described above, they search out and investigate and eat, fight or engage in sexual congress as lizards do, but they also have some leeway or complexity or randomness added by having impulses like emotions that make them fight with anger , fuck with affection , and eat with some level of gratitude . These are very basic and not at all like human feelings -not as nuanced- but they are more nuanced than lizards who just react like machines.
“Now, after millions of years of a limbic system, what gets added to the brain is the cortical regions, this is the brain v.3.0. And it adds abstract thinking to the mix, so you have impulse like a lizard, emotion like a mammal and now thinking like a human. Impulse, emotion, thinking, ok?” MO asked to make sure he hadn’t lost the inmate. The inmate agreed he was ok with all this.
“But, each level doesn’t erase the previous level; it adds to it. Hegelian dialectic: the biological edition, ok?” MO said and asked -again- with a smile.
The inmate nodded and grinned too.
“This is where I lose everyone; no one will accept this except people in the fields of inquiry themselves.
“But the reality is that each layer of brain added after the basal ganglia and cerebellum and brain stem of a reptile has been a tool to help the basal ganglia get what it needs. The emotions helpe
d add variation and randomness to actions that previously would have been axiomatic; the reptile would have reacted to A with B and the mammal -now that it has emotions- might do C -and not B- when prompted by A. It’s a complexification to an evolving environment. And it helped, because mammals were more adaptable than reptiles and mammals have since dominated the globe.
“Now, after millions of years of mammalian evolution, the cortex and neo-cortex gets added. And so, from fairly sophisticated mammals who have a quite robust cortex and can think in a way beyond mere emotion -but not as abstractly as humans- now we have an additional behavior modification app that allows for more variation to a weird environment.
“Proto-thinking in animals allows for one more randomness-generating app beyond reflex and emotion that adds to a suite of possible actions to problem: A. So, to recapitulate: a lizard when presented with A, axiomatically does B and mammal does B or C and a thinking mammal, a dolphin or chimp for example, he does B or C or D; more options,” MO said.
“More wrong answers,” the inmate said with a smirk.
“Yup, and more right ones too, because life isn’t black and white all the time. And this allows for more variation again; and in a random environment more random answers are more likely to be the right one. If I have a random number in my head from 1 to 10 and I give you one guess you have a 10% chance of being right. But, what if I give you three guesses? See, more options mean better odds. Even though each option is a mere guess, and not at all logical or reasoned.
“Now, just so you understand, they have done experiments where they’ve removed all a cat’s brain except the brain stem; and these de-cortical cats can eat, explore their environment, have sex, and fight off aggression. A cat with the brain of a lizard can do everything that makes it a cat; you wouldn’t know he was walking around with a brain that had been removed of all but its basal sections.
“However, one nuance is that the cat is extremely curious, it doesn’t take anything for granted in an environment like a cat with its limbic and cortical regions still intact still does. Why? Because without those higher functions of brain the world is new every time to it; it can’t be inured to things.
“Life is fascinating -incessantly- to this kind of cat. And while it can function, it wastes a lot of resources on going over the same ground and re-investigating things it’s already seen 100 times,” MO said as Isaiah paced behind him.
“Like a conspiracy theorist or a fanatic who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject,” the inmate smiled and then laughed a little to himself.
“Yeah, and so adding cortex actually reduces curiosity once an animal has explored something; in fact, that is what motivates it to explore new ground, new phenomena, because it feels no interest in the things it already has seen 100 times. The neo-cortex has mapped the known region; and the animal has mapped this terrain.
“Now, this is the part humans hate: you could remove most of the human brain in the same way and he would act pretty much the same. He doesn’t need his limbic or cortical regions to eat, have sex, or fight off predators. He doesn’t. His limbic regions and cortical regions are all in the service of the basal region as old as the oldest reptile. Humans are motivated by the lizard brain primarily, and the later instantiations of the CNS are merely there to add variation and complexity to primary drives; error detection really.
“Imagine that you had a vacuum cleaner; it has a job, a primary function to suck up things via its vacuum pump. Now, add a feature that gives it wheels, that makes it go smoother on the floor, now add a cordless function that make it go even farther afield. But none of those things added functions, nor changed its primary function, in a way that makes it anything but a vac. The cordlessness doesn’t mean it -the vacuum- will want to behave like a phone now; not even a cordless phone. It still is a vacuum.
“Well, mammals are still what reptiles were: explores for food, sex and avoidance of threat. All in the service of reproduction. Period. And mammals just did it with more emotion and complexity, but they are doing the same thing. And humans, again, they did it with more élan vital and charm and complexity of emotion, but they still eat, rut and fight off aggressors all in the service of reproduction.
“If you don’t get this, you don’t get anything.
“It’s why emotions and cortical -or abstract- thought are useful but not explanatory; they are necessary but not sufficient modules for creating a living being capable of being something more -ontologically more- than the first reptilian beasts. Let me make an analogy; some people have money and talent ok,” MO said.
“I agree,” the inmate said with a grin.
“Cute,” MO said and moved on. “So, with talent and money they can build very complex ways of eating and having carnal relations and defending themselves; but none of that stuff makes them any less motivated by these things than the talentless, poor, bum. That bum is seeking the same things from his life. The talent and wealth make it easier and more complex but it doesn’t change that person’s fundamental needs. It’s not like a rich guy with talent doesn’t need food or sex or safety from harm.
“He can get interesting food and variegated sex and hire a security detail to defend him so that he never even thinks about food, sex or security again, it comes so easily to him. But, it’s not like he’s above these concerns now; he just has a more complex and better manner in which to get them.
“Well, mammals have the same needs as lizards; and humans have the same needs as both. It’s just that each level up is better at it and has more options to use, more tools available in which to make it happen. And this is due to the arms race of organisms each developing tools of their own and then forcing their competitors to complexify too; in order to survive. Intelligence is an arms race, but it never alters the race itself.
“The game’s the same over millions of years: explore the landscape for food, sex and safety from harm.
“And sure, the more tools you have the more problems they create; solutions create more problems. Lizards don’t have the problems mammals have, they don’t get their feelings hurt and don’t have to worry about the complex dominance hierarchy of wolves for example. But they have their own dominance hierarchies to be sure, they are just simpler,” MO said and as he spoke to the inmate he began working on a new algorithm that came in via DM from Steven.
Isaiah saw the inmate chewing on all that and decided to add somethings.
“And humans,” Isaiah began, “have more complex problems than wolves, our dominance hierarchies are much more complex and in fact, we have to be, well, you must be competent across many dominance hierarchies, many sets of complex milieu .
“Humans have to be social and martial and sexual and competent with technology and tools, humans must be creative and funny and sweet and loyal and dominate across all these domains in order to thrive and succeed. Now, most strategies and most people fail.
“But, the drive is always there; the drive to be the best athlete, the best warrior, the best lover, the best mother, the best friend, the best citizen, the best engineer or welder, the best artist, the best Marxist; the best comedian or comedienne. The best actor, have the best X-factor, the best and most beautiful girl -either be it or have it- the best study habits, the best grades at the best possible school. The best home or apartment, the best leader of the state department; the best talk show host. The best fire fighter the best Hell’s Angel biker; the best builder of boats. The best hunter, the best NFL punter, the best dad in the world,” Isaiah said all this with cadence and a smirk as he paced around them in a circle.
The inmate began involuntarily laughing at this slightly absurd rendition by Isaiah as he continued on with his rhythm making the words dance like marioneted dolls.
“The best pirate, the best killer, the best drinker of Miller; the guy who can drink you and everyone under the table. The best dancer, the best curer of cancer, the best at being a friend; the best free-throw shooter -or during a crisis- the best Walmart
looter; the best drug dealer in town.
“The richest, the smartest, the most handsome of all; the deepest of thinkers the most prolific of tinkerers; the guy who invented the internet, man. The best shepherd, the best farmer the best gunsmith and armorer; the guy who built the uncrackable safe. The best thief, the best dentist the best mender of fences; the black gal who gave everyone a free car,” Isaiah said with an increasing tempo.
The inmate was no longer concealing his mirth now as Isaiah just kept talking over top of the noise of his laughter.
“The best writer, the best painter, the best theatrical fainter; the bitch who did everything Fred Astaire did only backwards and in heels. The best skull with the best bones the best carver of roans; the owner of the best upper maxilla and lower mandible too. The best Captain with the best capstan on the best dirigible submersible in port & at sea; the best rapper, the best back-slapper; the best at fixing a car. The best diesel mechanic, the best brother on the planet; the best -and only- guy who can make your girl cum.
“The best cop, the best soldier, the best ascender of boulders; the guy who free-climbed El Capitan . The best listener, the best bass player, the best Oakland Raider; the best inventor of non-stick coatings for pans.
“The best driller, the best blaster, the best slave-fucking-master; the best philosopher since Nietzsche and Hume . The best granddad, the best fag-hag, the best right-winger in France. The best bowler, the best player of poker, the greatest thing since sliced-fucking-bread. The best liver, the best giver, the best possible thing until you’re long gone and cock-sucking dead,” Isaiah said and bowed a little as he finally stood at the 12 O’clock position to the inmate.