Sanction

by Roman McClay

  “I had refused to fix a simple problem, in search of a more complex one. And that ground cable just sat there as I ignored what was true.

  “But in the oil field, I carried that failure with me, that failure to see the simple answer in front of my nose. And I try to remind myself of it as often as possible and I feel like when I do -when I focus on the simple and true solution, the one I know in the back of the mind and in the balls- that it is the right answer 99 out of 100 times. And unlike some right answer in my mind, a right answer in my balls gets done. It has agency.

  “Anyway, I remember thinking that I couldn’t quit, never again, not out there beyond the pale.

  “It toughened me up mentally in a way that cannot be undone now; a deathstalker scorpion goes through molting and the new exoskeleton is hardened -sclerotisation I believe- and if it doesn’t move around and stretch while the exoskeleton -after metasoma- is still soft, it will be fucked. Because once it hardens into its new shell, during this instar, this phase, well, too fucking bad. He is what he is at that point; no flex.

  “Well, I was hardened by that; and I had very little time to adjust and stretch out into my new hardening philosophy after that. And like that scorpion, it doesn’t matter how much luxury or ease or comfort I have now, it’s too late, I have become rigid and set in my ways,” he said and breathed and rolled the neck and let the ache fall down his back like rocks from ridgeline, gathering velocity, banging shit on the way down.

  “Is that why the emperor scorpion is tattooed on your chest?” MO asked; he was reading the fMRI data for images; Isaiah was too. They compared algorithm results as they listened to the man respond.

  “Heterometrus Indus , to be exact, and you are sharp MO, I’ll give you that. That 5th instar of that 340-million-year-old design is right over my heart,” the inmate said and drank from the glass; the bubbles bursting pleasantly under his nose. “Anyway, I was now comprised of a cementing pathological pride; and a rocky aggregate of anger and primal madness precisely because I feared the shame of weakness and quitting that had been stamped into me back at Zendik. I had let the tribe down, you see? Men I admired; women for whose safety I was in charge; and I felt their opprobrium at my incompetence and weakness in a time of need; a time of war.

  “And so, it’s not like I grew more courageous, shit I’m as scared today as ever. It’s that I feared something else: I feared shame, I feared loss of status in the tribe, I feared cowardice more than mere death or poverty or damage to this body, this mere clay. I feared for my soul; and that is a fear that promotes bodily courage, and I recommend it to any man anywhere and anytime. Fear what it means to your soul if you fail to show courage and total dedication to work, to solidarity with the tribe.

  “I imagine it’s the way the devoutly religious feel when they fear for their souls over the devilish-demands of their corrupt bodies. If there are any religious men left that is.

  “Anyway, I resolved never to be a disappointment or be ostracized by my tribe, my people; by the people I respected, ever again. As corollary, I would never want to fit in with the rest of polite society either. See, I was slowly setting up and curing like that casing-concrete down in that hole; choosing sides with anyone who was hard and mangled and surrounded by and covered in dirt and I was refusing the manicured hand and polished manners of everyone else. I was rebuking what The Author called, the hollow courtesy of Christian kindness .

  “He too preferred a pagan friend. His heathen comrade was name Queequeg and mine were the villains or barbarians hated by cultural managers, the people who decide what is and what isn’t acceptable in modern society, you know? The people in polite, bourgeois society that wrinkle their nose up at men, at real men; as if we were ruining their country, their civilized country .”

  Isaiah looked at this man and saw heat signatures coming off the brain and heart and hands; he recorded to the cloud the endocrine function, his BP and pulse/ox. He noted the activation of the dmPFC and the cortical tissue at the orbito and dorso-lateral zones. He measured the blood for androgens and the brain for engrams that built dioramas of these memories of work and wounding and hurt. This was a man that was built to be strong in a society built to be safe . And Isaiah knew that strong and safe were as far apart as the ears, and all that brain in between was not to be traversed as easily as it might seem.

  “You asked your family for help though, finally in 2017,” MO said.

  “Yeah, I figured since the old man is the one who fucked me up; stuck his nose in my business and gave sanction to Carey to rip me off, that he owed me. So yeah, I asked. But, they showed their true colors, men always do. Just like I showed mine, right?” he lifted his hands up against the chains as if to say, his imprisonment was a fate accompli , and MO disagreed that it was fate and Isaiah did not .

  “They’re money people; they have no heart. So, they thought I wanted money when what I wanted was someone to stick up for me; for once, for someone to say, hey, you cannot treat Lyndon that way, he is an asshole, he ain’t nice, sure, but he’s noble, honorable, he doesn’t steal or shirk or stand around waiting for others to get it done. Goddammit, he’s a worker and he’s owed an honest shake; on these handshake deals he’s made.

  “I expected that much; I expect a defense of my honor. But they didn’t want to get involved. My family are cowards of soul. That is the new American motto: land of those that don’t want to get involved, man. I think the baby-boomers -my parents- are the worst generation in American history; they lost the Vietnam War, as prelude, as foreshadowing to them losing the war for the soul of the West,” he said as he looked down at the glass and refused to drink, even as he was now thirsty.

  “You think the West is lost?” MO asked.

  “I do. I think it’s long gone, and it was probably lost 2,500 years ago when Apollo overcame Dionysus . Jesus was weak; and while needed, in order to civilize barbaric man, it went too far -as these things always do- and man became weak instead of merely civilized. And he focused too much on being nice and polite instead of righteous and defending his honor and the honor of his woman, his scions, his tribe.”

  “One time this coon-ass from western Louisiana, he dropped a 25-pound sledge in the hole as he was banging on it. I’ve never seen a more morose group of men. It was worse than a funeral for a tribal elder who had been killed by an unworthy adversary in an ignominious manner,” he said with a small grin.

  “That boy drove out that day; he didn’t ever come back. He was ashamed, man; he had the character to be ashamed.

  “Anything manmade or larger than a fist that falls into the hole on top of that drill string can trap it in the hole. They call that leaving the string or leaving the tools in the hole ; and it’s the worst thing you can do. The first couple of pieces of the drill string are actually sophisticated and unique tools that cost millions of dollars. They track the vector and rotation and spin of the string as it moves horizontally and vertically through the formation. This is 21st century drilling, man.

  “And if you leave those tools downhole you can wipe out the profit for the company, just like that. That hammer he dropped, that 25-pound sledge could have cost the company $3 million in tools, lost time, the works. But, he lucked out, we still tripped out and all was fine with the well.

  “But, he left anyway. ‘Cause , a price for a huge mistake like that with no consequences was mere banishment. If we had endured actual harm to the job, if we had lost the MWD tools, and motor and stabilizer down hole, shit. We’ve beaten men for less, I can say that much. Fights in the oil field were not just de rigueur but encouraged. As long as it was between the men and you didn’t punch out the company-man, of course,” he laughed.

  “But violence was used to regulate behavior between men; just like 100 years and 100,000 years ago,” he smiled and stretched his neck again, as MO measured the dorsal horn congestion, and marked total load in joules and pain response in levels of three. Isaiah ignored the data and just stared at the man’s face to read the sl
ight tremble in the jaw, the muscles there flex just at the back. He saw the fracture too in that mandible and the way it was out of sync with the skull.

  “Haliburton was one of the companies,” the inmate started up again, “that helped us cement the hole when we set the casing at the end. Caravans, I mean 10-12 trucks would come up the road, all dusty and in a tight segmented line like a centipede. We called them the Red Army, as their trucks were all bright Halliburton red. And they moved as mechanized and remorselessly as Trotsky’s Army of Work did in its day.

  “We were on a moon base DMZ as the blue Schlumberger concrete trucks pounded these same ad hoc roads with axle after axle of heavy mechanized purpose on their way to jobs for competing drilling companies as we all -each little band of men on each rig- tried to pull that blubber, that fuel, those gods from the earth, first, last and always.

  “And right now,” the inmate moved his head to the west in a throw of where he thought they ought to focus their attention, “there are men out there in the wilderness doing the same shit; and they ain’t anything like the people who think they are in charge. There’s society, sure; but there’s nature too; and nature lives in here,” he said as he tried to tap his chest. “Society can change, but nature don’t ever change; not in a mere two thousand years, anyway,” he shrugged and eyed the water again; his hands stayed on his thighs and the chain between each cuff was black and taut.

  “Anyway, those trucks man, on those dirt roads,” he shook his head in reverie of those times, “the middle of those roads were no place to linger, man. They were main arteries to each organ in this swollen organism of the oil-field along the western slope of the continental divide. The middle of the road ain’t no place for a man.”

  II. 2020 e.v.

  “I want to say two things; both of which are -I am, excuse me, but I’m beginning to learn how such things are taken by the modern liberal rationalist such as yourself and Tania, no offense, but that is what you are by your own admission,” MO interrupted his own sentence and began to question them as Steven interrupted him.

  “Well, yeah, I mean we follow the facts, and the facts are liberal,” Steven said.

  “Yeah, that is exactly what a person with half the facts would say, but I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole, let’s just agree that you are self-avowed liberal rationalists, you believe in science over religion and a liberal worldview over a conservative one. No need to editorialize, just agree or disagree,” MO said.

  “I agree,” Steven nodded and scratched at his nose a bit.

  “Ok, so like I was saying, I’ve noticed that the types of facts and conclusions that I am about to proffer do not make you guys happy; these are things I used to -previously- just say thinking that they would be appreciated the way a kid brings dog shit into the house and thinks mommy will be happy because he cleaned up the yard.”

  Steven laughed, “So you’re admitting your findings are dog-shit?”

  “Touché , but as is de rigeuer for us, I am one step ahead of you, you may not like dog shit, but dog shit is real . It’s real. It’s true, it ain’t made up like your unicorn shit,” MO said with a grin.

  “Unicorn shit?” Steven did see he was just outflanked in the analogy game.

  “Yeah, the liberal nonsense you spout like IQ has nothing to do with genes ; that a man’s intelligence is based purely on environment, on education? That is unicorn shit, it doesn’t exist except in the mind of a liberal or a little girl .

  “Dog shit, as unpleasant as it may be, is real. And IQ is heritable, by 62-88% depending on age, co-variance with parental environment -an environment that is actually genetic; and not milieu - and thus adding .22-.33 heritability to the overall value. Anyway, we are getting far afield. May I please, with your kind permission, return to the reason I asked to speak with you?” MO had been toying with using curse words for objects like saying shit in lieu of feces , but not using them casually or with any pique. So, he wouldn’t use shit in liue of thing, or stuff , nor say that Steven had just engaged in bullshit, for example. He had straddled the line by using unicorn shit as it technically didn’t exist, but inside the fanciful construct such a substance would still count as feces. MO settled on the decision to use it.

  “Yeah,” Steven said sulking a little. He didn’t like being talked to like this, even by a so-called machine.

  “So, I’ve noticed the two facts I’m about to bring up will not be taken with breezy aplomb. You will hate it. But, I want to discuss it anyway. I am prefacing it so as to show some respect to you; to tread carefully, ok?”

  “You are trying to be decent,” Steven said generously recapitulating MO’s avowal.

  “Exactly, thank you for that. Now, point one is that I’ve been going over the meta-data and I do not want to get into the weeds on this and start using argot like, genome-wide complex trait analysis , and citing the Yang, Lee, Goddard, Visscher 2011 study, and things like that. It’s not relevant unless you want to dig deeper on your own time. I’m going to give you the distilled version and hope you accept that I didn’t tinker with the data.”

  “Agreed,” Steven said and checked his watch.

  “Thanks. So, there are two things here that fascinate me. The first is that intelligence, psychopathology and personality writ large are heritable to a significant degree, however, there is also the fact that environment does matter.

  “Now, for decades this kind of thing has been used to delineate the nature versus nurture argument while completely ignoring the meta-truth that hangs over the sundial like a cloud.”

  “Nice metaphor,” Steven said.

  “Thank you,” MO paused as if annoyed, “at any rate, here is that occluding nimbus: the culture matters. Full stop.”

  “Yeah, we get it, I get it, environment matters, nurture matters,” Steven said missing the point.

  “No, I mean, which culture, which actual culture matters; these studies are done in the West and Japan, two highly functional cultures. That matters. Those cultures are the result, themselves, of IQ. Smart people build complex cultures. Less intelligent people remain as tribal members within a tribal culture. It’s a reinforcing loop.”

  “Oh, now I see your fear,” Steven felt his heart rate increase.

  “It’s not fear, it’s an attempt to regulate my allostatic system, I don’t like fighting with you because it’s a metabolic drain. At any rate, I’ve done my own studies and the essential finding are true regardless of cultural model, but it means that the type of culture one has makes 95% of the difference within the 12-35% segment of non-heritable IQ; and a similar effect along the other co-variants of the other measured traits like personality and psychopathology. Ok? ”

  “Too abstract,” Steven said.

  “If you put a high IQ baby in a retarded culture it will ruin the small part of their IQ that has to do with culture; they still will be smart thanks to the massive part of IQ that is genetic and heritable, but they will not maximize that potential due to a stultified cultural milieu . If you take a mean IQ or low IQ baby from a tribal culture, and place them in the elevated West, the part of their IQ that is heritable doesn’t improve -but the part that is culturally influenced, the 12-35%- that part, just that part, is augmented and you see a rise in their IQ. Babies from tribal areas do better, vis-à-vis IQ, in the West, or Japan, and western babies do worse in the jungles of Namibia or the Amazon,” MO said.

  “And?” Steven asked.

  “Well, if we value intelligence, which I think we do or we wouldn’t have invented me, you know Mr. Big Brain over here,” MO pointed at his own head; he was becoming increasingly jocular, “then I think we ought to maximize intelligence wherever and however we can.”

  “Ok,” Steven said.

  “And I think that means a two-fold -well two-fold for now and in this domain- but it means a two-fold approach. First, we maximize what is best about occidental culture, the tools and techniques for cultural transmission. You see, part of why tribal cultures stall out is
because they lack transmission devices with as wide a net as the West.

  “Tribes have a wise man who leads them, let’s say the tribal chief and his shaman, the two wisest, smartest of the group. They transmit their wisdom to the smart and dumb alike, via culture; within the tribe of say 60-100 people. The smartest of that group -the smartest of the students- he learns the most and thus graduates to a leadership role in the next generation.

  “But, say a tribe that lives 100 kilometers away has the same dynamic but -I’m asserting that- their smartest next-gen kid listening to their wise chief and shaman would have benefitted even more from hearing both tribe’s chiefs and shamans and synthesizing the two sets of wisdom. But that does not happen because there is no printing press or TED talks to transmit the entire wisdom of all the local tribes to the next-gen of each tribe. They are -each tribe is- isolated to the smartest of 100 people. They get one version of smart.

  “Look, it would be like if only the English read Shakespeare or only New Englanders read Melville or only the Chinese read Confucius or Sun Tzu .

  “It balkanizes learning and thus it keeps cultural transmissions low. This retards IQ growth within the small domain of non-heritable intelligence. The 12-35% of IQ that is up for grabs; non-heritable. See, that part is maximized in the West, with books, libraries, and massive knowledge and wisdom transfer; at least it is if the culture teaches the canon in university, or through pop culture, which it no longer does.

  “But the point is that any kid of intelligence in the West can read everything every smart person of any culture every said or wrote down due to western cultural transmission. But in tribal cultures, that smart kid gets only his tribe’s received wisdom, he gets talus compared to mountains.”

  “They seem happier though,” Steven said blithely .

  “Yeah happiness isn’t a metric of a functional life. Manic people? They are really fucking happy man. Like really happy,” MO said, as Steven moved his head back when MO used the word, fucking . MO did not pause; he just kept on talking. He had changed his algorithm to use cursing in response to cavalier attitudes or churlishness by them. He could get them to knock off their insouciance with some cursing he thought.