99 Cannibals and 1

I imagined a story that ran this way.  In a very remote island lived a hundred people; 99 of whom were cannibals and one who was not.  One day by an overwhelming majority the 99 decided to make a meal of the one who was not.  End of story.

The longer version went like this.  The island at first had ample resources and all of the hundred people got along well.  Then one day food supply on the island started to dwindle. The non-cannibal had seen to it that he found other ways to feed himself outside of what can just be found on the island by fishing from the sea. So he stayed healthy and looked well while the 99 looked emaciated as food supply diminished. Then one critical day the 99 looked to the one who was healthy and by a unanimous vote decided to sub-divide him into 99 equal parts. In the eyes of the 99 it was well justified that one was sacrificed for the survival of the many.  99 were fed.  For one day.  End of story.

Then there was this version. The one who was not a cannibal employed a few of the 99 to help with fishing.  Soon half of the cannibals were working for him and they were well provided for so that, as a result and by consensus, they and the non-cannibal gave part of what they earned to those who neither worked nor earned anything.  Meanwhile, from the 99 arose a leader who declared that they deserved better and promised that he will see to it that everyone gets fair share of everything that was gathered from the sea.  Furthermore, the non-cannibal who had the most must give more than those who worked for him. In fact, it was so that at the end of each day he was not to have more than what everyone else had.  Since he was out numbered the non-cannibal agreed.  As days went on those who worked deliberately did less and less as it was pointless to work any harder since they will end up with the same as everyone else. Before long only the non-cannibal was fishing.  Then one day when there was no longer enough for everyone, the 99 looked to the 1 and made a meal of him. For one day.  End of story.

The moral of the story, if there was one, was that opportunities may be equally available to everyone, perhaps even guaranteed, but not everyone will want to avail of it.  And even for those who do, equal results are not certain.  Come to think of it, there is really no moral to the story.  For the 99 and the 1, it is the same sad “End of story”.

Of Mice and Lo Mein (my apologies to John Steinbeck)

There are more cook books published today of any subject or theme than any other non-fiction genre, except, of course, for weight loss and exercise books*.  The shelf space they occupy in public libraries and book stores stand as contrasting altars to those who love to cook and those who struggle to lose weight gained from... eating. People love to cook, ergo, people love to eat but hate the extra weight gained.

Conclusion: there is a conspiracy between the cookbook writers and the exercise and diet gurus.

Scientists - or perhaps they were nutrition majors who never stopped matriculating and went on to get their PhD’s in meal preparation - did a study on caloric intakes of 3rd graders and boa constrictors (big snakes for those who skipped high school biology).  They’d feed the snake with one hapless rat and a third grader with cupcake, not in the same cage, of course, and measure the amount of calories they consumed and expended.  The procedure is too lengthy to explain here (meaning I didn’t really quite understand the science behind the bomb calorimeter).  Alas, the cupcake has more than twice the calories of the average laboratory rat – snow white fur, pink eyes and as docile as a jelly fish.  Not wanting to attract the ire of PETA the rat was already dead, as if that makes a difference, but I thought I’d mention it.

As I was watching the documentary I concluded that it was such a waste of government grant money just to prove why snakes stay slim and slender with nary an ounce of fat in them.  Snakes are not exactly bundles of energy and if anything they’d put to shame the most sedentary of couch potatoes among us.  So they don’t go to the jungle gym to work out but obesity is the least of their problems, especially when one considers the odds of them becoming a cowboy boot or western wallet first ahead of excess weight gain.

So what was the point of all that experimentation? Cooked and processed foods have more calories than raw ones (rats or otherwise). That’s stating the obvious, obviously. Actually, we’re told that man’s brain capacity increased when he discovered to cook his food.  Need I say that we’re the only creatures who do?  Bear with me as I try to get to the point.  One more thing before I get there. Human brain, the ones we have now, is the biggest consumer of energy of all the organs.  It (all of 3 pounds) accounts for just 2% of one’s weight but it consumes 20% of the body’s energy consumption per day.  Specifically, the average brain consumes the amount of calories contained in about one half to one whole cup of white refined sugar, depending on what it is engaged in. That might explain why there are no fat nuclear physicists, cosmologists or chess grand masters.  Conversely, those who watch copious episodes of Jersey Shores or the Kardashians tilt the demographic weight distribution off kilter the other way (just kidding).

Let me go back to some serious discussion. So when Grog and his tribe were dining mainly on raw meat, leaves and berries, their average IQs for millions of years remained at barely above room temperature. One day Grog came upon an auroch (believed the ancestor of the modern cattle) that was struck by lightning.  It was still smoldering where a nearby bush was still burning. He stumbled upon the very first barbecue and warmth from fire.  The rest is history.  I wasn’t there when it happened but an idle mind is awash with speculative imagination unfettered by evidence or fossil fragments.

Cooked food is processed more easily by our body and the resulting efficiency makes for the brain’s quick access to energy.  Scientists claim that giving the brain more energy allowed for more and more sophistication in the thinking process and as the brain gets “flexed” with more exercise it grew almost exponentially overnight - in evolutionary terms, that is.  So our raw-food-eating animal friends are stuck in IQ plateau.  But what does that do to sushi enthusiasts and salad grazers?  The Japanese are a smart people.  They make great cars, had a monopoly (at one time) on plasma TV and digital cameras and they write in difficult scripts and I, for the life of me, could not understand one word when they talk among themselves.  After an exhaustive research I found out they invented the hibachi and the “Little and Big Green Eggs”, so we know they cook.  As it turned out, they eat sushi sparingly and certainly not to the same degree that some westerners who had taken sushi seriously, who consume more raw tuna and octopus with sake, the latter like it were sparkling water.

Here’s the point of all these. Now I learned from our dedicated nutrition PhD’s that food is all about having enough to provide for growth, energy, necessary vitamins, tissue maintenance and the pleasure of the eating experience.  All of those cited, except for growth, if you discount finger nails and hair (for those of us who still have it), are still pretty good reasons to keep eating even after we’ve physically matured. Unfortunately, the percentages changed over time.  The pleasure of eating has taken over the lion’s share (pun is intended, I think) of the reasons we eat.  Of all the living creatures we’re the ones that take too much pleasure in eating.  I must wonder whether a garter snake finds as much pleasure swallowing mice as we like lo mein.  Whew, I finally found a way to get “Of Mice and Lo Mein” in there. To be honest I wrote the title first but struggled on how to work it into the body of the musing.  So, there!

Now we have a serious quandary. Vegetarians don’t want us to eat meat, cooked or otherwise, and PETA thinks there must be a way to eat meat without killing animals. Don’t they know that plants have feelings too.  Most Tibetans think so and I believe them.  In San Francisco they don’t want their citizens to keep goldfish in fish bowls at home. If it starts there, where does it end?  Now, cows have an ally in Chic-Fil-A whose ads feature a cow with a sign that says, “Eat mor chikin” (except cows do need to learn how to spell). I suspect there is a loose affiliation between vegans and PETA members but I can’t quite put a finger to it.  Full disclosure: I happen to agree with PETA that the annual presidential pardon on the “lucky turkey” every Thanksgiving is both silly and absurd as they question what the turkey was accused and found guilty of to be pardoned in the first place?  I think I should stop here because I have already managed to offend two groups, the Executive Branch of government plus all those who give two TV shows their Nielsen ratings.

*I can’t back up these statistics but next time you’re in a book store or public library check it out and see if it is so.

What’s Fishy with Human Nature?

I read this unlikely fish story.  In Guernsey, UK, on July 12, 2012, Mathew Clark stole a 13-pound bass from a local aquarium which he entered in a fishing competition and won the top prize money of £800. There are countless shenanigans throughout history – this is not the worst or most despicable – but this may typify the different sorts of misdeeds, uncomplicated they may seem, the motivation simple, clever yet seemingly unencumbered by guilt or the benefit of the basic ethical scruple, or regard for any kind of socially established norm of behavior.

Granted fishing is the most fraught with tales of fish tails, this incident would have had an entrancing ending if Mr. Clark’s intentions went as planned.  You see he envisioned winning the contest, keep the fish alive and later return it to the aquarium.  Not entirely implausible to pull because he used to work there.  Unfortunately, the fish died.  Obviously, Mr. Clark did not think it through very well, especially for someone who used to work at a place whose business it was to keep alive all of its fish and other water creature residents.

Everything would still have worked out for Mr. Clark if not for a keen eyed fish lover who saw the picture in the papers – Mr. Clark grinning as he held the winning catch during the awards presentation.  The person recognized the bass from the aquarium.  Needless to say, Mr. Clark’s fishy misdeed smelled and he was promptly arrested and put to jail and assessed a heavy fine.  Mr. Clark stunk like rotten fish.

Here was a case of a miscreant not thinking things through while another had the presence of mind to think through a most improbable connection by mere happenstance.  Now, what are the odds of that happening?  Of all the tall fish tales this one is true.

So, what is it about human nature that is both noble and corrupt that seems to come up in equal doses in every generation.  Perhaps not exactly in equal doses but let’s throw in a number, for the sake of argument, say, 10%.  If we review history, settling on the 10% number, it appears that no matter what generation we pick, there will always be 10% of miscreants whose deeds will come in a variety of ways and motivation.

There was always a Bernie Madoff in generations past and there will continue to be Bernie Madoffs in the future.  For this musing I will set aside the truly evil side of humanity by not dwelling on the likes of Atilla the Hun, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. They will take up an entire discussion although, just the same, we will always have the likes of them in future generations in the same dosage as many of their kind had done in generations past.

Explaining Mr. Clark and Bernie Madoff seem simple enough based on the simplest of all motives - greed. Of course, as we all know, it is more complex than that. As our world gets more sophisticated so do the methods employed by anyone who is corrupted or has the will to commit corruption.  In the Old Testament though, simpler times by today’s standards, there was a complex story of Esau who sold his birth right to younger twin Jacob for a bowl of stew.  What Esau did was supposed to be a big no-no in those times because he sold a solemn and spiritual right for something as “basic” as food that was of temporary value, although Jacob was not an exactly honorable brother to manipulate his brother.  And then Jacob and their mother later made it even more complicated when they conspired to deceive Isaac the father at his deathbed by having Jacob pretend to be Esau to get the elder’s blessing.  The story exemplified how one seemingly trivial low point in human nature, simple as it may have begun could escalate into something complex. Mr. Clark may have nothing more in his mind than a few hundred pounds of spending money, and Mr. Madoff may not have been thinking hundreds of millions of dollars in the beginning, except perhaps for a higher social prestige, lavish parties and expensive art work.

There was a B-movie, with a 2-star rating, that reminded me of how one little trickle of a white lie could cascade into an unstoppable waterfall.  A guy called in to his boss with a little lie for not coming to work one morning.  He lied that he was taking care of a sick daughter at home.  Granted he was quite unhappy with his job he didn’t exactly want to quit.  He doubled up on his excuse next time he felt like not showing up for work again by telling that his sick daughter was now at the hospital.  So the one simple lie has taken a life of its own as he lied to his wife as well, doing his routine task of taking his daughter to a baby sitter every morning, but never said anything about not going to work. The third time he called in to his boss for not coming in his boss fired him over the phone.  Then, again bereft of any thought process, he doubled up his lie further by telling his boss that his daughter just died at the hospital.

His daughter was perfectly fine but his boss softened immensely when he went back to work the following day; his boss spoke kindly to him and later took up a collection for him from very willing co-workers to help him out.  One morning a kind co-worker went as far as to bring a home-made quiche to his home.  His wife opened the door to greet the co-worker but his quick maneuver saved the day for him as he shortened the visit without alerting his clueless wife but to the bewilderment of his co-worker.  Of course, as always with cases like this, things unravel rapidly with devastating consequences.  This was fiction but how many have we seen in real life where one simple lie intensified to more lies and ultimately to a disastrous resolution, shattering lives and reputation or sometimes resulting in violence.

What is it then about human nature? The term is sometimes used to mean that it is inherently natural for humans to do the wrong thing, or that at least the path of least resistance being the easy thing to do is not the right way, inferring that to do the right thing is the more difficult one. Of course we do know that human nature is predominantly that of doing the right thing.  I’d say ninety per cent of the time.  Unfortunately, it is the ten per cent that gets the sensational coverage in the media.

We should settle on the fact that it is the inherent goodness of humanity that took our world to where it is today. History showed us that despots and oppressive regimes of empires and governments did not last for a long time.  However, in every era of history including the present one, there is always the ten percent.  In truth, every civilization happened to be more “civilized” than the one it preceded.  From the Magna Charta to the Geneva Convention to International Laws, humanity had been progressively recognizing and condemning man’s inhumanity to man and continues to strive to make our world a better place.  Perhaps it will take us a while to get the 10% (if that is the number, others may view it to be higher) down to zero but the direction points positively from one generation to the next; at least, we hope so.