Sense and Sensibility

I did not read the book but I saw the movie. As customary gestures go, though not necessarily  an obligatory requirement, my wife and I try to maintain an unspoken balance in the movies we watch by alternating between fast action thrillers and finely woven tales of romance and happy endings. However, she'll be the first to tell you that we do not usually find the proper equilibrium between genres of too much action that oftentimes defy any plausible sense  and the slow-burn dialog, rich in implied meanings and sensibility.  There, I found a way to work the two words into this paragraph that I unabashedly plucked from the 1811 novel by Jane Austen which, by the way, she first published anonymously as merely written, "By a Lady".  In fact, only 750 books were first printed.  They sold out immediately and the rest is history.  

Let me digress for a bit.

A father and his daughter were sitting on a bench facing a pond one quite morning.  

Girl: "Dad, will that mother goose feel sad if one of her gooselings gets lost?" 

They both saw the mother bird leading a half dozen grey-feathered little birds in single file as they cut a 'v' shape wake across what was just moments ago a flat-as-glass still water of the pond, reflecting the blue sky above. Before he could answer, the girl asked another question. "Why did mom cry yesterday when I said that someday I too will go to college like aunt Ruth?"

Dad: "Child, I really don't know. Your mom gets emotional sometimes over things like that". 

The father actually felt a little relieved that his daughter asked a much simpler question than the usual ones she asks when they go sit by themselves during moments like these which his wife - the child's mother - urges him to do from time to time to strengthen the "father-daughter" bond.  Once she asked, "Why are there bad people, dad? Why do bad things happen?"

He would almost always answer to most of her "why" questions with, I really don't know, honey". He would always tell her that, as a scientist, he knows a lot about the "how", "what", "when" but he knows little about a lot of the "why" questions, in an attempt to lead her questions away from the "why, why and why" which, as we all know, are mostly what kids her age ask.

Two years later in the middle of her fifth grade she took one of her mom's books from the shelf and went over to her dad who was watching TV. "Dad, can you tell me what's the difference between...?"  She finished her question by holding the book at arms length in front of her dad's face. The book was "Sense and Sensibility".

Indeed, what is the difference?  Why the difference and how and when did human culture begin to make the distinction between sense and sensibility.   

The five generally accepted basic senses of sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell and the variety of nuances within each were and still are responsible for how we survive - physically. That's the naturalist's strict way of looking at it. Anthropologists and philosophers, of course, want to look back and say  that sensibility came relatively much later in the development of our civilization.  It can be said that the transition from the ways our early ancestors conducted their lives and behavior to when civilized culture developed was made possible when society begun to distinguish the difference between the so called natural senses  and its almost transcendental equivalence - sensibility.  It was no small feat. It was a crucial development that delineated in no uncertain terms what it means to be civilized. 

What is amazing though is how well we've adapted in a physical world where some animals have far more superior senses than we have, yet we prevailed more successfully.  What we lacked, for example, in terms of smell that is a thousand times less sensitive than that of dogs, racoons and hogs, or vision less powerful than an eagle or hearing a thousand times less than a bat or vision not able to perceive infrared or ultraviolet light that snakes and bees and pigeons can, were more than made up for by a far more superior intellect.  But, our dominance could only have taken us so far if not for one other crucial progression unique to our species.  We have developed a far more critical ability that no animals can. We were able to go beyond the physiological and physical limits of the natural senses.  We developed sensibility.

We can now say, "We have reached the pinnacle of superiority over all the species around us. Our dominance is complete. We've reached the top and we can go no higher".  Well, not really.

The problem with reaching the top is that there is nowhere to go but down.  In fact, do we now find ourselves regressing?  We  begin with the generally accepted admission that there is so much division around the world today. We are divided on how we govern ourselves, we disagree about how we address managing our environment, we quarrel about all the inequalities going on, discussions are heated around which economic system is best, etc.  Even our outlook is seemingly split evenly between optimism and pessimism. All of these and everything else the reader can come up with do not speak well about how we've reached superiority over all other life forms, does it? 

It is months now since we, the superior species, had been held  hostage by a lifeform only visible to an electron microscope. But that is not all that is unseen.  Much more beyond our human field of vision were many signs already percolating from beneath the collective population that are now showing signs of cracks on the façade of civilization itself.

Where do we begin? We start with this.  Sensibility was not necessary for survival of species. As I  often point out in my previous musings, we are late comers relative to other species that ever lived, including those snuffed out of existence by at least five mass extinctions over eons.  99 % of all species that ever lived had become extinct. 

In other words sensibility was not and apparently still not necessary for the continued existence of species.  Why are we indisputably the only species who have it?  And, why do we have it?  If we've had it for so long, why are we still in so much turmoil?

In our 200,000 years of history as a species of so called modern humans, we made it through for much of that time without having to resort to sensibility, until perhaps the last five or six thousand years. I'm guessing because that's about when we begun to write things down. 

Scholars aren't sure which came first - culture or language. What we know is that one is not possible without the other in their present forms. To say we've come a long way from grunts and gestures to words that came out of Shakespeare's pen is one miraculous understatement; one astounding leap of human development. But, alas, that winding path that took centuries to traverse is crumbling before our eyes. 

Peaceful protests, allowed and guaranteed by law in much of the free world's governments, are one of the citizens' rights to express their sense of civic duty. Rioting and destroying properties and businesses during these protests are one of the darkest manifestations of disdain and hatred towards sensibility that took eons of social evolution to achieve. 

It is a pity that what took centuries of social progress to develop and achieve can be swept away under a wave of regressive behaviors among young people, some of whom are actually pursuing higher education. 

That young girl from the anecdote above will have more "why" questions to ask.