‘The Hero’s Journey’ is a familiar trope in fiction and goes back to Greek myths. The basic conceit is that man (it’s usually a man) leaves his comfortable home for some reason and comes back changed, usually more of a man. Luke Skywalker’s journey in Star Wars is a perfect example. He starts out a dopy farm boy and ends up a Jedi.

I’ve been reading a book on monkey behavior (among other things) and it notes something I think we’ve all heard. Male monkeys are born into a troop but at a certain point leave their home troop and join a new one. They, of course, have to spend some time alone in the wilderness searching for the new troop.

Their are good Darwinistic reasons for this. Troops are basically a big family and you shouldn’t have children with your brothers and sisters. It’s in everyone’s interests for the males to seek out new genetic material with which to commingle. Of course, the monkey isn’t thinking, “My DNA is too similar to everyone else round here; I should find some new monkeys.” To my knowledge nobody really knows whether this tendency to wander at a certain age is caused by genetics or culture or both.

But you see where I’m going with this. Is the behavior described in the hero’s journey just a dressed up version of monkey wandering?

I enjoy reading insightful and provocative commentary. But how do I know a piece of writing deserves such accolades? Often because its ideas mirror my own.

Case in point: I just stumbled across this interesting passage in the book “The Immortalist.”

Martin Buber said that “The lie is the specific evil which man has introduced into nature.” Why evil necessarily? Lying helps us to deal with an unsatisfactory reality. Its purpose is to improve somebody’s chances of surviving.

Lying as a device of survival? I made the same point in my piece “The Devil Paints” in which I argued the skills of deception were rewarded by evolution. I stated:

Some years ago I read about one scientist’s observation that the world of birds was full of deception. The primary example was a breed of birds who would use a high-pitched squeal to warn each other when predators were lurking. Birdwatchers observing this breed began noticing that if an individual bird found a bush rich with berries, he or she would emanate this squeal. The other birds would fly off in fear and this bird could eat all the berries for him/herself. Thus, this bird was more likely to survive and pass his or her genes on through reproduction.

But as time went on, the other birds started to figure out the trick. They realized that they had to be a little more critical every time they heard this squeal. And, as these birds wised up, they increased their chance for survival and thus passing on their genes. So the trickster birds had to get even more clever in their tricks, and the birds being tricked had to get even smarter. As such, trickery was essential to these birds evolving into more intelligent creatures.

It’s not hard to extrapolate this anecdote to human beings — we too have used deception to increase our odds for survival. And in fact, lying, or at least glossing over the truth, is still part of our mating ritual. A guy buys a fancy car to imply that he has a big bank account and can easily provide for a mate. Women use makeup and hair products to maintain the look of youth, youth being ideal for childbearing. Duping someone into sleeping with you is a great way to ensure that your genes last another generation. (I’ve long blamed all my romantic failures on the fact that I am inherently an honest person.)

From there I argued that these skills for deception were used in the creation of art.

So how does this relate to art? Well, art is a kind of deception. Let’s look at the written word, particularly fiction. Fiction is largely the act of describing events that never actually happened. Fiction is lies, albeit well-intentioned lies. As evolution rewarded good liars, it was helping propagate the genes capable of writing good fiction.

And check this out, dawg. “The Immortalist” makes the same point a few paragraphs after the one I quoted above.

Reflecting upon is, the lie is an amazing device. To think that members of our race should actually go to so much trouble as to invent what does not exist. Consider the provocation, the enormous anxiety weighing on our species for thousands of years, that could produce such an extraordinary breakthrough as the decision to reject one reality and substitute another. Of course it was the same dimly realized obsession that created our myths and poetry.

Myths and poetry my friends. That’s what it’s all about.

For years we’ve heard the theory that life on earth may have come from space. Here’s a bit more evidence*. Building Blocks of DNA Found in Meteorites from Space.

* This is admittedly several years old, but is news to me.

The components of DNA have now been confirmed to exist in extraterrestrial meteorites, researchers announced.

A different team of scientists also discovered a number of molecules linked with a vital ancient biological process, adding weight to the idea that the earliest forms of life on Earth may have been made up in part from materials delivered to Earth the planet by from space.
…
Lab experiments showed that chemical reactions of ammonia and cyanide, compounds that are common in space, could generate nucleobases and nucleobase analogs very similar to those found in the carbonaceous chondrites. However, the relative abundances of these molecules between the experiments and the meteorites differed, which might be due to further chemical and thermal influences from space.

This findings reveal that meteorites may have been molecular tool kits, providing the essential building blocks for life on Earth, Cleaves said. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

You’ve doubtless heard of the work of Russian geneticist Dmitry Belyaev. Belyaev is best known for his work domesticating Siberian foxes in the 1950s. He would find the friendliest foxes in a litter and breed them together. He quickly bred the aggression out of the animal. This breeding also resulted in specific physical traits – the bred foxes had floppy ears and upturned tails, like cute doggies.

In fact, this sort of process is presumed to have been what led to the domestication of dogs. When men first started living in permanent encampments (what would evolve into cities) they would leave their garbage at the outskirts. This attracted wolves, the bravest and friendliest of which would approach these cities of man and eat. They mated with similar wolves which led to friendlier and friendlier wolves which led to dogs.

But where does this all lead? Today I came across an argument that such similar breeding occurred in man! No, we’re weren’t bred for friendliness by space aliens; the theory goes, as stated in Michael Gazzaniga’s book “Who’s In Charge?”,:

Hare and Tomasello think that humans may have undergone a self-domestication process in which overly aggressive or despotic others were either ostracized or killed by the group. Thus, the gene pool was modified, which resulted in the selection of systems that controlled (that is, inhibited) emotional reactivity such as aggression… The social group constrained the behavior and eventually affected the genome.

Why are we nice? Because we killed the meanies eons ago.

Of course, not everyone is nice. Psychopaths and sociopaths often play upon the trusting nature of regular folks. But the thing about psychopathy is that it’s only advantageous if the psychopaths are in the minority. If everyone is out to screw everyone else then no one trusts anyone and it becomes impossible to take advantage of people. It’s only when most people are decent that being indecent has an advantage.

An intriguing thought just occurred to me. We understand that we can make the experience of life more pleasant (at least temporarily) by altering our brain chemistry with various substances – martinis, heroin, coffee etc. So why wouldn’t we be “designed” to be in this state all the time? Why not exist in a state of constant pleasure.

The answer, I think, is that the pleasure state is worthless when one is trying to survive in a world of survival of the fittest. In our normal state, if we see a approaching tiger we say, “Holy Fuckburger! A tiger! Run!” But after a martini we might say, “Awww… look at the nice, widdle puddy cat. C’mere kitty I’llsh give you a tickle.” The martini laden version of ourselves wouldn’t likely live long enough to pass on his/her genes.

So the martini or drug soaked brain does not last long in the savage world. What brain does? The anxious, fear laden brain most of us are stuck with. Nature does not reward sensations of joy, peace, calm, but rewards paranoia, phobias, hatred.

Merry Christmas!