Exploring ideas in evolution, traveling with my consciousness instrument up and down the scales of biology, society, ontogeny and biography, concepts familiar to one level often evoke interesting, complementing melodies in another.

I was recently asked by an editor about a piece that he was using if I was saying that charismatic leaders will be unnecessary, or if I was saying such leaders should be removed.  The editor wasn’t clear by the way I wrote it.  I was confused by the question.  Why would someone suggest that I believed something “should” be different?  I experience myself as describing what I see and hear and the likely evolutionary repercussions.  Then I realized that people often evaluate the future based upon what scenario they prefer, what “should” be true.  I can see how the two can be confused.  My predictions must feel like expressions of ideals to some people, manifestations of a “should.”  To me, when I make predictions, I’m following implications of established patterns.

Having spent over 30 years of my life in psychotherapy, usually group therapy, and having received some training in psychotherapeutic interventions in my 20s (NLP, hypnotherapy, child clinical work), my world view has been deeply influenced by the 1960s humanists (Pearls, Rogers, Maslow, Laing, Janov, Berne) and Eastern paradigms.  In Gestalt psychotherapy, the word “should” becomes a marker for hidden scripts or story lines that inhibit the natural flow of personal transformation.  Practitioners encouraging psychotherapeutic change use a road map that includes frequently used, less than useful detours, barriers, dead ends and dangerous roads.  When the word “should” appears in client conversations, it often indicates that they are traveling one of those avenues.  They are not seeing the world as it is.  They are seeing it through the lens of a skewed world view based upon low quality information, usually acquired at some point in the past.

For example, if someone believes he or she shouldn’t express affection unless in private, or believes the behavior could draw derision, it is probably because the person had an experience where that was the case.

Regarding following an idea as it travels among the scales of biology, society, ontogeny and biography, the word “should” is a signal that natural, personal traffic flows are being impeded, and it also applies when discussing biological or social transformation.

No evolutionary biological theory should work better than another.  That’s like saying one fairy tale should be more satisfying than another fairy tale.  What works, works.

It’s not a question that we should have world peace or end starvation.  We seek to understand the way the world is now and the dynamics of transformation that lead to change.  The better we comprehend the present and the processes characterized by societal evolution, the more seamlessly peaceful options will emerge.

Psychotherapeutically and societally, providing high quality attention and present moment awareness serves to make a “should” unnecessary.  Focused on the present, future possibilities can unfold naturally in the context of a dynamic manifesting in the now.

There is only one moment.  The moment we are in.  “Should” suggests a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of evolution, transformation and change.

Personal changes and societal change are profoundly practical.  They only have time for the present.

My experience of art is often the way I experience activism.  My goal is to engage and then let myself be guided.  This engenders trust of my unconscious and of the times.

In art it is often the case that I am the observer of what emerges from my fingers.  Theory formation, for me, is art.  I expose myself to information, often feeling led to read the books that I absorb in the same way that I feel led to play with or explore various idea avenues.  When I’m scooping up ideas and information, the concepts realign to reappear as art, in this case, a story or theory.

I was a watercolor artist when I was in my 20s, a comic artist when I was in my late 30s and 40s.  When I was involved with watercolors, I was usually inclined to express internal feelings characterized by distress, shame, frustration, remorse, yearning and feeling alone.  Performing comic strips and panels, I trended toward bitterness, disappointment, frustration, annoyance and anger.

When writing, I feel drawn toward melancholy, reverence, respect, delight, disappointment and awe.  I’m feeling more rounded in my expressions using words.  And, I more often feel the role of the observer as I watch the productions of creativity emerge.  Formerly, I often felt a victim of the creative process, perhaps because feeling the victim was often a central part of what I had to say.

There is a tendency among activists to feel the victim.  I suspect that in art, as in activism, it is about our relationship with our self, our self as other and how that relationship bleeds out into our lives.

Having experienced a succession of art media and several different internal experiences while engaged in the process of expression, I observe an arc of experience/expression that is reflected in both my art and my activism.

At this time both my art and activism are about letting go.

Neither is about making something happen as much as it’s about letting something happen.  What I am letting happen is what is already there.  My job is to trust.  I can choose to trust me.  I can choose to trust society.  Then, I can seek to place myself in a position where what is seeking to be expressed can be expressed.

That which is in me is the same as that which is in society.  There is music, a logic, a wisdom in both.  There is also a hidden, bottomless affection.  My job as artist is to encourage words, to create stories or theories that suggest the beauty of the ways that we are made.  My job as activist is to nurture options that make more likely a sharing of positive experience, to emphasize process in a way that the pathway becomes the goal.

My experience of art is often the way I experience activism.  Trust is central to two sides becoming whole.

Last December, workers from the Republic Windows and Doors factory on Chicago’s West Side staged a factory takeover when denied over one million dollars in benefits when the factory closed its doors.  This was the first union factory takeover in over fifty years, the beginning of an imminent reformation of American unions, an old song rearranged.

This shutdown was preceded in November by the proliferation of spontaneous Facebook demonstrations across the country.  The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender/transsexual (GLBT) community and sympathetic activists protested the passage of Proposition 8 in California by taking to the streets.  Crowds were created with online social networking tools, mostly Facebook.

The old Left and new Left are finding that old and new tactics are both appropriate in the current deteriorating economic environment.  The Obama campaign guided 14 million people on the use of online tools.  Many of these people are feeling empowered.  Many others, like the unions, GLBT communities and countless other communities, are feeling angry.

Collapsing economy, meet new tech.

Over the next few months, observe the oldest community in the Left, the unions, learning to use the newest tactic, online and cell phone technology social networking intervention.  At first, unions will view new tech, such as social networking, as only tools.  They will seek a way to make them do what the unions want to accomplish.  As the unions’ younger members and the children of these ancient organizers consult with their dads and moms, the unions will jump 70 years.  Control will be wrestled from the leadership and placed in the hands of the rank and file.  Another hierarchy coming down.

Collapsing hierarchy is starting to become visible several places at once.  Financial services have lost control of asset distribution.  Small businesses are loaning money, mostly by allowing credit, to other small businesses.  Barter is emerging.

Chain stores are beginning to close their doors.  Flea markets will take their place.  As auto dealerships close, we will fix our older and older cars with a trusted, often out-of-work, mechanic.

As advertising dollars disappear, the influence of corporations on mass media will withdraw.  A new media story line is emerging of economic problems being corporations’ fault.  It began with the late November media observation that all three carmakers flew to Washington on private planes.  All those car commercials weren’t keeping pundits from making news by observing corporate incongruity and hypocrisy.  This was not the case even a year ago.

This is more than a class war.  This is not just about a battle between the resource-less and resource-more.  In other words, this is not just a resource war.  Seventy years ago, it was union hierarchy against corporate hierarchy.  Not now.

This time it’s organized anarchy against hierarchy.  Old style unions and corporations are both coming down.

As the accordion of our economy collapses, the music made is quite different from when two hands drew the instrument apart.  The melody and harmony are no longer about just independence and freedom.  The music now is about independence and freedom within the context of community and interdependence.  As the music changes, all fall down.

To where each can see eye to eye.

The Obama Administration seems to have a feel for part of what our society and our economy has to achieve when it seeks to fund a transition to a “Green” economy.  Decentralizing the electrical grid by creating a distribution infrastructure that encourages solar and wind offers economic health without greenhouse gas production.  Still, the Obama Administration is not exactly displaying a lack of imagination but is exhibiting a failure to understand that the economic crash is signaling the end of the consumer economy.

Three generations of Americans have grown used to this giddy consumer amphetamine high accompanied by a reverence for products and the institutions that bring us all these choices.  Imagining an economy without the constant churn of natural resource conversion into disposable commodities, at this point, is a challenge.  Engaging imagination in this direction would be a useful challenge for the new administration.

My website design and development firm serves over 400 businesses.  One of those clients is down the street and around the corner.  Monica sells used children’s clothing and toys.  This Christmas she saw her business boom.

Monica told me the story of one of her customers giving the younger of her two daughters a used toy, a toy that would have been quite expensive if new.  The older child, maybe seven or eight years old, upon being told by the mom that is was a used toy, expressed excitement at the mother’s virtuous act.  To this child, the fact that the toy was used enhanced its value.  It was a recycled toy.

The Obama Administration needs to be able to see three or four years into the future when a sizable portion of the slowly recovering economy is revolving around stewardship of what we can use as opposed to abandonment of what’s not new.

This means paying close attention to infrastructure that encourages preservation of resources.  One obvious choice would be to fund public transportation over highway construction.  Another would be to subsidize specific areas within industries that don’t churn nonrenewables.  Modern agriculture burns up fossil fuel fertilizer in the guts of cows, pigs and chickens that we then consume.  Nonconsumer economy food is organic.  When we note the astonishing amount of the greenhouse gas methane that is produced by cow flatulence, moving quickly away from beef would be another prudent stewardship economic action.  We could tax beef as we tax gas.

Very soon advertisers will begin touting the longevity of their products as an integral feature of what they produce.  This change in frame of reference will encourage the new stewardship perspective.  How can the government proactively spend our money to make our withdrawal from the three-generation consumer high as painless as possible?  It can begin by emphasizing quality over quantity whenever possible.

Perhaps that which most characterizes a quality life is a life spent in appreciation.  The government can’t make people appreciate, but it can encourage reverence for life and art.  One of those things government can be spending money on is massive art works.  Art, almost by definition, enhances or encourages the idea of stewardship.  Art is not generally disposable.

I imagine that the zeitgeist message of a stewardship society is stories that naturally emerge from artists.  In a consumer economy, all propaganda revolves around consumption.  Those days are over.

Does the Obama Administration have the hearing and vision to be able to note the excited voice of a child observing that recycled is actually brand new?

Consider that the American and world economy are beginning to work their way into a depression.  This is not too farfetched considering that in the blogs and mainstream media, the 1930s are becoming a common theme.  It is becoming conventional wisdom that we’re headed for depression.  Just as dust bowl winds destroyed our farmlands, this hurricane of financial abuse is deconstructing the modern economy.  It is not unreasonable to expect that the federal government cannot manufacture jobs quickly enough to breathe life into a dying consumer economy gasping for breath.

It’s time for the American Left to start exercising some imagination.

Let’s assume that eighteen months from now it will have become clear that Federal interventions displayed only moderate success.  Big box and specialty chains will be closing doors.  Flea markets and street vendors will spring up like mushrooms around an old tree trunk as the abandoned old structures house numerous spontaneous eruptions of minicommerce.  Deep resentments will emerge, focusing on those perceived as wealthy.  Demands will be made that resources be redistributed that allow the disadvantaged to have access to health, education and a job.

The American Left has been split for years between those that concentrate on heinous U. S. actions overseas (Palestinian rights, anti-war groups, anarchists, fair trade advocates, global environmentalists) and the moderate Left, which emphasizes what is happening within the confines of the U.S. borders (unions, African-Americans, Left Democrats, church groups, local environmentalists).

Right now, on one side, is the African-American and union population feeling empowered by an Obama Administration, with left-leaning Obama supporters seeking to give the president a chance.  On the other side are organizers and activists wanting to make sure an Obama Administration follows through on its promises to serve those most disenfranchised within U.S. borders and overseas.  This side uses strategies that exert pressure in the form of protests, letters, actions, campaigns, etc., which will provide clear guidance to policymakers.  Right now, the soft Left and hard Left is split even further than is usually the case.

These differences between the soft and hard Left polarities are about to disappear.  Three forces are combining to unite the Left and integrate Left impulses with the status quo.

First, economic inequalities and the economy will become by far the gravest concern of both the Left and mainstream America.  Media will plaster hard time stories across screens, airwaves and print from dawn to dawn.  It is a story that unites and compels people to tune in.  People will feel part of something larger than themselves.  Not just for a few months, as in 9/11, but for years.  And, it won’t be just Americans.  It will be the world.  In this struggle, corporations and the wealthy will often be seen as the opponent.

Second, the stories we will be exposed to will come from across the world.  Video will be provided of these events.  In the way that video made the 2005 tsunami a major television and Internet story, video from around the world will make the depression an experience shared by people everywhere.  Feeling part of something larger than ourselves, we’ll have an opportunity to shift identity to experiencing ourselves as members of the world.  The split between the domestic and foreign affairs Left will begin to fade as our boundaries become fuzzy, with constant exposure to the duress that non-Americans are feeling.

Third, continuing integration between the Internet and its users will lead to a long succession of spontaneous, seamless, focused, date-based, single-event political actions.  The Internet is changing the way we feel about ourselves.  We are becoming empowered.  We are becoming empowered by the re-emergence of the commons at a time when cooperation, sacrifice and interconnection are becoming the new world view.  As brutal as the economy will be, individuals will feel entitled and empowered by the new communication tools focusing on cell phone technologies and the web.  Our feeling good about ourselves will be all about what we can do together.

What are the Left’s priorities and strategies for achieving those priorities?  The answer to this question seems integrally tied to the Left’s ability to integrate its strategies into new technologies.  How do you strategize spontaneity?  A deep understanding of social networking applications and cell phone technologies seems essential to being able to achieve long-term goals using these horizontal tools.

With American and world society moving quickly in the Left’s direction, it will be difficult for the Left to clearly articulate its goals.  Winds will keep resculpting the economic landscape.  In the context of massive, integrated, horizontal, headless communication, there will be few movement spokespeople articulating an overall vision.  There will be visions expressed by individuals representing specific groups and particular crises.  Stitching those visions together will be a challenge.

The Left has an opportunity to exercise imagination.  To do so, it will have to take a leap.  The implication of all this change is staggering.  What we are looking at is a possibility of world peace in our lifetime.  Intuiting that as a possibility during the difficult times to come takes an ability to grasp the larger pattern of integration and empowerment engaged below the surface of the media story of deep distress and helplessness.  I’m not talking about seeing silver linings.  The storm itself is indication of good things to come.

Just as there has been blow-back for the heinous actions America has committed over time, there is blow-forward for the suffering the world is about to go through.  Winds of change are blowing a brand new melody.  This time it will be music we all can hear.

“Before Agassiz, recapitulation had been defined as a correspondence between two series: embryonic stages and adults of living species.  Agassiz introduced a third series: the geologic record of fossils.  An embryo repeats both a graded series of living, lower forms and the history of its type as recorded by fossils.  There is a “threefold parallelism” of embryonic growth, structural gradation, and geologic succession.  ‘It may therefore be considered as a general fact, very likely to be more fully illustrated as investigations cover a wider ground, that the phases of development of all living animals correspond to the order to succession of their extinct representatives in past geological times.  As far as this goes, the oldest representatives of every class may then be considered as embryonic types of their respective orders of familiar among the living.’ ” (1857, 1962 ed., p. 114)  (Gould, S.J. (1977) Ontogeny and Phylogeny.  Cambridge: Belknap Press, pp. 65-66)

When the sciences were forming in the nineteenth century and earthly twentieth century, strong personalities explored fertile new ground, and they planted virgin orchards to have followers harvest many of the fruits.  Society would draw boundaries regarding what was acceptable to pursue, and sciences would evolve in the directions encouraged.  Politics informed insight.  Prejudices pushed thinking in particular directions.  Discipline seeds were planted that sprouted and grew in the direction of the light.

The light that shines on science often comes from dim understandings derived from assumptions of individuals.  These assumptions created walls that inhibited connection.  For example, there are disciplines like anthropology and evolutionary biology that from early on grew at odd angles as a result of prejudices and politics that suggested that females could not inform how species and societies evolve.

Still, 100 to 150 years ago, as fields of study formed, there was an assumption that there are deep connections–roots–connecting the various disciplines.  One discipline could inform another.  Practitioners often participated in several disciplines at the same time.

Perhaps the most powerful contemporary proponent of fourfold parallelism and strong connections among disciplines is not a scientist, but the philosopher Ken Wilber.  Ties between biology, sociology, ontogeny and personal experience somehow have become the realm of the philosopher, whereas 100 years ago this was considered integral to understanding how science disciplines connect.  It’s almost as if our reductionist zeitgeist interprets making connections as somehow suggestive of a reverence for deity.  God forbid.

Almost like a species evolving to occupy an astonishingly unattended niche, for example, amphibians discovering land, science big-banged itself into the modern age with the creation of the modern pantheon of disciplines.  Things have calmed down as disciplines have subdivided with arcane sub-branches growing further and further away from other sub-branches with innate parallelisms.  Those days are coming to an end.

More and more academicians are posting their papers on the web.  Mostly, we’re still stuck with abstracts, but full works will more commonly emerge with time.  Just as there has been an amateurization of media with the rising influence of bloggers for high quality information and Youtube for current windows on the world, prepare for an increasing number of high quality, nonpeer-reviewed papers and academic treatments of ideas formerly reserved for journals only.

It’s happening already.  Professors, on their own websites, are playing with ideas and posting works that they can’t easily find an audience for within their discipline.  These academicians are finding that they are having fun.  They’re finding that they like having fun.  It’s only a matter of time before nonacademics start seeing what they can accomplish.

Just as the web has been revolutionizing and evolutionizing everything it touches, the web will be revolutionizing the science of evolution.  How things transform will become as fascinating as the transformations themselves as idea morphing will become a spectator sport.  Divisions between biology, society, ontogeny and personal experience, the four foundation parallelisms, will blend with one another as the peoples’ academia disrespects the walls created by the prejudices and politics of the past.

Most magical of all, the wall between science and religion will vanish.  When it becomes clear that both science and religion are all about connection, parallelisms between the two will feel so intuitive that it will be difficult to understand why the two diverged.

Of course, mythology will be abandoned by religion.  Science will surrender its obsession with separation.  The light of society will grow clean and clear.  The trees of academia will grow straight and strong.  The grafting of branches will grow ubiquitous.

Gardening will be how we humans spend our time.

“The classical argument for recapitulation involves a threefold parallelism of paleontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny.  Morphologists occasionally added a fourth source of evidence — teratology and the phyletic explanation of abnormalities as developmental arrests (Chapter 3).  This fourth criterion — the abnormal individual as an arrested juvenile — forms an important part of the usage made by other disciplines of the biogenetic law.  We have seen how Lombroso invoked it in his theory of criminality.  We will encounter it again in Freud’s theory of neurosis.” (Gould, S.J. (1977) Ontogeny and Phylogeny.  Cambridge: Belknap Press, p. 125)

…

The phrase “American exceptionalism” seems to be emerging more frequently in the sentences that the Right is experimenting with to communicate what it believes it still has to offer to Americans.  Just as many Americans believe the U.S. is special, they have also believed that this country makes it possible for any individual to achieve anything he or she sets out to do.  Independence, freedom and liberty are frequently intoned as representing this point of view.

This frame of reference, the belief that we are special because we are different, has hobbled the ability of the left end of the American spectrum to put forth a vision of where we are headed.  The Left or liberal message emphasizes community, cooperation, sacrifice and interdependence.  These attributes don’t just exist in our future; they exist in Scandinavia and other European countries in the form of mature institutions serving the population in unique and useful ways.  We rarely find Left or Progressive elements in America using Scandinavia or Europe as an example.  Part of this is our whole culture’s hesitation to defer to another country, to suggest we can learn from somewhere else.  Most of us really believe we are exceptional.  In addition, when looking to Europe, the right cries out “Socialism.”  Then Progressive elements reflexively concede the higher ground of language to the Right and its mythic control of message.  So the Left is left with no clear way to build a picture of what it seeks to achieve both because we don’t want to put another country on a pedestal and because we don’t want to buck up against the Right Wing’s ability to reframe.

Our deep-seated American exceptionalism has had other repercussions.  We do not easily see the connections between processes.  We frequently fail to examine the causes of difficulties that the country faces.  During this economic meltdown there is some unanimity around the idea that regulatory forces failed to make and hold to any boundaries regarding corporate behavior, but there is an almost phobic hesitation to regard in detail what has to change.

Americans fail to make connections.

Parallelisms run in several directions from anyplace you choose to make the beginning.  That there is a beginning is as arbitrary as that there is an end.  Connections between different ideas or different patterns of experience provide insight not only into how the world works, but an understanding that our place in the world is profoundly relative.  We can hardly be exceptional when who and what we are is integrally related and interconnected to any and everything else we choose to examine.  There is no beginning, no end and no center.  We cannot be the center of a world characterized by seamless interdependence.

Gould emphasized in his multiscale perspective of evolution a re-examination of the fourfold and threefold parallelisms of Freud, Piaget, Haeckel, Darwin and the host of theorists that came before the neglecting of connection that became the hallmark of Americanism.  Our belief that we alone make a difference in the world engendered an environment where the impact that we have on each other goes unexamined.  Boundaries between concepts, regulations of agencies and explorations of similarities have been ignored.

As hard times compel a deep re-examination of whom and what we are, we will discover a new self identity that offers an ability to see beyond our own needs and self-aggrandizement.  Sensitivity to connection will emerge.  Fourfold parallelisms will proliferate into multifold perspectives that will encourage views of science, religion, art and politics that are integrally connected.

Like folds in clothing that crease and then modify as we move across our day, parallelisms will form and move in waves across the cloth of our experience.  It will become clear with time that integrated, seemingly separate processes are animating the same material.

Still, to understand how everything is connected, we’ll need to surrender the American idea that we are alone.

First, some excerpts….

“But why does recapitulation occur?  Since he rejected the single developmental tendency of Naturphilosophie, Agassiz could not propose the easy explanation of his teacher Oken.  As Darwin’s most implacable opponent, he could seek no aid from transmutationists’ doctrines.  To Agassiz, the threefold parallelism reflected the unity of God’s plan for His creation.  It was also a fact of observation.  What more need a Cuvierian empiricist say? “The leading thought which runs through the succession of all organized being in past ages is manifested again in new combinations, in the phases of the development of the living representatives of those different types.  It exhibits everywhere the working of the same creative Mind, through all times, and upon the whole surface of the globe” (1857, p. 115) Agassiz invoked his God specifically to forestall any evolutionary reading of recapitulation: ….  Yet, Agassiz’s view contained an argument that no evolutionist could resist interpreting.  If the fossil record is only a temporal display of the same divine plan that animals reflect in their own ontogeny, then the geologic component of Agassiz’s threefold parallelism merely extends the scope of recapitulation and the generality of benevolent design.  But if fossils record an actual history of physical descent, then the argument must be inverted.  The geologic record is no mere addition to a twofold parallelism between embryonic stages and the structural gradation of living forms; it is the fundamental sequence that engenders the other two.  The structural gradation of living forms is merely its artifact, because primitive animals have survived in each type.  Embryonic stages are only its reflection, because an embryo must repeat the shapes of its ancestors before adding its own distinguishing features.  Agassiz’s parallelism, a divine union of three independent sequences, becomes the mechanical result of a single causal chain leading from the geologic record to the stages of embryology: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” (Gould, S.J. (1977) Ontogeny and Phylogeny.  Cambridge: Belknap Press, pp. 67-8)

“The cultural evolutionists also recognized the similarity between their concept of development and the growth of the individual toward maturity.  Taylor himself saw savages as having a mentality equivalent to that of children of civilized races ((1865) 1870, 108).  Frazer made the link with the recapitulation theory even more explicit: ‘For by comparison with civilized man the savage represents an arrested or rather retarded stage of social development, and an examination of his customs and beliefs accordingly supplies the same sort of evidence of the evolution of the human mind that an examination of the embryo supplies of the evolution of the human body. (1913, 162)’ “  (Bowler, Peter J (1988) The Non-Darwinian Revolution.  John Hopkins Univ. Press: Baltimore, p. 136)

“The foregoing chapters have surveyed the three major areas of language development: development in the individual, development of new languages, and original development of language.  Parsimony alone would suggest that these developmental processes might have much in common with one another, and the common pattern that emerges has an independent support that no other linguistic theory that I know of could claim: it is in accord with all we have so far learned about evolutionary processes and it is in accord with all we have so far learned about how processes in the brain determine the behavior of animate creatures.”  (Bickerton, D (1981) Roots of Language.  Karoma Publishers: Ann Arbor, p.194)

…

The excerpts noted above provide some idea of the zeitgeist around 100 year ago characterized by a desire to observe common ground between different disciplines.  Gould in his Ontogeny and Phylogeny goes into passionate detail, exploring academic overlaps as disciplines formed.  There were equivalencies noted between evolution, embryology and individual ontogeny, societal stages and individual pathology.  When Bickerton regards language development as “development in the individual, development of new languages, and original development of language” he is providing another view of multileveled parallelism.

Gould displayed a deep sensitivity and intuition for the ability of heterochronic theory to explain ongoing processes in several disciplines at several levels.  Heterochronic theory tracks the effects of changes in rates and timing of maturation and development on ontogeny.  I’ve noted the fourfold parallelism outlined by Gould and mated that with discoveries in neuropsychology over the last two decades while observing the relevance of social structure to heterochronic direction over time.  In other words, the fourfold parallelism of 100 years ago is even more relevant today with our enhanced understanding of the dynamics behind….

Evolution of Species
Transformation of Society
Individual Ontogeny
Psychological Trauma

…with social structure evidencing itself as a bridge concept connecting biological and social evolution.

Regarding bridge concepts, once you wade into patterns or processes that leap from discipline to discipline, you begin to see patterns or processes in one area as identical to the others, only with a different name.  Social structure is integral to all four levels.  Heterochrony is integral to all four levels. Neuropsychological endocrine system insights, particularly those revolving around the sexual hormones, are integral to all four levels.

What is different now is that an understanding is emerging of the influence of the environment upon all four levels of the fourfold concept.  This is not exactly conventional wisdom at this time, though our story is changing from “survival of the fittest” to “we’re in this all together.”  As the twin crises of the environment and the economy make clear that integration and interconnection, not just competition, are integral to understanding evolution, the fourfold parallelism will feel intuitively right.  In an epoch of reductionism, it’s difficult to respect that which can be better understood by stacking up concepts instead of breaking them down.

Parallelisms run rife through culture.  Still, science has difficulty growing in directions that society and politics don’t suggest.  For example, without the recent (over the last 200 years) idea of progress it would be difficult to hypothesize patterns of transformation over time.  The reverse is true.  In the West, we are so narrative/sequence time-based it is difficult to evaluate processes that occur at several levels in a single moment.  Hence our blanking out as a society to the understanding that biology, society, ontogeny and personal experience are all integrally tied in the moment we occupy, a moment profoundly affected by the environment.

Parsing out the moment is not as difficult as a deep commitment to reductionism and narrative understandings would imply.  Still, parsing out the moment is difficult.  I’ve written over 300 essays on this blog seeking different ways to provide a handle on a moment.  Threefold and fourfold parallelisms are one way to break out a point in time.  Within just one of the parallelisms, society, many isomorphic, interacting forces can be observed in play.

It helps to presuppose interconnection.  It’s not enough to assume understanding can be enhanced by exploring something specific in detail.  It’s also important to understand how that thing came to be.

Yesterday, I met my younger sister Terry and her family in the Walker Brothers in Highland Park.  Our dad was treating us.  It was 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday.  I am the oldest of three kids, the only one still close to home.  We were eating breakfast a few blocks from one of the houses Terry and I grew up in.

Talking with my niece Renee, she told me about her choosing the economics of institutions as her undergraduate major, and her likely specialization as Ph.D.  It combines history, political science and economics and offers a wealth of interesting areas to explore.  Renee was excited.

I asked if there were evolutionary aspects to the discipline, if a paradigm of a succession of institutions in different societies over time was examined.  Renee was not aware that this was the case.  From her introduction to the study, it looked like the economics of institutions concentrated on snapshots of a place and time.

Riane Eisler’s The Real Wealth of Nations explores society’s institutions from a matristic point of view.  It’s not exactly an evolutionary model, but Eisler reveals the recent emergence of “partnership” society horizontal and egalitarian economic and government institutions.  From what Renee was saying, her economics course was comparing Marxist and capitalist models.  Eisler compares her new matrifocal paradigm with both patristic communist and patristic capitalist orientations.

During the conversation with Renee, my mind began to bounce the concepts I’ve been playing with up against the economic models and the kinds of institutions that societies create.  It would be fascinating to explore the overlap between social structure, the nature of institutions that different social structures create and the ways that manifestations of individual heterochronic tendencies within a society manifest in that society’s institutions.

A thought that slammed me during the discussion was the possibility that early institutions in the United States, and the profound innovation that followed, were a direct result of youngest sons and youngest daughters immigrating to this country.  Primogeniture would have encouraged this.  The first-born males would have stayed with the family property.  The first-born females were often married to ally two families and enhance status.

Flipping over to Wikipedia, I am stunned to see noted in the second paragraph, “…This may have resulted in a large number of younger sons of the British aristocracy emigrating to the colonial Southern United States.”  There is likely a pattern here.  This pattern is likely to have unfolded not just in the diaspora to America but in immigration populations across the planet.  Youngest sons and daughters, maturational-delayed sons, maturational-accelerated daughters, those with tendencies toward matrifocal social structure, are the people that immigrate to new locations.  More likely to engage in female choice, separated from families that would choose their mates for them, the immigrants would tend to create societies built from institutions that would encourage equality.  Industry and the commercial environment would more likely feature innovation.

While coming to these conclusions, talking to Renee, my head began to pound in pain.  And then, a little later, waves of nausea.  It being 24 hours later that I’m writing this down, I’m feeling much better, but I am wondering if there is a connection between my somatic distress and the ideas discussed.  Physical distress or emotional elation seems to frequently accompany insight.  It occurs that ideas are preceded by headaches that lift when put to paper, or headaches emerge while ideas get written down and headaches linger after the ideas are expressed.  Making connections is a physical experience.

Regardless, the idea that immigrating human populations may often compel the youngest sons and daughters to leave their societies of origins to begin new societies suggests that more egalitarian, innovative institutions will be characteristic of new societies.  Match this up with pineal testosterone season-of-birth effects on populations moving from equatorial regions to Northern climates and possible dramatic changes in diet and a picture emerges of how human evolution is impacted by movements in populations.

A question to consider is whether birth order and age of mother issues relevant to human evolution and social structure tendencies are applicable to other species when it comes to the movement of populations to new locations.  Are there other species with predictable progeny variations in testosterone and/or estrogen levels based upon mother’s age?  What are the male and female birth order patterns when societies of unestablished individuals break off from central groups?  Are there patterns that suggest that individuals that have broken off from their society of origin are more behaviorally or physiologically flexible than their parents?  Does social structure trend from a patrifocal to a matrifocal direction in immigrating populations?  How would you measure degrees of social structure in nonhuman species?

Perhaps the many ancient fairy tales can provide us guidance.  Always it is the youngest son that returns with blessings after having walked the unconventional path.  His two older brothers fail to achieve what the stories’ youngest son hero inevitably manages to discover.  The youngest son receives help from elves, dwarves, fairies, all manner of mysterious guides and gift givers.

Youngest daughters are similarly blessed in these stories.  With the older sisters married off to the parents’ first choice in a mate, whom the younger daughter marries becomes less important, more open to the invention of chance.  Their lives are less predictable.  They come across fairy godmothers and other powerful mysteries.

In my family, the younger the child, the farther from home they live.  Indeed, that would be one way to test one aspect of this thesis.  I would predict that youngest children live farthest from their parent’s home.

Our ancient stories encourage our youngest children to take chances.  Society structures itself to send the youngest far away.  There may be profound repercussions in our institutions.  Innovation may be blossoming around the youngest where they settle.  Consider that the profound creative, innovative proclivities of the United States may have its origins in progeny of the oldest moms.

“In a case-control study of testis cancer 259 cases with testicular cancer, 238 controls treated at radiotherapy centres and 251 non-radiotherapy hospital in-patient controls were interviewed about some possible prenatal and familial risk factors for the tumor.  For firstborn men, the risk of testis cancer increased significantly according to maternal age at the subject’s birth, and this effect was most marked for seminoma.  The association with maternal age was not apparent for cases other than firstborn.  The risk of testis cancer was also significantly raised for men from small sibships and of early birth order.  These results accord with the theory that raised maternal levels of available oestrogen during the early part of pregnancy are aetiological for testicular cancer in the son, although other explanations are possible; there is evidence that seminoma risk may particularly be affected.” (Swerdlow, A. J., Huttly, S. R., Smith, P. G. (1987) Prenatal and familial associations of testicular cancer.  Br J Cancer 55 (5):571)

A number of studies have emerged that connect birth order to enhanced likelihood of contracting specific diseases or conditions and increased hormone levels associated with those conditions.

A connection not made is that hormones, specifically testosterone, particularly the mother’s testosterone levels during pregnancy, influence maturation rates, and maturation rates reflect propensities for specific disease and condition tendencies in concert with established hormonal thresholds.

In addition, estrogen can be a powerful marker for testosterone proclivities in the context of those social structures that encourage specific testosterone-driven maturation rates.

In Classic Matrifocal social structure, high-testosterone, high-estrogen females will mate with low-testosterone, low-estrogen males.  Female breast cancer will be common in this population.

In Warrior Patrifocal social structure, high-testosterone, low-estrogen males will mate with low-testosterone, high-estrogen females.  High testicular and prostate cancer will be common.

Early puberty, or the maximal height achieved coming at a relatively young age, is also associated with higher rates of breast cancer.  This could be for several reasons.

Left-handed women get breast cancer a higher percentage of the time.  These would be the Classic Matrifocal.  They would be more accelerated in maturation rate, achieving puberty sooner.  In addition, they would menstruate a longer period of their lives, exposing them to higher levels of estrogen for longer periods.

High fat diets and alcohol consumption can increase female estrogen levels, adding to established tendencies.  Pubertal timing is influenced by diet.  Low fat diet can push back pubertal onset.

Combine genetic social structure tendency, uterine environment, pubertal timing as a result of maturation rates and diet, and environmental influences like diet, alcohol and exercise, and a picture emerges that can provide an idea of how changes in lifestyle can reduce the chances of cancer.

“Lastly it is clear that stress reduces testosterone levels in men (Kreuz et al., 1972).  And Leedy and Wilson (1985) concluded that male hormone levels may be affected by the stressors of routine military flight.  So the reportedly low sex ratios of children born to men in stressful occupations e.g. aircraft pilots (Goerres and Gerbert, 1976; Synder, 1961) and abalone divers (Lyster, 1982) may have hormonal—perhaps androgenic—determinates.” (James, W. H. (1986) Hormonal control of the sex ratio.  Journal of Theoretical Biology 118: 435)

When females are stressed, their testosterone levels go up (Geschwind and Galaburda, 1987).  When males are stressed, their testosterone levels go down.  High fat diets raise female testosterone levels and lower the testosterone levels of males.

What other environmental variables influence men and women in opposite directions?

I am hypothesizing that a mother’s testosterone and estrogen levels propel her sons and daughters in opposite yet complementary maturation rate and evolutionary directions.  Not incidentally, several environmental variables also push the hormones of males and females in opposite directions.  If this pattern continues to unfold, two things are suggested.

First, though there have been no studies conducted that seek to observe whether changes in a male’s hormone levels over the course of his lifetime influence the hormone levels of his sons and daughters, the paradigm we are exploring would suggest that this might be the case.  Changing a mother’s uterine testosterone levels has been shown to influence progeny testosterone levels and behavior for generations.  If the same principle held true for males, social structure transformations could occur far more swiftly.  Clearly, societies able to quickly respond to changing social and environmental conditions by shifting social structure would outperform those without that adaptability.

Second, and this thought has bounced around in the back of my brain for a couple months now, what if humans were not just designed to take environmental information into consideration during ontogeny?  What if humans were genetically programmed to detect and embrace specific information from the environment to determine growth speed, timing and direction, with literally our genetics being only part of the apparatus determining feature?  What if part of our genetics is literally stored in the genome of other species, with messages from those genomes communicated via specific environmental triggers?

This is feeling less and less farfetched to me as time goes on.  This would suggest that not only do different species on the planet share the obvious and less obvious interconnections characterized by complex and subtle interdependencies, but that different species on the planet may actually, in a sense, store one another’s genes, issuing various detectable sensory data into the environment designed to be perceived and ontogenetically responded to by other species.

In other words, we are seeking in our own genome all the answers to how we evolved and manifest as a single being.  Perhaps some of the answers exist in the genomes of other species across the planet, hidden tendrils of connection mating their message transmitter and our message receiver, and perhaps vice versa.

This Theory of Waves suggests that our environment is deeply informing the growth of human individuals, societies and our species.  Male and female complementary opposite hormonal constellations juxtapose in several ways in this model, not the least of which is the seeming impact of an environmental variable on the two sexes in ways that responses are in opposite directions yet converging on the same social structure goal.

If we evolved in close cooperation with environmental cues, why not the genomes of different species emerging in direct relation to these communications between species?  Observed from this point of view, it becomes more difficult to understand any species or individual as outside of, or not integrally connected to, the environment.

There are complementary opposite dynamics between the sexes at a number of levels in this theory.  Consider that complementary dynamics may also be engaged across species, with across-species sharing of integrated genomes.

The new paradigm is becoming easier to see.  I’m observing an emerging of the 60s without the narcissism and the drugs.  The commons is no longer a foreign concept.  I’m feeling excited and relieved.  And, a little scared.

I’m an unapologetic hippie disguised as a business man/activist/theorist/artist.  I feel like I felt the first time ‘round when the world felt like it was in the process of being reborn.  It wasn’t the war ending or the drugs.  It was the certainty many of us felt that society was transforming, heading powerfully in the direction of the Left, in the direction of female-centric egalitarianism, reverence for nature, sensitivity and responsibility toward poverty, minorities and the Third World.  I’m only partly talking about the election of Obama.

I did not see Reagan coming.  Large portions of our population felt threatened by both the minorities within our borders and hostile governments overseas.  Those folks voted to protect what they have and focus on what corporations could commercially provide.  It was a potent, cogent combination.  The zeitgeist had most of us believing that the purpose of government was to encourage those that are good at making money to make more money while protecting our borders and keeping the poor away.

During the 70s through the 00s, there were forces at work, the same energies we saw unleashed in the 60s.  These were not hidden forces, though their implications were not easily interpretable.  Uninterpreted, they moved though our society unimpeded.

The most obvious was the dissembling of the Soviet Union.  There could be no 60s without peace.  There could be no peace with a cold war.  When the Soviet Union transformed, I was more than elated.  I’d felt personally stalked by missiles since I was little.  The fall of the Soviet Union, for me, meant I didn’t have to be scared anymore.  This change in politics was a personal epiphany.  I believe that the transcendence of this polarity cannot be underestimated.

In the meantime, media and corporations homogenized our nation.  From the early 70s when I drove back and forth several times a year between St. Petersburg, Florida, and Chicago to the early 80s when I again took up residency in the North, I observed the destruction of American cuisine.  Unique local fare was replaced by chains in the many states I would stop in to eat meals.  I observed radical changes in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida in a single decade.  Suddenly, almost all Americans were eating the same thing.

In the meantime, TV and cable transformed what people were observing.  Bill Cosby became the American family.  Women worked, blacks became middle class and gays came out as normal.  We were all seeing the same thing, and what we were seeing was that the other was not as other as the polemicists were telling us.

It is not a mistake that the last place in the nation to get TV (TV arrived with cable), the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee, was also the region with Democrats least able to visualize an African-American as president.  Without a Bill Cosby we would not have been able to have an Obama.

The new paradigm we see emerging now was cultivated by the fall of the twin towers of the old world view:  hostile poor and minorities at home, hostile governments overseas.  For forty years these deep-seated beliefs have been undermined by global changes and a new media story.  That story has been deeply contrary to what politicians have been telling us.  The new story was that we are all the same.

It is deeply ironic and interesting that corporations and the elites, those that have most profited from the years since the 1960s, have been instrumental in disseminating the information that homogenized our country.  With homogenization comes less fear of what is different as differences are absorbed, transformed and then transform the culture.  The other has become us.  We can now choose to be less afraid of sharing.  With hard times this is important.

A reverence for the commons is on the way.

I’m starting to get an idea for a book.  It began when I noticed how many of the metaphors I use are related to toys and play.  Noting that toys seem to often elegantly portray biological processes, I’m considering using a different toy to guide a different chapter.  The book would be called something like “The Play of Evolution.” Maybe, “Playing With Evolution.”  The subtitle might be “Beyond the Abyss of Reductionism,” with the Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt comic as the cover of the book.

The chapter breakdown would emphasize the several human evolution themes of this website:  biology, society, transition from biology to society, neuropsychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, psychology, autism, spirituality/language/unconscious, story and myth, society and teleology, society and political activism, medical implications of the theory, creative process and contemporary social shifts.  There is lots of overlap between sections.

My mother worked in a toy shop during Christmastime when was I was growing up.  I was employed there for a year when I was 16.  My wife Marcia owned and ran a toy store for 22 years.  That is where I met her.  Toys have perhaps fascinated me more as an adult than when I was a child.  In college, my room was filled with the toys that interested me.  My winter coat pockets are filled with unique toys from many places.

Toys that seem evocative and/or metaphoric for the particular chapter concentrations of the book include the Slinky, Rubik’s Cube, Chutes and Ladders, the Eight Ball, Hula Hoop, Tinker Toys, Erector Set, geodesic toys, dress up, dice, playground devices (teeter totter, swings, merry-go-round), invisible man and woman, magic tricks and chemistry sets.

This is going to be fun.

Just had a rather odd thought that may or may not be relevant to the principles I’ve been exploring.  I’m wondering if estrogen levels in procreating males and females influence the number of children in families.

There are r and K strategies for guiding progeny to maturity.  In an r strategy, you have as many children as possible to compensate for an inability to control an environment often hostile to progeny achieving maturity.  In the K strategy, parents conclude that by paying close attention to fewer progeny, adulthood for the offspring can be more predictably achieved.

A high-estrogen male would likely be more inclined to pay close attention to his children than a low-estrogen male.  That attention would more likely translate into a K strategy whereby the child is ushered into adulthood with much attention.  Plummeting birth rates in Europe and developed countries might be directly related to changing male hormone levels, elevating estrogen.  Twentieth century high fat diets may be partly responsible for drops in birth rates.

High fat diets granted to emerging middle classes in developing countries may be leading to a diminution in population explosion as males become more solicitous of their children.

Studies with animal populations could be conducted by adjusting male estrogen levels and observing variations in family size over time.  It’s not clear to me what the results would be if the mother’s estrogen levels were changed.  Do high-estrogen females have larger families than low-estrogen females?  It might have to do with social structure.

When female choice is engaged in matrifocal social structures with high-testosterone females, we would hypothesize that in Classic Matrifocal TE (high testosterone, high-estrogen) females there would be smaller families than in Te (high testosterone, low estrogen) Contemporary Matrifocal females.  In a patrifocal society where males are doing more of the choosing, we’d expect that TE Conventional Patrifocal males would have smaller families than Te Warrior Patrifocal males.

F te/M TE        Conventional Patrifocal (small families)
F tE/M Te        Warrior Patrifocal (large families)
F Te/M tE        Contemporary Matrifocal (large families)
F TE/M te        Classic Matrifocal (small families)

Which doesn’t exactly work.  Contemporary matrifocal (think Sweden) clearly has small families.  We’d also expect Classic Matrifocal to have large families.  So, there seems to be a complementary opposite thing happening again.

F te/M TE        Conventional Patrifocal (small families)
F tE/M Te        Warrior Patrifocal (large families)
F Te/M tE        Contemporary Matrifocal (small families)
F TE/M te         Classic Matrifocal (large families)
.
So, though it feels right to say that it is male estrogen levels that decide family size regardless of social structure, we could just as easily say that it is female estrogen levels that decide family size, only high female estrogen makes for a big family.  High female estrogen levels translate into large families (low-estrogen females, small families) as high male estrogen levels suggest small families (low-estrogen males, large families).

A place to go to find refuting evidence would be Conventional Patrifocal Asian societies.  Were large families in Asia once the convention?  If both very large and very small families have both been the case among Conventional Patrifocal, then this piece of the puzzle may require more thought and observations.

There is a possible pattern here.  Studies would have to be conducted to back it up.

Being human, it’s difficult to imagine what we don’t have words for.

Benjamin Whorf proposed that language powerfully determined the reality that a society can perceive.  For example, some indigenous Americans communicate largely in the present tense.  In Hopi mythology, the future and the past converge in a mythological alternative present as if at the other end of a giant wheel or hoop.  Such an experience of reality could influence individuals and societies at a number of levels.

Our unconscious, our personal representatives of the infinite other side, provide us information based upon the stories we have made up about the world.  What fits our stories we can absorb.  What does not fit our stories we ignore.  The words we use to create our stories are stored with a myriad of associations.  Associations left outside our experience, outside our words, do not end up in our stories and are not available to makes sense of the world.

A society emphasizing a single tense may be wiser than one deeply sensitive to the increments of time, wiser because the information received is far often high quality, real time information.  Nevertheless, that wiser society may be vulnerable to the machinations of a time-dissociated society.  The dissociated society is able to achieve long-term goals partly because they’re not spending time paying attention to the present.

Imagining or embracing what we don’t have words for is a particularly difficult issue in the sciences.  Over 150 years, many variations of evolution theories have emerged and languished as society keeps encouraging origin stories that support corporations battling for supremacy that then manage our financial/economic world and world view.  Demonizing socialism, as in socialized medicine, the elites seek to control disbursement of assets by controlling the meanings of words.  We don’t have a word that means both freedom and community.  “Epigenetic” is coming to mean both environment and heredity.  There is a concept binding together both “independent” and “cooperative” that when invented will go a long way toward making possible the placing of attention on the many-with-few-resources by the few-with-many-resources.

Isadora Duncan mentioned that if she had the words to say it, she wouldn’t have to dance it.  Perhaps the scientists and politicians should learn to dance.

The behaviors of individuals, the behaviors of societies and the observation of changes in those behaviors in different scales of time are divided up into different disciplines to be studied by different academicians in different journals and research communities.

There are scientists that don’t believe in “unitary” theories or perspectives because unitary theories seek to remove the barriers between scales and/or time frames.  I don’t think these academics experience the world through a seamless progression of information gradating from discipline to discipline.  They live on an archipelago of knowledge springing from an unexamined ocean.

Next door lives a teenager practicing guitar.  He practices his riffs repeatedly, seeking a familiarity that prompts him to move on.  I am practicing merging ideas from different disciplines, encouraging my fingers to find various pathways between concepts that have not had much opportunity to mate.  Next door, the boy is becoming deft and drawing melodies from his instrument.  I am seeking ways to easily jump between biological scales and time frames.

In between the academic archipelagos that seek to sort and store the information about our world, I am building Tinker Toy bridges, hubs and nods that suggest a connection between these islands of understanding.  While passing between the islands while on these bridges, I sometimes observe marine wildlife.  They are difficult to describe.  There are places where language just does not work.

Still, above the water there are three primary melodies I’m playing with:  anthropology, evolutionary biology and neuropsychology.  There are a number of related disciplines such as primate studies, comparative religion and mythology, medicine, archeology, psychology and sociology.  But within the main three there are sub melodies.

Anthropology
Social Structure
Ethnicity
Female Infanticide

Evolutionary Biology
Heterochrony
Lamarckian Dynamics
Ontogeny
Sexual Selection

Neuropsychology
Testosterone and Estrogen
Uterine Environment
Medical Diseases
Mental and Neurological Conditions

I find myself moving the sub melodies away from their discipline of origin to another discipline, seeking ways to explain the riffs from inside a new environment.  Personally experiencing the breakdown of scale and time, I’m seeking to create opportunities for others to have the same experience.  For example….

Anthropology
Testosterone and Estrogen
Uterine Environment
Medical Diseases
Mental and Neurological Conditions

Evolutionary Biology
Social Structure
Ethnicity
Female Infanticide

Neuropsychology
Heterochrony
Lamarckian Dynamics
Ontogeny
Sexual Selection

…shifting the sub melodies down to a different discipline, I seek ways to make sense of concepts from the different scale and/or time.

This shuffling, this practicing of riffs continues until I feel a familiarity.  Then I try another way to move my fingers across the fret board, a new combination that will eventually feel routine.

On this pathway seeking to make novelty routine and the routine novel, interesting things happen.  I go swimming in surrounding waters.  I’m not aware of hearing anything while submerged.  Yet, while drying myself off after swimming, I hear music.  I can’t yet play it.  Yet, I continue to practice my scales and my sense of time.

At a fairly fast clip, the American Left is splitting into pieces, in no small part due to a failure of imagination.

Two splits are happening at once.  First, to whatever degree African-Americans were integrated into the Left community, they have gone.  With the election of Obama, the Democratic Party has moved left in its willingness to empower minorities of color.  Having deeply satisfied a large constituency, that constituency is not at this time willing to push Obama on social justice issues, trusting that he will not disappoint.  There was always a disconnect between social justice and foreign policy in the Black community.  African-Americans for the most part did not heavily protest the Iraq War.  The disconnect has grown wider as they see evidence that they’re being heard.

A second split has increased the chasm between the hard Left and the center Left.  There has always been the disagreement between strategy, tactics and perspective.  The disagreement is growing wider.  The far Left focuses more on U.S. behavior overseas, where differences between the parties have been relatively small.  The center Left places more attention on domestic issues, where Democrats show growing differences from Republicans, with increasing large differences such as positions on abortion and minority empowerment.  The center Left at this time is behaving as if placing pressure on Obama is tantamount to betrayal.  They don’t want Left expressions of encouragement to behave in specific ways to be interpreted as disappointment or dismay.

The hard Left is feeling isolated.  This is not unusual.  Former allies are pulling away, leaving an abandoned hard core focusing on the many ways that Obama will disappoint.

The hard Left is lacking imagination.  The hard Left is horrible at having hope.

For decades, the Right has shown the world how to step into or create a societal situation that demands a complete bottom-up re-evaluation and reconstruction and then do those things that feel right.  This is Naomi Klein’s description of the shock doctrine.  The contemporary Left has never shown that kind of imagination.  The Right profited from nonaccountability, little regulation and no transparency while accomplishing its goals.  The Left now has an opportunity to sow horizontal communication, transparency and diversity in ways only experienced on the web.

Which is where the hard Left will find its allies.

Obama gained the presidency for several reasons, not the least of which was an intuition for how to use the Internet, email, cell phones and social networking to motivate people to walk the streets, contribute money and have conversations.  Obama out-lefted the Left, using democratizing tools that empower those at the bottom of society’s hierarchy of haves and have-nots.  It is these people, the new-tech-using young that are natural allies of the Left.

The second group of allies is the former middle class.  Obama ran talking to the middle class.  His second term he’ll be speaking to the unemployed and underemployed.  These will be people with time on their hands.  The new technologies are most empowering to those that will take the time to work the networks.  Soon, there will be a large class of people with time.  Through their cell phones and computers, those people will be organizing.

The third group will be globalists.  These are people whose perspectives will have evolved to view national boundaries as anachronisms.  Americans will be seeking international solutions to a variety of problems, including financial regulations, environmental regulation enforcement and military spending.  These folks are natural allies to the Left.

The young, the downwardly mobile and the global will be allying to join the old Left to change the world.  There is a question whether the old Left has the imagination to recognize allies if they’re not carrying signs in the streets.  It’s difficult to say.  If the hard Left weren’t feeling isolated, it might not be able to recognize itself.

Estimating that there are the four prototypical couples…

Female te/Male TE
Female tE/Male Te
Female Te/Male tE
Female TE/Male te

…we might conclude that dating services would concentrate on matching up people with their complementary opposites.  Still, many people pair off with a partner that is not complementary in the ways that I am describing in this thesis.  For example, an artist couple, both high estrogen, might marry.

Consider that there may be a difference in procreation percentages among couples that are not complementary opposites as predicted by the theory vs. those that are.  For example, place two high-testosterone people together and it may become less likely they will have children.

The same would go for our artist couple.  Two high-estrogen mates, according to this thesis, would have children a smaller percentage of the time than if their estrogen levels were complementary opposites.

Second marriages that don’t have children might be marriages where the dynamic of complementary opposites are less engaged.  People might be more compelled to relax with someone that is similar rather than battle with their opposite.

If this hypothesis holds water, I’m not sure what the repercussions are.  If the coupling instinct compels us to bond and mate with opposites, in other words if there is a macro pattern to our attractions, then it seems society and our unconscious are closely allied in ways we’ve not considered up to now.  If the couples that don’t feel a deep desire to have children are the same couples that don’t match up with our four foundation couple prototypes, then there seems to be an extremely powerful unconscious rule guiding individuals not to procreate under specific circumstances.

This all feels fairly farfetched, though complementary to the main thesis.  It seems to me that couples outside the paradigm can still have children that make important contributions to the balanced polymorphism.  I wonder if there are patterns to these integrations of couples that don’t fit the four prototypes.  Consider what might be special about their children.  To me, the Theory of Waves thesis feels/seems elegant, subtle, complex and beautiful.  Still, there is room for far more of the same.

It seems for now that this Theory of Waves, broken down or reduced to eight prototype human beings, offers some purchase to grip the theory that has been difficult up to now. Time will tell whether this is really the case. I just know that the three disciplines, Anthropology, Evolutionary Biology and Neuropsychology, and their doorway concepts of social structure, heterochrony and balanced polymorphism, haven’t felt particularly friendly to most folks introduced to these concepts.

To review, there are eight prototype human beings.

Female
High testosterone, high estrogen (F TE)
High testosterone, low estrogen (F Te)
Low testosterone, high estrogen (F tE)
Low testosterone, low estrogen (F te)

Male
High testosterone, high estrogen (M TE)
High testosterone, low estrogen (M Te)
Low testosterone, high estrogen (M tE)
Low testosterone, low estrogen (M te)

There are natural complementary pairings. Opposite sexes are drawn to their opposite hormonal complements, not just to the opposite sex.

Female te/Male TE
Female tE/Male Te
Female Te/Male tE
Female TE/Male te

The complements naturally ally themselves into social structures, patrifocal and matrifocal, with two variations within each.

F te/M TE Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te Classic Matrifocal

The eight prototype or categories of humans each come with their own characters or stereotypes not unlike the archetypes established in the Greek pantheon of gods. Certain diseases or conditions cluster around each of the eight types. Each type has an ideal mate, a person that they are naturally attracted to. There are vague correlations in terms of politics. I expect there are more and less appropriate diets for each of the types.

Each of the types is located at a hormonal extreme. Environmental effects likely influence their moods, dispositions, health and ability to concentrate. For example, smoking raises a woman’s testosterone levels. F t would likely suffer fewer repercussions from smoking than F T. The foods we eat dramatically influence our hormone levels. Adjusting diet to the specific human prototype may provide individuals a handle on their mental/dispositional experience not easily available until now.

One way to communicate the eight prototypes would be to offer an example of an actress or actor in the context of the roles that we are used to seeing that person portray. Consider that matrifocal individuals are likely inclined to gravitate to the acting profession, and there is some evidence to support large numbers of left-handers are performers. Still, their profession involves play acting what they are not.

It can be a little complicated. Rock Hudson was gay and left-handed, classic matrifocal. He portrayed heterosexual studs. Yet, in high school (New Trier), the story goes that he was expelled for riding his motorcycle up the steps and down the hallway. That act could be interpreted either way.

Still, let’s take a shot at creating a celebrity pantheon for the eight prototypes in this model.

Female
High testosterone, high estrogen (F TE)
Queen Latifah, Oprah Winfrey

High testosterone, low estrogen (F Te)
Madonna, Michelle Obama

Low testosterone, high estrogen (F tE)
Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson

Low testosterone, low estrogen (F te)
Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson

Male
High testosterone, high estrogen (M TE)
Clint Eastwood, Viggo Mortensen

High testosterone, low estrogen (M Te)
Tom Cruise, Vin Diesel

Low testosterone, high estrogen (M tE)
Tom Hanks, Robert Redford, Barack Obama

Low testosterone, low estrogen (M te)
Matthew McConaughey, Leonardo DiCaprio

When compiling this list, I had to Google lists of celebrities. I could see faces, but I could not remember names. Perhaps I’m not the best one to be figuring out these correlations.

Visitors, what are your opinions of which celebrities go with which prototype? Break out your Tinker Toys and tell me which hub of characteristics draws which personality sticks.

For a detailed introduction to the model behinds this concept, click here.

“Primary process is characterized (e.g., by Fenichel) as lacking negatives, lacking tense, lacking in any identification of linguistic mood (i.e., no identification of indicative, subjunctive, optative, etc.) and metaphoric.  These characterizations are based upon the experience of psychoanalysts, who must interpret dreams and the patterns of free associations.”  (Bateson, G. (1972) Steps To An Ecology of Mind.  Balantine: New York.  p. 139)

Dream and the unconscious can only communicate in the present, in the place you are in, with no “no” or negatives.  While dreaming, what you imagine to be true becomes true.  You can’t imagine being somewhere or sometime else without being in that somewhere or sometime.  You can’t imagine something not to be true, because you have to imagine that thing to not imagine it, and then that thing appears.

This is the world of our dream, our infancy, our unconscious, and the consciousness of nonhumans on the earth.  Humans when awake are able to be split, experience themselves as two, and engage in the manipulation of time and space.  We are able to imagine something to be true while observing the creations of our imaginations.

Still, we are heavily impacted by what goes on in our unconscious.

In addition to one time, one place, no negatives, during sleep we experience two seemingly different things being the same.  We steep in metaphor.  It’s not just one thing representing something else, in dream one thing becomes the something else.  Symbols are invested with the life and spirit of that thing that they are representing.  There is no difference between the two.  Again, there is only one time, one place, no negatives.  For one thing to represent another thing, it has to be that thing.

There are the stories we tell ourselves in dreams packed with symbols offering understandings of relationships.  When we awaken the stories do not stop.  Only awake, we can be in two places, two times at once.  Awake, we can imagine what is not true.  Yet the stories continue, stories representing relationships, experiences, insights, cultural lessons, emotions, people and more.  From an unconscious interpretation of our awake experience, a thing and what that thing represents are the same.  So we stack experiences with stories with our unconscious making connections, seeing what’s the same, deeply fusing together what to our conscious would not necessarily be related.

Asleep, we make the connections between the experiences of the day with all the stored connections that we’ve made.

Awake we wander thinking awake is reality when in actuality awake is far more unreal than asleep.  Awake we believe in two or more times.  Awake we believe in two or more places.  Awake we believe that there is what something is not.

Asleep, we experience the connections.  Asleep, we experience the now.

Perhaps it would be useful if we brought into our conscious awareness (our awareness while awake) sensitivity to how me make connections, fuse meaning by overlapping experiences and see/experience/feel/hear different things as the same.  This might provide us some purchase, some equanimity as we ride the rapids of place and time as we parse out cause and effect relationships.  Though it is the unconscious that with certainty makes connections, it is the conscious that can discern the separate threads.

We are both split and nonsplit beings.  It seems that by being both we can experience the every and the each.

It was noted by Marrion in 1986 that Kwakiutl (Annett, 2002) display high incidence of left-handedness. Riane Eisler has written of the partnership society qualities of Scandinavian societies. There are studies that suggest increased percentages of anomalous dominance among Scandinavian populations. In 1998, I wrote that equatorial populations migrating to Northern climates will be subject to higher degrees of autism and conditions characterized by maturational delay. Minnesota Somali children seem to be fitting this prediction.

In other pieces, I’ve discussed the hypothesis, first considered by Geschwind and Galaburda, that light mediated by the pineal gland could be influencing testosterone levels, thus engendering conditions characterized by maturational delay. They did not make the connection to heterochronic theory, but it seems fairly reasonable to mate migration with left-handedness. Yet, if Kwakiutl evidence maturational delay having lived in or near the Arctic Circle for thousands of years, then the effects of light on the pineal may show signs of creating maturational-delayed populations at the extreme Northern and Southern ends across the earth, without recent migration.

Are there signs of increased left-handedness in Southern Australia, Southern Africa and the Southern tip of South America? What about the Lapplanders? Consider Latino and African-American populations in Alaska.

Alcohol lowers testosterone levels in males. Fat increases testosterone and estrogen levels in females, lowers testosterone levels in males. Tobacco influences hormone levels. Cross referencing season of birth and parent alcohol, tobacco and fat consumption may offer insights into the origin of conditions characterized by maturational delay. Perhaps a confluence of several variables propels individuals into left-handedness with no left-handedness recorded in their family.

It is possible that in the lands characterized by little light for long periods of time, which often leads to depression, increases in alcohol consumption to medicate depression leads to ontological changes in the children. There are few studies that would suggest that a male can modify his genetics by the way he lives his life. Perhaps such evidence exists and could be examined by setting up predictions based on converging influences changing a male’s testosterone levels and impacting his children’s maturation rates.

Another group to examine for these effects is those that do not see the light of day. Maybe these people work nights, have very sensitive skin or spend almost all their time underground. What might be the handedness distributions and disease/condition constellations of their children? Cross referenced with the other hormone influencing variables, data about these people might reveal patterns.

The Kwakiutl are a unique culture in other ways than higher percentages of left-handedness. They are matrilineal. Perhaps we should be looking for signs of egalitarian societies in those places in the world where it is coldest.

Talking with my son Elia last night (Elia is an anthropology major at Loyola), I brought up a conundrum that I’ve been playing with for a few years.  It has to do with the origin of language, metaphor and god.

I presuppose or assume that consciousness existed before humans evolved and probably always existed.  I don’t go so far as to define consciousness, though Gregory Bateson’s interpretation of Freud’s primary process has been a useful foundation for me.  According to that definition (extrapolating primary consciousness to god), god consciousness is not unlike that of an infant:  only one time, one place and no negatives such as “no.”  This consciousness is much like that experienced during dream.  In dream, you cannot imagine something without it becoming true.  You cannot be two places at once.  You cannot think of the future without being in the future.  You cannot read, because if the words acquire meaning, you travel to what the words describe.

So, I assume consciousness exists and always existed, existing up to, and including, the appearance of human beings.

I characterize human consciousness as split consciousness.  I hypothesize that when the right hemisphere began to reduce in size along with the corpus callosum brain bridge we acquired self-referential capabilities, were able to create pasts and futures, be two places at once and line up words in rows in ways that abstract worlds could be constructed.  Creating two differentiated cerebral hemispheres with diminished communication between the hemispheres promoted our experiencing ourselves as split.  Time was invented.  Language, formerly gesture, turned into speech and acquired legs.  Not unlike the Platonic myth, as speech makers we experience ourselves as isolated from a hidden half.

It fascinates me that we don’t just use speech to communicate with ourselves and our companions.  Speech provides us access to stories and metaphors, which we use to build deeply layered stories to explain the world.  We are split beings telling stories to ourselves.  We tell the stories and we listen to the stories inside our heads.  Human beings swim in a sea of stories that don’t even end when we go to sleep.  In dream, we become the story that is being told.

I’m presupposing that consciousness exists and perhaps always existed.  Let’s also presuppose that the nature of story or metaphor as it manifests itself in human beings offers a clue to the nature of consciousness.  Let us presume that consciousness without time is god, and that also consciousness with time has something to do with god.

Consider that split consciousness is a step toward god, coming to god from the opposite direction.

What would our experience be if instead of a split brain, experiencing the world as split in two, we were three brained or four brained?  What would it be like if we were a million brained, split into a million parts, experiencing a million tenses, available to a million nows?

I’m imagining being that million-brained creature, or perhaps twelve-billion-brained creature if we were every person on the planet times two, and I’m getting an inkling of how humans, as a split-brained speech user, have an opportunity to experience god in ways unavailable to other species on the planet.

There is a difference between the primary process ever present now and a split or fracture resulting in a multitude of nows.  Yet, they are feeling like different aspects of something that is the same.  It feels like as humans we have the potential to grasp both the ever present and every-present, humans being the flesh bridge between the two.

It also feels to me like the stories and metaphors manufactured by a single person, times six billion, create some kind of simulated matrix of possibility, a miniature universe of “what ifs”.  If one person, split, provides the leverage to estimate what god is–experiencing both the now and the every now–then society makes this even easier to understand.

When I have these discussions with Elia, it sometimes feels like I’m talking with myself.  I don’t think I mean this in the narcissistic sense, but sometimes there are two consciousnesses sitting at the table, and yet they are the same consciousness, and feeling this, I feel closer to my god.

Ten years ago, I was exploring the possible origin of human culture in tribal societies driven by rhythmic dance and music. Tribal societies are on rare occasions characterized by paternal anonymity, or children who are unaware of the identity of their biological father. Observing that human brain size began to diminish about 25,000 years ago, I hypothesized that this reflected an emerging patrifocal emphasis on speech instead of gesture and a movement away from a selection for big-brained males. If this was the case, I suspected that there might be remnants of the old matrifocal paradigm that still exist within contemporary society. In the neurological literature, I sought humans with unusually large brains, difficulty with language, but who were also ambidextrous or left-handed. I came to find that autistic individuals commonly display these features; in addition, I discovered that individuals with autism are often obsessed with pattern replication and have perfect pitch (Brenton, Devries, Barton, Minnich & Sokol, 2008).

It appeared that hidden beneath the just-so story was a theory, which, if brought to light, could help make useful predictions and illuminate unrecognized relationships. From the beginning, the theory drew information from three different disciplines: anthropology, evolutionary biology and neuropsychology; yet, because these three disciplines did not share a common language, it became my goal to show that they were indeed studying an identical process. Evolutionary biology’s heterochronic theory explored the long-term effects of changing maturation rates, while anthropological explorations of human social structure examined the repercussions that one or more generation’s mate choice has on society. Researchers in the field of neuropsychology largely neglected to acknowledge the evolutionary implications of their discoveries, which could elucidate the parallels between the environment’s influence on uterine hormone levels and the distribution of handedness across a society. It became clear to me that all three subdisciplines were describing the dynamic of sexual selection and how sexual selection’s influence on maturation rates impacts human evolution. There seemed limited opportunities for the practitioners of each discipline to feel moved by potential synergies with their academic neighbors. However, in order to further understand human evolution, there seems a need to speak the basic languages of these three subdisciplines.

This work seeks to transcend the academic language barrier by emphasizing common patterns and ideas shared by all three subdisciplines.

This introduction to the Theory of Waves begins with an overview of four hypothetical, yet fundamental, social structures (two matrifocal and two patrifocal) and outlines the hormonal constellation of the individuals who comprise those four basic prototypes. There exists an elegant dynamic that compels and maintains these four balances. This dynamic, as explained below, can be maintained or propelled at three different levels of two overlapping hormonal paradigms.

Below, I discuss the impact this dynamic has on understanding ethnic variation, disease and condition etiology. For example, I reframe female infanticide as a socially engineered form of sexual selection. The hormonal constellations that arise as a result of this selection process produce a low prevalence of female breast cancer in Asian societies.

Having investigated related theories, I offer several reasons why neuropsychological studies have produced such inconsistent results. This theory, the Theory of Waves, ends by making a number of predictions that concentrate on autism. These predictions provide an opportunity for members of the academic community to prove this story wrong. It has been by matching up anomalies across disciplines and by discovering melodies using the black keys on a piano that this theory has come together.

I believe that understanding neoteny (the prolongation of ancestor infant features into the adults of descendants) is integral to understanding the process of becoming human. Central to understanding neoteny is understanding early play behavior. Experiencing this theory as it has come together over the last ten years has felt like deep play, frequently crossing the line to the reverential. Let the following concepts play across your mind like music. Email me if this theory strikes a chord with your own experiences, or if it harmonizes with your own understanding.

…

In this model, or theory, which I’ve been calling the Theory of Waves, there are eight varieties of humans, four male and four female. These eight types of humans feature specific characteristics, or tendencies. Each type of human can be influenced by other types, and each is susceptible to specific features in the environment. Environmental influences can compel the progeny of these types of humans to transform into other types of humans. These environmental influences compel evolutionary currents, which can provoke a significant transformation within a single generation. More often, however, these transformations occur over the course of centuries or longer.

Similar to Watson and Crick’s double helix, a larger body is created from an assembly of component parts. In this case, societies are made up of eight types of human beings, each of whom represents one of the eight potential combinations derived from the hormonal extremes. The hormonal extremes form a structure that serves as a template for a majority of the individuals within a society. The majority of individuals within a society will exhibit some basic features associated with these hormonal extremes, yet they will exhibit these extremes to less of a degree than the eight prototype humans.

Imagine that the eight basic artist colors (purple, red, blue, yellow, orange, green, black and white) are all being blended in specific ways to paint the character of a society. Or, consider that instead of the two planets Mars and Venus, which represent the classic male/female dichotomy, there are eight planets—four female and four male—which together comprise a pantheon of eight gods and goddesses.

Female Constellations
High testosterone, high estrogen (F TE)
High testosterone, low estrogen (F Te)
Low testosterone, high estrogen (F tE)
Low testosterone, low estrogen (F te)

Male Constellations
High testosterone, high estrogen (M TE)
High testosterone, low estrogen (M Te)
Low testosterone, high estrogen (M tE)
Low testosterone, low estrogen (M te)

As in the double helix, there are natural complementary pairings. In this framework, opposite sexes are not only drawn to each other based on sexual attraction, but they are also drawn to each other based on the attraction to their complementary opposite hormonal counterparts.

Female te/Male TE
Female tE/Male Te
Female Te/Male tE
Female TE/Male te

The complementary counterparts naturally ally themselves into patrifocal and matrifocal social structures. There exist two variations within each.

F te/M TE Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te Classic Matrifocal

Conventional Patrifocal: Domineering, caring and discriminating men who choose cooperative women.

Warrior Patrifocal: Domineering men who choose cooperative, caring and discriminating women.

Contemporary Matrifocal: Commanding women who choose creative, cooperative, caring and discriminating men.

Classic Matrifocal: Commanding, caring and discriminating women who choose creative and cooperative men.

These fundamental paradigms are flexile and have an ability to transform from one societal prototype into another over time. The human hormone thresholds can vary over time and can control the speed and direction of evolution. The thresholds can be influenced at three locations within two interlocking cycles, or feedback loops, as described below.

Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level.

Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > mother’s estrogen level.

The environment can intervene at any of the three levels of these two loops by influencing both maturation rates and timing (via testosterone) or by influencing the intensity of mate selection criteria (via estrogen).

Level 1: A mother’s uterine hormonal levels are impacted by environmental influences, which in turn affect the child’s maturation and development. The hormonal levels of the mother influence the overall disposition of the social structure by predisposing certain tendencies of the progeny.
Level 2: The environment, through a variety of specific hormone-influencing prompts, impacts a person in society, thereby shifting social structure proclivities.
Level 3: Shifts in social structure influence mate selection criteria, which alter evolutionary trajectories.

Changes may occur at the level of the womb, individual ontogeny and/or at the level of society. The relationship among these three environmentally susceptible locations creates an interactive system, which directs evolutionary trajectory.

…

Central to this model are the environmental impact points, which compel the transformation of a society and our species. In a woman’s womb, testosterone levels decide her children’s testosterone levels (Geschwind & Galaburda, 1987) and their maturation rates and social structure proclivity. Females (F) with high testosterone (T) give birth to high-testosterone (T) females and low-testosterone (t) males. F T = F T or M t. The reverse is true for low-testosterone females. Low-testosterone females give birth to low-testosterone females and high-testosterone males. F t = F t or M T. This is how societal prototypes are created and maintained and how the complementary opposite foundation of this thesis emerges.

This may be feeling rather dense. Bear with me. I will define some terms.

“Neoteny” refers to the prolonging of infant features over many generations so that eventually they appear in the adults of the descendants. For example, chimpanzee-like progenitor features, such as having a large head relative to body size, small chin, large eyes, upward stature, curiosity and affection, are all characteristics that over time manifest in the physiology and psychology of adults. Acceleration reverses the evolutionary trajectory, whereby processes featured by ancestor adults condense or withdraw over time and appear earlier in development in the characteristics of children as well as in the infants of future descendants.

Heterochronic dynamics (Gould, 1977) of evolution (i.e., neoteny and acceleration) are embedded in social structure and lead to the very specific mating of neotenous males with accelerated females in matrifocal social structures and accelerated males marrying neotenous females in patrifocal social structures. There is a direct connection between womb conditions, maturation rate directions (neoteny and acceleration) and social structure.

The net result is that not only are males and females mating with their hormonal complementary opposites, but also that societies are evolving with males and females trending evolutionarily in opposite directions by continuing selection for opposite proclivities in opposite sexes. It is conceivable that in human beings there exists a dynamic that demands eventual flipping of social structures, perhaps over periods as long as hundreds of thousands of years or as short as 6,000 years (Gimbutas, 1991). This provides an opportunity for the sexes to realign. It is also possible that this “flipping” is constantly occurring within different lineages in a society, which are taking turns performing the role of the hormonal outliers, or eight prototype humans.

Whereas the influence of a mother’s testosterone levels on her progeny has been established (Geschwind & Galaburda, 1987), this model hypothesizes that the mother’s estrogen levels influence her children via an identical dynamic, which encourages and reinforces the sexually selected focus on partner choice and discrimination, as well as caring and care giving. In this case, the estrogen levels within a woman’s womb determine her children’s estrogen levels, their tendencies toward evaluation of nuance and their compulsion to care. A female (F) with high estrogen (E) gives birth to high-estrogen females and low-estrogen (e) males. F E = F E or M e. The reverse is true for low-estrogen females. F e = F e or M E. This is how estrogen-related societal prototypes are created and maintained. This dynamic also contributes to the complementary opposite foundation of this thesis.

Whether a male or female has high or low estrogen levels does not contribute to maturation rates. This makes it possible to have high or low-estrogen males and females in any social structure. Maturation rates inform heterochronic tendencies and social structure proclivities. Nevertheless, estrogen confers discrimination, an attention to detail that can exaggerate the proclivity of a social structure. In addition, estrogen focuses on the features of a child, attracting those with high estrogen toward individuals who exhibit childlike features. Assign high estrogen to a female with high testosterone and you achieve Classic Matrifocal social structure with commanding females prone to choosing cooperative males with neotenous, or child-like, characteristics. Assign high estrogen to a male and you get either a Scandinavian Contemporary Matrifocal paradigm (Eisler, 2007) with both sexes exhibiting neoteny in a matrifocal context, or you get an Asian Conventional Patrifocal paradigm with males who are focused on mating with females displaying highly neotenous features. When pairing high estrogen with high testosterone, you get an exaggerated intensity of sexual selection, not unlike Fisher’s runaway sexual selection (Fisher, 1930), which results in a powerful focus on neoteny. F TE = Matrifocal selection for neotenous males. M TE = Patrifocal selection for neotenous females.

The particular way that testosterone and estrogen align with individuals within a society compels both social structure and particular physical features of individuals. These two hormones, which influence heterochronic trajectories, also influence personality features, disease and condition proclivities, societal characteristics and even such societal mysteries as female infanticide.

…

Another way to view this is by noting that at the extremes, a society displays the highest and lowest hormonal thresholds. These thresholds exist in those with bodies and minds most impacted by the battle between somatic function and behaviors, which are both required for survival. Those at the hormonal extremes are at the front lines of what a body can easily survive. When the environment changes, the extremes are put under more intense distress as the societal balanced polymorphism (the established balance of social structures within a society) is pushed in a specific direction. The majority of society, which exists in the center of this spectrum and which also has a heterozygote advantage (Annett, 2002), are compelled to drift left or right, matrifocal or patrifocal, over the course of several generations. Those at the margins are under the most intense duress.

Even in a society characterized by one of the four foundation social structures, one or more of the other social structures are integrally involved. Assimilated within a society are representative individuals, couples and subcultures, who act as social structure opposites to the established paradigm. In this way, these couples and subcultures also contribute to the balanced polymorphism. Though we in the West have been living in patrifocal social structures, matrifocal elements are integrated within the larger society and occupy the “left” end of the spectrum. American society displays a combination of all four social structures. Together, all four of these form a balance that is changing, particularly now.

There are a number of repercussions, or implications, of this basic model, and details are explored below. The etiologies for a number of physical and mental diseases and conditions are suggested by understanding the eight human prototypes as hormonal outliers that exist on a continuum within social structures and are held in balance so that they create a heterozygote advantage. Those whose hormonal constellations exist at the center are not burdened by hormonal extremes. The engine behind human evolution can be examined in detail so that one may offer a number of predictions. This work will concentrate on conditions characterized by maturational delay and acceleration, and it will focus particularly on autism. The reader will be able to infer by this example how the principles in this Theory of Waves can be applied to a number of diseases and conditions.

Neuroscientists will recognize at the core of this thesis a variation of the Geschwind and Galaburda (1987) hypothesis that connects hormones, handedness, lateralization and debilitations. Evolutionary developmental biologists familiar with nineteenth century principles of heterochrony (the study of the effects of changing maturation and development rates and timing) will find heterochronic processes (Gould, 1977) manifesting in neuropsychological studies of the endocrine system (specifically, testosterone and estrogen). These evolutionary biologists will also recognize how sexual hormones influence maturation rates and timing (Hall, Person & Muller, 2004). Anthropologists will be able to observe the impact of social structure—and the forms of sexual selection that drive social structure (such as female sexual selection and female infanticide)—on how societies transform and our species evolves. Studies of human social structures are integrally tied to both the evolutionary biological principle of heterochrony and neuropsychological processes driven by testosterone and estrogen.

…

For example, I’m hypothesizing that in highly patrifocal hierarchical Asian societies, originally organized in ways that demanded large-scale cooperation in order to manage irrigation works spanning for hundreds of miles, males need to be high in testosterone relative to females, while simultaneously being low testosterone relative to other males. This would be necessary in order to better facilitate cooperation within a highly combative hierarchical and patrifocal society requiring male/male collaboration. In this hypothesis, I shift down both estrogen and testosterone levels to accommodate lower testosterone levels for males in a patrifocal society with cooperative undertones. A relatively high-estrogen Asian male is suggested by the highly aesthetic and visually discriminating Asian culture. Relatively low female estrogen level is implied by ubiquitous female infanticide. To fit this model, Asian females would have to exhibit the lowest recorded female estrogen levels. This would mean the normally low Conventional Patrifocal female estrogen would have to be shifted lower in order to accommodate Asian male patrifocal cooperation. And, indeed, studies support anomalously low female Asian estrogen levels (Diamond, 1986).

Female infanticide may be integrated into an understanding of patrifocal social structure—particularly the Conventional Patrifocal social structure of hierarchical Asian social structures, which exhibit long-term stability. When the number of females in the procreation pool is reduced, far fewer males are able to have children. A heavy emphasis is placed on the ideal male, the non-ideal males procreating far less. The result is a continuing selection of highly patrifocal traits in the male population. Because of this, left spectrum and older genotype features that accompany matrifocal social structure do not easily emerge. This would include left-handedness, an attraction to innovation and spontaneous creativity. Instead, status, hierarchy and tradition would be highly valued, as is the case with traditional Asian culture. Female infanticide is a powerful sexual selection tool providing long-term stability to Conventional Patrifocal societies. Very low incidence of autism would also be expected, as I will explain shortly.

…

With individuals congregating around the eight hormonal paradigms, we’d expect that many diseases, disorders and conditions would be assigned to those located at the extremes, or outlying positions of the balanced polymorphism. For example, Asian females with very low estrogen should have low rates of breast cancer, while matrifocal societies with high estrogen should exhibit high rates of breast cancer. One would expect the same pattern with prostate cancer. We’d expect to see relatively few cases of prostate cancer in Asian patrifocal societies but high rates of prostate cancer in patrifocal societies that exhibit little cooperation. In Contemporary Matrifocal Scandinavia, one would expect very low rates of prostate cancer, yet relatively high rates of male breast cancer. Social structures compel hormonal tendencies, suggesting disease and condition etiology.

For conditions like autism, Asperger’s, stuttering and phonetic dyslexia, we’d expect to see the four matrifocal categories trending toward these conditions, with a possible emphasis on M te and F TE if Classic Matrifocal is how we primarily evolved (see below). Autism, Asperger’s, stuttering and phonetic dyslexia are often accompanied by male maturational delay, which is a marker of matrifocal societies. Matrifocal societies feature low-testosterone males and high-testosterone females.

There is the possibility that certain mental conditions will trend toward these same hormonal extremes. I would estimate that borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, based upon their association with families exhibiting left-handers and maturational delay, will fit the same matrifocal profiles, again with a likely Classic Matrifocal emphasis.

Diseases and conditions may have multiple etiologies depending on the particular symptoms they are associated with. For example, Marian Annett and colleagues noted two types of dyslexia. She observed phonetic dyslexia trending toward the extreme left end of the balanced polymorphism and visual dyslexia trending toward the extreme right (Annett, Eglinton & Smythe, 1996).

Schizophrenia may display two radically different etiologies, which would appear in both patrifocal and matrifocal cultures. These two different etiologies would be based upon the hypothesis that hemispheric differentiation and corpus callosum size vary according to two extremes (Coger & Serafetinides, 1990). One etiology is reinforced by facility with language (Crow, 1995; Crow, Done & Sacker, 1996) and is accompanied by a surge in patrifocal social structures, while the other displays a familial and social structure identical to the familial and social structure of autism, characterized by matrifocal origins.

…

I am hypothesizing a five-step evolutionary continuum that begins with natural selection but then moves to sexual selection. In this continuum, animals focus on particular patterns when they choose a mate. Step three begins with crossing a bridge over to human sexual selection, where adept practitioners of novel pattern creation are selected as procreation partners by mates with sensitivity to these nuances (Miller, 2000). The fourth step is taken when novelty itself becomes desirable outside the partner selection process, and society is thus compelled to embrace in its productions countless nuances of the new. In the fifth stage, awareness of the creation process itself becomes a target experience.

1) natural selection
2) sexual selection (selecting for pattern when seeking a mate)
3) human sexual selection (selection for novel pattern when seeking a mate)
4) art and culture (selecting for novel pattern outside of mate selection)
5) awareness of the selection or creative process

Integrated into the sequence established above is the longer-term dynamic of humans, who evolved from random-handed non-speech users (Annett, 2002) with two equally large cerebral hemispheres and a wide corpus callosum (Witelson, 1991).

I hypothesize that step 3 of this sequence is compelled by long-term male maturational delay and reinforced by sexual selection in a matrifocal context, where child-like features attract more focus (Gould, 1977). Classic Matrifocal was likely our social structure at this stage (Knight, 1991). Stage 4 suggests a shift toward patrifocal social structure as well as a decrease in brain size (Wiercinski, 1979), culminating in the Warrior Patrifocal. This sequence suggests that Classic Matrifocal and Warrior Matrifocal preceded Contemporary Matrifocal as well as Conventional Patrifocal, with the possible emergence of Contemporary and Conventional in the last 5,000 years.

Deep societal change can occur quickly when there is a change in hormonal constellations. Sudden shifts can occur from matrifocal to patrifocal, or patrifocal to matrifocal. For example, if a matrifocal society is highly stressed over time by patrifocal incursions, the ideal male mate may shift from one displaying cooperative tendencies to a male who is quick to fight. Formerly highly valued aesthetic-oriented males may then find themselves outside the pool of highly valued potential mates. In mere generations, physiological, hormonal and neuropsychological transformations can occur.

Migrating populations exposed to changes in sunlight (Geschwind and Galburda, 1987) show radical fluctuations in social structure, which impacts evolution over time. Sunlight impacts the pineal gland, which directly influences the testosterone levels within the individuals of a population (Geschwind and Galburda, 1987). A variety of specific diseases and conditions acquired by the eight prototype hormonal outliers will emerge among these migrating peoples, including autism. In addition, changing diet can exaggerate hormonal changes.

A radical change in diet, such as an increase in high quality fats and nutrients, could raise a female’s estrogen and testosterone levels and lower a male’s testosterone levels (Ahluwalia, Jackson, Jones, Williams, Mamidanna & Rajguru, 1981). These changes in hormonal levels would compel a shift in social structure toward the direction of female choice. Females would then seek mates that were cooperators rather than warriors. Sudden dietary changes that drastically reduce access to high fat foods could compel a hormonal shift toward a patrifocal social structure. These hormonal shifts would be further accentuated if combative situations emerged. This is the variation of the Kuzawa (2007) thesis, which proposes that uterine environments can influence adult physiology. My Theory of Waves thesis suggests that the parent’s hormonal shifts can adjust a progeny’s hormonal constellations and shift a society’s hormonal spectrum in a particular direction, depending on environmental pressures. Such hormonal shifts thus result in modifications of social structure.

Eight environmental variables influence testosterone, including light (Geschwind & Galaburda, 1987), diet (Schmidt, Wijga, Von Zur Muhlen, Brabant & Wagner, 1997), body fat (Ross, Bernstein, Judd, Hanisch, Pike & Henderson, 1986; Glass, Swerdloff, Bray, Dahms & Atkinson, 1977), alcohol and drugs (Castilla-Garcia, Santolaria-Fernandez, Gonzalez-Reimers, Bastita-Lopez, Gonzalez-Garcia, Jorge-Hernandez & Hernandez-Nieto, 1987; Ahluwalia, Clark, Westney, Smith, James, & Rajguru, 1992), tobacco (MacMahon, Trichopoulos, Cole & Brown, 1982; Barrett-Connor & Khaw, 1987), touch, physical activity (MacConnie, Barkan, Lampman, Schork, & Beitins, 1986; Morville, Pesquies, Guezennec, Serrurier & Guignard, 1979) and stress (James, 1986). Estrogen has been far less studied, but diet has been repeatedly shown to dramatically influence estrogen levels (Ahluwalia, et al., 1981).

We can view evolution as both a dynamic and static process that is driven by social structure, environmental influences, maturation rate modifications and hormonal changes. The evolutionary developmental biological view, or the heterochronic perspective, offers a dynamic frame. Annett’s (2002) modern UK society is characterized by a balanced polymorphism, which exhibits an evenly balanced static spectrum view of left and right-handed individuals. On the far left side of this spectrum exist the extreme left-handed, as well as the random-handed, and on the far right side of this spectrum exist the extreme right-handed. Most people in a society exist somewhere in the middle. This spectrum of individuals is aligned along a gradated curve and offers a static snapshot of our society in the process of transition. The older anomalously dominant (both cerebral hemispheres close to the same size) matrifocal prototype is stationed at the left side and balances those with cerebral asymmetry designed for speech facility, the patrifocal prototype, on the right. Annett’s Right Shift Theory (Annett, 1985) argues that cerebral asymmetry with language proclivity offers a heterozygote advantage that allows the moderate right-handed to occupy the center of society. This Theory of Waves integrates social structure, maturation rates and a long-term evolutionary arc into Annett’s static snapshot in time.

…

Four major barriers prevent the easy appraisal of the natural hormonal levels that characterize the eight human prototypes.

Assays that fail to measure the variations of handedness with the degree of sensitivity established by Annett’s peg tests obstruct new insight and obscure potentially valuable observation. Annett’s work concluded that humans evolved as a random-handed species, which transitioned to right-handed when brains became lateralized for speech. Her peg tests measure degrees of right and random-handedness and are integral for establishing a locus related to social structure, disease/condition proclivity and maturation rate propensity. It is essential that different studies, particularly studies across cultures, compare apples to apples and use Annett’s protocols when measuring handedness.

It would be useful if Annett’s techniques were required to measure handedness around the world, quickly. Dietary changes within patrifocal societies may be skewing results dramatically. Aboriginal societies with a matrifocal foundation have almost completely disappeared. There are very few tools available to measure variations in societal balanced polymorphisms. Annett’s peg tests seem to measure the effects of testosterone and some indirect effects of estrogen fairly well.

The eight environmental variables noted above profoundly impact the hormone levels of males and females in a variety of contexts. To effectively measure the natural hormonal thresholds in ontogeny at any point, one must have an understanding of how that person’s hormonal levels are being influenced and altered by external variables. Adult hormone levels are dramatically impacted by a variety of factors. Existing studies show wild variation in results because these studies ignore influential variables. One study that measured testosterone levels neglected to take into consideration the time of day that levels were tested. In addition, the effects of stress cannot be underestimated. For example, measuring the testosterone levels of an autistic child in an institutional setting does little to provide an idea of that child’s base hormonal threshold, particularly if that child is on a standard institutional diet. Diet has been shown to have an effect on the symptoms of autism (Hjiej, Doyen, Couprie, Kaye & Contejean, 2008).

Some diseases and conditions appear at both ends of the left/right spectrum and occupy multiple poles of both matrifocal and patrifocal social structure. Annett approached dyslexia etiologies from a new perspective and established a protocol, which discovered that handedness congregated at both the extreme left and right ends of the spectrum. Diseases and conditions with more than one etiology often confound studies and frustrate attempts to discover patterns in social structure, handedness, hormonal constellations and ethnicity. It may seem that a disease such as schizophrenia, or a condition such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, does not always associate with a specific social structure or prototype predilection when more than one etiology is potentially in play.

Lastly, the season in which an individual is born affects the maturational delay and acceleration of that individual. Season of birth can thus help polarize a society’s social structure to either end of the spectrum. The effects of pineal-influenced testosterone levels may not merely be influencing those who live in migrating populations but also those who live in relative climatic extremes. When individuals within a society congregate at the hormonal extremes, vacating the balanced polymorphistic middle where those with the heterozygote advantage reside, it becomes nearly impossible to form conclusions about a society normally based on a seamless arc, or balance. In other words, climate and migration patterns influence the variables we’ve been noting.

These four conditions that inhibit high quality information regarding hormone levels—inconsistent handedness studies, untracked environmental variables, multiple pole disease/condition etiologies and season of birth effects—are primary reasons that the Geschwind/Galaburda hypothesis drew mixed support.

…

Norman Geschwind and his colleagues suggested that a number of diseases and conditions tend to align with specific handedness and cerebral lateralization tendencies. Geschwind believed that the random-handed (often left-handers) and the anomalously dominant, both of whom exhibit cerebral hemispheres near the same size, were evolutionary derivations. I agree with Annett (2002) that the random-handed and anomalously dominant are our evolutionary forebears, but I’ve added that these ancestral genotypes are matrifocal in origin.

Approaching Geschwind and Galaburda’s (1987) thesis with a heterochronic/social structure perspective gives one the ability to hypothesize the etiologies of a host of diseases and conditions as well as suggest a relationship between handedness, hormonal associations, social structure, lateralization, ethnicity and environmental variables.

These are some of the diseases and conditions noted in the literature (mostly from Geschwind and Galaburda, 1987) that offer correlations with some of the variables addressed in this model: alcoholism, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, asthma, ataxia telangiectasia, atopic syndrome, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, benign intracranial hypertension, bi-polar disorder, borderline personality disorder, breast cancer, congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), cluster headaches, celiac disease, conduct disorder, congenital heart disease, dementia, depression, diabetes, Down’s syndrome, dyslexia, dystrophia myotonica, endometriosis, epilepsy, gastrointestinal issues, harelip, heart disease, Huntington’s disease, immune disorders, hyperkinetic syndrome, Kartagener syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, Klippel-Feil syndrome, lupus erythematosus, migraine headaches, mital valve prolapse, narcissistic personality disorder, obesity, obsessive compulsive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, osteoporosis, ovarian cysts, Parkinson’s disease, phobias, pilonidal sinus, polycystic ovary syndrome, prostate cancer, schizophrenia, scoliosis, spina bifida, stuttering, temporal lobe epilepsy, thyroid disorders, torticollis, Tourette’s syndrome, Turner syndrome and twinning. Cross reference these variables with handedness, social structure, maturation rates, ethnicity, family of origin, cerebral dominance and hormonal levels. All of these conditions offer opportunities to observe the relationships of these conditions and diseases to the eight human prototypes.

…

The predictions below focus specifically on issues of relative maturation rates with an emphasis on autism and related conditions.

1) Autistic males, from families of left-handers, will have lower testosterone than the norm, and autistic females will have higher testosterone. The mothers will have high testosterone (Baron-Cohen, Lutchmaya & Knickmeyer, 2004) and quite possibly high estrogen. If we evolved primarily from high F TE, M te, then autistic males will have low estrogen, and autistic females will have high estrogen. (In any study of autism, those with familial male maturation delay tendencies, or families of left-handers, need to be evaluated separately from those possibly traumatized by an environmental effect.)

2) Larger penis and testicle size will be associated with autistic, ambidextrous males and the familial left-handed. Left-handed males and autistics will produce more sperm. (This is based on the large testicle matrifocal bonobo sexual egalitarian paradigm vs. the small testicles patrifocal gorilla harem paradigm.) If larger testicles and increased sperm production are associated with low-testosterone, promiscuous social-structure males, then the two variables will be related in the sense that higher-testosterone males will have smaller testicles or lower sperm production.

3) Autistic males will exhibit more neotenous characteristics, while autistic females should show less neoteny than their contemporaries.

4) The children of parents of widely different ethnicities, separated by tens of thousands of years from common ancestry, will reveal characteristics of their last common progenitor and increased incidence of autism and left-handedness. (Maturational delay progenitor feature emergences will be far more common in matrifocal social structure families.)

5) Neoteny has dental correlations, with smaller teeth being characteristic of the neotenous smaller jaw. Learning that teeth have grown smaller over millions of years, researchers will find that they have actually grown larger in males over the last few tens of thousands of years as patrifocal social structure has taken hold. Ontologically, the teeth of males from older mothers should be smaller than the teeth of males of first-born, young mothers. The reverse should be true for females. In a large family, the male’s teeth will erupt later and later, the female’s earlier and earlier.

6) Because a mother’s testosterone level rises with her age and because she has children across the whole arc of her reproductive years, we might observe a display of personality and physiological features in her children that would roughly reproduce human evolution over a span of eons. An older mother should more frequently have male children with maturational delay, female children with accelerated maturation and increased prevalence of autism in both sexes. Autistic children born to young mothers will more likely come with less frequency from families of left-handers, trauma being a likely cause.

7) Obese mothers (overweight women exhibit increased testosterone and estrogen levels), particularly those who are older, should show high incidence of autism in their children, particularly in migrating populations moving from equatorial regions to northern climates. Equatorial peoples transplanted to northern climates will display higher percentages of maturational-delayed male children, and maturational-accelerated females, including autistics, with the births congregating in certain seasons.

8) If the low-testosterone males and high-testosterone females are late born, and high-testosterone males and low-testosterone females are the oldest children in a family or the first born, then first-borns will mate with first-borns and late-borns will mate with late-borns a higher percentage of the time than would occur by chance.

9) Hypothesizing that social structure has political correlates, it would be likely that in a politically conservative family, if liberals were to emerge, it would be among the youngest sons and daughters. One would also expect a higher incidence of divorce or serial monogamy with youngest children (reflecting matrifocal values).

10) Conditions that display maturational delay, such as autism, Asperger’s and stuttering, will appear more often in males with longer limbs and smaller teeth than in others in their family of origin. This would suggest that the youngest males would also be the tallest. (Longer limbs and smaller teeth are neotenous features.)

11) Eating healthfully (the caveman diet) brings puberty later and provides a longer time for the brain to grow. Putting autistic children on such a late-puberty-enhancing diet may enhance their ability to connect. When puberty or progenesis in humans is dropped to a younger age by several years, it has neurological and cognitive repercussions. In addition to a possible increase in depression and bi-polar disorder, there is the potential for a general curtailment of the final stages of cognitive development.

12) Societal periods of innovation will be preceded by periods of romance, revealing changes in the selection criteria by which females pick their mates or by a widening of the selection criteria for the ideal male. Shifts toward increases in the variety of acceptable features in the procreation population will result in increases in cultural and technical variation. For example, if female infanticide is a tool used for patrifocal cultural stability, decreases in female infanticide over time within a culture will correlate with increases in societal and economic variation. These changes will result in matrifocal societal surges, increases in left-handedness and increases in autism.

13) If rhythm and dance were the aesthetics driving human evolution through rituals of sexual selection, then the sound and feeling of nonstop rhythm may be necessary to encourage the development of an autistic child. Rhythmic environmental triggers may be essential to the healthy growth of maturational-delayed children. By implication, comparing congenitally deaf left and right-handers may reveal an unusually high number of autistics in the left-handed group.

…

I am hypothesizing that evolution is driven by this hormonal ebbing and flowing, or waxing and waning. Mother’s testosterone levels > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory. Mother’s estrogen levels > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory. These two currents are inextricably intertwined, yet they follow established patterns, not unlike the double helix. Changes in hormone levels, influenced by the environment, impact ontogeny while we are in the womb, when we are children and after we’ve become grown-ups.

I call this the Theory of Waves to suggest the surge of features that travel ontogenetically back and forth from conception to adulthood and adulthood to conception over generations, with the direction of features often opposite between the sexes. Darwin proposed three different theories of evolution. This model in some ways integrates his three models (natural selection, sexual selection and Lamarckian selection, or pangenesis) and seeks to show patterns common to evolutionary biology (heterochronic theory), anthropology (social structure) and neuropsychology (sexual hormone endocrinology and Annett’s balanced polymorphism), all three of which describe ways that human beings may have evolved and may still be evolving.

Clearly, an adjustment (Matsuda, 1987) of Watson and Crick’s (1953) Central Dogma is occurring in several places in this thesis. Let me urge the reader to approach this work playfully while still rummaging for something useful in these conjectures. Most of all, perhaps, this thesis is suggesting that neoteny is central to being human. I believe that by playing with evolution we may discover who we are.

References:

Annett, M. (1985). Left, right, hand and brain: The Right Shift Theory. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Annett, M., Eglinton, E. & Smythe, P. (1996). Types of dyslexia and the shift to dextrality. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 37(2), 167-80.

Annett, M. (2002). Handedness and brain asymmetry. New York: Taylor & Francis Inc.

Ahluwalia, B. S., Clark, J. F., Westney, L. S., Smith, D. M., James, M. & Rajguru, S. (1992) Amniotic fluid and umbilical artery levels of sex hormones and prostaglandins in human cocaine users. Reproductive Toxicology, 6(1), 57-62.

Ahluwalia, B., Jackson, M. A., Jones ,G. W., Williams, A. O., Mamidanna, S. R. & Rajguru, S. (1981). Blood hormone profiles in prostate cancer patients in high-risk and low-risk populations. Cancer, 48(10), 2267-73.

Baron-Cohen, S., Lutchmaya, S. & Knickmeyer, R. (2004). Prenatal testosterone in mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Barrett-Connor, E. & Khaw, K. T. (1987) Cigarette smoking and increased endogenous estrogen levels in men. American Journal of Epidemiology, 126(2), 187-92.

Brenton, J. N., Devries, S. P., Barton, C., Minnich, H. & Sokol, D. K. (2008). Absolute pitch in a four-year-old boy with autism. Pediatric Neurology, 39(2), 137-8.

Castilla-Garcia, A., Santolaria-Fernandez, F. J., Gonzalez-Reimers, C. E., Bastita-Lopez, N., Gonzalez-Garcia, C., Jorge-Hernandez, J. A. & Hernandez-Nieto, L. (1987). Alcohol-induced hypogonadism: Reversal after ethanol withdrawal. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 20(3), 255-60.

Coger, R. W. & Serafetinides, E. A. (1990). Schizophrenia, corpus callosum, and interhemispheric communication: A review. Psychiatry Research, 34(2), 163-84.

Crow, T. J. (1995). A Darwinian approach to the origins of psychosis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 167(1), 12-25.

Crow, T. J., Done, D. J. & Sacker, A. (1996). Cerebral lateralization is delayed in children who later develop schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 22(3), 181-5.

Diamond, J. M. (1986). Variation in human testis size. Nature, 320(6062), 488-9.

Eisler, R. (2007) The Real Wealth of Nations. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler

Fisher, R. A. (1930). The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Geschwind, N. & Galaburda, A. M. (1987). Cerebral Lateralization. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Gimbutas, M. (1991) The Civilization of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper Collins

Glass, A. R., Swerdloff, R. S., Bray, G. A., Dahms, W. T. & Atkinson, R. L. (1977). Low serum testosterone and sex-hormone-binding globulin in massively obese men. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 45(6), 1211-19.

Gould, S. J. (1977). Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge: Belknap Press.

Hjiej, H., Doyen, C., Couprie, C., Kaye, K. & Contejean, Y. (2008). Substitutive and dietetic approaches in childhood autistic disorder: Interests and limits [French]. L’Encephale, 34(5), 496-503.

James, W. H. (1986). Hormonal control of the sex ratio. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 118(4), 427-41.

Hall, B., Pearson, R. & Muller, G. (Eds.) (2004). Environment, Development, and Evolution. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Kuzawa, C. W. (2008). The developmental origins of adult health: Intergenerational inertia in adaptation and disease. In W. Trevathan, E. O. Smith & J. J. McKenna (Eds). Evolution and Health (325-49). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Knight, C. (1991) Blood Relations. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

MacConnie, S. E., Barkan, A., Lampman, R. M., Schork, M. A. & Beitins, I. Z. (1986). Decreased hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone secretion in male marathon runners. The New England Journal of Medicine, 315(7), 411-7.

MacMahon, B., Trichopoulos, D., Cole, P. & Brown, J. (1982). Cigarette smoking and urinary estrogens. New England Journal of Medicine, 307, 1062-5.

Matsuda, R. (1987). Animal Evolution in Changing Environments, With Special Reference to Abnormal Metamorphosis. New York: Wiley Press.

Miller, G. (2000). The Mating Mind. New York: Random House.

Morville, R., Pesquies, P. C., Guezennec, C. Y., Serrurier, B. D. & Guignard, M. (1979). Plasma variations in testicular and adrenal androgens during prolonged physical exercise in man. Annales d’Endocrinlogie (Paris), 40(5), 501-10.

Ross, R., Bernstein, L., Judd, H., Hanisch, R., Pike, M., & Henderson, B. E. (1986). Serum testosterone levels in healthy young black and white men. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 76(1), 45-8.

Schmidt, T., Wijga, A., Von Zur Muhlen, A., Brabant, G. & Wagner, T. O. F. (1997). Changes in cardiovascular risk factors and hormones during a comprehensive residential three month kriya yoga training and vetetarian nutrition. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica Supplement, 640, 158-62.

Watson, J. D. & Crick, F. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature, 171, 737-8.

Wiercinski, A. (1979). Has the brain size decreased since the upper paleolithic. Bulletins et Memoirs de la Societe d’Anthropologie de Paris, 6(6-4), 419-27.

Witelson, S. F. (1991). Neural sexual mosaicism: Sexual differentiation of the human temporo-parietal region for functional asymmetry. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 16(1-3), 131-53

…

The introduction to this piece was modified on 3/8/09

For more details regarding this theory, visit http://www.neoteny.org/?cat=28

For more details regarding this theory and autism, visit http://www.neoteny.org/?cat=29

Imagine social structure, matrifocal and patrifocal, as representing left and right or past and future in a distribution of humans inclined toward egalitarian or hierarchical organization, our matrifocal past leading to our patrifocal present.

Consider human males exhibiting neoteny or maturational delay contrasted to females showing acceleration or maturational acceleration as pairing together neotenous, cooperative males with maturational-accelerated, commanding females.  We would hypothesize this to be a matrifocal society.  Now, consider the reverse, with neotenous females mating with accelerated, dominating males in a patrifocal society.  Heterochrony is the evolutionary biological principle that explores the influence of neoteny and acceleration on the evolution of species.

Last, note in neuropsychological studies of handedness and cerebral dominance in humans that there is a seamless arc of handedness tendencies beginning at the left end with strong left-handers bridging over to the right side with strong right-handers.  Most people are toward the center, many being right-handed but displaying some left-handed aspects.

An overlapping of all three of these academic traditions suggests a single process manifesting in three seemingly different areas.  Anthropological social structure exploring matristic vs. patristic frames, evolutionary biological neoteny/acceleration studies following the influence of changing maturation rates on physiologies and neurologies over time and neuropsychological evaluations examining the relationships among cerebral lateralization and handedness, maturation speeds and hormonal influences.

All three pathways lead to a woman’s womb.  The alchemy of our evolution focuses on a moment in later pregnancy when a child’s maturation rate is set by the mother’s testosterone levels, and hypothetically the child’s compulsion to be selective is established by the mother’s estrogen level.  How cooperative/commanding and how discriminating a person grows up to be is decided by the mother’s hormonal levels, levels heavily influenced by environmental factors.

Our evolution is only about genes insofar as genes are programmed to be open-ended, taking into consideration environmental information before making major decisions.

Decisions such as social structure, personality structure, maturation speed, degrees of caring, aesthetics, cerebral lateralization, handedness, creativity, physical dexterity, abstract thinking proclivities, cooperative tendencies and referential consciousness are all informed by testosterone and estrogen levels in the womb.

Pretty much most of what makes us human is decided in the womb, based on parents’ hormonal tendencies and environmental information.

We are moving into a new era where a healthy environment is becoming understood as integral to societal health.  Forty years ago there was no environmental movement.  Twenty years from now the environment will be the primary focus of governmental institutions across the world.  In a single lifetime, everything has changed.

Integral to understanding these changes is understanding the ways that we are integrated into the environment as individuals and as a species.  In ancient Catal Huyuk in Asia Minor, the womb was worshipped as the goddess.  There was understanding of how humans were connected to the environment through a woman.  These insights are re-emerging.

What formerly seemed separate has become connected in the past, in our future and in the now.

“The diversity of human skills and the improbability that any one individual could be good at everything makes it reasonable to suggest that different genotypes, for different patterns of CD [cerebral dominance], are associated with various strengths and weaknesses that complement and balance one another in the population as a whole.” (Annett, Handedness and Brain Asymmetry, p. 186)

Thirty years ago in Guatemala, a student of Marian Annett, W. J. Demarest, evaluated Mayan and Ladino (mixed Spanish and Indian) children to see if their handedness distributions were similar to Annett’s UK studies.  Annett hypothesized that the way that the British are cerebrally organized would carry over to humans across the planet based upon the fairly consistent manifestations of left-handedness that are observed.

The conclusion of the Guatemalan study suggested that the Mayan children did not exhibit the same distribution of handedness, implying a different distribution of cerebral lateralization.  The Mayan children drifted further to the left, emphasizing that they might be less lateralized for language.  The thesis of this website would argue that the Mayans exhibit a more matrifocal social structure than Western societies, the left drift in handedness appraisals suggesting an older genotype.

In another study, indigenous Americans located in the Amazon rain forest were described as being more right-handed than the European norm.  The Yanomano of the Amazon are violently patrifocal with ratios as high as 140/100 male/female, with female infanticide being the convention.

If we assume that South and Central American indigenous populations migrated from Asia at about the same time, and that varying handedness distributions across the Americas reflect social structure, then it would be interesting to consider that as social structures metamorphosized over time, those changes were accompanied by degrees of handedness.

If a society over the course of thousands of years moves back and forth, left and right across the cerebral dominance/handedness/social structure distribution, informed by a mother’s uterine testosterone and estrogen levels, do changes in the mother’s hormone levels delaying rates of maturation for males, accelerating them for females, sometimes result in a reverse effect?

For example, let’s make believe that the Mayans were Yanomano-like 3,000 years ago, engaging in female infanticide, warrior-like, combative to a T.  If a contemporary Mayan baby were compelled to evolutionarily drift backward by changes in a mother’s uterine testosterone levels, and the child drifted back 3,000 years to when male testosterone levels were high, not low, what would be the maturation rate and testosterone level of the children?

If we assume that we were matrifocal as we departed Africa 50,000-80,000 years ago, growing more patrifocal over the millennia, what of those that grew patrifocal, and then drifted back in a matrifocal direction?  In other postings, I’ve proposed that is exactly what is occurring now in the U.S., led by what is happening in Scandinavian countries.  Consider that in Scandinavia, possibly highly patrifocal in the relatively recent past, embryos now bathed in a high-testosterone uterine environment propelling them into the past might arrive instead in a patrifocal society.

Unless Scandinavian contemporary matrifocal society is already firmly established further past or back than the evidence of their relatively recent patrifocal frames.

That would suggest that the hypothetical Mayans with a Yanomano past are hormonally the ancestors or forebears of the Yanomano.

I guess I’ve answered my question, untied the knot.  The implication is that there are smaller waves within the larger waves of our evolution where past and future are extremely relative.  What would seem to be an innovation may be an ancient re-emergence.  What may seem like moving forward in time is moving back.

Contemporary piercings, tattoos, rhythmic music, far less marriage than in the recent past may all be profoundly non-innovative.  Many contemporary trends may be examples of our changing cerebral dominance, handedness, social structure proclivity and hormonal constellations as we drift backward in hormonal time.