It’s only been this year that I don’t feel a Cold War chill when the Evanston air raid sirens go off after snowstorms to alert the community that side street plowing is underway.  I grew up deeply impacted by the societal certainty that the world would end in nuclear conflagration. Polls from the 1960s showed the majority of Americans believed that the world would end in nuclear war.  The Cold War weighed upon my mind and my dreams when I was a child and a young man.  There was no sound more terrifying than the air raid sirens.  Practice on Tuesday mornings always, without exceptions, brought me the chill of terror.

An activist’s showing of Dr. Strangelove this last January was followed by a discussion.  It was taking place in Hyde Park, a few blocks from Obama’s home at the 57th Street Friends Building.  I chose not to watch the film; instead I read in the next room.  When I was young, I saw Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe and On the Beach.  These three films probably politicized me more than any other single event, as I was shifted left by forming an identity with a world I perceived as deeply threatened in a way that I felt deeply threatened.  Watching those movies was a terrifying experience in the 50s and 60s when they came out.  I did not feel a desire to revisit those feelings.

Listening to the movie just outside the door, I scanned academic bibliographies for theory leads.  I was not jolted by what I heard in the next room.  It’s taken almost 50 years, but I no longer feel haunted by the bomb.

I stepped back into the room for the finale of the movie and the discussion.  The discussion was a shock.

Many of the people in the room expressed the experience that the movie now was terrifying for them whereas it had not been when they saw it the first time over 40 years ago.  This confused me.  Then several people expressed the opinion that the world is a far more dangerous place now than it was during the Cold War.  Several people in the room believed that worldwide conflagration is a more certain thing now than then.  No one expressed a different opinion.

I’ve concluded that this has far more to do with stories, the stories we tell ourselves, than with the reality around us.

Just like any other community, the American Left loves its stories.  The American Left, like most other communities, also tells itself the story that what the community believes to be true, is true.  I wouldn’t be an active participant if I didn’t agree as least some of the time.  Still, at events like this discussion of the movie, I am stunned by how powerful our stories are, informing our reality, molding our perception to embrace alternative realities.

From where I sit, there has been a slow, steady stepping back from the nuclear abyss.  Yes, we have a long way to go.  Yes, there is the strong possibility of horror in our future.  But the threat of worldwide nuclear annihilation has dramatically diminished.  American bombers are no longer constantly in the air.  We share the space station with the Russians, relying upon them for transport.  We have strong ties with the Chinese.

The Left engages in exaggeration, but more than that, we tell ourselves things that are not true.  Those untrue words serve to focus our attentions and motivate ourselves to accomplish goals.  Telling ourselves and one another stories, our community coheres, making it possible to easily work together.  Sometimes the stories leave out relevant information.

In January, when the Gaza protests were gathering together hundreds of thousands in protest across the world, the story of horrors, the media coverage of those stories and the protests objecting to the conditions that created those stories continued to pry apart the priorities of Israeli West Bank settlers and Americans that sympathized with the Israeli government view that the Jewish nation was threatened by terrorists.  We have a long way to go before the American government stops funding Israel.  Between now and then, the stories Americans tell themselves will have to be based on information different from that which the Israeli Right Wing seeks the American public to see.  Video coverage of the massacres in Gaza told a different story.  On the Left, there was a kind of exultation and vindication that the real story was being told.

There was relief that the word was getting out after the endless Gaza boycott and decades of horrors committed with little coverage.  Activists and nonactivists were propelled into the streets to voice their support for the Palestinians.  The community was strengthened by the telling of the community’s story to the society at large.

Yet, like the missing pieces in the Dr. Strangelove discussion, in the Gaza protests there was no discussion of the fact that it was the horror that was creating news to inspire change.  The innocents were martyrs for the story that needed to be told.  If the original missiles sent into Israel from Gaza could be taken back, Hamas would not do so.  War itself had become a Leftist activist intervention to achieve change.  With new communications technologies, video everywhere, even with the Israeli government shutting down cell bandwidth during the war, information was getting out that supported the Palestinian position.

The story within the story is that the violence feels necessary for the violence to end.  Both sides are colluding to kill vast numbers of an already repressed people to achieve their release from horrible conditions.  The awfulness is compounded by the story of destruction being a story that both sides want to tell.

Growing up, listening to grandmother, I was told the Jews were special.  I was told that Jews suffered more than other peoples.  In my child’s mind, I thought she was saying that Jews were special because we suffered more than other peoples.  I thought the suffering and the special were connected.

Then I somewhere concluded that because I suffered, I was special.  I suffered from feeling terrified.  I was stalked by a nuclear end.  I experienced myself as being unique.

Growing older, withdrawing from suffering, fear lifting, I realize specialness and suffering are unrelated.  Yet, in some strange, twisted way, the Jewish nation is conferring its specialness upon the Palestinian people.  The Jewish people are sharing perhaps their most powerful story, the story that we are unique because we suffer.  They are sharing the story with their “enemy.”  The horrors inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Jewish nation feel like the kind of deep abuse that one family member inflicts upon another.  There is a sickness to it that transcends a normal war.

In the end, there will be peace.  It will take time.  And, perhaps in the end, the need to make suffering part of the story will not be necessary anymore.

“As early as the first day of life, the human neonate moves in precise and sustained segments of movement that are synchronous with the articulated structure of adult speech.  These observations suggest a view of development of the infant as a participant at the outset in multiple forms of interactional organization, rather than as an isolate. …  In contrast, microanalysis of pathological behavior — for instance, that of subjects with aphasic, autistic, and schizophrenic conditions — reveals marked self-asynchronies.  Delayed auditory feedback also markedly disturbs this self-synchrony. …  For example, as the adult emits the KK of “come,” which lasts for 0.07 second, the infant’s head moves right very slightly (Rvs), the left elbow extends slightly (Es), the right shoulder rotates outward slightly (ROs) the right hip rotates outward fast (ROf), the left hip extends slightly (Es), and the big toe of the left foot adjusts (AD).  These body parts sustain these directions and speeds of movement together for this 0.07-second interval.  This forms a “unit” composed of the sustained relation of these movements of the body. …  This 2-day-old infant displayed segments of movement synchronous with the adult’s speech during the entire 89-word sequence.  In other words, this is a sustained and precise occurrence.  Another 2-day-old infant sustained similarly synchronous movement throughout a series of 125 words of tape-recorded female speech. …  This study reveals a complex interaction system in which the organization of the neonate’s motor behavior is entrained by and synchronized with the organized speech behavior of adults in his environment.  If the infant, from the beginning, moves in precise, shared rhythm with the organization of the speech structure of his culture, then he participates developmentally through complex, sociobiological entrainment processes in millions of repetitions of linguistic forms long before he later uses them in speaking and communicating.  By the time he begins to speak, he may have already laid down within himself the form and structure of the language system of his culture.  This would encompass as multiplicity of interlocking aspects: rhythmic and syntactic “hierarchies,” suprasegmental features, and paralinguistic nuances, not to mention body motion styles and rhythms.  This may provide an empirical basis for a new approach to language acquisition.” (Condon, W. S. & Sander, L. W. (1974) Neonate movement is synchronized with adult speech: interactional participation and language acquisition.  Science 183: pp. 99-101)

I came across a passage that referred to the work above maybe thirty years ago.  It might have been while I was studying Neurolinguistic Programming in 1981.  I was astonished that such a thing could be true, that newborn infants were wiring in the sounds of their environment with micro movements that allowed them to integrate the world into their body, not just their brain.  The research suggested that human development was being informed by the environment in ways both subtle and deep.  We are likely listening and dancing to the sounds we hear while enveloped in the waters of the womb.

In 1997, I was standing in line at the grocery store at Jewel in Evanston.  On the cover of one of the gossip mags was a reference to a study that children can learn to sign earlier than they can learn to talk.  Almost a year and a half into a research binge even deeper than the one I had been involved in when I was studying Neurolinguistic Programming, seeing the reference to sign coming before speech, remembering the study about dancing infants, I was hit by associational lightning.  Everything made sense.  I felt a certainty that everything was connected.  I could see the surface of where these connections were, but they quickly receded beyond what I could consciously grasp.  At that point I was reading perhaps two books a week, mostly anthropology, comparative religion and evolutionary biology.  The pace accelerated.  And then, six months later, after I’d departed from my profession (running a sales firm), I descended completely into study, mostly neuropsychology.

Six months after that, about a year after the grocery store line revelation, I stepped back into shared reality to find a new profession.  A peculiar aspect of my previous profession, selling calendars and greeting cards, is that I got paid almost a year after an order was written.  The Far Side calendars by Gary Larson sold to Montgomery Wards, Sears, Walgreens and OSCO made it possible for me to disappear into the arcane details of the contemporary neurological implications of 19th century theories of biological evolution examined from a social structure point of view.

A reference to children speaking in sign before speech reminding me of a paper on infants embedding language in the body made the association that provided the perspective to see connections where I only suspected that connections were.  I believe it was the National Inquirer that ran the story about children and signing.  Inspiration can come from unlikely places.

For more details on this adventure, click here.

Rosanna Schatzki works with me conducting research on diseases and conditions.  We’re starting off by looking for connections that support the thesis that breast cancer, prostate cancer and testicular cancer have correlations with the many variables connected to our theory.  I’m expecting increased incidence of relatively rare conditions like male breast cancer in populations such as the Jews and blacks, who have migrated from equatorial regions.  I’m also expecting higher rates in Scandinavian countries.  I told Rosanna to check to see if Iceland shows higher rates of male breast cancer.

Yesterday she discovered a study that concluded that there are unusually high rates of male breast cancer among Icelanders and Ashkenazi Jews.  We’re off and running.

Paul Whittaker works with me finding the email addresses of academics conducting research in areas related to what I explore.  For example, I’ll give him a book closely connected to my work, such as Geoffrey Miller’s The Mating Mind or Simon Baron-Cohen’s Prenatal Testosterone in Mind and I’ll have him, using Google, uncover the contact information for selected professors cited in the books.  When a piece comes up that seems related to a professor’s work, I email an invitation to visit.  Almost 50% of the people I email respond to these invitations.

I’ve finished emailing more than 1,000 of these researchers the synthesis piece, “Introduction to the Theory of Waves,” which Roger finished editing.  Each email was customized to each researcher specialty.  That took six weeks to do.

Co-director Laurel Lambert Schmidt is recently guided Wisconsin activists on the use of the just-created Wiscaction.org website, part of the growing Peace, Justice and Environment Project network of statewide networks.  We have more than 42 states in the system and are seeking to have the country completed by July.  More than 1,200 organizations around the country are being served by these online tools with powerful communications features.  Over 10,000 organizations are in our database.  Laurel’s work has been integral to organizers around the country learning to effectively use these tools.  I can’t imagine what this project would look like without Laurel’s passion, attention to detail, laser-like intelligence and astonishing hard work.

Programmer David Larson continues to come up with remarkable and innovative ways to make these networks useful to the activist community.  Soon we hope to have the ability for any individuals or organizations to instantly create their own highly sophisticated website with integrated social networking.  We’re trying to make this free.  We were the first to offer multiple degree of separation online action tracking, which was picked up by Charge.org and is now being used effectively by Facebook.  Here we are seeking to integrate everything we’ve created into a single personal package.

The recession is finally hitting my website design and development business, although a little later than it’s hit most.  In the last three months, we’ve lost 24 clients.  Others are downgrading services to save costs.  Others are adding our services because we’re cheaper than competitors.  This quarter we added 16 clients, many being folks that I dropped off information to by cold calling.  Cold calls (walking in the door and dropping off a flyer) and referrals are still by far the best way to bring in new business.

Rosanna has agreed to be our specialist that will guide clients in the use of My Space, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.  I work with over 400 businesses designing, maintaining and marketing their websites.  Rosanna will enhance the ability of the various firms and individuals we work with to be able to understand and operate in the surging world of social networking.

Many years ago I had one person helping me, Bob Alanis.  Now there are six of us.  Central to everything that happens here is Bob.  Bob is the heart of what makes the web firm work.  There is no way to overestimate Bob’s contributions.  Personable, patient, knowledgeable and a joy to be with, Bob has made making a living as stress free as is possible.

These three things that I do may not seem obviously related:  designing evolutionary theory to usefully predict the causes of medical diseases and conditions; the creation of a Left/Progressive national network of networks integrating online the work of over 1,200 peace, justice and environmental organizations; and serving the local business community by creating and maintaining their websites.

Yet, the people I work with in all three projects often influence or are directly involved in the other projects.  The only person involved in all three is Marcia, my wife.  She is the linchpin, the hub that everything revolves around.  She makes it possible for me to trust.  Without trust, I cannot leap into the unknown.

Then there is Dana, Beck, Rosalie, Craig and others that make the difference between things feeling deeply satisfying and gratifying and it being just another day.

Then there are the children and grandchildren, emerging in these essays over time.

The enthusiasm and talents of these incredible folks make possible these things I do.  These are the people that I am devoted to.

Our culture is in denial.  We are telling ourselves everything is going to get better in a little while, or if not in a little while, a somewhat longer time.  Then we are thinking yesterday’s normal will return.  There seems little understanding for how far the foundation of our society and our accompanying beliefs have already shifted.  There also seems little understanding for how fast the acceleration is continuing.

Observing the Obama Administration interventions, it’s clear that many decisions are being delayed until a more powerful impetus emerges from below and a consensus or new conventional wisdom starts to surface.  Trillions are being spent to maintain the system that got us where we are.  This is not unlike a drug addict borrowing money to buy a better class of less toxic drugs.

Though a robust majority of citizens in this country support national health care and enhanced government services, the myth still lingers that the United States is qualitatively better than other societies with attributes having something to do with liberty, freedom, independence, innovation and creativity.  There is the story that has been told for many years that this country’s accomplishments, usually economic accomplishments, have to do with unrestrained creativity nurtured by an environment unencumbered by regulations.  Money spent to enhance the lives of people who are not engaged in the process of being creative to make more money should not be encouraged.

The media has started to turn away from this story line that encourages the maintenance of an elite.  The shift in story line is discovering creativity in the lives of individuals and innovation in what we as individuals create.  We are discovering creativity in the context of individuals serving communities.  With the collapse of the consumer economy founded upon the destruction of nonrenewable resources, we are discovering that our ties to one another offer deeper satisfaction than the accumulation of products that end up congregating resources in the hands of a very small group of people.

Where do we begin?  We need to tax those corporations and individuals accumulating the most resources.  Heavily regulate industries whose behaviors have repercussions outside their immediate circle.  The days of believing that we are not all interconnected are over.

Free college, great schools, free public transportation, guaranteed minimum income, single payer health care, free day care and two years of national service largely serving populations overseas.  Overseas commitments include a deep commitment to the United Nations, including an immediate end of world hunger with free health services for all.

This is the beginning, the foundation for a world society able to excel in the act of being human.  By taking care of one another, revering the community and acting from our hearts, real creativity will emerge.

The shift is already underway.

Consider the exhibition of partnership society or matrifocal features in Scandinavian societies and evidence of these qualities in the Canadian, New England, Minnesota and Wisconsin populations.  In earlier pieces, we’ve noted the possible relationships between the need for Vitamins A and D in Scandinavian populations and the exhibition of neotenous features in both sexes of the populations, such as blond hair, blue eyes, lanky builds and lactate tolerance.  Observing the egalitarian social and political aspects of Scandinavian nations, I’ve hypothesized that there might be a direct connection between the neotenous features of individuals within a population and the partnership or matrifocal features exhibited by the society as a whole.

I’m seeing similar patterns in other regions of the world.  Of course, individuals from Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark have immigrated to Canada, New England, Minnesota and Wisconsin, carrying their biological and social proclivities with them.  Would this explain why North Dakota and Montana are so conservative by comparison?  Do North Dakota and Montana have different ethnic makeups?

I’m seeking evidence that simply living in a northern latitude influences populations to exhibit neotenous features.  One place to look for information is by exploring differences between indigenous American Indian populations.

…

“Thus evidence will be presented to show that among the present traditional hunting-fishing population such as the Eskimo, Barry also found a lower degree of conformity on the Asch Conformity Test and more independent values.  Hence a higher number of left-handers was predicted for the Eskimo, while observed incidence is 11.3 percent.  (Dawson, John L. (1977) An anthropological perspective on the evolution and lateralization of the brain.  Annals of the New York Academy of Science 299: p. 426)

This is not much of an increase in left-handedness.  As a side note, female infanticide is common along with other powerful patrifocal tendencies in Eskimo populations.  This would not support the thesis that latitude alone might influence neotenous trajectories.  (Click here for my hypothesis that neoteny and left-handedness are closely associated in human evolution.)

…

Taurodontism, a tooth condition that evidences itself in 57% of Down’s syndrome subjects, often shows up in Eskimo populations and in Neanderthal remains.  Down’s features are often highly neotenous. (See Opitz, John M. & Gilbert-Barness, Enid F. (1990) Reflections on the pathogenesis of Down syndrome.  American Journal of Medical Genetics 7: p. 42)  Are there other neotenous features that Eskimos retain?

…

“Balikci (1967: 623) has discussed the various cultural strategies, including child betrothal, adaption, and importation of wives, that were employed to ensure satisfactory recruitment of females into the adult population.  Interestingly, such practices existed alongside female infanticide, the very practice that contributed above all others to the shortage of women!”  (Freeman, Milton M. R. (1971) A social and ecological analysis of systematic female infanticide among the Netsilik Eskimo.  American Anthropologist 73, 5: p. 1013)

Freeman’s study does not do much to support my conjectures.  My hypothesis states that female infanticide and neoteny are only related in a Conventional Patrifocal context (see Introduction to the Theory of Waves).

…

“Amongst the various Amerindian populations (Figs 91 and 92) there is a wide variation in height means.  North American Indians are taller and heavier than South American and Central American Indians.  The Blackfeet means are well up in the European range, as are the means for British Columbian Indians (Birkbeck, Lee, Meyers & Alfred, 1971; Lee et al., 1971; not plotted).  The Apache Indian and Alaskan Eskimo children are also considerably taller at all ages than the South and Central Americans.  Even though they do have many traits in common, North American and South American Indians differ considerably in physique and craniofacial structure.”  (Eveleth, P. B. & Tanner, J. M. (1976) Worldwide Variation in Human Growth: Cambridge Univ. Press, London p. 127)

An issue would be whether the Indians at the very south of South America start to increase in height again.  Otherwise, this passage would seem to suggest that northern populations are taller than southern populations, which would support the ideas we are playing with.

…

“The highest proportion of left-handedness that I could discover from a reliable source was for the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia, 17 to 22 per cent of whom were left-handed or ambidextrous for writing (Marrion 1886). [footnote says ‘Marrion reported that no fewer than 6 per cent of Kwakiutl Indians could write with either hand.  However, there is no tradition of written language in this culture, and many adults do not write after leaving school.  Marrion (personal communication) noted that many treated writing their name as an activity akin to drawing.’” (Bishop, D. V. M. (1990) Handedness and Developmental Disorder.  MacKeith, Manchester p. 12)

Bishop’s excerpt would support a position that northern populations exhibit matrifocal features such as higher percentages of left-handedness and ambidexterity.

…

I can’t say the patterns are very clear.  This first pass through easily accessible studies shows indigenous American populations with features supporting and not supporting the thesis that Northern populations evidence more neoteny than Southern populations.  Studies of the Hopi, for example, show that they have a number of matrifocal features as do other tribes scattered across North and South America, though North America seems to be where these features congregate.

Ten years ago as this theory came together, then called “Shift Theory,” I imagined setting up a research foundation to explore the medical implications of the hypothesis. With the original impetus behind the research being an exploration of the origin of dragon and then serpent myths across six continents (see humanevolution.net), I titled the first site the Serpent Foundation. The serpent suggested, for me, the matrifocal origins of culture and the serpent as a symbol of the medical profession, a connection derived from those early societies.

With time I let the title drop. It seemed cultish and, in our culture, suggestive of something sinister. Visitors were sometimes confused. Confusion was not the effect I was looking for. Nevertheless, serpentfd.org is still a functional domain name of the original site, now going by the URL sexualselection.org.

Ten years later, I’ve brought in a research assistant, Rosanna Schatzki, to help me gather information and help write papers that will appear in this blog from time to time. Roger Olson continues his excellent editing as he has over the last year, having edited almost 400 pages of these essays.

Of the many conditions and diseases that lend themselves to interpretation by this thesis, I’m thinking of starting with breast cancer in males and females, prostate cancer and testicular cancer. There are a number of problems in evaluating the influence of hormone levels on these diseases. We’re hypothesizing several environmental conditions that can influence the results. I’ve noted in earlier essays how this may have compromised Norman Geschwin’s work. Geschwin and Galaburda’s Cerebral Lateralization has influenced much of what happens in this thesis. Still, this seems a reasonable place to begin since our hypothetical four social structures and associated hormonal constellations clearly suggest where specific kinds of cancers will congregate.

We make the following predictions. Unable to perform experiments or studies, we research the literature for support and contradictions to our positions. (T=high testosterone, t=low testosterone, E=high estrogen, e=low estrogen)

High female breast cancer is Classic Matrifocal Female TE/Male te.
High male breast cancer is Contemporary Matrifocal Female Te/Male tE
High prostate and testicular cancer Warrior Patrifocal Female tE/Male Te (and populations influenced by the pineal testosterone effect (see Introduction to the Theory of Waves).

We would not expect to see high levels of any of these cancers in Conventional Patrifocal Female te/Male TE or those Asian societies where sexual hormone levels are shifted downward to lower levels. (See Tentative Conclusion to the Estrogen Discussion)

There should be accompanying effects in related areas. Those with higher percentages of left-handedness, anomalous dominance and larger corpus callosums will likely exhibit higher percentages of breast cancer. There will likely be a close association with autism, Asperger’s, OCD, female borderline personality disorder and male narcissistic personality disorder.

We’d expect societies exhibiting high percentages of left-handedness to fit into Classic or Contemporary Matrifocal. These might be Nigerian Yoruba, Kwakiutl and others. We’ll look for evidence of elevated breast cancer in those societies.

I’ve hypothesized the influence of the change in light on migrating equatorial populations creating autism. This same effect will likely propel higher incidences of breast, prostate and testicular cancer as individuals in those populations are pushed to both hormonal extremes. Pretty much all the diseases and conditions we’re exploring should show elevated levels among this population. I’m also starting to wonder if these same effects might be influencing nonmigrant northern populations, having even possibly encouraged the Scandinavian paradigm with only the matrifocal prototypes preserved for their advantages in preserving vitamin A and D.

In the earlier piece, Latino Repercussions, I noted seven variables that skew the patterns that we seek clear evidence of. Variables that can influence what we are exploring include not only migration patterns and latitude issues (regarding light), but seasonal effects that include the possible influence of autumn allergies on a mother’s uterine hormonal levels, father effects revolving around how a father’s environment may influence his hormone levels, social structure changes in transitional times, social structure changes over the last few hundred years, cross-ethnicity pairings, multigenerational echo effects and the standard basket of environmental influences that influence hormone levels. Conducting this research is a little like playing basketball in a hailstorm on a slippery hillside.

This will take patience.

I’m becoming one of those people that believe that there is no such thing as random chance.  I don’t believe in god in any of the Western traditional senses.  I don’t believe in reincarnation.  I don’t believe each person’s life is preordained.  I believe in what I’ve personally experienced, and then I take that with a grain of salt, figuring there are unconscious agendas.  In a way, I live my life inside a big “as if” frame, believing many things tentatively based upon the information that I have.

Part of this revolves around my belief that my unconscious is aware of everything my conscious is aware of, except earlier and with more information, and it is less distracted than my conscious mind.  I take my conscious machinations as sort of the froth at the edge of big waves hitting shore.  Lots of sound and fury, but most significant is the depths that it implies.

My feeling that there is little random chance is revolving around the sense that I as an individual and we as a society are living lives that are guided by the stories we create.  I often have the sense that as compulsive story makers we are constructing layers and layers of realities that engage in a sort of evolutionary selection process.  We tell stories about stories struggling with stories.  This process goes on in our heads and across the scale of our societies.

It’s almost as if there’s a whole level of evolutionary unfolding happening at a level outside of perception.  Similar to the concept of Dawkins’ memes, this concept is different in that the pure survival of a story is not the focus of the struggle.  What is important is that the story offers an efficient bridge between the human imagination and the sense-based world.  Those stories most effective at reproducing an infinite, interconnected, everything-influencing-everything reality offer the holders of those stories an advantage when integrating with sense-based reality.

In January of 2008 when Obama won the Iowa caucus, a story unfolded as a possibility.  In the story I saw forming, Obama wins the Democratic nomination, the economy crashes, Republicans are blamed for the crash (and the other Bush debacles) and Obama enters office with a mandate.  The story made sense if our society understood (at the unconscious level) the environmental emergency taking place and needed a powerful story to compel compliance with coming changes.

I began with the presupposition that the coming crisis is real, that a society like an individual has an unconscious (as Jung proposed) and that the societal unconscious will address the crisis by creating circumstances, a story, that most people will with conviction share.

Obama’s winning in Iowa, to me, was the first chapter in a story that involves a major shift in identity that will allow for an ability to address the crisis.

Another example of noting an event and seeing it as part of a forming story was the mainstream media first lambasting Palin for lying, right after the convention, and then skewing GM, Ford and Chrysler CEOs for taking private planes to congressional hearings.  For the first time that I could remember, truth and integrity were being promoted by the press in a context that was not necessarily in their self interest.  It wasn’t just any truth and integrity.  The media was exploring corporate incongruity and noting hypocrisy even when engaged in by major advertisers.  GM, Ford and Chrysler pay large portions of mainstream media expenses.  I see a new story emerging.  In this story, corporations and the elites are held responsible for society’s demise. The AIG bonus debacle may be the tipping point in this tale.

Right now I am watching for how the coming depression will be characterized.  Will it be called the Great Depression II as Krugman titled it on 1/5/09, or will it have another name that suggests the story we are at the beginning of telling ourselves?

The last depression bridged over into that hybrid of global integration and global conflict called WW II.  This depression will refine global integration and offer horizontal, diverse and transparent opportunities.  Will it end with conflict?  Not the kind we saw last time around.  Instead, we will see vast resources expended on an integrated multinational embrace to prevent any more of the horrible refugee plight, starvation, border conflict and conflagrations appearing on Youtube and the web.

This will not be called Great Depression II or Depression 2.0.  It will be called something like the Vast Depression because it will touch everyone.  It will be profound, everything will change, and though the word “Vast” sounds like the word “Last,” this Depression will be the beginning.

Humans like stories with a happy ending.  We also need cautionary tales.  Consider how we tell ourselves the story of the coming years.  It will be the story that our species uses as our foundation tale.

I’ve been viewing this work as that of an artist that plays with ideas.  As an artist, I change or modify my perspective on a sweep of data until I acquire a position (have an experience) that suggests beauty, subtlety and complexity.  I then evaluate those ideas based on how potentially useful they are.

In other words, I am looking for useful stories.

I am coming to the conclusion that the world is so complex and so gorgeously constructed that any theory–that is what I specialize in, creating theories–can only be a temporary, partial explanation.  It feels obvious that the universe was created by god as artist.  It is while deeply engaged in the artistic process that the universe feels most understandable.

So, I look for patterns.  If I had been trained in music, I would be composing and playing tunes.  That not being the case, I compose and play the patterns evident in the world around me.  Theory formation is so like music because those patterns I draw out from my environment are so deeply influenced by my culture, the information available, my sense structure (sight, feeling, hearing, taste and smell) and my personal experiences.  The theories I come up with are not arbitrary, but they are deeply informed by my place in space and time.

Whereas a musicians works with notes, bars, phrases and musical sentences, I as a theorist play with fads, trends and transformations.  I parse out time by examining social pattern durations and look for the beautiful, subtle and complex larger patterns evident in this world that I see, hear and feel.

There is as much truth in a theory as there is reality in a song.  Every song serves to communicate emotion and create a consensus about how the world works.  Every theory seeks to consolidate structure long enough to make it useful to perform predictions.  Time is an issue.  Reality changes as time flows, and a theory can grow dissonant, like a song developed for ancient ears.

I am an artist playing with fads, trends and transformations, constructing melodies that make it easy for listeners to feel how the music sounds in the moments coming up.

The narrative fine arts (music, dance, song, storytelling) often allow the participant to predict the future in a fashion that makes it feel like what is being created is by both artist and participant.  The artist sets up a structure that allows specific futures to unfold.  The performer and the audience member experience closure at the conclusion of one of the many predicted pathways.

Concluding that reality is so deep, subtle, complex and ever changing as to be ungraspable except by works of art, I would suggest that science might be usefully redefined as art.  Let’s give up this idea that something can be known.  Reality can only be romanced.

Over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, higher education acquired its current denomination or discipline/subdiscipline structure.  Germany established a paradigm for government-academia relations that was reproduced in the United States and then utilized in the Second World War to create an integrated response to the international crisis.  University-government interlocking hierarchies were established that achieved national security goals.  The U.S. became a military behemoth and then the prime economic power.  The structure of higher education has reflected this vertical frame of reference.  The citation system has been integral to this rise.

It is a premise of this work that the two heterochronic directions of human evolution, neoteny and acceleration, also manifest in society.  Patrifocal societies, or what Eisler calls dominator societies, compel a vertical, top-down, male-control frame.  This reflects the societal encouragement of maturational accelerated, dominating males and neotenous, cooperative females.

I have been suggesting that contemporary society is in the middle of a transition to a matrifocal, matristic, partnership society featuring horizontal structures, egalitarian diversity, transparency and a breaking down of walls.  Commanding, maturationally accelerated women mate with cooperative, neotenous men to support a society where verticality feels like an obstruction to creativity and a sharing of resources.

The Internet has been a transportation system down which many of these changes have been traveling.  Our present highway system was built largely for the military in the middle of the 20th century.  The Internet, though originally conceived as a military tool, has evolved to become the conduit through which matrifocal values are distributed to the society at large.

At present, the Internet is training our young people to think like anarchists.  I mean “anarchists” in the sense that they are observing and experiencing subtle and complicated things getting done with little or no top-down administration.  Events get planned, high quality information gets distributed, people self-organize, idea makers meet idea users and barriers drop.

Across the planet and throughout society, web users are experiencing the dropping of barriers and the collapsing of hierarchies.  This is not so clear to the rest of us.  To the young, this is feeling like the way the world works.

As the economy collapses, this new paradigm will recreate many towers into a single bridge.  That which is high and separate will become shared, transparent and horizontal.  Our higher education will see its center of gravity precipitously drop.

In academia, citations are coin of the realm.  Climbing the primate ladder requires citations–grooming rituals–that confirm bonds between allied forces in the competitive world of ideas.  Citations outline the exact territory of consensus and the community engaged in that support.  Just as there is hard currency, there are hard citations.  Hard citations keep academic hierarchy firm.

The Internet and open source is about soft citations.  Credit is derived by an individual’s participation in a project in a way that he or she receives respect from a community of peers for his or her contributions.  When people are participating in open source projects, citations are not currency for advancement but for esteem.

Open source is becoming societal philosophy, a foundation story.  It’s not just about pooling the creativity of the many to transcend the congregation of economic resources by the few.  Open source is changing the way we think.  It will change academia.  As the philosophy of soft citation moves up with the young people that achieve tenure, the vertical system supported by hard citation will fall.

Look at the web as a massive, growing citation system that distributes esteem horizontally at exponential speeds.  Compare that to the academic system with hard citations almost always recorded on paper and stored in libraries.  How long before higher education understands that healthy growth comes with the taking down of barriers, not a continued maintenance of walls?

That understanding is beginning.  Observe the proliferation of papers by young academics published not in journals but on the web.

I’ve often talked about the horizontalization of society in these essays as I’m describing the influence of neoteny and matrifocal culture on contemporary times.  I’ve presented my view that the exponential growth of the web is a direct result of these social impulses.  Consider that we are about to begin a profound transformation of our academic institutions that will result in a surge of unique ideas.

A big positive of our academic communities is that they provide a space for like minds to congregate and integrate ideas.  That space offers opportunities for peer review, from which useful consensus can emerge.  That space is about to exponentially expand.

There are two distinct kinds of information that is gathered, stored and distributed as part of the services that academic communities perform.  First, there are data.  It is essential that data be of high quality and trusted.  Ernst Haeckel compromised a whole school of evolutionary biology with liberties he took diagramming animal ontogeny.  Several successive U.S. administrations have modified inflation and economic growth metrics to enhance the picture they wished to see described.  Not good.  High quality data are vital to good science.

The second kind of information has to do with the predictions that result from the data or information.  It’s how we make a story that usefully estimates how our world works.  Theory formation requires trusted experimentation to prove the theory’s usefulness.  Here again high quality data are essential.  Experiments performed by nonprofessionals can’t engender the trust that is necessary for academic consensus.  Once a theory is constructed from trusted data and predictions are made, experiments to test those predictions must be of high enough quality that they can be relied upon.

We need professionals to create and store data.  We need amateurs to help make things up.

We are observing an amateurization of society that is disconcerting to the professionals, those that Kos calls the gatekeepers.  Media and entertainment are experiencing a surge in nonpaid or low paid, highly competent writers, critics and artists that are creating, posting and distributing high quality content.  The web now offers to amateur and professional alike almost unlimited access to high quality data, thus blurring the lines between those elevated by access to what was formerly limited information and the rest of us.  In other words, the surge in transparency, diversity and horizontal communication is not only toppling hierarchies but amateurizing information control.  The web is reconstructing professions formerly in the exclusive control of the professionals.

Musicians and their listeners are deciding between the two of them what they like without the professionals of the music industry controlling creation, production and distribution.  Amateur artists across the world are experiencing a feeling of elevation as the former hierarchies collapse.

Traditional news media, formerly the collectors, producers and distributors of information, have been transforming into almost exclusively interpreters of the news.  They have been letting go of the expensive news gathering machinery–foreign bureaus and local reporters working on unique stories–and instead providing opinions.  The amateurs have stepped in.  Blogging sites such as Kos and TPM are offering high quality information and opinion.  It’s becoming less clear with time what the professionals still offer that is within their exclusive control.

With escalating unemployment, we’ll see a surge in the amateur domain.  We’ll have amateur commerce with street vendors proliferating outside the brick and mortar context.  We’ll see amateur agriculture with co-ops and individuals growing their own food.  We’ll see amateur health care with a proliferation of interventions occurring outside a health delivery system that is breaking down.

We’ll see amateur finance funding nonbanking loan solutions that will provide money to lubricate the economy.  Watch for web-based community financing and micro loans from micro sources, with web-based barter systems using web units as an efficient amateur currency.

If it can be imagined, it will be tried.  With the new social networking tools, the chances of things tried receiving attention exponentially increase.

With the amateurization of society will come the amateurization of academia.  Professional data determination will still be required, but the theory construction that makes sense of the data will become the domain of any or all interested parties.  The trend will be encouraged by professors publishing works on their blogs or personal websites because they can’t easily or quickly find space on peer-reviewed pages.  Immediate response by a multitude of interested professionals and amateurs inside and outside the author’s area of expertise will encourage a proliferation of theorizing unconnected to professional journals.  Finally, the non-PhDs will start making unique contributions to domains formerly populated by pieces only appearing in rarified enclaves protected by peer review.

Experiments will still require a professional’s intervention.  Professional consensus will still be required to make sure information is of high quality.  But the theory formation?  Anybody can make up and tell a story.  An amateur can create a theory.  Watch for the amateurization of academia as web vehicles are designed that allow for the most erudite of the amateur ideas to emerge.  Consider what it would look and feel like if there were an integration of online academic journals and social networking software that allows for ranking as in Digg or Stumbleupon.

The neuroscientist and dolphin researcher John Lilly used to say, “Whatever you believe to be true is true or becomes true, experiencially and experimentally.”  In the new horizontal amateur society, what we can imagine can come to be.  Imagine academia invested with the imagination of a child.  Consider what our world will look like with imagination and knowledge allied at last.

“No one, least of all Williams and Kafatos, expect the eventual story to be so simple. But it does seem likely that normal development is controlled by gradually decreasing concentration of a hormone acting primarily at high levels of the regulatory system. This is also an ideal mechanism for the simple and rapid production of heterochronic effects. Any acceleration of adult characters by reduction in the titer of juvenile hormone, or extension of juvenile traits by maintenance of a high titer, represents heterochrony. Since minor alterations in the concentration of a hormone can lead to substantial changes in morphology, heterochrony may play an important role in geographic variation (secretion of juvenile hormone is influenced by temperature and photoperiod, for example), polymorphism (including sex, caste, and phase) and speciation itself.” (Gould, S.J. (1977) Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge: Belknap Press, pp. 295-6)

A premise of this work, this theory I’m calling the Theory of Waves, is that testosterone is instrumental in changing rates of maturation, leading to neoteny and acceleration. I’ve been eating and breathing this assumption for so long I forget that it is little discussed in the biological literature, let alone in neuropsychological or anthropological discussions. Gould above alludes to it, but I can’t find anywhere else in his papers or books that he goes into detail discussing the hormonal foundation for heterochrony. Darwin’s last great work, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, proposed a theory that described the sexual organs as producers of a substance that was influenced by the environment to impact evolution in a single generation. Darwin called them gemmules. We’d call them testosterone, estrogen and related hormones.

Gould seemed loath to explore in public Lamarckian implications of heterochronic theory. He described his colleagues’ confused responses to his having heavily emphasized heterochrony and recapitulation in his 1970s work, Ontogeny and Phylogeny. A focus on nineteenth century and early twentieth century non-natural selection evolutionary theory was not looked at as a conventional research path. Gould walked that path carefully. He was rewarded with deep positive regard and a host of graduate theses building off his work. Still, only recently has mentioning Lamarck’s name become a respected act, in large part because of the recent influence of evolutionary developmental biology.

Of the many assumptions built into this subtle and complex Theory of Waves, perhaps this is the most instrumental. Testosterone levels and the timing of testosterone’s introduction determine heterochronic trajectories, including maturational delay (paedomorphosis and neoteny) and maturational acceleration (recapitulation and condensation).

This work has taken a step further, hypothesizing that estrogen levels and the timing of estrogen introduction determine sexual selection proclivities (the focus on particular features as desirable) in addition to an attraction to childlike features. I can’t say I’ve consciously come across this suggestion in the literature. I’m pretty sure it’s there, probably in non-obvious contexts. Googling “estrogen” and “sexual selection” brings up this site first, suggesting there is little competition for the concept. My site receives no visitors searching for that term.

I’ve wracked my brain for many years, wondering why there is so little attention to the relationship between the sex hormones and human evolution. There are researchers out there, like the late Ryuichi Matsuda (see http://www.serpentfd.org/a/matsuda1987.html) with intuitions for these issues. It seems his work is not mainstream, or if mainstream, it seems he’s little followed, though I note he’s getting some attention from evolutionary developmental biologists. This is good.

Gregory Bateson in his Steps to an Ecology of Mind discussed a unique feature of the human species that he believed is responsible for our destructive behavior. Humans are able to visualize a future, splitting time, and then focus on the steps necessary to achieve a specific future. In addition, with humans, steps imagined and achieved on the way toward a future don’t have to be examined for their repercussions on other people or other aspects of the environment.

Competitors are encouraged to “stay focused.” Shutting out the world achieves goals. Bateson might suggest that this ability to shut out the world also destroys it.

This blog describes a hypothetical proto society characterized by dance-and-song-driven rituals and a population selecting neotenous features in our species over time. We lived in dreamtime. We communicated by gesture. Both cerebral hemispheres were the same size, the corpus callosum brain bridge was still wide, we did not split time and children did not know who their fathers were. We were random-handed, left and right-handed half the time.

There were changes, changes described in this work. The result was society stopped selecting exclusively for aesthetics and started selecting for those adept at spoken language, splitting time and telling stories. The right cerebral hemisphere grew smaller, the corpus callosum became thinner and dreams retreated to the time we spend asleep. While awake, imagination flourished with an ability to manipulate time. Consciousness was now split with two hemispheres allied but in poor communication. Instead of each individual being unconsciously part of a larger whole, each was now consciously divided.

Thesis and antithesis. The synthesis is what we face today. How does each individual become consciously part of the larger whole?

I am coming to the conclusion that this is not so much a spiritual or religious question as much as it is social and biological. As a species, we are in the process of making the transition to a form of consciousness that features a far higher number of interconnections in space and time than has been the case before the emergence of the social networking technologies. Observing the ways the young are using the new technologies and how they encourage the invention of even newer technologies that enhance the destruction of traditional ideas of space and time, I conclude that we are deep into a social/biological transition.

Our world is becoming characterized by massive interconnection with individuals, each a hub in a universe of incoming and outgoing information. To some degree, this mitigates the destructive capabilities of the split-brain, split-time human. We are each becoming experts in consultation with an increasing capacity to embrace the connotations of repercussion. We are developing an intuition or understanding that our ability to split time can create unintended consequences. Society is technologically and socially addressing the destruction we have wrought. Still, to transcend the dissociative plague that Bateson describes requires more than just technology.

In addition to evolving as a society, our biology is transforming. There has been a return of matrifocal values that include horizontal interconnection and the original matrifocal neurological structures. The numbers of left-handers have been increasing along with the numbers of neurological conditions characterized by both cerebral hemispheres being the same size with a wide corpus callosum. These are the members of the self described neurodiversity movement. Autistic and Asperger’s individuals are stating that they are not subjects of a disorder, but members of a new order. I would suggest that the representatives of the neurodiversity movement embody the re-emergence of matrifocal proto society, in a context where their strengths and intimacy with nondifferentiation can become the guide and balance to the modern split.

What does the neurological synthesis look like? I’m not exactly sure. I suspect it has something to do with what we’re observing in Scandinavia, though visually the new humans may look a lot more like the Obamas. Left-handed, lanky synthesizers are in our future. Speciation is not easy to predict.

I met a young person at a party.  She was a freshly minted clinical psychotherapist interning to become experienced in her profession.  As someone that had been seriously considering the same profession thirty years ago, I had questions about what models she uses to perform interventions.

I expected that she would be describing psychotherapeutic models I was unfamiliar with, and I was right.  What I had learned was mostly unfamiliar to her and vice versa.  The conversation was disjointed, though.  It took me to the end of the short conversation to discover a particularly important piece.  Almost all her patient contacts took place in a setting with no privacy, in rooms filled with other people, with people she would only see once or twice.

The reason the conversation was confused was that every minute to ninety seconds her cell phone would ring.  She’d then review what was on the screen and sometimes text.  It was after this occurred the fifth time that she told me that in the environment that she practiced her profession there was little in common with the way I’d been trained.

Thirty years is a long time in a social transition.  The relationship between time and attention is radically transforming.  Cell phone technologies, twitter and texting are abbreviating experience, layering the near and far away so they overlap, dramatically increasing the number of people we come in contact with every day.  Yet, the contacts are not particularly deep.  We have less uninterrupted time to explore each other in detail.  It is no wonder that the young therapist and I have different intervention models.  All my models assumed time to establish rapport, set up goals and construct new and useful pathways to the desired change.  In an age where the young are facile with divided and abbreviated attention, I’m not clear how the new models work.

With the increasing amounts of time available as unemployment and underemployment rise, and the dividend, layered and abbreviated use of time familiar to the young, I’m seeing in the near future a world culture so unique it borders on a speciation event.  In the world of biology two subspecies or species variations can so diverge in behavior that they cease to interbreed and eventually create different species.  For example, two insect variations might at first be able to successfully breed, but rarely do so because they are awake at two different times or populate two different areas of tall trees.  With time, interbreeding becomes genetically impossible.

Imagine a youth integrated into the new technologies attempting a bonding with another youth unfamiliar or unattracted to the new divided, layered and abbreviated use of time.  There would be a dissonance, a cultural divide perhaps greater than that of two people pairing that speak different languages.

At what point does our use of time become so fragmented that it starts to acquire aspects of dream?  In dream there are no two times.  What you imagine becomes real.  There is only the place you are in and the time you are in.  Layering different times (being in conversation with one person while texting another), abbreviating time and spending time in contact with those remote, are all contributing to invest waking life with an almost dreamlike quality.  In dream the narrative is designed by the dream creator, connecting the dreamer with the extended matrix of our origins.  In waking, our lives are becoming deeply impacted by the behavior of increasing numbers of other people.  We are becoming increasingly social animals influenced by an ever growing community.  Waking and dream are showing a potential to converge.

Psychotherapy is one of those professions at the forefront of the changes underway.  Clinicians will need many tools to address the variety of ways that people are impacted by changing times.  At least one course in philosophy might be useful, particularly a course on the philosophy of time.  It might also be useful to pay attention to those ways that new technologies are embedding in the waking world, integrated in ways formerly most at home in dream.

Over the last few decades, there has been a seeming decrease in available time as both parents needed jobs, traffic took longer to negotiate and leisure became less about relaxing and enjoying and more about decompressing.  At the same time, enormous amounts of money have gone into entertainment vehicles paid for by advertising dollars that we feel compelled to watch with the leisure time we have.

We are coming to an end of an age where just money buys influence and buys time.  The shift is subtle, yet unmistakable.

Online social networking has become the avenue through which individuals seek friends, cement relationships, look for respect, express creativity, listen for trends, consider proposals and search for jobs.  Those excelling at the medium put in the hours.  The number of people that an individual affects grows wider with time.  In the world of social networking, time equals influence.  Facebook, My Space, Twitter and the others use up enormous amounts of time.

As the economy spirals downward and our identity shifts from a consumer to a steward frame of reference, what we observe in media will transform as advertiser dollars disappear.  Programming will grow to reflect the creations of a new tech, social-networking-savvy population that produces unique content at least partially because there will be the time to do so.

Unemployment and the end of the consumer economy will encourage relationships and creativity in ways unimaginable before the web.  As advertising dollars disappear, so will corporate original content.  So will high quality corporate news.  There will be a huge demand for grass roots creativity that reflects the experience of the new tech savvy, social networking, nonconsuming population with time to share.  There will also be a huge demand for high quality information, news, stories and interpretation.  Perhaps we’ll soon see a grassroots media revolution with contributions made by people with the time to produce content and distribute it through the social networking networks they have created.

Whereas time used to equal money, we are moving into an age where time equals relationships.  Whereas before power came with money, in an aesthetic economy with steward values power accompanies the strength and number of bonds that one maintains.

We are in the midst of a shift so radical it’s not imaginable in the media we’re used to supplying news.  Shifts in use of time are so fundamental they’re not recognizable until seen from the other side.  These changes, of course, are necessary.  It is time.

I just noted the NY Times article on Somali Autism. My 1998 conjectures that this could occur are discussed in several pieces here. The piece, Somali Children in Minnesota, Autism and the Effects of Light on Uterine Testosterone supplies the best summary.

Information coming out today that I haven’t seen before include articles mentioning higher rates of autism in other countries among immigrants. The Huffington Post noted, “Higher than normal autism rates among children of immigrants have also been reported in Ireland, the UK and several cities in North America, especially Montreal.”

One article notes a Swedish study concluding autism is higher among Somali immigrants in Sweden.

I see no articles that mention my posted pieces on the subject, or the work of Norman Geschwind that inspired my hypothesis.

Attracted to making music during portions of my life, I’ve never given in to the desire to learn an instrument.  Instead, I’ve made music by learning a single key on an instrument and then played that instrument for a particular feeling, usually revolving around one song or two.  A flute makes a sad song, a harmonica offers encouragement, piano suggestions of wisdom, the recorder joy, kalimba sociality, drumming earnestness and sexuality, and the bouzouki loss.  Never having learned an instrument except for these brief visits, my fingers and lips are familiar with these evocations of feelings as if I lived in several foreign countries for short times, never having learned the language.

I approach theorizing in a similar manner.  I feel attracted to particular disciplines and the theories in those disciplines based upon the feelings that those theories awaken in me.  In the same way that I don’t learn an instrument, I don’t become any discipline’s adept, but I become somewhat proficient in those portions of the discipline that evoke powerful feelings, feelings of reverence.

I am guided by wonder.  My journeys across the fret boards/keys of instruments and the relationships evoked by theories in different disciplines are explorations characterized by my feeling pulled toward an experience that features a coming together, a synthesis.  I presuppose, I assume a single, sense-filled, understandable whole that can be evoked by melodies, harmonies, stories or theories.  I sometimes end up in the middle of a pattern convergence with an experience of flawless unity.  Then I seek pathways, stories or theories that can make it possible for someone else to connect to that experience of unity.  Clearly, science and art are closely allied in my experience.

There was a time that I only played the black keys on the piano.  I listened for what message could be best said within that particular boundary.  Jumping from discipline to discipline, I seek patterns that suggest no boundaries, listening for a discipline’s black keys and their connection to the larger patterns that bring a number of instruments together.

Unable to play an instrument, I listen for the non-obvious, obvious symphonic whole.

There has been a barrier preventing immigrants, gays, minorities and labor from achieving the power to gain respect.  Central to this barrier are media that rarely reflect the population that they broadcast to, instead hawking a conventional wisdom that serves controlling interests.

The huge immigrant rights demonstrations a couple years ago were driven in part by the participation of Spanish-speaking radio stations urging and informing people to participate.  These were very planned affairs coordinating an exclusive use of American flags vs. the flags of Latin nations, the wearing of white clothing and the participation of children.  Cell phones and text messaging were widely used to expand the crowds.  The effect was immediate and profound.  No anti-immigrant legislation was enacted.  A new organizing paradigm was born.

When opposition to Proposition 8 in California failed and gays lost the right to marry, and later when Gaza was attacked, spontaneous Facebook demonstrations proliferated across the country.  Cell phones and text messaging were widely used to inform.  Tens of thousands of people in hundreds of events congregated with little advanced notice.  Established organizers often arrived at demonstrations they did not themselves create, consulting and guiding overwhelmed Facebook sponsors as the events began.

When the rank-and-file union employees of the out-of-business Republic Doors and Windows manufacturing firm were denied over one million dollars in wages and benefits, they took over the plant and contacted the media.  Cell phones and text messaging were widely used to spread the word.  There was an immediate, powerful media response that emphasized the hypocrisy of the Bank of America refusing to take responsibility for workers’ wages after having received many billions of dollars in taxpayer money to make sure businesses weren’t denied credit.

Old media are being used in new ways.  New media are being used to achieve traditional goals.  Occasionally old media and old techniques still work.

It is looking like the Obama Administration will be experienced by many people as an opportunity to demonstrate and be heard.  It is clear that this is not a Left administration.  Still, there is evidence that the Obama Administration seeks to please.  That being the case, which processes, which tactics or which combination of tactics will most effectively compel the administration to pay attention?

Observing the ongoing, deep difficulties that the Left has speaking in one voice with a clear message using an agreed-upon tactic, it is easy to conclude that impact will not be coming from the traditional Left.  Youth and technology, particularly cell phone technologies, have been central to the successful calls for change that have been unfolding.

Unemployed and underemployed youth, and older folks introduced to the new technologies by the young, will be integral to the message-making machinery that reaches the Administration’s ears.

As the crowds grow larger and the people feel more empowered, there may emerge glitches in Facebook that will inhibit its seamless use as a tool for social change.  In its place will emerge other tools, social networking technologies unencumbered by corporate ties.  The power of these new tools will be indisputable as the tools reveal the effectiveness of specific social change interventions along with particular strategies and tactics.  People will be able to observe the results of their efforts and compare them with the interventions created by people with similar goals.

Whereas up to now social networking has been propelled by a desire for connection, observe the consequences of social networking driven by a desire for respect.

Old media and new media are transforming into a seamless whole.  How we mirror our experience and communicate conventional wisdom will change.  There will be new attitudes toward our leaders.  In the beginning, Obama will be blamed by media conventional wisdom for encouraging the use of new technologies to advocate change.  It will be perceived as a kind of chaos that will make the 60s seem sedate.  Yet, as the media themselves transform, that blame will cease.  Like the Spanish-speaking radio stations urging people to the streets, media will grow to reflect the people as the people view themselves, not as the corporations view them.

This will be painful.  It will at first be unfamiliar.  And, it will be ourselves, our own faces, that we’ll see and hear reflected back to us at last.

During the several years I created comic panels and strips, I would lie down on my couch, sketchbook in hand, and run comparisons or associations between not obviously related categories or themes, seeking incongruous connections.  If I found the kind of matching-up that I was seeking, humor with some insight would result.  Disappointment and bitterness often accompanied these comic strip and panel productions.  Humor often serves to reveal and share hidden feelings.  Talented humorists tease out the universalities in situations, allowing us to feel disappointed, frustrated and sometimes relieved and appreciative all at once.

I did most of my comic production at the end of a marriage, during the divorce, dating, and then remarriage.  A lot of the comics revolved around relationship, the nature of relationship and the brutal challenges of connecting with another human being.  This comic creating period lasted about five years.

At about the same time I was producing comics, I rediscovered music.  As a teenager and as an adult before my first marriage, I listened to and created music.  That faded as I grew older, disappearing from my life during the twelve years of that relationship.  Music re-entered my life as I turned toward dating a second time.  After bonding with my second wife, music again withdrew to become of negligible importance.  Not that music every really leaves me.  It just withdraws to the constant rhythm that my body produces:  finger taps, fingernail clicks, sways and hand rhythms, foot movements.  Songs are often playing in the background of my thoughts.

The connection between music and creativity and mate-seeking is pretty obvious in my life.  I experience a compulsion to produce when single.  Music touches me deeply at those times.  When married, not so much so.

Evolutionary Psychologist Geoffrey Miller has explored this dynamic in some detail, particularly in his book The Mating Mind.  Miller hypothesizes that humans evolved largely as a result of sexual selection focusing on aesthetic behaviors propelling brain size increases, unique physiological features and music production.  The theory on these pages has synergies with Miller’s work.  He’s written me that he views at least one of my essays on social structure and sexual selection as compatible with his thesis.

Miller has observed that the production of acclaimed composers and performers usually correlates with the teenage and young adult years when the performers are in procreation mode.  Indeed, I’ve noticed that pattern in my own life and in the lives of performers that I’ve observed.  Miller and I agree that creativity and procreation are closely tied.  We both hypothesize that human evolution resulted from a unique combination of sex and aesthetics.

And then there is the kind of creativity I am involved in now, writing these short essays, composing this theory of evolution.

At about the same time I stopped cartooning, about a year in to my second marriage, I began a project to produce a book on dragons.  Long story short (visit humanevolution.net for details), this theory of evolution emerged.  I ran with that for a couple years and then shelved it while starting a new profession.  When I started this blog in April of 08, my interests in evolution re-emerged and then, this autumn, deepened.  The deepening occurred shortly after being diagnosed with a cerebral aneurysm.

The kind of creativity I’m involved in now is qualitatively different from that which I was part of when I was single.  I am not so much performing, though I deeply desire recognition.  The theorizing on evolution and my observations of social change have more to do with a fervent wish to make a contribution, to reveal what is hidden.  Before, when I was single both times, I sought to manifest that which was hidden in me in order to find someone I could trust, to find a mate.  This time, as a gratitude-experiencing married person, I seek to make visible the processes of our species and society’s unfolding.  I am still the artist, and the invisible I seek to make available is still about sex, still about aesthetics, but at the level of their operational dynamics.

When we are young, or when we are seeking a mate, it seems connection is all about connection between two people.  Perhaps, growing older, we explore connection in its more universal aspect.  Younger, we create to achieve copulation.  Older, we create to provide an understanding of the context that compels us to create to achieve copulation.  In both we seek to be integral to our community.

I wonder how Geoffrey Miller views postprocreation stage creativity.  Reader, what might your opinion be?

We are passing out of the age of irony and entering a stage of blame.

“Irony” has many connotations.  For me, a suspicion of underlying processes and an expectation of disappointment cover much of what the word implies.  Observing and comparing incongruities helps predict that manipulations are being engaged.  We come to expect hidden motives.  Quality relationship and communication become depreciated by expectation of differences between the hidden and the seen.

We expect the government to lie.  It sort of goes with the territory of information manipulation on a massive scale.  When a government lies, and we know it’s lying, and the government knows that we know that it’s lying, then we’ve crossed a line into toxic irony.  Trust, expectation of reciprocal integrity, becomes denigrated by an environment where transparency is interpreted to be naïve.

The age of irony hit full stride with Ronald Reagan achieving the presidency and declaring that supply side economics was a viable economic model.  Even George Bush, Reagan’s opponent in the primaries, was disgusted and described supply side as voodoo economics.  Americans voted a preference for a storyteller over Carter, the sharer of difficult truths.  Consider that the Iran Hostage Crisis that took down the Carter Administration was predicated on the hidden truth that the embassy takeover was reprisal for the U.S. destroying the Iranian democracy in 1953, replacing the government with a tyrant in order to control oil production and distribution.  This was not exactly shared with the American people.  Americans don’t like to feel responsible for the repercussions of their government’s “real politic” behaviors.

Eisenhower made a decision that cost Carter the presidency and put in a professional teller of stories as our president.  At some point, the layers of repercussion become so deep that the ironic crooked smile leaves our faces.  We watch appalled as the president with the permanent smirk, like the Joker in the recent Batman film, commits bedlam without an ounce of shame.  It’s not even that horrors are wrought without shame, they are committed in a fashion that communicates that shame is not appropriate or necessary for an American president, or an American, to feel.

Irony has run its course.  The deepening layers of that which is hidden have evolved from expectation of disappointment to transparent horror.  The hidden has been revealed as loathsome and terrifying.

The age of irony encouraged us to put up with untruth.  Untruth blossomed into a corporate, anti-science, quasi-fascist presidency run by its propagandist arm.  Suddenly, with the economic reappraisal revealing the rot that began with the Reagan Administration, transparency is in, and irony looks a whole lot like complicity.

It is no mistake that the economic implosion reached society’s consciousness at the same time as the media turned upon the Republican Party.  When the Republican National Convention ended, the candidates were tied, and the Republicans were deeply engaged in lies.  Sarah Palin over the next two weeks was assailed for not telling the truth.  What candidates had been doing without shame since Reagan, making stories up recreating reality, suddenly was not acceptable.  For the two weeks after the RNC that the media lambasted Palin, the economy cooperated with the new unironic view by making transparent that what is perceived is not necessarily the same as what’s beneath.  It crashed.

If it was not true that the fundamentals of our economy were sound, then perhaps other things we’re being told should be examined.

There will be blame before there is trust.  The American people, people that don’t like to feel responsible for their government’s behaviors, prefer blaming to following the trails of cause and effect that suggest the connections between influence and motivation that lead to understanding and then deep and lasting change.  With the lifting of irony, we achieve transparency.  Still, transparency can be abused.  It doesn’t matter what we know if we don’t change our behavior.

Hard times engender trust.  We are forced to nurture and rely upon our connections.  Transparency is revered.  Honesty is elevated as a good thing.  We look for integrity instead of expecting to be disappointed.

The age of irony is over.  It will take some time to learn again to trust.

We humans experience consciousness as a two-way split.  This offers us an ability to toy with time, space and storytelling while often suffering from a misinterpretation of what we perceive.  We can also commit deceit.

Our experience of the split gets interpreted in a number of different ways.  There is right and wrong, evil and good, left and right, yes and no, me and not me, and us vs. them.  There is also what we are aware of and what we are not aware of, which can be framed as what is conscious and what is unconscious.

In psychotherapeutic intervention, there is what is called the “reframe.”  Faced with a client or patient with a conscious mind deeply polarized from an unconscious, the therapist will seek common ground in the form of an unconscious intent that the conscious can agree with.  The conscious may feel powerless to influence unconscious processes that seem to generate behaviors or experiences contrary to conscious goals.  Still, the conscious can learn to trust that the reasons behind the frustrating behaviors or experiences make deep sense.  From this new perspective, the therapist’s third position outside the polarized personality acts as a model for how two seemingly combating sides can explore the benefits of having an agreed-upon common ground.

It is peculiarly human that the world is framed in splits.  As divided selves, we feel it is natural that division characterizes experience.  Perhaps if we were like five-fingered starfish with five brain lobes and five different conscious/unconscious selves, then the world would be characterized by a different mathematics, politics and family structure.  As it happens, such a transformation may be happening right now.  It’s not so much the starfish that is our model, but the spider and the web.

Our survival as a species requires intimacy with the concept of reframing in our personal lives, social lives, politics and science.  We need to encourage an ability to trust that the processes we observe at any scale are unfolding according to reasonable and important needs and intentions.  How those needs manifest often require intervention.  There may be damaging repercussions of poorly integrated attempts to satisfy needs, but the needs themselves can be respected.  The “terrorists” aren’t out to “steal our liberty.”  Suffering individuals seek attention.

Third-position perspective–reframing, marriage counseling, corporate and political arbitration, theory formation–seek a way to uncover common ground.  Still, the human split is what is inevitably being addressed.  Nonhuman experience is characterized by no division, whether that be cut into two, three, five or more.  How do we achieve an understanding that features no division?  This question is useful.  Facing the economic, societal and environmental repercussions of living life split, it is useful we explore the alternative.

My answer is art.  It is what we humans do that makes us human.  Our economy is transforming.  One of the sectors being propelled into higher numbers is craft stores.  We are finding our way back to reverence for craft, respect for art.  Consider what our economy would look like if art and craft formed the foundation for commerce.  Observe and listen to how music is transforming the web and how the web and new technologies are transforming how music is being made.  We are being provided a model of how to live in the world.

That model has to do with identification with that which exists beyond the split.  Massive, multi-person online art, craft and play integrated with off-line reverence for aesthetic creations hold deep promise of a personality and society able to integrate not just two adjusting polarities, but the infinite aspects that make up our existence.

Reframing is not just a psychotherapeutic intervention.  It is the first step on the pathway toward integration.

Modern technology serves hidden societal assumptions. Different societies encourage radically different uses of technology. A hybrid transitional society with easy access to energy supplies and natural resources, such as the United States, proliferates technologies like a wildflower garden sends out seeds. Still, there is a method to the madness of technological innovation.

On one side perches the atomic bomb and pregnancy ultrasound, two of the most powerful tools of a patrifocal society. On the other side, serving a matrifocal society, are the Pill and the Internet.

Across the world there is a war being fought between destruction and creation. On the eastern front, battles wage across a woman’s womb; and the sex of the survivor determines both the structure of future society and that society’s talent and tendency to innovate. On the western front, the military-industrial-financial world alliance is clashing with the Internet society, and losing.

Female foeticide is one of the greatest killers on the planet, a scourge that goes almost unremarked. Modern ultrasound technology has facilitated the abortions of female fetuses rather than the drowning and smothering of infants. It is a machine that insures a child is male. The liberal West supports abortion. The conservative West supports patrifocal culture. It so happens that aborting females supports patrifocal culture. Is it any wonder we read or hear so little about the millions of females that are aborted?

The fewer females that survive the womb, the fewer non-ideal males in a society that find a wife. Those males achieving patristic success that manifest an ability to work well within hierarchy, take orders, give orders, command followers and perform well in male-to-male competition are rewarded with an opportunity to procreate. These males are the ideal mate. If only the ideals sire children, the values of the society are far more likely to be passed on. With the ideal male being one that fits in well and cooperates with the established patrifocal paradigm, innovation is not encouraged. Innovation is not a feature of societies that kill a female foetus. It is no mistake that societies displaying the most stability are societies that kill the girls.

In the quickly transforming West, where women are achieving parity with men, the Pill places in the hands of women the kind of man that they will mate with. In the West, concepts of the ideal male have blended together and produced any man that can contribute to an innovation. The idea of a Western ideal male has disappeared. Societal ideals have become amorphous with independence. Innovation thrives in an environment where the female can pick a mate with no guidance other than what she feels is best for her personally. The Pill provides her the power to make her own choice. Only males that she approves of supply her seed. The result is a proliferation of male ideals with an emphasis on males that can beat out other males to make a woman happy.

In the meantime, those Western males with a facility to thrive in hierarchy, take orders, give orders, command followers and perform well in male-to-male competition, build bombs. Multileveled corporations and military hierarchies work closely together with government and lending institutions to build a world where males are in control.

Encouraged by the shift to female choice and a reverence for innovation, the West has invented and nurtured the Internet. The web is planting matristic values into societies across the world. Horizontal communication, transparency and diversity are spreading like hurricane-propelled seeds from a continent of wildflowers. Disappearing borders are making bombs seem so yesterday. Observe our governments needing to encourage borderless adversaries to be able to continue to manufacture the myth of the enemy.

Technologies serve male or female-based societies, even forming hybrid technologies in societies like America where both social structures are in integrated combat. Male dominated Wall Street feeds off unique financial vehicles created by innovative minds. Huge influxes of corporate capital have fed the horizontal web.

Sex-determining ultrasound, the bomb, the Pill and the web all reveal how technology helps determine and support the social structures that drive societies as they change.

Humans are story tellers, metaphor makers, a species moved by symbol.  It’s not just that we invent mythologies or stories we believe to be true, stories occurring in another time or place.  It is the fact that these stories sit at the root of both what it is to be consciously conscious while at the same time entitled and clueless.

As creators of content where nothing before existed, we are an astonishing reflection of the greater consciousness that animates the all.  Yet, with an ability to disregard the larger interconnected web of the all, instead paying close attention to our own unique fabrications, we are also a bane of that subtlety and complexity that surrounds us.

Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, describes several times over the last few thousand years that humans and their immediate environment suffered the consequences of the human gift with words.  Societies, unable to see the repercussions of their creations, engaged in destruction.  It’s a pattern we keep repeating.

We have an ability to make stuff up that doesn’t closely approximate the nature of the surrounding environment that is affected by what we make.  The cure for this uniquely human malady is directly related to the economic, political and social transformation that is underway.  We are in the process of learning to give up freedom, independence, liberty, free markets, autonomy and being alone.  It is necessary for us to do so in order to pay close attention to those we share this world with.  Observing how we are interconnected, watching, listening and feeling to how we influence and are influenced, we can make stories, metaphors, myths and symbols that more closely approximate the real world, not just a world that we make, because we can.

Our financial system has been founded upon a fairy tale that believes that the distribution of unlimited resources to a relative few is good for all.  Our economy has been built upon many layers of stories starting with statistics that have been adjusted so as not to distract from central story themes.  For example, contemporary inflation, abandoning metrics that were the convention in the 1970s, is almost triple the story told us now by the government and the news.

We behave as if economic growth is necessary to economic health.  No population in nature reads from that script.

As the credit unwinding picks up speed, so will the desire to compose a story that uncovers whom is responsible for the destruction.  Better we learn to deconstruct the mythologies, the tales we’ve created, that have made it seem that the acts committed seemed sensible.  The stories will all reveal different ways we’ve leveraged disconnection and invented fictions that did not reflect the real world.  As a species, perhaps it is time we learn to revere the creative arts instead of offering homage to the financial wizards that conjure creative vehicles.

The new economy, the new world order, must allow for the human compulsion to make stuff up in a context that reveres an ability to closely observe, listen to and feel the subtle and complex nature of the world around us.  Indiscriminately scrambling the two together, as has been our tendency as a species, will not work any longer.  The world is too small for us to continue to tell ourselves the story that the world goes on forever.

The astonishingly naïve idea that we are free, independent and require liberty needs to be replaced with the understanding that each individual has value, is interconnected and is creative.  This new story is one that reflects and respects the sensory-based reality that is our home.  The closer our mythologies can come to reflecting the way that evolution really operates, the easier it will be to integrate with the other life on this planet.

Humans are story tellers, metaphor makers, a species moved by symbol.  The time has arrived to integrate our ability to create with a reverence for perception.  As we offer respect to those individuals that can perceive the interconnections derived from the information of their senses, individuals that can tell a story that at its roots approximates that world as it really is, we will be uniting a species’ compulsion to create with a reality that craves to be understood.

Talking with Left activist and organizer friends, I would conclude that there seems little awareness of the deep structural societal changes underway.  Much of the Left expects more of the same.  In the 1960s, many of us had the experience of participating in a profound cultural transformation.  Most of the folks I know now don’t see or feel what we experienced then as happening now.  It is astonishing how deeply the Left has been purged of vision and optimism by the free market free-for-all of the last thirty years.  Our youth are not burdened in this way.

Perhaps part of this is due to the split between the practical and the spiritual.  Since the 60s, folks I know either stayed politically active or drifted off in New Age directions.  Not too many friends maintained a position in both worlds.  A re-embracing of the two polarities would be useful going forward.  Practical spirituality or spiritual pragmatism would be a boon to the Left right now, a Left seemingly unable to intuit a politic that can experience destruction and positive transformation as closely tied.

Since the 1960s, there has been a remarkable surge in secular spiritualism with yoga, martial arts, alternative medical interventions (i.e., acupuncture), pathways of personal transformations and meditation having become integrated into American culture.  There is an ideational infrastructure available for a reverence-for-the-commons point of view.  Most of my political friends aren’t seeing it.

It would be interesting to be able to track the speed, geographic span, degrees of separation and number of participants in the various Facebook campaigns proliferating across the web.  Some are social, some political, some difficult to categorize.  I expect hybrids will soon emerge that have spiritual connotations.  As participants seek a repetition of the experience of feeling part of something larger than themselves, experiences emerging as a result of spontaneous large gatherings of friends and strangers, a new form of worship will evolve.  I doubt it will be called worship and I doubt it will be associated with religion.  Regardless, it will offer people the bonuses of congregation without the us vs. them mythology.

The economy is crashing.  Along with it is American reverence for the dollar.  To see what will emerge as the new focus, we’ve only to look back to the 1960s.  That is when the door to societal alternatives blew open.  To understand how those winds will change us now, observe our youth.

Twelve-step programs have provided opportunities for many people to experience profound personality transformation.  Twelve-step programs allow individuals to identify with a third position, which transcends their conflicting selves while at the same time connecting them to a mythology allowing some facility communicating with non-narrative unconscious processes.  Many psychotherapeutic interventions rely upon third position identification and symbol communication to allow the patient an experience of personal transcendence that includes relief from internal conflicts.

In the previous two pieces I contextualized these two interventions within the context of human evolution.  The very split we bridge has an evolutionary etiology.  The remedies have an evolutionary explanation.  There are other pathways that the process of human personality transformation engages in that find reflection in our species’ transformations.

Perhaps the most ubiquitously transformational of all human experience is falling in love.  To attribute it all to hormones is demeaning.  Consider elevating the significance of hormones.

Testosterone and estrogen and their families of related hormones animate each of us, as individuals, as members of society, as examples of our species and as participants in the animal world.  People seeking psychotherapeutic intervention often feel compelled to do so to find a mate.  They are unable to extricate themselves from internal struggles long enough to form strong, long-lasting external ties.  Love and psychotherapy are often, if not almost always, directly related.

Many people meet their mates in twelve-step programs.  Sometimes, as a result of that process’s interventions, a person rediscovers the mate they have.  Combine third-party identification and mythological allegiance with complementary opposite hormonal availability and you have three powerful forces present for transformation.

Humans are unique in regard to mating.  Other species exhibit discrimination, but humans take discernment to a whole other level that is extremely specific.  We don’t just seek mates of the opposite sex.  We seek a mate that exhibits the complementary opposite hormonal social structure constellation to the one that we ourselves exhibit.  The process of imagining our complementary opposite, practicing skills to attract that complementary opposite, and then having enough of our internal resources available to create and maintain the bond necessary for a relatively healthy relationship requires enormous personal commitment.  There is perhaps no process more uniquely human.  There is no process more suggestive of our connection to evolution.  See Introduction to the Theory of Waves for details.

There are twelve steps to the program that addresses self destructive addiction.  There are three primary interlocking processes featured by twelve-step programs and many Western psychotherapeutic interventions.  Third position intervention, symbol/metaphor/mythology facility and complementary opposite hormonal accessibility (mate choice) together offer opportunity for personal evolution.

The dance of life involves being able to hear the music animating all of life.  We can let our own steps be also the steps of all.

I’m sympathetic to several mythological scale interpretations.  I believe that myths come in hierarchical levels, with layers based upon the evolutionary dynamic.  Evolution unfolds at biological, societal, ontological and personal levels.  So do the stories that signify the processes at those levels.

Jung can be right regarding species specific stories or archetypes that target shared biological experience.

Levi-Strauss might nail a mythology focused on trans-society shared cultural roots.

Freud might intuit the labeling of a symbol that significantly expresses a specific culture’s understanding.

One person’s dreams may reveal a symbol right for that person based on the associations that person has for a particular object or event.

The levels bleed into one another.  We often become chauvinists for the level that we fetishize.  That sort of goes with the territory of being human.

Associations or relationships circulating around a particular symbol elevate that symbol to a particularly powerful usefulness.  Still, it’s vital we not take symbol too seriously or statically.  It’s as fluid as language, as vital yet as insubstantial as art.

How symbol comes into play regarding personal transformation has to do with an individual’s ability to both allow himself or herself to offer allegiance to the proto language of metaphor, myth and symbol while at the same time identifying with scales larger and more comprehensive than that of the individual and one’s own life.  Dipping into reverence for metaphor, myth and symbol allows both a letting down the barriers to one’s other side while transcending that very split between the two sides.

Respect for the nature of symbol provides a doorway, a roadmap to all scales of evolution, including personal transformation.  Just as a single melody can travel through several sections of an orchestra, the melody can be broken up by time.  A single note, a single bar, a single phrase or a single movement all carry the same melody at different scales.

A myth provides us an opportunity to identify outside the single note that is our usual experience.  Embedded in our own cacophony of personal stories that are based upon our own experiences, it’s difficult to intuit the larger song relevant to who we are outside our unique lives.

To experience the revelation that we are more than the narrative experience characterized by language, symbol, myth and metaphor use language and/or image as a doorway to have an experience by association instead of by cause and effect.  The very process of reverence for this non-narrative experience allows a transcendence of our isolated-by-time, narrative world.

It’s not just the content, it’s the process.

Regarding personality transformation, allowing an allegiance to non-narrative experience, however manifested, encourages healing from both within and without.