The Hegelian interpretation of history, picked up by Marx, was a view of history as story with particular trajectories.  Teleology, the idea that we walk a path created by a transcendental god, was abandoned.  It was hypothesized that the path we walk is one informed by our own behaviors and understandings.

What I’ve been playing with the last year and a half is the idea that biology and history are connected by social structure, and that teleology exists but is biologically informed.

The Hegelian view of history was predicated on pattern and predictable changes in pattern over time.  Darwin’s theory of natural selection was founded on an opposite view of the effects of time, stating that change occurred only when heritable, randomly generated features compelled a proliferation of traits that served to promote the goals of individuals to survive to procreate.  Evolution displays no thesis and antithesis unless they are represented by every mating pair.

Perhaps ironically, the theory of natural selection does not operate in a narrative frame.  I say ironically because the foundation thesis has been interpreted to support Social Darwinism and free markets, which promote that story, or narrative, that controlling elites are the result of natural processes.  Two pieces were left out of that not-useful story.

First, the free market interpretations of the theory of natural selection don’t view evolution from a larger scale.  Interconnection is ignored when focus is on survival strategies of constituent parts.  Marx’s Hegelian large-scale view provided leverage that transcended capitalist focus on individual achievements.  Whether evolution or societies are being studied, the scale of investigation can determine the solutions that emerge.

Second, interconnection is not only observed by an increase in scale, it is experienced by immersion in the process.  The experience of interconnection removes narration from the equation, introducing the experiencer to the feeling of an ever-present now, autistic primary process.  Compassion often results from the twin experience of interconnection viewed as a whole and interconnection felt from immersion.  When boundaries blur but sensitivity to scale remains, insight can result.  Compassion is a feature of integrated insight.

In a Hegelian fashion, I have proposed that we are in the middle of a social transformation that features a synthesis of two foundation principles.  I hypothesize that we evolved over the last, at least, two million years in a matrifocal, matrilineal/matrilocal context.  That swerved to patrifocal, patrilineal/patrilocal over the last 50,000, accelerating in the last 25,000 to start rocketing the last 6,000.  A slowdown began maybe 500 years ago.  A return to matrifocal commenced the last 300 with an acceleration occurring in the last 100.  In this latest generation, things are rocketing.  We could interpret current patterns as a synthesis of the two social structures, or as the reemergence of the matrifocal.  Both interpretations make sense.

Oscillations between social structures go with the territory of being an evolving social being.  Different social structures serve different animal societies in different ways.  Evolution charts social structure changes as the environment and social structure impact individuals.  Environmental influence is huge.  As regards humans, trends over time as humans ally themselves with social structure compel trajectories that simulate teleology.  It looks like a transcendental god is in play.  What is happening is biology.  Hierarchies rise and now fall in direct relation to biological imperatives.  Hierarchies rose for thousands of years under patriarchal frames of reference, high testosterone males and low testosterone females.  Now they fall.

Somehow, Hegelian narrative interpretations of experience and non-narrative primary process interpretations are both true at the same time.  Patrifocal transcendental and matrifocal immanent paradigms are both in play.  Evolution unfolds at several scales at the same time.  We both live in a return to matrifocal times and we are experiencing a synthesis of traditional patrifocal and ancient matrifocal.  Somehow, that which is aboriginal that is reemerging is also wholly new.

Understanding how things are different is somehow also the same as understanding how they are the same.

An article in Science News last October 31 called attention to a discovery:  ”These dinosaurs were not separate species, as some paleontologists claim, but different growth stages of previously named dinosaurs, according to a new study.”

“Juveniles and adults of these dinosaurs look very, very different from adults, and literally may resemble a different species,” said dinosaur expert Mark B. Goodwin, assistant director of UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology.  ”But some scientists are confusing morphological differences at different growth stages with characteristics that are taxonomically important.  The result is an inflated number of dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous.”

In the article, Goodwin’s associate, John “Jack” Horner, says, “Dinosaurs, like birds and many mammals, retain neoteny, that is, they retain their juvenile characteristics for a long period of growth, which is a strong indicator that they were very social animals, grouping in flocks or herds with long periods of parental care.”

Horner associates neoteny with sociality, suggesting that animals that congregate throughout their lives exhibit neotenous characteristics.  I wish I knew more about these areas.  My next question is:  Are there specific social structures associated with those animals that group in flocks and herds?

If it is true…

“In addition to extramarital sex, premarital promiscuity and trial marriage may also alter the paternity probability.  Indeed, at least one cross-cultural study suggests that in matrilineal-matrilocal societies sanctions against premarital sex, when they exist, are quite mild, whereas such sanctions are severe in patrilineal-patrilocal societies.  (Goethals 1971).  Although premarital sex is especially tolerated in matrilineal societies (e.g., Malinowski 1929), unwed mothers and illegitimacy leading to lower probabilities of paternity are not tolerated…In most matrilineal societies divorce is reported to be quite frequent, and can be initiated by either party without social stigma.”  (Kurland, J. A., “Paternity, Mother’s Brother, and Human Sociality,” in Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior:  An Anthropological Perspective, N. Chagnon and W. Irons (eds.) (North Scituate:  Duxbury Press, 1979), pp. 160-1.)

A fair amount gets written on changes in the nuclear family, increased divorce, marrying later, few kids, abortion, contraception, women becoming more fully employed outside the home, and now women often retaining jobs because they are often paid less, with their male colleagues getting let go.  Not so much gets written about how this influences general social frames of reference.  I hypothesize we are experiencing a dramatic shift from a patrifocal to a matrifocal foundation.  Intuitions…

Social structure and the environmental effects upon social structure feel central to how species change cascades across an ecosystem.  I just typed “social structure” and “testosterone” into Google, wondering who might be discussing relationships among the environment, social structure, testosterone, estrogen and evolution.  I expected one of my postings to come up first, but preceding that there was a book I’d not heard of, Social Structure and Testosterone.  I just ordered it.  It seems to be carrying a sociobiological banner, but perhaps there are patterns the author is uncovering that will offer insight.

Most evolutionary psychology or sociobiological theorizing seems to assume or emphasize male impact.  Tanner, Hrdy and others have pioneered female influence.  I’ve written often about the heritage of our patrifocal society creating stories that emphasize a male’s influence.  I’m now encouraging myself to view animal evolution as heavily influenced by social structure, with female sexual selection perhaps understandable in a context of social structure that only sometimes makes it obvious that female choice or female sexual selection is in play.

It is possible that my estimation that estrogen is managing the timing of testosterone, heavily influencing directions in evolution, is integral to understanding the relationship among the…

Running some more riffs off of yesterday’s conjectures regarding the particular hypothetical dynamics that I’ve been exploring in human evolution, are there species that tend to cluster (1) sexual selection with females picking males for particular qualities (dance, song, plumage, etc.) and (2) females assigning relatively large amounts of attention to the young?  If so, males can be chosen for their neotenous features, features females would be attracted to in their young, which might result in relatively larger brains, more cooperative behavior, more tendencies to play, more creativity.

This could veer off in two directions.  If the female is picking males for those features that demand higher testosterone levels (bright red plumage), the male will not likely be displaying neotenous tendencies and would not likely be helping in the raising of the kids (though this would depend on seasonal variations in hormone levels).  Yet, if the female is picking males that are challenged to behave with some creativity, or at least species-related novel behavior, to get the females’ attention, the male may end up evolving in ways that suggest how the human species has evolved.

I’m thinking that those predators that hunt in cooperative packs might as a trend display…

“He [Darwin] was prevented from harvesting all the fruits of his fertile imagination because he did not follow through with the logic of his own argument – to discover how female choice influenced the origin of the hominids; that is, to show how sexual selection was important at the very onset of human evolution.  Because of an unfortunate blind spot engendered by his own cultural background, Darwin was unable to explicate the necessary interrelationships and carry his own work on to its more logical conclusion.”  (Nancy M. Tanner, On Becoming Human (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 167.)

Charles Darwin suggested the possibility that humans were descended from tribal cultures characterized by matrifocal social structures that were driven by female sexual selection.  He referenced Morgan’s writings.  After suggesting the possibility, he rejected it as being incongruent with his experience of contemporary and primitive society, featuring a focus on male hierarchical dominance patterns with a complementary pattern of female compliance.  If Darwin had instead embraced what he rejected, it is unlikely that the history of evolutionary theory would have been changed.  Female sexual selection was almost ignored for 100 years.  It is with the work of Geoffrey Miller (2000) that sexual…

Three things are bouncing around my brain after I drank coffee to knock out a headache, which worked.

I’m finishing the over 100 piece that seeks to provide a less-stressed introduction to this theory than the earlier “Introduction to the Theory of Waves.”  First, the theory is now called “The Orchestral Theory of Evolution.”  The name changed when I hypothesized that estrogen manages the timing of maturation.

That, by the way, was a bizarre realization.  Bizarre for two reasons.  First, it came to me without my being aware that it had come to me.  I just found myself working with that premise, not having noted when it became part of my thoughts.  Second, for more than 11 years, I’ve been working with testosterone controlling the rate of maturation without it having ever crossed my mind that it would be interesting to know what managed the timing.  It just never struck me that it was relevant or knowable, even though I’d been discussing rates and timing of maturation for 11 years.  At the same time, for 11 years, I’d been wondering how specifically estrogen might fit into the theory that was coming together.  I sensed that the theory was out of…

“In a study of alcoholism, it was noted that alcoholism is a significant health concern for lesbians, with an incidence rate perhaps three times that of the general population.  The relationships among the development of alcoholism in women, the experience of stigmatization and the complex facets of lesbian identity and lesbian community are explored.  This exploration provides for a more comprehensive and critical analysis of alcoholism in lesbians.  As a phenomenon of women’s health, alcoholism is examined using the perspectives of developmental theory, symbolic interactionism and critical theory.  The author offers insights and implications for health care, research and theory building.”  (Hall, J. M., “Alcoholism in Lesbians:  Developmental, Symbolic Interactionist, and Critical Perspectives,” Health Care for Women International 11(1) (1990):89-107.)

“Yalom et al. (1973) studied 20 16-year-old boys of diabetic mothers, who had received estrogen or progesterone during pregnancy.  These boys showed less heterosexuality and less masculinity than 20 control boys.  Netley and Rovet (1982) showed that among 33 males with 47,XXY syndrome, 24% were nonrighthanded, compared to 10% of a control group. …  In the present study, as well as in Lindesay (1987), only homosexual men were studied.  In Rosenstein and Bigler (1987) and McCormick et al. (1990), both

…

A professor recently wrote me that she introduced the ideas described in my blog to her class on Neanderthals and Human Evolutionary Theory.  Her email asked or suggested several questions or expressed her class’s confusion in the following areas:

Are you proposing that testosterone levels are driving evolution of mammals in general or primates specifically?

The evidence that testosterone is driving evolution mostly comes from anomalies emerging in neuropsychology around progeny maturation changes that result from environmental influences upon a pregnant mother and other studies in the neuropsychological literature.

An interesting primate study was as follows…

“In a 5-year longitudinal study, we examined the effect of disrupting the neonatal activity of the pituitary–testicular axis on the sexual development of male rhesus monkeys.  Animals in a social group under natural lighting conditions were treated with a GnRH antagonist (antide), antide and androgen, or both vehicles, from birth until 4 months of age.  In antide-treated neonates, serum LH and testosterone were near or below the limits of detection throughout the neonatal period.  Antide + androgen-treated neonates had subnormal serum LH, but above normal testosterone concentrations during the treatment period.  From 6 to 36 months of age, serum LH and testosterone were

…

That I might have featured Asperger’s when I was young never crossed my mind until this year.  I’d been studying autism for 12 years.  Working for 12 years with the thesis that testosterone informed the rate of maturation, it never struck me that estrogen might manage the timing until last winter when I discovered I’d been causally considering it for a couple of weeks.  My creative process is an artistic process that often features a conscious mind just along for the ride.  There are similarities between those of us living lives deeply informed by the creative process and those that this society calls autistic.

Understanding autism is at the heart of this orchestral theory of evolution.  If this theory does explain how autism emerges and offers interventions that can improve the lives of those that feel inhibited by the condition, then there is the chance that several dozen conditions and diseases may be addressed by using the principles outlined in this work.  My premise is that autism is a condition that features male maturational delay and, in females, acceleration.  Social structure, neurological anomalies and endocrinological differences are all integral to autism and Asperger’s etiology.   By adjusting our theory of evolution…

A foundation of this work is the power of sexual selection and social structure to inform biological and social evolution.  Integrating sexual selection and social structure with heterochronic theory, neuropsychology and endocrinology makes it possible for these components to comprise a synthesis I’m calling “The Orchestral Theory of Evolution.”  One way to explain how these seemingly different disciplines integrate is to explore them in enough detail, one at a time, so that depicting how different languages are describing the same process makes sense intuitively.

In the case of sexual selection, I have the work of Geoffrey Miller (2000) to detail what I am thinking.  Miller doesn’t believe neoteny influences human evolution in an important way.  Miller is an evolutionary psychologist.  He believes that the simpler explanation is likely more useful.  Nevertheless, Miller adroitly describes human evolution impacted by sexual selection.  My variation of Miller’s thesis is as follows:

1) Natural selection
2) Sexual selection (selecting for pattern when seeking a mate)
3) Human sexual selection (selection for novel pattern when seeking a mate)
4) Art (selecting for novel pattern outside of mate selection)
5) Awareness of the selection, or creative, process

I believe that a familiarity…

This work began almost 15 years ago when I disappeared down a rabbit hole where I was studying the origins of dragon and serpent mythologies in matrifocal cultures that came before the Indo-Europeans.  It was an art and writing project that involved my creating a book of dragons, treating the various dragons and dragon-like mythological beings as species within a genus, exploring them biologically and socially.  I became intimate with the religions, mythologies and social structures of ancient aboriginal societies and early civilizations at the root of dragon myths.  I found myself living and breathing ancient air, viewing, listening to, and feeling the world in a different way.

This alternative path features a world view that presupposes connection.  Studying ancient matrifocal society, I was introduced to an experience characterized by an immanent presence rather than a separated, transcendental god.  Interconnection is presupposed.  The individual is part of a larger process.

These themes are, of course, reemerging in contemporary times through a number of avenues, including Eastern practices, drugs, group art/aesthetics such as dance and chanting, and aboriginal spiritual paths.  I was exploring the origin of dragon myths, discovering the cultural heritage of societies that had their myths and familiars demonized…

Explorations of societies displaying matriarchal, or matrifocal, tendencies often struggle with a definition that will adjust to very different examples of the paradigm.  Often, a woman’s exercise of authority within a culture can be profound but not obvious, as if there were an agreement that men look like they are in control.  There are different areas where authority manifests such as home, work, market, social situations.  Female authority may vary depending on the context.  Shared authority can look very different in different societies.

What I am calling “The Orchestral Theory of Evolution” is a feminine theory of evolution insofar as both sexes share the ability to inform change and both foundation hormones have profound impact.  “Feminine” suggests sharing and cooperation.  In the context of evolutionary theory, a feminine paradigm is a cooperative paradigm with both a male and female command of process.

Nevertheless, from our Western perspective, provide a woman any control in a hierarchical context where men have traditionally called the shots, and the female anomaly often receives negative attention.  Evolutionary theory traditionally focuses on the male.  Some exceptions with a focus on the female have emerged over the last 40 years, mostly from female theorists, but so long…

If heterochrony is the study of the rates and timing of maturation, with testosterone levels impacting rate and estrogen levels controlling timing, then those environmental or social structure adjustments that influence levels of testosterone and estrogen determine the speed, timing, features and direction of evolution.

Central to the dynamic that winds its way throughout this work, and what I am now calling the Orchestral Theory of Evolution, is the idea that biological evolution and social evolution are the same.  The present paradigm behaves like there has been so profound an effect upon society and consciousness by self awareness and language that culture now seems separated from biology.  This work seeks to integrate biology and culture.  This integration is made possible by an understanding of how evolution proliferates variation outside of natural selection.  This is an old idea, one that emerged in the nineteenth century.  Stephen J. Gould, in his 1977 Ontogeny and Phylogeny, sought to codify this idea.  He focused on the principle of heterochrony, a word coined by Ernst Haeckel.  Heterochrony is a process that describes the dynamic of progeny variation, a process that is not random.

The natural selection paradigm hypothesizes that the progeny produced by a parent…

Several themes run through this blog.  Several related melodies play off each other as I explore how they are connected and the way that the melodies seem to transform when approached from different directions.  Perhaps this work’s most influential theme is the power of play to inform understanding.  I am not an academic.  I have no affiliations with an established institution or connections with groups that compel me to defend specific beliefs or conjectures.  I feel like a grown-up surrounded by toys, ideas that represent patterns in our experience, and I’m reveling in the process of letting myself be led to what feels like unique ways for the ideas or patterns to interact.

Like a child, I presuppose that what I am exploring, I can understand.  Engaging, I intuit and experience connection, and I estimate that my participation will be rewarded with my having learned something I didn’t know before.  Many themes carry through this work, but perhaps the core idea is that everything is connected and that those connections can be understood, or at least intuited, by a nonacademic.

I maintain a deep reverence for what might be called “fun.”  When I feel attracted to something, I take that…

“In a 5-year longitudinal study, we examined the effect of disrupting the neonatal activity of the pituitary–testicular axis on the sexual development of male rhesus monkeys.  Animals in a social group under natural lighting conditions were treated with a GnRH antagonist (antide), antide and androgen, or both vehicles, from birth until 4 months of age.  In antide-treated neonates, serum LH and testosterone were near or below the limits of detection throughout the neonatal period.  Antide + androgen-treated neonates had subnormal serum LH, but above normal testosterone concentrations during the treatment period.  From 6 to 36 months of age, serum LH and testosterone were near or below the limits of detection.  Ten of 12 control animals reached puberty during the breeding season of their 4th year, compared with five of 10 antide- and three of eight antide + androgen-treated animals.  Although matriline rank was balanced across treatment groups at birth, a disruption within the social group during year 2 resulted in a marginally lower social ranking of the two treated groups compared with the controls.  More high (78%) than low (22%) ranking animals reached puberty during year 4.  During the breeding season of that year, serum LH, testosterone and testicular volume…

In the work of scientists, and specifically evolutionary psychologists, there are two unstated presuppositions that make their often elegant, jewel-like conclusions less valuable or useful.

The first presupposition is the usually unstated position that regarding consciousness, a larger consciousness can be assumed to be not present.  This potentially influences theorizing outcomes.  There is a heavy negative emotional valence assigned to theories that presuppose a grounding consciousness.  Some of these theories, for example creationism or intelligent design, are associated with irrational, nonscientific, mythological, constituency-based belief systems.  It is assumed that choosing a nonconsciousness position enhances theorizing capabilities and that a consciousness position is associated with mythology and a respect for non-sense-based conclusions.  Dawkins’ evangelical atheism is an example of evolutionary psychology’s tendency to lump together mythology-based faiths or beliefs with nonmythology, trans-consciousness hypotheses.

The second presupposition revolves around evolutionary psychology’s unstated presupposition that patrifocal social structure is the default social frame of human evolution.  Matrifocal social structure is rarely rejected; it is just ignored.  David Buss has done sterling work exploring mating conventions among people living in patrifocal social structure.  Studies cited in many works by evolutionary psychologists ignore matrilineal or matrifocal examples.  If it can be assumed that matrifocal social…

I’m working with Nithya and Elia on two separate but related projects.  Nithya is exploring the possibility that there is a correlation between breast cancer and matrifocal society.  It looks like she’ll be concentrating on Dravidian communities in India.  I hypothesize that many matrifocal societies are characterized by high-testosterone, high-estrogen woman, and I am estimating that certain diseases and conditions will be more common among that hormonal constellation, including breast cancer.

About a week into conducting research, Nithya noted that an unusually large number of matrifocal societies are island communities.  She suggested Founder Effect, or an ability for unique features to proliferate in the absence of competition.  I told her to explore whether mountainous communities possibly show a similar propensity.  The Basques would be an example.  Both islands and mountains have shown unique language structures.  I’m wondering if islands and mountains might harbor ancient social structures, relatively unmolested because of unique geography.  It would not be farfetched to consider that matrifocal social structures mainly inhabit terrains that are difficult to attack.  This would support a hypothesis that matrifocal social structures are precursors to patrifocal social structure.

We also talked of creoles.  Nithya noted many matrifocal island societies in the Caribbean. …

I typed “Chomsky ‘universal grammar’ matrilineal” into Google, looking to see how much attention has been given to the various tenets of Chomsky’s universal grammar as regards social structure. The results were 215, fewer if I subbed in “patrilineal.”  Using “Transformational Grammar,” the results were even fewer.

For the most part, theorists and academics are not exploring juxtapositions between social structure and language structure as they relate to Chomsky’s hierarchy trees and the various parts of language that might suggest some sort of evolution over time.

One issue is that in Chomsky’s foundation hypothesis, every human on the planet shares the same language template.  This may be true.  Then again, there may be derivations.  If we presuppose, as the anthropologist Chris Knight, the archeologist Marija Gimbutas, and sociologist Riane Eisler have, that humans evolved until recently within matrifocal social structures, then language structure may or may not reflect this matrifocal evolution, depending on whether the hypothesized template was completed before or after the transition to patrifocal social structure.

If matrifocal social structure language groups show clear trends in particular linguistic structures, then it might be possible to adjust Chomsky trees to reveal evolutionary developments over time.

The hypothetical emergence of…

“But effective clitoral stimulation, though intensely pleasurable, does not necessarily occur during sexual intercourse.  Female pleasure, far more than male pleasure, is a function of erotic learning and cultural expectations.  Among human societies the most advanced orgasmically are purported to be the women of Mangaia, a southern Cook Island in central Polynesia.  Mangaian females reach orgasm two or three times during intercourse.  Upon entering puberty at thirteen or fourteen years of age, Mangaian boys go through a series of initiation rites into adulthood.  Part of the initiation includes being instructed in methods of stimulating women to maximum sexual pleasure.  Indeed, Mangaian women are expected to attain orgasm during intercourse each time; if not, the Mangaian man who fails to please her loses his status in the island’s society.  Two weeks after a manhood initiation ritual involving penile mutilation, an experienced older woman begins to practice boys in the arts of conferring female sexual pleasure.  According to their ethnographer, D.S. Marshall, Mangaians probably know more about female anatomy than most European physicians.  The Mangaians, with no semblance of a Puritan heritage, do not consider female sexual pleasure an indulgence.  They consider it a necessity.  High cultural expectations for female orgasm have…

In the February 27, 2009, issue of Science on page 1164 begins an article on Chinese government attempts to adjust the male/female birth ratio.  At this time, there are 120 boys born for every 100 girls.  Female foeticide has replaced female infanticide as the technique best designed to dispose of unwanted females.  Still, many baby girls are not taken to the doctor when they grow ill.  There are still quasilegal ways to dispose of children.

I hypothesize that female infanticide and foeticide are patrifocal societal tools used to maintain a patrifocal frame.  Males that don’t fit the male patrifocal ideal don’t achieve a wife and don’t pass on ideal genes.  Maintaining a high male/female birth ratio goes a long way toward encouraging long-term patrifocal societal stability.

“Bao and Li are one of four couples in their 600-person village to have espoused uxorilocal marriage, or living with the wife’s family.  Couples in some regions have opted for this lifestyle throughout Chinese history, but the practice is typically stigmatized.  By rewarding daring couples with land and public praise, Care for Girls aims to remove the stigma.  Bao says it worked:  “People don’t discriminate against you now.”  (Science, p. 1164)

The article goes…

There was a fascinating study I read several years ago that sampled the genes of children and their parents across working, middle and upper classes in the UK, looking for variations in the degree those women had made cuckolds of their husbands.  In other words, what percentage of families had children from fathers other than the father the children thought was theirs?

Across all UK classes, ~20 percent of children were living in families with fathers that were not their own.

On a show called Radio Lab, available by blog cast, there was a story that described a boy’s genotype being compared to his mother’s with the discovery that the boy’s mother was not really his mother.  After confirming that there had been no hospital mix-up (the boy was directly related to his dad), it was discovered that the mother was actually a two-person hybrid, a chimera.  In the womb, two embryos had somehow merged.  The boy was a direct descendant of some parts of the mother’s body, but not other parts.  The boy was not descended from the parts that had been the mother’s uterine sister.

A feature of rare aboriginal societies is that there are children that don’t…

I have been told by others, particularly by author David Brin with some annoyance, that my bias toward the matrifocal frame weighs down what I am trying to communicate.  At those moments you feel most perturbed by how I’ve said something, do tell me so my turns of phrase don’t turn stomachs.  I’d rather communicate than indoctrinate.

I write about 90 days before posts appear.  In a couple weeks [a couple months ago], posts start to emerge that begin with the observation of a possible erroneous connection, that both Hopi and Trobriand Islanders have languages with not much more than the present tense and both are matrifocal.  Two cases a pattern does not make.  That the Hopi are mostly present tense is contested.  The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language informs culture with language structure guiding culture values) is considered disproved by many, but I’m thinking there might be a connection between language, ancient matrifocal society, primary process and autism.

A premise in that long piece, “Introduction to the Theory of Waves,” is that matrifocal societies will evidence diseases and conditions associated with autism in modern society.  I’m starting to think that premise may be wrong.  The particular way…

In Seattle seeing family in March, I noticed American Indian and Asian populations, both with epicanthic folds.  The epicanthis fold is considered a neotenous feature because all humans exhibit this in the womb.  Many are born with the feature and lose it as they grow older.

As noted in previous pieces (see http://www.neoteny.org/?p=375), people with Down syndrome display the fold.  People with Down syndrome exhibit a host of neotenous features.

What strikes me is the possibility that epicanthis folds might offer a signal for social structure anomalies.  This seems a stretch because Asian societies are largely patrifocal, negating the feature’s correlation with matrifocal societies.  Still, it would be interesting to know the variety of cultures around the world that display this feature.

I’ve discussed the two different kinds of neotenous societies, the Scandinavian and Asian paradigms.  The two kinds of societies display two different clusters of neotenous characteristics.  Scandinavians show blond hair, blue eyes, light skin, lanky builds and egalitarian societies.  Asians display light skin, childlike, fragile features, short height and the epicanthic folds.

One society matrifocal at its foundation, the other society patrifocal.

The tentative resolution of this conflict was discussed in the series of posts…

There is a not politically correct notion that the individuals that make up ancient aboriginal societies are different from contemporary humans.  It is usually assumed that they are different as in less evolved, less intelligent or less capable.  It depends on whom you talk to or what you’re reading.

The American philosopher Ken Wilber attempts to take this issue head on, repackaging the 100-year-old four-fold parallelism that equates human evolution, societal evolution, individual ontogeny and an individual’s psychology.  Wilber does not frame the differences between an individual in an aboriginal society vs. an individual in modern society in negative terms, but seeks to unpack the features of various stages of growth and show how these stages manifest on a number of different scales.  Growth, transformation, evolution, all these aspects of how life manifests over time, display pattern.  Those patterns can be described.  Ken Wilber seeks to describe how those patterns manifest in human society.

My personal focus is the influence of sexual selection on social structure mediated by changes in the rates of maturation.  The patterns I focus on are very specific.  Still, I focus on biology, society, ontogeny and personal experience, the four-fold parallelism.  Wilber is more general in…