Don’t Eat Me!
For a guy who didn’t graduate from high school, my dad is one of the smartest people I know. His intellect doesn’t come from a book, but rather a life full of experience — the kinds of experience most people never imagine, the kind most people believe to be lived only by characters in storybooks. Yet, no one has ever written a book about my dad, and he would probably prefer it that way.
For the last decade, I have lived more than 1,200 miles away from my dad and only talk to him on the phone a couple times a year so I cherish the time we spend together on the phone or the few times we’ve visited during that time. One of the greatest common sense philosophies my dad has come to learn is the “don’t eat me” factor.
In a nutshell, this factor is the primal fear we humans have — developed since the beginning of evolution and deeply ingrained in every one of us. Ever since humans have run around the globe wielding clubs and dragging women around by the hair, we have lived with the “don’t eat me” factor — the fear of other creatures in the food chain, which by many methods have been the motivating factor in human groupings into what we know today as civilization.
This grouping together is a protective reaction, a natural defense of safety in numbers employed by organisms throughout the span of genus and species. This fear of being eaten is at the core of everything we do — from desiring fast cars and hot fashions to being seclusive hermits who don’t bathe, our primary motivation is self-preservation from anything and everything which may or may not have an ability to destroy us.
Being aware of this primal instinct allows for a unique perspective in terms of the psychological pushes and pulls from all kinds of human-designed influences — from politics, to religion, to media, to marketing. All these systems are designed around the basic human instinct of self-preservation, in a nationalistic, spiritualistic, culturalistic, and self-centered exploitation of this fear of being eaten. We give out of fear, vote out of fear, fear out of fear, and purchase out of fear.
Even though we convince ourselves, and allow ourselves to be assuaged in our convincing, that we are enlightened and evolved above such primitive thought, through our words and environment — this primal instinct is truly at the heart of everything we do. Don’t eat me.
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vincent says –
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:33 am
Yes, this is one of the basic things for me too. I express it rather differently (of course! we each have a different life-experience): I remind myself I am an animal. But I mean probably the same thing as your dad.
However, it is not about being in constant fear of course. It is about being aware that our primal emotions are beneficial: to prompt us to serve our own individual physical survival, no matter what fancy idea flits into our brainbox and flirts with us: such as altruism, worshipping God, seeking enlightenment and so on.
Yet we can still commit suicide. We can still give up life for what we consider a noble cause. We can still do selfless actions. But there is a cost.
timjamz says –
September 4th, 2008 at 1:04 am
Suicide isn’t a natural thing. It’s a result of “the psychological pushes and pulls from all kinds of human-designed influences — from politics, to religion, to media, to marketing.” These things, mired from the cauldron of greed, have a way of spoiling many souls desirous of a more natural environment, yet unable to find such solace — ergo, the despair described by Paul Martin’s book.
I tend to believe, though, in contrast to your view, that seeking enlightenment is an instinct much like “don’t eat me” — although the psychological capitalism has distorted the very word to a point that it conjures associative images that you feel are negative (and quite possibly rightly so). And, in agreeance with your view, I see this primal desire to “connect” with all of life (what I view as “enlightenment”) as certainly beneficial.
Vincent says –
September 4th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Tim, shall our discussions founder on the matter of word-definitions?
Read any book on suicide and you will see instances of taking one’s own life for a cause or an ideal, in full sanity. It happened in ancient times and today too. Or it may happen because someone’s life at present doesn’t match up to his standards of what life should be.
As for the adjective “natural”, don’t get me started. Are homosexuality, chastising a child with a rod, smoking a pipe, tattooing, abortion, infanticide, bleaching one’s skin, slimming, cheating at exams, carrying a knife or gun for self-defence and aggression, adultery, going insane——natural?
These things are human behaviours and different ages have different opinions of them. Calling any of them unnatural is simply to make a value judgement that they ought not to be in the repertoire of a person’s behaviour. Let us not go there.
Now you use the expressions “seeking enlightenment” and “psychological capitalism”.
Are these even worth defining?
Vincent says –
September 4th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
If you go out into the street, or a clearing in the jungle, come to that, in any city, hamlet or hut in the entire world, accompanied by an interpreter, and say to whomsoever you meet—man, woman or child—and say “don’t eat me”, they will all understand you, at least your literal meaning, and laugh at you. Put the expression in some context and they may understand it metaphorically too.
Now mention to the same audiences “seeking enlightenment” and “psychological capitalism”.
timjamz says –
September 5th, 2008 at 12:11 am
LOL! Is this a serious question? Aren’t discussions by defninition a parsing of definitions?
timjamz says –
September 5th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Since you have so eloquently disparaged my assertions in the next post, I’ll follow up with the questions of “seeking enlightenment” and “psychological capitalism” over there as well — since the ends to your means is the same in either case.
thesasmac says –
September 5th, 2008 at 10:01 am
What really gets me is that I automatically thought of daddy when I saw the title of this post!!!
Like father like daughter I guess!!
More important than the animal instinct “Don’t eat me!” I have learned “everybody is out to get you!!” HAHA. The lessons of our father really come from a full life’s worth of experience that I couldn’t even dream of recreating! Instead of trying to dissect his why’s I’ve learned to take what he says at face value and remember it. When I need it, I remember what he said and I understand what he meant.
Just remember Tim, to never let a plane go unwatched when you’re driving down the road. It very well may land directly on you!!
timjamz says –
September 5th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Roger that.
Vincent says –
September 8th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I know you may think I am too anarchic in this matter of discussing, Tim, if that is what we are about; but it’s pretty hopeless if the aim of our discussing is words and their definitions. If we cannot make contact above and despite words, then it is a waste of time.
To me we are using words as a transparent toolset to discover something through interaction together, where the important discoveries cannot be defined but only felt.
To this end, any word or phrase whose significance is disputed in any way should simply be dropped out of the discussion as a needless distraction.
But perhaps I ought to stop trying your patience, and shut up!
timjamz says –
September 8th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Leave my patience out of this. If you are to stop trying, that is your own business.
I’m curious about what you’re getting at here, Vincent. Certainly, in any purposeful discussion, the point is beyond the words though words are indeed the tools. I think it’s interesting that you use the word ‘felt.’
If I had to summarize what I ‘feel’ regarding out literary melee here… I would say that I see you as a friendly adversary — I feel your intent is to bring about positive change, but the approach is one almost of tearing down.
What do you think of that?
Vincent says –
September 9th, 2008 at 2:28 am
You’re probably right.
On the other thread, I exposed a difficulty with the word “help”. That illustrates what I mean about words with distracting meanings.
timjamz says –
September 9th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Ugh. That was supposed to read:
“our literary”
Funny: I typo’d just before the word literary….