The Baboon Congress

A Lilipadlian Life, or Stephen Jay Gould #1

48 Comments

Today’s guest post is from Clyde.

At 6 a.m. I rode the Sakatah Trail to a bridge across a narrowing in Eagle Lake, a fun place to watch wildlife, such as beaver, egrets, herons, swans, eagles. This morning below the bridge was a swarm of a few hundred 3-6 inch catfish, most about 5 inches. They were feeding on water bugs, or perhaps their larva on the surface of the shallow water in a circle about 8 feet across.

After a bit I saw a pattern to their movements. Four to six catfish would make a group and swim abreast across the area of feeding. At the edge of the circle they would disband and swim back into the circle, soon joining another band. In the 20 minutes I watched I guess about 150 such groups formed, swam, and then disbanded at the edge. The few three-inch fish were never part of a group.

The question, of course, is, in the language of the evolutionists, what advantage is there to such behavior? The answer is obvious; improved feeding. A group can sweep up the larva and/or bugs more efficiently. When the larva/bugs try to swim out of their way, the ones at the edge catch them. I wonder two things: 1) is there more advantage to being in the middle or at the ends? 2) are some fish dominant, as in wolf packs, and always get the more advantageous position?

Can you tell I read a lot about nature and evolution. I believe Stephen Jay Gould is one of the great essayists, a match for Montaigne, Addison, Steele, Pepys, Emerson and the like. Thoreau I would still place above all of them. Perhaps it seems odd that as a former pastor I read about evolution. But I see no conflict; I believe reading about nature and evolution has a strong worshipful aspect. I admire the mind of the creator, in the design of both species and processes/systems. I have on occasion quoted Gould from the pulpit, but not his evolutionary thinking as such. Gould’s nature essays covered vast ground, including one of the finest and also one the stupidest essays ever on baseball. I did have one church member who knew who he was, and we enjoyed our inside joke.

The fish behavior I observed raises one of the most difficult questions for evolution, one that still perplexed Darwin at his death: how do cooperative behaviors develop? Survival of the fittest is a fully competitive model in which each individual is trying to protect its DNA and pass it on at the expense of other species and individuals.

How in a very competitive world do cooperative and even community behaviors develop? In some non-human species community roles have developed, such as foster parenting. How does one explain the vast community/cooperative behaviors of humans in evolutionary terms? A theory of an altruistic gene has developed to explain such behavior, which really only raises deeper questions. One man believes he has identified a gene for religion, thereby disproving the existence of God, which again only goes deeper because, of course, God could have made that gene.

It is a fascinating and complex issue. I do recognize both competitive and cooperative behaviors in myself and think to some extent they are instinctual. I have a visceral competitive response every now and then, damn it. I also think that in general men are more competitive and women more cooperative, but that may be learned in socialization. Lots can be said, but:

Where do you fall on the competition/cooperative continuum? Where would you like to fall?

48 thoughts on “A Lilipadlian Life, or Stephen Jay Gould #1”

  1. i have almost no competitive urges at all, but i don’t think that’s because i’m female. my Steve is not competitive (except with himself) either. my Mom had a high need to have her children be not just good but best. she was always pushing me to be more “out there” than i was and her fear was that i would be “left sucking hind teat.” another farm-type chestnut that meant i’d be left wanting, i guess. they did talk about teats a lot. “as useless as teats on a boar” was another that my Aunt Marie would often spout and her daughter does to this day. maybe their obsession with teats is why i got into milking….?? what were we talking about again?
    sorry, Clyde – thanks for the keen observations. i read Lewis Thomas – “Lives of a Cell” long years ago and just loved it. can’t remember a word of it, though 🙂 should try Stephen Gould

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    2. barb, I grew up with all those expressions, and more, but the word was never “teat.”
      Have I ever told you folks my eighth grade English teacher was called Mrs. Teat? Then later her son was my next door neighbor. His son changed the name to Tate. A couple of miles they other way from us lived a family named Braa
      I am going t to go see of the fish are back..

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons:

    Thanks for the post Clyde. Very thought-provoking. Your opinions remind me of what I was taught in confirmation class by our local physics professor. His lecture on evolution, as follows:

    “There will be people who try to tell you that the Bible and evolution are in conflict. That is not true and you don’t have to worry about this. God is big enough to handle this. The Bible will tell you why and science will tell you how. That’s how it works.”

    I thought he made sense and took him at his word, eliminating all kinds of religious problems in the process. Thank you Sheldon Cram.

    Meanwhile, I am not very competitive in most things. However, if the Twins or Vikings are playing in a “big game” I turn into a sideshow for my family who enjoys watching me watch the game.

    I have also found that if someone pushes me too hard and will not leave me alone, I have a ruthless streak which will cause me to push back relentlessly at them. Thus my admiration for those Wisconsin Dems! I am not certain that this character trait is competitiveness or hard-headed determination.

    But there it is.

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  3. In evolution it’s the most adaptable who survive and procreate. Maybe that makes them the fittest, but when things change, the fittest better be able to change too. And that leaves open the opportunity to be most adaptable by being the most cooperative.

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  4. Morning all.

    My father was also a relentless pusher… no matter what I did, his response was “That’s great… but now what are you going to do next.” Don’t get me wrong, encouragement is good, but it did often leave me feeling that whatever I did wasn’t quite good enough yet. I assume that this is why I am, as Barb says of her Steve, competitive with myself. Can I read more books this year than last? Will I be able to send more cards to soldiers this month? Can I get the yard nicer looking this week? I don’t think of myself as outwardly competitive, although I will admit to cheering really loudly for our team at the lumberjack show on Tuesday!

    Wonderful topic, Clyde. I am also a Gould fan – discovered him many years ago while reading my father’s Scientific American.

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  5. Good morning to all,

    I think it all comes down to good education and political awareness. Then you have to believe that people will do the right thing if they understand what is going on. I am not religous, but I don’t think that matters very much as long we aren’t tallking about religion that rejects good education and political thought. Rejection of the theory of evolution is mainly or completely due to a lack of education as far as I’m concerned. I think well educated religious people don’t reject evolution as a theory. Evolution is a theory and not a fact, but there is a really large amount of evidence supporting this theory.

    I think with political awareness and education any tendency to be excessively competative or too uncooperative can be over come. This requires some faith that people will not do the wrong thing if they know what is right, but I think we all hope this is true. I don’t think anyone is fundamentally evil except perhaps some people that have extreme mental illness.

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  6. Greetings! I am a hugely cooperative person at work, at home, while driving, shopping — just about anywhere. But get me involved in a physical activity like sports or karate and my competitive teeth come out — bared, sharp and snarling.

    Karate tournaments are well-organized and very respectful affairs. There’s a protocol to bow to the judges and your competitors before and after you perform. I’ve observed that the men don’t usually chat together much while they each await their turn. But the women will usually chat together, say things like “good luck, ma’am” or “very nice form, ma’am.” I usually try to play this little game, but inside my head I’m saying, “bite me, wench, you’re going down!,” or some other mental verbal assault on their honor and character.

    Usually, I watch my competitors with a critical eye, looking for faults and weaknesses. Assured of my victory, I mentally prepare by getting into the “zone” and generating an internal killer rage so I will blow them over with my screaming intensity. Thirty seconds later, it’s over.

    I had to graciously accept 2nd place in the spring tournament. She was my equal in many ways, but she got the first because she had much lower stances. But then she had the advantage of being 22 years younger with way better knees to get those lower stances. She shouldn’t have even been in my division — that kind of ticked me off. Sooo … am I competitive? You bet your sweet bippy I am!

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    2. I grew up watching sports. Track was the only sport in which I participated. Well, there was some participation in basketball, but it didn’t get very far. I guess I really didn’t have the competitive drive needed to be good at track or any sport. I admire people who are good at sports and I am still a sports fan. I do think that many people have an excessive interest in competitive sports, myself included.

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  7. There is way too much to respond to here! First: great essay, Clyde. I hate competition most of the time. That is one response–and not a very noble one–you’d expect of a kid who grew up not strong, not fast, not coordinated. I think competition is the ugly monkey on the backs of virtually every American male. And I recognize that is the predictable response of a perpetual loser!

    But (I’m whispering now) I am not entirely free of the ugly urge to compete. The little girl who lives next door once invited me to her school’s Kite Day. On Kite Day, father-daughter teams fly kites and eat doughnuts. Since Callie’s dad was on the road, she invited me. I could feel ugly competitive urges stirring in me when I bought the kite. I had a hunch the winds would be light at the time we were to put up the kites. So I went to a real kite store and shelled out close to $30 for a delta kite. Do you know about deltas? In faint breezes they still shoot toward heaven like the space shuttle.

    On kite day, Callie and I went out into this big field and deployed our blue delta. All around us fathers and sons were running to launch box kites and traditional kites, most of which were digging trenches in the dirt with their ribs. Some kites got head-high and then dove to their death. Our delta began to rise. At the end of the 100 yards of string, I tied on a second string. And then we were in the third 100-yard string. All around us dads were screaming at kids, kites were flailing, kids were fighting tears . . . and the blue delta was up where it should have had lights to warn passing aircraft.

    And, oh, how I enjoyed walking in for doughnuts afterward, full of the sick poison of competitive smugness. This wasn’t even an acknowledged competitive event, but I know American men well enough to know that every dad on that field had envied Callie and me. One by one, dads asked me, “Was that you with that blue kite?” “Oh, it probably was,” I’d say with feigned disinterest. “Damn, but that thing flew!” they’d so. Controlling my joy, I’d say something deferential like, “Oh, you know, Callie chose a delta kite. Any doofus can fly a delta in light winds.”

    After a lifetime of dropped passes, lost races and strikeouts, those doughnuts tasted great.

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  8. I admit it-I am a pretty driven person with high expectations, and my daughter will be the first to tell you that I can be a real pain to live with. My children are enthusiastic about many things and wanted to be involved in many things, and then were dismayed when they found out I expected them to put their all into their activities. I have learned, however, that my children are not just extensions of myself, and they have to find their own sense of purpose apart from what I think they should do. That is a hard thing for me to keep in mind sometimes.

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      1. I wish I were wiser and had the answers. I am learning that all I can do is be a good example and get out of the way and bite my tongue. Daughter just started her first job in a coffee shop and she is demonstrating cleaning skills and a work ethic never befor seen in our home. Where did it come from?

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      2. She is probably getting this from her days in pre-school and kindergarten where your daughter was also, no doubt, cleaner and more polite than she was at home…(Daughter is this way – she is much more focused, neater and more likely to remember “please” and “thank you” with her teachers than she is at home.)

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      5. That is so true. My house may not be ‘clean’, but it’s not disgusting. However, I spend 6 hours a week cleaning at the dojo to help pay for karate, and that place is immaculate when I’m done.

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    1. i my be late but plug me in anyway. i have a meeting in appleton wi on the morning of the 25th and will come over afterward.

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  10. Hmm, Clyde, now you’ve got me thinking. The more I think about it, the more I don’t see the two being contradictory or opposites – with competitive at one end of a scale and cooperative at the other. I consider myself competitive and cooperative, both. If we can agree on what needs to be done, and it takes a team to do it, I’ll be on your team to accomplish our common goal. If you want to race me from one end of the pool to the other, you’re on your own, and I’ll try to get there first. But, winning certainly isn’t everything. Before I had my knee replaced with a titanium one, I played a lot of tennis and was reasonably good at it. I played in numerous tournaments and enjoyed every minute of it. It never bothered me to lose a tennis match to a better player, but it did bother me to lose when I was beating myself with double faults and stupid mistakes. Competitiveness can make us work harder, give more and, come to think of it, so can cooperation.

    That said, there some competitions that I have no interest in. I couldn’t care less if you live in a bigger house, or drive a newer and nicer car than I do. And if you’re embarrassed to be seen in public with someone wearing clothes hopelessly out of fashion and comfortable shoes, you should probably rethink going anywhere with me. The status symbols, by which many people measure success, are just not important to me and I waste no time, money or energy acquiring them.

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  11. In general, I’m a laid-back, cooperative person, and like Plainjane I don’t care about fancy cars, big houses or fashionable much of anything. I was quite competitive about grades when I was a kid, but there really wasn’t much opposition for a long time . At work there’s small opportunity for direct competition, so it’s generally against myself or the clock; recently I’ve been rather underutilized, so I’m trying to learn to work slower, which is VERY unnatural for me. Perfectionism is a kind of competitiveness, and I have a fair dose of that. Then there’s the unique competition of doing a live reading, when you’re trying to get the “right” reaction from the audience. Are they going to think the piece is funny/scary/touching? Where are they going to laugh, and is it where I thought it’d be? Are they going to applaud or sit there like lake trout with their eyes kind of buggy (occasionally that’s the reaction you’re going for, but usually not so much)? That’s where the thrills are in my life.

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    1. When I was out in the job market I had trouble finding work that utilized my talents. I supose you and I, Crow Girl, would be thought of as people who are not very competitive because we have trouble finding good jobs. However, I think the political system in which we live has something to do with educated people ending up in jobs that don’t use their talents. The lack of jobs for educated people is said to be a main factor fueling the rebellions in the near east

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  12. I am generally more at the cooperative end of the spectrum. Like Steve, I’m not a competitor at all when it comes to physical activity since I was a slow kid, often picked last for kickball – so phy ed and sports made me curl up into a little ball for a long time. Showing off intellectually? No surprise, I’m sure, but yeah…I do get competitive on that front. It was one place I could excel in school, so that’s where I took out my competitive aggressions. And once that pattern was ingrained, it stuck, much to my chagrin as I hear myself mouth off like a smarty-pants. Projects (like theater stuff, work projects, etc.) on a team, then I know that the best way to get things done is to work well in the group, which sometimes means I lend my strengths to help someone else, and sometimes I seek out and rely on the strengths of others to make up for my weaknesses to get things done.

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  13. Wkiwedia has a wonderful article on Gould, which starts “Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.”
    He wrote a series of 300 monthly essays for “Natural History” magazine, which are collected in books. One of his last essays “I Have Landed” is brilliant, far-ranging, and moving. He was also, as he explains in that essay, a devoted choir singer. He especially loved singing in the choir for Bach’s B Minor Mass, which is ironic for an atheist of Jewish descent, but Gould was nothing if not complex.
    He also long ago wrote a book called “The Mismeasure of Man,” which every proponent of current educational trends for mass testing should read and at least consider, along with Alfie Kohn’s “Punishment by Rewards.”
    Tomorrow’s essay, I warn you, is subtitled “Stephen J. Gould #2.”
    Also, no fish today.

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  15. A very fine post, Clyde. I’ve never really been able to see the whole evolution vs. religion thing. I very much like the how/why statement from Jacque, expresses my sentiments exactly.

    Am I competitive, you had better believe it-do I find losing epically to be shameful, oh yeah-ergo, I try very hard to not look competitive. I have no idea if there is an equivelent to that sort of behavior in the animal kingdom-maybe all those ravenous masters of camoflage.

    On a tangent note-anybody else hear the piece on Morning Edition (I think yesterday- I have no time sense this week) about how scientists are theorizing that multi-cellularity evolved for reasons not unlike what Clyde observed in the fish.

    Linky for those of you who want to know:
    http://www.npr.org/2011/08/10/139345519/scientists-explore-why-single-cells-band-together

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  16. I grew up with two brothers that were extremely competitive and had the not insignificant advantage of being 8 years older. At first I shunned competition altogether because, as you can guess, I never stood much of a chance of beating them in anything. But having a goal or something that drives you to strive is undeniably a positive thing in moderation. So I essentially learned to compete with myself. The only problem was that, as an angsty teen, I’d set my standards way too high. I had to learn to set achieveable standards and then hold myself accountable to strive for them. Like most other strategies for personal growth, there are advantages and disadvantages.

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    1. My brother, who is two years younger than me, would challenge me to a foot race when we were young. I am sure I was faster and I didn’t accept his challenge. Looking back, I think he was just trying to get my attention. I don’t think my brother and I were really very competative againest each other. It was a little annoying that he was a straight A student and I was not.

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  17. I’m cooperative to a fault, but there are a couple of places I find myself competing in a sense. At Tapestry (Fridays for international folk dancing) there’s no way I could be the “best” dancer, but I do want to be known as “really good”, so I find myself requesting a dance that I can lead each week, in case there are newcomers. Ah, the ego. And then I can remember wanting to be thought of as “the best office manager we’ve ever had – so I usually don’t compete except in a time line. I guess it’s recognition I desire.

    Thanks for the introduction to Stephen Gould, Clyde – looks like one Husband will enjoy, too. Why is it the creationists don’t think God could have come up with evolution?

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    1. You’re not alone…I’m that way about being a memorable parent volunteer teaching my little bits of art and music – may not be “the best” but fierce about being memorable/noteworthy. All ego.

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      1. Fully clothed . . . well, yeah . . . I don’t think anyone pictures God sitting on some cloud buck naked. But what style would God dress in? Robes like a Roman senator? Given how rude the Romans were to Christians, that seems like a loser. So then what? Slacks and a sweater like Mr. Rogers? Not bad. I’m sure some Creationists see God dressed conservatively in a suit and tie. I just don’t see God as a Ralph Lauren guy, do you? My fondest hope would be that God would feel secure in his looks and would have a sense of humor. In that case, he might run around in a Superman suit!

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    3. I think all of us want to be recognized. To have somebody say “You are good at that” or “you’re the best (fill in the blank) we’ve ever had” is not just feeding people’s egos. But as great as that is, I think we all want someone to recognize us on a deeper level, too. To have somebody see you as you are inside and to say “I like you” or “You are good” is a rare thing.

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  18. I was definitely more competitive when I was a kid, particularly in certain athletic things like softball and running (or climbing trees if there had been a competition in climbing trees). However, I was just selectively competitive… I totally stunk at other sports like volleyball and so my competitiveness was limited to things I was kinda good at. I didn’t really care about getting the best grades in school, either – I was very content getting mostly B’s.

    Now that even my little bits of athletic skill have sunk into oblivion, I have to be less competitive or go crazy. Since my body is no longer fast or good at softball, it would drive me crazy to remain competitive because I would never win or be the best, or even place in the top 5. I noticed a few years ago when I joined the local Y that when I would supposedly speedwalk around the track that it bugged me when people would pass me. I guess when your “speedwalk” is everybody else’s “casual stroll,” that will happen. Now I no longer go to the Y and my competitiveness is restricted to my time on the treadmill…trying to go a little faster than the set program and pushing myself to do more in less time.

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  19. By the way, Clyde, thanks for telling us about the fish. I think those fish put on a very interesting show. I always like to hear about interesting obsevations of that kind.

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  20. nice post clyde. i am competitive but i like to think i am also cooperative. it all varies with the situation. if i am being art of a group and working toward an end goal i will be as cooperative as possible and try to be competitive about doing the best job and helping others to do the best job possible. if i am with a group where some two dollar badge is trying to throw his weight around and ramrod their idea of what should be done i am a little less cooperative. i am a competitive spirit but unfortunately life has taught me to be a realist as well. i do my best but i like it best hen i set my own guidelines and succeed by my masure against my own standards rather than trying to whoop you you old dogs. it doesn’t need to be i’m good youre bad . it just needs to be im good.
    as for the evolution thing i thought god had enough foresight to plant the seed for the evolution to occur. he is a cool god that gets it for the most part. it is ok to allow the world to figure this stuff out. heck back in the day they had time to think about stuff like this now we have to update our facebook profile and answer the emails and google every destination we are looking for. i used to look forward to getting lost so could see new places and learn the world on kind of an accidental as you go approach. now the world is afraid to take a left turn if the gps doesn’t tell them to.
    i do like the group thing like whe a flood is coming or just came and the community bands together, i was listening today to a replay of some of the earthquake victims of the sanfransisco earthquake in 94 and how the only thought they had was t help people get out of the buried rubble and the fact that the stranger next to you becomes a partner in those type of situations. my god thoughts are varied and not all one way or the other.. i do like this randy newman take on god:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEKuGcmW70I

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