Manipulating Convenience

Everybody wants the best for them selves, they may be altruistic in certain situations, but in general, every individual looks for its own benefit. Sometimes one gets the benefit because he is lucky, but when capable of manipulating results, every human will turn the scale in their favor. They do it since they are young. "The sight of her child smiling, or the sound of her kitten purring, is rewarding to a mother, in the same sense as food in the stomach is rewarding to a rat in a maze. But once it becomes true that a sweet smile or a loud purr are rewarding, the child is in a position to use the smile or the purr in order to manipulate the parent, and gain more than its fair share of parental investment."
With time, humans learn how to arrange things to benefit them and the manipulation gets smoother and smother until it is no longer noticeable. A person learns to live and survive in their life and gets the environment around him/her to support survival and comfort. If a person is capable of utilizing their bosses, they will. They will get employees do do what they are told and even friends and family to please them as much as possible. But wanting these things is not enough. One must learn how to apply the manipulating strategies and one must know when to use the appropriate ones. Its a trial and error technique. one can use guilt or positive conditioning to see which affects in a more efficient way the victim and then the manipulation begins. One way or another, we all learn what will get us going in life and naturally begin to apply it in order to survive. We all have our own way and we all use it. We all want to keep going. We all want to survive.

HUMANS: UNNATURAL?

Humans have changed many of the ways that things happen in nature. One of this is altering the birth- death ratio. As it is said in the book, nature usually has its way of controlling the population of a species. It keeps it in balance with diseases and predators. However, humans have made machines and weapons that keep away predators and have used science and medicine to eliminate and defend themselves from diseases.
Going back in history one could see how this would affect society. Men and women would marry young and have babies soon and take in life quickly. They would do this because they didn't know when they would die, a lucky person would live to his fifties, in the middle ages a lucky old guy would be one in his forties, but now, we see men and woman in their eighty's and ninety's and it its actually not that weird. Humans have been able to get their life expectancy much longer and the death rate has decreased. The birth rate, on the contrary is increasing and we are therefore having an overpopulation problem. Women have and have children and our culture is actually suppressing anti-conceptives and drugs that will prevent more children. Why? because it is supposedly unmoral. But isn't overpopulating the world to a point when we are just going to end up killing ourselves unmoral? all we are doing is using up all the resources to a point when the nonrenewable ones will run out and the renewable will no longer be renewable. So we will consume everything and leave all other creatures out of our world. Except, this wont happen because nature will make sure it doesn't. We, as a species will probably starve. the selfish gene inside of us will kick in and make each person fight for its own survival. Nobody will be willing to sacrifice and die for the good of others so you don't get a few healthy humans but you get many mediocre ones. They aren't strong enough to survive and the little strength they have they use it up with survival. So no one is strong enough to survive. We will all die. From starvation.
So what we have thought is smart and were all proud of the fact that we are outsmarting nature is actually our death bed. Unless we do something to stop our over population, we will end all dead, all starved. Well that is if global warming doesn't kill us first.

IS LOVE A GENE SURVIVAL STRATEGY?

One can see how a parent and a child have a strong bond. How love will take moms and dads to die for their child and don't really mind the sacrifice they are going through, as long as their child lives. This has always been a matter of love and loyalty but, now, looking at the human nature, this "unselfish" act can be totally opposite, a selfish act. How can it be selfish? Well, humans want to get passed on, and relatives are the best example of similarity in genes because the go from one generation to the other. So a mom wants a child so this one, at its time can reproduce and pass on the genes from the mom to another baby and then this one will grow and reproduce and pass on the genes and so forth and therefore the gene is preserved from one generation to another, the gene never dies. So the mom sacrifices herself so that the genes she passed on are not wasted and because they might not have a life - including reproduction- ahead of them and the baby does. This is why when a relative is dying of old age, it is more acceptable in a way and an altruistic behavior is less expected. However, when the case includes a child that has a long life ahead, parents are commonly altruists. So kin selection works even naturally because the truth is that all examples of child protection and parental care are helping it. All the body organs get involved, milk secreting glands, kangaroo pouches, and so on, are examples of the working in nature of the kin-selection principle. So parental care is in effect altruistic but it is as well selfish. We, as humans, just cant avoid out selfish gene.

How Experiences Affect You

My mom is reading a book that she is glad to constantly share. In "the Outliers", by Malcolm Gladwell, some of the psychological characteristics of human beings are looked at. It talks about the way in which past experiences reflect on the person we become because we tend to repeat pleasant memories and avoid harmful and sad memories. "All that happens is that individuals who are accustomed to winning become even more likely to win, while individuals who are accustomed to losing become steadily more likely to lose." pg 82 This happens because the individuals who won will enter the next fight with more confidence and will therefore have a higher chance of winning, because they believe in themselves, the ones that have lost in the past enter the fight doubting their abilities and pushing themselves lower and lower and will probably loose and then the stimulation will be even stronger for the next fight and the cycle will begin. These individuals will probably end up avoiding fights and have a very low self esteem regarding this section. "The Outliers" talk about the way in which a human is formed since he is little. He says that, in general, obviously there are always exceptions but we´re not considering them, the oldest ones in a group tend to be more successful. In a grade level, for example, the older ones are usually more confident because they have had more development. Comparing a kid that was born in January and a kid that was born in December will probably show what the author is trying to say. When they are young, each year is a big significance in development, therefore when they are in school, the January kid has had 11 more months to develop both mentally and physically, therefore when PE class begins, or when the kids are asked to learn some facts, the December kid is more likely to have a harder time accomplishing the goals. The December kid will look at the January kid and see how he accomplishes things much easier and immediately decides that it is based on ability and not development. All his life, he will grow seeing how the the January kid finds everything easier and he will consider himself lower and he wont realize that maybe, if the January kid had been born on December as well, that he might have kicked his ass at everything because it turns out he is smarter and more coordinated, hes just one year behind in practice. As the two kids grow, their age stops affecting as much, however, the two kids have already established the idea that the January kid is better than the December kid in their minds and the January kid will have probably been inhibited as a kid and wont try many more things when he is older from the fear of failing.
So the kid that always wins, will believe in himself and probably win once more, while the kid that always looses kind of accepts that as a fact and enters the fight already believing that he will loose and will therefore not give everything hes got. So your past experiences do affect it and if humans have seen that their selfishness has helped them survive as an individual, they will keep on being selfish to be able to survive.

Lying Animals

"But do animals ever communicate false information; do they ever tell lies?"
According to Dawkins, they do. He talks about camouflage and some instincts being lies. Maybe the difference between animals and humans is that animals are not conscious of what they are doing. A bird might make a false alarm warning others of hawks and gets to be able to get more food for himself and he does it as a survival technique. Some plain old fly has the bees stripes in able to appear like a bee and avoid as many predators. Angel fish wait quietly at the bottom of the ocean camouflaging with the sand until a possible prey is close enough to get eaten. All of these animals are lying to survive. If the angle fish didn't hide, he'd never get other fish close enough to get them and eat them, he would starve. All of the animals lie, but not with evil intentions, just with selfish intentions. It is very different since one case infers the prosper of one with the destruction of the other while the other just wants the destruction of one and sees as a side effect the survival and prosperity of the other. We as humans instead are aware of our lies. We are aware of our intentions and we are aware of our motives. As humans, we choose when to lie and when to tell the truth, when to hide and when to come forth. We do things for our benefit or we do them for the disgrace it will bring the other. We are conscious of our acts and of their consequences. so why are humans so mean? how can be so selfish but then go and value altruism? why are we such hypocrites, even with ourselves? will we survive individually or will we survive due to group work? will we survive at all? Will we end up destroying one anther? how does our difference from all the other creatures affect our future? What is our purpose in life? Into what will we evolve? How much longer will we keep this form? Some questions just don't have answers and there is no way of getting them until they have actually occurred, there are some that will simply never have answers, or will develop more questions from each answer, we just don't know.

SURVIVING WITHIN

Reading what is currently being taught to me in biology is rather interesting. It is saying exactly the same that I am being taught except that it shows some analogies and different methods of showing and explaining the process and the way in which things work. For example, Richards Dawkins explains chromosomes as volumes, and DNA as instructions and so forth to make it easier for the reader to understand. This is good because not all the readers know much about biology so even though the author many times assumes we already know some things, by doing this you get to understand some basic science even if you don't identify each term. It also explains the basics of the ways in which things work so one gets to understand each idea. One very interesting method of survival that nature has developed is the way in which traits are stored. Even though one of the characteristics might not be present in one generation, it can still be kept from one generation to the next. It is astonishing how the molecules and cells get a survival machine and adapts it to its benefit. Even though nature is not conscious of the act, things have evolved in a way that cells and traits are preservable. In this way, the DNA instructions specify a specific characteristic in each person and store others for future generation. When one receives the mothers and fathers chromosomes and unites them to create your own DNA, many possible combinations of results exist. The DNA eventually gets created by the mixing and arranging of inherited characteristics and in situations such as eye color, if you inherit brown and blue eye possibility, you will end up having brown eyes because brown is a dominant trait. If you wanted to have blue eyes, you needed both parents to give you blue eye "instructions". This shows how brown, the dominant trait is or has been more "selfish" than the blue trait, and therefore appears in the physical appearance. The Blue trait, however, is also somewhat selfish and fighting for survival and will not permit his presence to be forgotten. These recessive traits have therefore developed a way in which to survive. They may not show in a person but are stored internally so when that person reproduces, its offspring also has the possibility of showing the trait. With time, some humans are "better" survival machines than others because they confront the world better and survive longer and in general fit better the description of "survival of the fittest" and therefore, the genes in these humans tend to get spread more and each time humans evolve and continue to evolve. Currently however we do not feel the change because evolution is a very slow process but one thing is definite: molecules that are millions and millions of years old have survived within their survival machines and we are just one more try of a machine that might get renovated, kept or thrown away according to its capability.

HUMAN SURVIVAL MACHINE

So, we have evolved because mistakes happen. So maybe mistakes aren't so bad after all. Many people say to learn from your mistakes and apparently even non thinking molecules apply this advice. With time each tiny cell, each small molecule learned from the mistake of the first replicator and applied the replication it itself. This way, new kinds of molecules were being produced and each time they got more and more complex. During the replication, mistakes could occur and each mistake lead that molecule to either a better life or a worse one. If it lead it to a better one, then when it replicated itself, this new characteristic would also be transmitted and therefore passed on. If the mistake didn't help, well the molecule most probably didn't survive, or was to weak to replicate itself and therefore wasn't able to pass its traits on. And so we evolved thanks to this replication and to the increasing of complexity through out time.
Three aspects that were a great influence on each individuals survival were longevity, fecundity, and copying fidelity. These are really important because it helps establish which group survives and goes on living in next generations. Since competition is currently occurring, to have long lives, helps increase of survival, so does reproducing constantly and having good newborns because if they all change then there is no basic thing to transmit plus to many negative mistakes might occur. For competition, having a good "survival machine" also helps a lot because it increases your chances of survival. Today, we, humans, are the survival machines of thousands of cells, some very old ones, some relatively new but we are still their survival machine and it is us what keeps them alive and existing.

Selfish or Altruistic?

When reading Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene", I have discovered that I read in a different tone than when I read a novel. It is different to read science because one tends to have to pay much more attention to everything you go through, you cant afford to doze of because you than all that you have read because one must understand things in a chain to be able to get them straight. In novels and other books, you can sometimes doze off a few paragraphs and then get once more involved and you still understand everything that is going on. In "Slaughter House Five", for example it isn't as bad to doze off. plus the experiences told in the novel usually make it easier for you to doze of because it leads you to think about your own experiences or you get a point of view or perspective in a certain topic so you doze off. In this book it is even less worse since it doesn't have a straight time line so you can go back and forth with the thoughts and you wont really get lost. "The Selfish Gene" has also gotten me involved in a topic that i actually enjoy and would like to learn about.
In this book the author says he will discuss why humans are selfish and how this characteristic has gone from generation to generation. He says its not just a human trait but many animals have it and it is actually indispensable for evolution and survival. However he also talks about altruism and how it may help for survival but that there will never be a completely altruistic group since selfishness always develops and takes over. It also talks about individual selection and how one may survive and then transmit to others that characteristic. He talks about selfishness being necessary for survival and a natural thing in creatures.
One thing that actually impressed me was the fact that he wasn't going to talk about nature vs nurture since he didn't really consider it that important. I , on the contrary, believe that that is very important because society really can transform you in some ways but that there are other things that you inevitably inherited and there is nothing you can do about it. Last year, in PDR, we actually did a debate on this subject and we concluded that both are very important on the development of a person. So it actually surprised me when the author specified that this would be one of the topics which he would not discuss.

Looking At Things from One Point Or The Other

In Slaughter House Five, Billy pilgrim meets the Tralfamadorians and learns from them a new way to interpret and view life. He gets to understand that there are things in life that he cant change and that he doesnt have any any power over. He even gets to believe he doesnt have power over anything, not even his own decisions. That everything is happening, has already happened and will happen at the same time. He even learns a prayer in which he asks god to "grant him the power to accept the things he cannot change." So its just as Epictetus sugests it, one has to choose the way in which one sees and interprets life. "Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. "So, he just suggests to "accept what you cannot change" and to actually enjoy it and see it in a positive way, and the way to do it is by actually convincing oneself that is what you want.
Both works talk about life perspective. The way we look at things, people and life. They try to tell us how to interpret each one and how to handle them in a way that will make us happy or atleast that we dont suffer about them. Vonnegut found a way to get council from all the pain he had from war, he accepted a belief of no free will and of destiny. He got himself atached to people that died and suffered for it but then found a way to ease the pain. Epictetus, instead, suggests a way in which one can avoid the suffering from the begining but one would probably avoid the bond and friendship as well, so you never gain it but then you cant loose it. Its just self persevernce and keeping a sane mind.

Anchors Away!!

In Epictetus they suggest a very detached life. I talks about detachment from many things, personally I don't consider myself capable of doing so. "That is how it is in life too: if you are given a wife and a child instead of a vegetable and a small shellfish, that will not hinder you; but if the captain calls, let all those things go and run to the boat without turning back." This really makes me think how one can simply let go of these things. I guess that it matters how your priorities are set up in life, and in my case, it would be very hard because family is really high up on my list. I also wonder, in the analogy, what would the captain be in real life? It compares kids and wife with the vegetable and selfish but then what is that big power that calls and you have to answer? It really confuses me because it is kind of contradicting. It says not to depend on anything but then it says that one must answer the "captains call". I would really like to know who the captain is. It talks about the boat "being anchored" and about you running to avoid being "left behind." What do all these mean? The boat is what: Life? And then what, kids and family are just a detour? It talks about getting "fresh water", so what is that, like a rest? a rest from what? something new to try? Wouldn't it be unfair with your wife and kids? One day you just decide you want your old life back and leave them? except that I guess that if everyone followed Epictetus´s Handbook, then the kids and wife would also consider him just a "stop" and wouldn't really mind him leaving. I guess it would be a matter of perspective and the way in which people live so if we all follow Epictetus's way, then we all think of others as things that we are fond to but that nature can take away at any point. So I guess, we could all live his way, its a matter of getting used to it.

How Much Dethatchment is Good Dethatchment?

The first five of the aphorisms of Epictetus Handbook lead you to question the way in which you interpret life. It talks about a person suffering or feeling disappointed or averted because they do not live in the "correct" way. It tells people that to accept life as it is, and to avoid all the suffering and confusions in between if you don’t, one must separate things in life in what is up to us and what isn’t. This way we can’t suffer upon the things that weren’t under our control but we instead accept them as natural because it was supposed to happen. Through this, we avoid disappointments and instead we change our way of thinking. We get detached from things we can’t actually own, such as our family and therefore don’t feel sad when they die or live because they were just a few more human beings that can be replaced. So it’s all about our perspective and how we view things and how we think. "What upsets people are not things themselves but their judgment about the things." So it all depends on the way we react to each occasion and how we deal with ideas and opinions. The text also got my attention when it says that an uneducated person blames others, a partly educated person blames himself and that a well educated person doesn’t accuse anybody, it just understand that there are things that happen in a certain way and one can’t control and that there are other decisions that one takes fully conscious of what one can obtain and what one cannot.

I do believe that there are things that one can’t change in life and should accept but I also think that detaching oneself from all these will not get you a satisfactory life. I do think that one should be careful in the choices one makes avoid getting hurt but I think that one has to accept the things that will hurt you as they are and accept that they hurt you. I believe that to experience happiness and joy one must also suffer because you won’t otherwise enjoy it because you’ve got nothing to compare your happiness to. So when it says you won’t get harmed than it might be right, but you won’t get good feelings at a high rate either. So yes, one should accept some things as they are, yes one should have a good perspective in life and avoid getting confused because you are experiencing a bad outlook, but NO, one should not avoid getting completely dethatched from all that you can’t own because even though one cant own them physically, you do own them sentimentally and they are an important part of your life and a support that always keeps you going, even at the worse moments.

Poo-tee-weet?

This final chapter is kind of like the first. Vonnegut begins and ends his book by communication with the reader directly. Once more he is telling what he feels and what he thinks instead of narrating sections of Billy's life. I really liked this closure since it once more lets us knows Vonnegut's direct thoughts. He is sharing with us what he wants us to know and he is closing the book he spent so much time and effort on. He now gives his perspective about death and even continues his "So it goes." to show that he still tries to give death as little importance as possible and that it means much to him but that it is also just something natural that had to happen.
He continues to talk about Dresden and about the human condition it developed in him. "I suppose they will all want dignity" (212) He keeps on emphasizing such points that he tried to get across throughout the whole book.
We also get to see that Billy and Vonnegut are not the same person since he says "Now Billy and the rest were being marched into the ruins by the guards. I was there. O´Hare was there." Or we can interpret them as being the same person. One can be "Dante" and the other can be the "pilgrim Dante. " Another thing that caught my attention was how Edgar Derby dies and how stupid and ridiculous the whole situation is. Even though they had already announced his death several times throughout the book, I was kind of expecting some more details but there were none. So really why is his death so important? because or if irony or is there a deeper message that I haven't yet deciphered.
"Poo-tee-weet?"-That's the last word of this book. So, what does it mean? I think this last word can have many interpretations. As I had discussed with several of my classmates, this phrase can be a sign of hope because even after all the horrible things that have happened there is still a bird that sings, It can also be seen as a mockery to our behavior, it being so horrible and terrifying that even the birds question what it is we are doing. It can also be seen as an end to all the bad things Billy has lived, as if the bird was saying, "Its OK, you're back now, you can get back to your normal life and go on with it. " Or it can be an Irony as well: as if it was saying that even though all these terrible things happened to them at Dresden, the rest of the life was just going on with their lives and even birds were just living their own circumstance and had forgotten about them and now they are welcoming them back to the real world.
By the end of this book I had answered many questions but I also have many new ones. This "unstuck in time" thing is something that really got my attention and I was glad to have read this book not only because it gave me some knowledge on common history but also because I got to experiment with a new kind of structure. I was used to a linear story with maybe a few flashbacks and foreshadows here and there but i had never read such a mixed up book. I guess the closest Ive got to it is "Crónica de una muerte anuncida" by Gabriel García Márques which also jumps around in time and space. Still this was a novel that also made me question my current life and my actions and human nature in general. I liked about this book that every interpretable part had several interpretations and each reader gets to find their own and look at the circumstances in their own way. So, what was this book to each and every one of you?

Are we Predestined?

Are humans good or evil? Do we have free will or are we predestined? Is there an excuse or justification for our actions? What and why do we act upon?
These questions are very common. I guess we could even call the cliches, still the way in which we react to them is unique and personal for each individual. Even Vonnegut has these doubts and relates his book to these questions. He is constantly highlighting human cruelty and how we are always making so many wrongdoings. he even highlights our perversion at one point. ´"That's not what you want, for Christs sake." He told Billy."What you wants in the back."´ Here the bookstore salesman is referring to the back part of the store where all the porn is. He is amazed and actually laughs at Billy when he realizes hes not interested in porn but all he wants to do is buy a Kilgore Trout book, their display "garbage".
Vonnegut also indirectly relates his book to human dignity. He kind of tells people that the only way to justify such horrible human behaviors is to think that things happen the way they do because it is meant to be that way. By looking at things this way, the Tralfamadorian way, he gets to calm some of his uncertainties and some of the things that probably haunted him after war. He stops taking all those actions personally and stops questioning them and just accepts them.
Vonnegut reaches an interior peace, or at least gets close to it because he takes away human guilt and human will. It is no longer our decision what we do but we just end up doing what we are meant to do. This theory takes away our blame because it means that it wasn't us who CHOSE to do all those bad things, we just had to do it so that things would work out. We did not have the bad intentions and we did not wish anybody evil. This is also taking away the reason for why we decided to act in one way or another because we just did it so that the future could complete itself. However, the fact that Billy/ Vonnegut found a way to clam himself down doesn't mean I found a possible satisfactory answer, I still wonder about these questions as they pop into my mind every once in a while.

SO IT GOES...

Throughout the book there is a phrase that constantly comes up: "So it goes." At first I didn't really understood why Vonnegut wrote it. Maybe he just doesn't care about others and every death is just one more death. After having Mr. Gunther go and talk to us during class, I understood the real reason for this phrase. Its actually almost completely backwards to what i had thought. It all connects to the fourth dimension and to the tralfamadorians.
Through the class discussion I got to understand a new concept: the fourth dimension. I may not be like a genius at it or anything but now I have a basic guideline on how it works. Vonnegut included the tralfamadorians in his story to show the reader that there is another way of seeing life. That one is able to perceive it from another point of view, from one in which you don't only see the stars as "lines" instead of "dots" but you also see the complete course of a lifetime. The concept of time doesn't exist in its normal way but is no longer a constraint in life. To the tralfamadorians, life doesn't consist of a future, a present and a past, it consists of something called a time worm, where you see everything at the same time. This way, you get to choose what part of life to see and what moment to "live."
The way in which you live your life must be a very important topic to Vonnegut. Taking into consideration that he was one of the few that survived Dresden, he must have been left with a huge sociological disorder. Understanding this fourth dimension must have kept him a bit calmer because he can, at the same time, acknowledge any moment in any persons life. Therefore, he just chooses to see a certain situation and goes from one to the other, he is unstuck in time. This way of seeing life must be comforting to Billy and therefore to Vonnegut, (I believe Billy is an indirect representation of Vonnegut and what he felt and lived and experienced) because it permits him to see the great moments of all of his friends´ lives. That way when he says "so it goes" it might refer to the end of a persons life line but it doesn't really matter because he can choose to see any point on that line and remember all the loved ones he lost. This way he doesn't have to suffer his past or anything like that, he just time travels in a way that he just looks at life in a way that lets him fight all the pain he´s got inside. So its not that he doesn't care about somebodies death, its just that its really not such a big deal because the death is just one of the many points that make a line and he can travel to any of the other points and choose to enjoy it instead of torturing himself with the loss of his friends.