I mowed my prairie of a lawn today. My poor husband worked on the old lawnmower for weeks, however it ended up needing a new carborator which we didn't want to pay for. So I went out and bought a new lawnmower. Funny, when you let someone who has never mowed a lawn buy a lawnmower. I bought the coolest little electric mower. My lawnmower is the most amazing little thing in the world. It wieghs about 2/3 of the weight of a normal mower, starts when I push a lever, doesn't stink of gas, and has a sweet little purr instead of a deafening roar.
It is so the girly lawnmower.
My husband hasn't stopped making fun of me yet. He says my hippie mulching lawnmower doesn't have blades. Instead it has little gentle hands which slowly massage the tops of the grass off. I love my lawnmower!
I enjoy mowing the grass and watching it all level off evenly. So easy to do and it is so perfect and flat when you are done. Plus it stays that way for at least a week or two. Very unlike housework. Mowing time is also thinking time. I like to think, far too much, as sometimes I forget what my hands are doing as my mind is far off thinking. When I mow, I just have to touch base now and then so I don't mow down my son or the cord, and otherwise I can think.
Today I thought about, well stuff I shouldn't mention, hah, hah, That's why I looked so happy mowing the lawn. But outside of inapproriate thoughts, I also tossed around thoughts about society and such. My grand, impressive theory of what is worng with society. For me, being a scientist, most everything falls down into evolved patterns of behavior.
other stuff
NT,god,siva,driftwood,sm
Almost all of our behaviors were developed over five hundred thousand years or so of evolutionary pressure. Our minds balloned enormously. We developed the capacity to speak Some skills helped us find food or find mates, but many of the "personality" traits that we have now evolved as a means to maintain intact small social groups. We lived in small tribes/packs which required intense cooperation to exist over long periods of time. I think of these packs like small towns. You know everyones business and they know all of yours. You grow up surrounded by the same packmates, watch the old ones die, the new ones born. You have a reasonably well established place in the social hiarchy. You know where you stand.
If you become injured, at least in the short term, the others assist you-the origins of empathy. If you help others they most likely will help you in your time of need. A very necessary component of a social group. Each of you gives food, shelter and care to others in the group for the same things in return. While in a small town, you may hate it because you can't be anonomous, for the same reasons, a lot of people return to small towns to have kids. You want your offspring to be surrounded by others who care for them and at keast in some fashion comprise members of a social net, to catch them in case of trouble. We all search for a clan of sorts that will take us in and embrace us. We spend so much time searching for this "group". In the form of fraternities, religion, geneology, PTA, the in crowd, a club of people who do what we do, or gangs for that matter.Or race or my favorite the goth or punk kids who are outcasts and thus part of a group, Even blind patriotism to a country/state/city or sports team qualifies as finding a "group" When we find it, we feel the need to attack others who aren't in our group, as a way of boosting our own self esteem/social standing/survival rate. (if we feel better about our selves we project that externally, and others may percieve us to "better")
These groups and the need to belong to one seems like a double edged sword. On one hand it seems to be the source of most wars that we fight. On a tribe/pack level back in the days of prehistory, it makes sense to have evolved a blind allegience to your group. Your group keeps you alive, and it seems that attcking other groups also keeps you alive. If the "others" don't survive then it makes more room for your and your group's genetic contribution to be carried on. That may be pushing it a bit-definitely in the BS range :) , However blind loyalty to the group and the extreme need to be in a social group was a very selected for trait for highly intelligent, yet highly vunerable pre humans. No matter what your group-giving you security, food, affection,-is put ahead of all others. Your offspring was part of that group-you insure they survive and that your Genetic contribution gets passed on. Now days that blind group loyalty and the intense need to be part of a group gets us into all types of trouble. What is it that you identify with and how willing would you be to fight for it? religion and patriotism seem to be the big ones. How many of us Americans quit eating french fries just because they are french? Why is it worse when one american dies as opposed to one iraqi? It's becuase he was one of us! How dare you kill one of us! You can only hope folks stop and think a bit more before they make snap choices. Sometimes you have ignore the gut feeling because it is grounded in animal instincts. They work well mostly, but the larger the "group" becomes, the harder it is to deal with irrational animal instincts. If nothing else, recognize what you feel , recognize WHY you feel it, then make a choice.
On the flip side of the groups. We need them. As the group gets too large, we feel lost, alone. We no longer have the feeling that someone is there for us if things go bad. If we are "injured" or "hungry" metaphorically or literally, will there be someone there unconditionally to help us? In a small town, quite likely. In a big city, likely not. As we, at least in America, move large distances away from our families and early childhood friends, we , at least subconciously, loose the net/group. Even worse, we never have the group in the first place. Single parent families (I was one for several years) and a collapse of "raising the child by the village" , drug and alcohol abuse by parents, and on and on lead to an apathy of sorts. I see this in my family, the "white trash" approach to life. Why should we bother helping anyone else (not littering, not stealing, mowing the lawn, smoking around our children, roadrage.....) when no one will help us. Our group has been decimated and so we no longer feel empathy for how our actions will effect other members of our group. Who cares. it's not my problem... Or perhaps, external stressors (bills, debt, terrible jobs) leave us so energetically drained that the necessary mental and physical energy needed to feel empathy is totally absent. We can't care about you becuase we can't keep our own heads above water. Perhaps in a group, your actions that hurt other members of the group would leave you outcasted. Now days we have become used to not caring about others and made our group so tiny,
Rates of "induced" mental illness have increased quite a bit over the last century. By induced I mean Depression /alcoholism/drug abuse/stress induced exacerbation of more permenant disorders like bipolar/ADHD. In almost every mental illness the traits that in extreme make it negative, can be seen in a positive evolutionary light. They served a role. Now as we have lost our group, we are much more prone to developing mental and physical disorders. It used to be that psychsomatic meant you were imagining it. Now days it means that you feel physical pain induced by a mental condition. If being a bit loopy is grounded in biology, than the same biological "flaw" can cause you to feel pain or become sick. Stress makes all these things worse. As we become richer, "happier" and more independent we become more miserable.
What is true happiness? How do we recover a group without being idiotic and letting our blind faith in the group lead us into trouble? How do you teach folks that it is this group idiocy that leads them into war? How do you recover our ability to work as a group and feel empathy for each other? Interesting book called emotional IQ that addresses how, at least, to teach social skills to kids. Perhaps it would be a start. Boy, long winded today. Gotta go plant the flowers now. In the driftwood of course ....
