Science, Satire, and the Soul

Your face is scary.

No, not really. I'm sure you're a lovely person. But for some reason, looking directly at other people's faces—especially when they're looking back—truly is frightening and discomforting. Why are we so weird about eye contact?

The other day, I was walking to the grocery store. There was a guy my age walking towards me, in the opposite direction. He looked like a college student; he likely even attends the same university I do. I tried to smile at him.

But the moment he saw me heading towards him on the sidewalk, he cranked his neck down, hunched his shoulders up, and pinned both eyes on his feet as if his gaze were the only thing preventing them from taking a frenzied lunge into traffic and dragging the rest of his body along for the ride.

Now—this behavior would be totally understandable if I were, say, Chewbacca from Star Wars. However, I'm about 5'1, persistently cheerful, and have a face shape that earned me the nicknames 'chipmunk cheeks' and 'hobbit' in highschool. I'm slightly less intimidating than a lame baby rabbit. (Actually, much less intimidating. I've never quite felt safe around rabbits since seeing 'Monty Python'.)

I continued walking and smiling, hoping that he'd glance up and see the expression. No such luck. The poor kid almost ran into a mailbox because he was too busy deliberately not looking at me to look at anything else.

Finally, after he'd passed me, I broke the awkward tension.

“You should look up! Someone might be smiling at you.” He did a 180, gawked at me for a moment, then laughed and continued on his way. The kicked-dog tension was gone from his stance.

I've seen the same thing time and time again. Not always; some people nod, smile, or just straight up ignore strangers as they go by. But I'm sure you've experienced the awkwardness of looking across the room and locking gazes with someone you don't know. Most of us shut our eyes, keep scanning, or turn away quickly, hoping that they don't think we were looking.

Chances are, they've done the same thing before, and know perfectly well you're not staring at them. Very few people are actually conceited enough to assume that everyone in the room is constantly checking them out. (If you're one of those people who actually does turn heads as you go by, my email's cognitive_chimera@gmail.com. No, seriously.)

So why is it that eye contact is so spooky?

It's a monkey thing.

No, really. I was in Japan several summers ago, and went on a hike to the top of a mountain to see Japanese Macagues (Macaca fuscata,) also known as the Snow Monkey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Macaque

At the top of the trail was a sign. It said, “Do not stare at the monkeys!” And had a little stick-figure caricature of a monkey attacking a human being. (Of course, that immediately lead to my entire group daring each other to piss off the monkeys. Nothing says 'I had a good time' like visit to the ER for bandages and a rabies shot.)

For primates—and other mammalian species, such as dogs and wolves—eye contact is a display of aggression. (Or a display of sexual interest. Nothing says 'intent to commit hanky-panky' like a direct stare. Well, okay, there's other things that say it, but very few of them are considered appropriate in public.)

Staring contests actually are contests of dominance, and prolonged eye contact can lead to a physical tussle. Even a quick flash of eye contact can be very hostile. Cultures across the world have legends and superstitions about the 'evil eye'. Eye contact sends our levels of cortisol and adrenaline, otherwise known as the 'oh shit' hormones, into a spike.

Check out the this article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/vitamin-eye/200907/eye-eye-visual-violence-0 for more in-depth information on the effects of hostile eye contact.

But is it just purely about science and biology? I think it's possible to overcome our gut reactions to eye contact and turn it into a positive experience.

When we look at someone we don't know, especially if they look very different from ourselves, it's sometime tough to realize that they're actually a person. Until we get to know them, they're still the archetypal 'other'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other

The German philosopher Hegel was one of the first to put the phenomenon into words. Conrad wrote about it in his Heart of Darkness. Philosophers, psychologists, and authors may wax poetic and scientific and thoughtful on the subject, but we don't really need them to tell us about it, because we've all felt it. Part of why eye contact is so threatening is because it's an intimate interaction with something not of ourselves.

Instead of letting the experience be dehumanized and frightening, though, ignore the need to twitch away. The next time you make eye contact with someone across the room, or with a stranger in the street, don't give them a dirty look or jerk your gaze away awkwardly. Smile at them. Wink. Cross your eyes, imitate the professor silently, or pull a ridiculous face to make them laugh.

Diffuse the tension of that fleeting, happenstance contact with a stranger. You might not know them, but just because you've never cried on their shoulder, laughed with them, shared a drink or shaken hands with their parents doesn't make them any less human than your best friend. Behind the unfamiliar face is a person who can connect and relate and understand. All it takes to turn that moment from a threat to a connection is a smile.

Just try not to wink at any axe murderers. You never know.

Before we get down to specifics, let's consider the main subject. What's the source of the strange things people do? Where did we even get all of these bad ideas?

Instinct

Many of the things we do are a result of our biology. Even if we're not 'animals' (those of you who recall what the average college apartment looks like may disagree), our bodies are. We have that flight or flight reflex, which anybody who's ever been asked out on a date is personally familiar with. We still wrinkle our noses up at bad smells, crave cuddles when it's cold out, and gawk at attractive rear ends.

Still, genetics, chemicals, and physiology alone don't makes us 'human'—at least, not in the terms which we think of it today. We have what we need to achieve such a state, but culture is what sculpts the raw material of humanity. It provides us with a link between what we are and what we can become.

Consider Tarzan for a moment. He is, unfortunately, much like Santa Claus. He's a charming and magical image, but also an ultimately unrealistic romanticization. A human raised by apes would end up nothing like Tarzan. (For one, if you smiled at him, he'd probably try to kill you. Never grin at a gorilla. It's like playing 'chicken' with a mac truck being driven by a kid who's played “Grand Theft Auto” way too make times.)

Man Vs. Animal

A man or woman utterly isolated from human influence, behavioral standards, and anything else related to the trappings of culture would hardly be 'human' in any sense other than the purely biological. Unable to speak any known language, wear clothing, relate, or (goodness gracious) use toilet paper, such a person would probably be more akin to monkey than man.

While they'd still be human, there wouldn't be much human about them. They'd seem closer to what we think of as animal. Perhaps a highly intelligent, curious, very strange looking one—to be honest, we are pretty much the naked mole-rats of the primates—but still unlike what we think of as human.

We're not a different species from our ancient ancestors. Some thousands of years of evolution may separate us from them, the turn of generations breeding changes within our genetic code; but the people who walked barefoot and illiterate and ate raw meat with their fingers were just as human as you or I. In fact, many of us still struggle with illiteracy, run around barefoot, and eat with our fingers. (You know who you are.)



So when, then, did our ancient lineage make the transition from what we define as 'animal' to what we think of as 'human'? We can line up skulls on a bench, measure the different shapes and sizes, and engage in furious academic debate over the types of teeth. But there's no a distinct moment in time, a clear line, at we might point and say, “This is human. That is not.” (Well, not unless you put Wolverine from X-men on one side and a cute little girl in pigtails on the other. But that's just cheating.)

Culture

Was it something we did, something we thought? The first attempt at language? Art? Curiosity, humor, writing... Burial rituals, or the telling or stories to explain those things which we didn't undersand? Was it the discovery that when we break wind upon a flame, it explodes into a conflagration—or the realization that said phenomenon is really funny, especially when someone lights their ass on fire?

We have it in us to be an amazing and wild variety of things, from simple hunter-gatherer to astronaut. But it is our culture—our body of knowledge, of technology, of ritual and language and meaning—which actually draws out that potential. 'Culture' allows us instant and constant access to the summation of what all of those before us have achieved and become in their lives. This shapes us into something different, something more, than what we could be without it. (Or, in some cases, something less. For instance, without language, we would never have come up with the excuse “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” And I'm still not sold on the idea that us figuring out how to light stuff on fire was a good thing.)

We—you, I, and everyone else—are authorities on the subject of what it is to be human. We have the ultimate first-person perspective. (Unless, of course, you're either a dog that has learned to read, or a sentient robotic brain. No offense meant to either party.) So we're all intimately familiar with the urges to do crazy things, and with the need to handle those urges in a way that obeys the laws of society.

Our instincts are, by and large, responsible for many of our oddities. The chemical reactions and instincts that govern many of our natural inclinations evolved in a setting far from modern society. Instinct, when shaped by self, and poured into the mould of modern culture, births a multitude of strange and varied phenomena.

For example, before we had the tools and technology to defend ourselves, leaping a foot in the air, screaming like a little girl, then attempting to climb the nearest tree was a perfectly reasonable reaction to sudden, loud noises. Taken out of context, however, people who do that these days look like complete lunatics.

We cram our feet into four-inch wedges and strap on skirts that binds our thighs together. Not only does this sometimes look ridiculous, but it seems completely contradictory to survival instinct. (Think about trying to run away from a grizzly bear in high heels and a miniskirt.) But when viewed through the lens of cultural ideas about sexual appeal, it's just another way of displaying virility and attracting a mate. Tight, showy clothing is one way that members of our culture have been conditioned to approach the issue.

We are, as individuals, part biology, part culture, and part ourselves. There are some things that are ours by nature, some that result from our experiences, and some that neither culture nor instinct nor plain old idiocy can yet explain.

Much of this was inspired by Clifford Geertz's 1966 paper, “The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man”. I highly advise checking it out.










Quote: 

“When seen as a set of symbolic devices for controlling behavior, extrasomatic sources of information, culture provides the link between what men are intrinsically capable of being and what they actually, one by one, in fact become. Becoming human is becoming individual, and we become individual under the guidance of cultural patterns, historically created systems of meaning in terms of which we give form, order, point and direction to our lives.” (Geertz, The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man)

People are the strangest things I've ever encountered.

We'll drive miles to reach a nice location for running around in circles. We ask questions we already know the answers to, and solicit advice so that we might have the pleasure of completely ignoring it. We argue with ourselves, but feel awkward disagreeing with anyone else.

We strap apparatuses made of metal and wire to our chests to make our mammary glands perkier, glop sticky chemicals into our hair and onto our faces, puncture our skin with bits of metal, and call it beautiful. We eat things that we can't pronounce. We drink gallons of bitter-tasting metabolic stimulants to avoid sleep, and then complain that we're always tired. We always want to push that big red button.

Not only do we manage to walk around on just two legs without constantly falling over, but we occasionally attach wheels to the bottoms of our feet, which causes us to fall over more. (For some reason, we still seem to enjoy it.) We laugh at misery and cry over happy endings. We invented the spork.

Being part of the phenomenon of humankind can be baffling. We do so many amazingly weird things. Some of them are sad, others are uplifting, and lots are just point-blank funny.

This blog will address the unusual, the interesting, the sad, and the hilarious things about humanity. I'll share thoughts on human nature and existence, how they relate to science and faith, and the simple, funny quirks of everyday life. Things that we tend not to think about, but which merit discussion, or at least a “What the hell?”

I aim to generate good discussion, consideration, laughter, and learning on both ends. I'm new to blogging, and still getting the hang of actually using all these nifty keys and options in something resembling meaningful order. I'll be streamlining the process as we go along.

I'd absolutely love feedback and advice—this includes constructive criticism! As long as it stays on-topic, courteous, and genuinely thoughtful, I'm happy to hear what you have to say. I might not agree with you, but I'll at least give it due consideration.

Feel free to contact me at Cognitive.Chimera@gmail.com. More to come soon.