Biological Survival
How did our behaviours become our behaviours?
Where did we all learn to act the way we act?
Why do we act the way we do?
Social construct is a theory some push, as a means of understanding how our behaviours have come to be, these theory literarily says our behaviours are shaped by the social societies we belong to.
Could it really be so, have our behaviours been shaped by society, by our interactions with society, by our involvement with others?
If the social construct argument were true, what would we have to see?
We will have to see that no living thing possess any character trait till they start interacting social societies.
A few months ago, my brother Victor, sent two puppies, with eyes barely opened, and barely able to move beyond a few feet.
Feeding, Rico constantly seeks to prevent Bud from eating.
Why?
Who taught Rico before his eyes got open to do this?
Where did he learn this from?
Which social society constructed him to act the way he was acting?
Was he a member of a spiritual society that constructed him in his mother’s womb?
We might have to wait till Rico is able to talk to get some answers, but since that might take a pretty long time, we might as well state the obvious, he belonged to no social society, hence, did not learn his acts via any social construct or society.
So where did Rico get the ability to act the way he did? What was his driving force? What reason did he have to act as he did?
But these are dogs not humans?
Agreed, we take a look at humans:
“And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.” Genesis 25:26If the social construct theory of our behaviours is true, we must surmise that Jacob belonged to the heel grabbing society in his mother’s womb, in which all the members are taught how to grab heels, else he would not have been able to grab his brother’s heel. Of course that is absolute garbage.
So how come Jacob pulled of such a beautiful grab of Esau’s heel just before he even had fully stepped into the world?
Where did he get the ability to make such a grab? Where did he learn to do that? What drove him to grab his brother’s heel?
We have seen animals having sets of behaviours before they belong to any social animal society and humans having sets of behaviours before coming into the socialized world, we should be able to come to a conclusion confidently that the social construct argument as a lens to understanding human or animal behaviours, is extremely insufficient.
If we dispel social construct as a means of answering these questions, we have to provide a better explanation.
BLOBS – Biological Large Objects
Thanks to the works of Oswald Avery, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase we have come to know that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) literarily carries information, it also acts as the base upon which new beings(children) build their own unique DNA. The DNA is literally encoded information.
So that for a new being to be formed, it needs to receive DNA bases from its ancestors, which then form new unique DNA structures in the being, thus the new being has some traits from the DNA that it received as the base to form it’s own unique DNA strands, hence inheritance of traits from parents, yet the child is never an exact replica of the parent.
This transference, in a way, gives credence to the Biblical story of the human race beginning with one man and one woman, else, where would we all have gotten our DNA bases from? Maybe Martians.
Considering that we have scientifically proven that our physical characteristics are formed via information stored in the DNA, a biological structure, and our physical traits are pretty much set in the womb, I will push it further, for it will not be too much of a stretch to surmise that even our character traits are encoded in our biology as well.
For if we have never been in a social society where we might have been socially constructed, yet have certain characteristics that we exhibit, right out of the womb (as seen with Jacob), I say our character is also rooted and formed by information stored in our biology.
Thus, we are blobs, both physically and character wise.
Our biology is the base for all we possess, our physical traits, our intellectual abilities, even I will go as far as saying our spiritual tendencies, are rooted in our biology.
Mothers, can attest to the fact that none of their children came out of the womb as tabula rasa (a blank slate) and they formed the child’s character from beginning to the end, no, children come to the world with their own completely distinct physical and behavioural traits, some so diverse from their siblings you wonder if they come from the same parents, yet, they mostly do.
So that those who tout the social construct argument show great disrespect to the inbuilt powers of our biological systems, which we portray before we belong to any society.
Our biology is indescribably deep, it's workings and machinations confound even the best of our medical devices and practitioners. Such complexity makes me severely doubt the possibility of our existence happening by random chance.
But parents train children on how to behave, and trainers train dogs to behave or act properly, what do you say to that?
Most of the illusions about the efficacy of teaching can be captured in this saying:
“If the student is smart, the teacher takes the credit”But the same teacher will not take credit for the bulk of his other students that did not turn out well, clearly showing that the determining factor was not so much the teacher’s teaching as it was the innate ability of each respective student.
You cannot teach a living being to do what it was not innately capable of doing, even non-living things must be used according to their own innate nature, not according to the ability of a teacher.
You see this play itself out in the world of professional sports where teams do not go about picking just any one off the street, then hire the best teacher to turn them to world class players, no, they seek established or promising players, then hire a coach who can put the talents to the best possible use.
Coaches are never fired for being bad teachers, rather because they are not putting the talents at their disposal to the best possible use. Hence, the self-same players would flop under a certain coach and excel under a new one.
So that you can hire the best flight instructor in the world, but your dog will never fly, for it does not have the innate ability to fly.
Hence, as blobs, that which is not found in our biology cannot be expressed as an act, trait or character. Hence, all of our character traits and abilities are rooted or encoded in our biology.
What then?
If we have sufficiently explained the source of our acts, we must need also provide it’s why, for the explanation of the source of a thing does not necessarily explain the rationality or the why behind it.
What is the guiding hand of all our acts, why do we act in certain ways, what is the moving or motivating factor behind each individual’s ways of doing things or each individual’s choice of using his traits or abilities in certain ways, in certain directions?
Survival : The invisible hand
The offspring of killer snakes immediately flee from their hungry mother the moment they come to life.
The offspring of dogs stick around to suck mummy’s milk.
The offspring of man sticks around the longest, not only sucking mummy’s milk but also eating her food till she harasses him to go get married.
These actions are all different, but one invisible hand drives them all – survival.
All use their traits in whichever necessary way to survive, to stay alive, to avoid death, be it at the hands of their own mother or other forces in nature.
If Biology is the base of all our traits, survival is its invisible driving hand. This ties very closely to our love of life and disdain for death, read eternity infinity.
- Rico tries to prevent Bud from eating as he sees the food being his own chance or means of staying alive
- Jacob grabs unto the heel of Esau, he wants to be the first, birth right at stake
- We do jobs we do not find easy or comfortable when necessary to have access to resources that enable us survive
- We stay home in this COVID-19 epidemic in order to have a better chance of survival.
The acts differ, are derived from within, but the invisible hand remains survival.
We may even alter our acts between opposites, we may be saints one day, devils the next, madmen the next, all in all, survival is the moving hand.
Reading of David acting like a mad man before Achish the king of Gath (1 Samuel 21:13) in order to avoid being killed, is a cogent reminder of a very strong inner drive in every one of us to survive.
So strong is this driving hand of survival, that some go as far as becoming suicide bombers to secure their survival in a world they have never been to, seen or touched, the invisible hand of survival goes beyond the physical.
Do you then mean that the social groups or societies we belong to do not influence how we act?
The move of chess player A does not determine the move player B will make, it influences the move of player B, even so, to that very same extent, does the act of others influence our acts or behaviour. Yet, player B will still draw from his inner arsenal of moves.
The act of the one does not directly move the other to act, rather, the act of the one serves as a variable the other uses to shape his own next move from the arsenal of moves he biologically possesses within.
Even so, humans might act differently when in the midst of crowds, but the fundamentals do not change because we have ten more people to interact with, we simply review our next act, from the same fundamental base to decide what to do next based on what others do, might do or have done.
All in all we are still striving for survival, using the tools that are available to us from within, biologically.
So that all of what we exhibit in or due to social societies, do not come from outside, rather abstracted from within, and adjusted based on the acts of others.
In sum, we are all blobs (Biological Large Objects), constantly fighting to survive with all the tools available from within, yet, our victory over death, our survival, is only for so long.
Thank you for reading.