Self-Control

Who exercises better self-control: someone who has never experienced the desire to bite anyone else, or the one who feeling an almost uncontrollable urge to bite, nevertheless masters himself? The other day, Bow really needed to bite, but he was determined not to. His mouth opened and his teeth were ready, but then his hand came up and slapped his forehead, and he snapped out of it before actually committing the offense.

He's taking  better care of his blanket, too. He got it for Christmas, and it has a couple of holes in it and a knot on one end. But he gets to have it with him now most of the day, and he takes care not to destroy it, because he knows he will need it at night.

Bow is almost ten now. His birthday is on the sixteenth of this month. Watching him try to master his own involuntary reflexes has gotten me to wondering about human beings and how much of our repertoire of behaviors is also pre-wired.

I used to think that the mind-body dichotomy was an invention of theologians. I now see that it has biological correlates. There are different levels of brain functioning, and they often send conflicting signals to our body. And then there is shame.

Is there a reason for shame? Is it an emotion invented by clerics? Is it something society uses to manipulate people into doing what others want instead of what they themselves want? Or does it come built in?  Is it a way to handle and prioritize conflicting internal signals? Bow does not feel ashamed about the same sorts of things that I might feel shame about. He is not ashamed of lying or trying to deceive. He is not ashamed of bullying or trying to control. But he does sometimes seem to feel he let himself down, when he does something that he did not intend to do. Lack of self-control in that sense is something that bothers him, as much as it would bother anybody.

Lack of self-control is also an issue with language. Most of the chimpanzee cries that have been documented are involuntary. They transmit rudimentary emotional states. Other kinds of vocalizations are less well known.

Lots of Bow's vocalizations are involuntary. He has food cries and cries about someone new arriving, and they are predictable and spontaneous and unpremeditated. He can't stop these cries from coming out, short of clapping his hands on his mouth. These involuntary sounds he makes are not his way of talking to others. They are, instead, the way nature programmed him to transmit information about his internal state whether he wants to or not. These cries are meant to help others, not himself. Nature selected for them as a way to counter deceptive impulses.

Other vocalizations and gestures Bow does control. He uses them deliberately, and he as often uses them to deceive as to tell the truth. So like the proverbial sinning individual in a morality play, Bow has his internal battles to fight: to do what his body requires of him or what his mind tells him would be in his best interest.

Surprisingly, Bow is fighting his baser instinct toward violence by using higher control. But in the area of language it works quite the other way around: his involuntary cries tell the truth. His deliberate communication is often full of lies. Bow is ashamed, if he resorts to violence when he meant not to. But I think he is also ashamed when he tells the truth, when he meant to deceive.

This insight is something that might be of use to theologians as well as sociologists. How many humans feel shame when they lie? How many others feel ashamed only when they tell the truth?

Virtual Dominance Displays

Recently Sword celebrated her twelfth birthday, and Bow was not in attendance. He had not been invited to the party. This made him sad, but Lawrence stayed with him all day, and they had a special party of their own. Meanwhile, Sword had her party at Orchard House with her grandmother and me and four of her friends from school, two girls and two boys.

Having been excluded from quite a number of parties myself, I understood how Bow felt when he told Lawrence that he wanted to go to the party, too. But I also understood Sword. Lately, every time she brings home a friend, Bow insists on going into a protracted dominance display for the new person that sometimes does not end until the guest leaves. It's hard enough being a tween and needing your mother's approval for sleepovers. Having to consult with your younger chimpanzee brother is completely intolerable. So I gave my permission for a party that did not include Bow.

You would think that an intelligent nine year old male chimpanzee could foresee that social exclusion would be the unavoidable result of such aggressive tactics on his part, but even if he can foresee this, he has no control over himself. The displays appear to be hard-wired.

What is a dominance display? Well, you could look it up in the wikipedia, or you could watch the video I embedded below to see what it looks like. Every time Bow meets a stranger, he goes into a frenzied display of his strength and prowess calculated to send the stranger cowering for the bushes. He does this even if the stranger is on the other side of the continent in a Skype video call!

Julia Hanna is a talented writer and artist who also contributes to my article directory, PubWages. This Sunday, I interviewed her for my YouTube channel. We thought we would do it in the morning with Bow present, but due to his insistent display, we had to postpone it till the evening, when he was asleep. Notice that Bow was not really being violent. He didn't hurt anyone. He just wanted to scare Julia into submission, and he was quite frustrated when it didn't work, and we kept talking around his display. He was very careful not to hurt me, gently moving me aside so he could hurtle himself at the computer screen. But interestingly enough, he didn't hurt the computer, either. He knew that if he smashed the screen, Julia would disappear, and then who would be there for him to intimidate? As soon as the call was over, he sat down peacefully before the laptop on the floor with a pensive look on his face.

When Bow goes into these displays, it does not mean that he doesn't like the person he is trying to scare. Sometimes he likes them very much and even hopes for a successful relationship. He just wants to make sure that he ends up on top!

You may think that this is a practice that only chimpanzees engage in, but that is not accurate. Other primates have similar behaviors, and I have seen many a dominance display performed by a human lawyer in the course of my law practice.

For Bow's sake, I would like to find some chimpanzees that he can practice his displays on through the safety and comfort of an internet video call. If you know of any chimpanzees who would be willing to reciprocate, please drop me a line!

The Mystery of the Missing Scissors

Yesterday afternoon I made a mad dash for the kitchen to put the chicken in the oven as usual. I had Bow's permission to do this, but he knows exactly how long it should take me to do it, and I was very dismayed when the scissors for removing the shrink wrapped plastic off the thawed hen was not anywhere near the sink, where it should be. I usually keep these scissors in a crystal vase intended for a single long stemmed flower. The vase is right next to the sink, but it was empty. I started to panic. Where could the scissors have gone?

Sometimes Sword borrows those scissors when she has a new sack of chicken feed to open, and sometimes she fails to return them. I checked the garage near the chicken feed area. Nothing!  So then I made a dash for my bedroom and brought out a different pair of scissors, appropriate for sewing and paper work, but not very good for kitchen tasks. I prepared the chicken, placed it in the oven, and was on my way back to the pen when I ran into Sword in the hall. "Have you seen my scissors?" I asked her.

"Which scissors?"

"The ones that go in the kitchen."

She popped into the kitchen and came out sporting the scissors I had just used, the ones that came from the bedroom. "These scissors?"

"No. Never mind."

I hurried back to the pen and Bow. I was half expecting to find a puddle on the floor, in punishment for having taken so long. But no, Bow was good. He was patiently waiting for me at the door. He had been watching the exchange between me and Sword.

"I don't know who took my scissors," I told Bow, not really expecting him to answer.

Bow took my hand, led me to the glass and spelled: "Bow doesn't think Sword took them." This was very nice of him, since he often says things that are not so complimentary about her. (Sibling rivalry.)

"Then who?" I asked.

"Mommy," he spelled.

"Me? What did I do with the scissors?"

"You opened something," he spelled.

It was true! When he said that, I suddenly remembered that I had used them to open a package around lunch time. Mystery solved. They were on the dining room table, next to the package.

Self-Reliance

Bow doesn't like me to go far. He knows that he's not in any danger of abandonment, but he wants to control my comings and goings. On Monday, which was Labor Day, while Lawrence was watching Bow, I took Sword to the mall, nearly a two hour drive away. Bow knew that we would not be back for lunch.

I had no sooner left the house than Bow chose to pee on the floor in several different locations, clearly not an accident. Lawrence disciplined Bow, cleaned up, and then, after they were reconciled, asked Bow why he did it. Bow spelled: "I don't want Mommy to go far."

He's eight and a half years old. I was back by 3:30 pm. Even though we went farther than our usual range, he was not left alone, and I came back soon, way before dinner time. How do I teach my son self-reliance? How do I get him to pull his fair share? How do I make sure that when I am gone someday, he will be able to care for himself and his dependents?

Many primatologists are out in the field trying to protect chimpanzees from human encroachment. One of the dangers for chimpanzees in the wild are the snares set by the bushmeat traders. Some workers in the field try to help by locating snares and de-activating them. Still, many chimpanzees are maimed by the snares.

One group of chimps is taking care of the problem themselves. See the link here. The chimpanzees of Bossou, Guinea have developed their own method of finding and de-activating the snares. As a result, this group of chimpanzees suffers fewer snare-related injuries. In the fight for survival, my money is on them, rather than the chimps who are waiting for do-gooder humans to take care of this problem for them.

I want Bow to be self-reliant. He needs to understand that the majority of people who are "trying to help" do more harm than good. Everybody's got some kind of axe to grind. One group of "pro-chimpanzee" activists are preaching vegetarianism to their followers, even though chimpanzees are clearly not vegetarian. Almost all "pro-chimp" activists want chimpanzees in sanctuaries, where they will not be allowed to start a family. There is a conflict between human populations in Africa and the chimpanzee populations that are vying for the same territories and the same ecological niche. We have killed all the other hominids. Can we expect anything better for chimpanzees?

If chimpanzees can learn to de-activate snares, couldn't they also learn to do something productive? Would it be so terrible if instead of raiding human gardens, they traded with humans for goods and services? That's what I want for Bow. But the first step in self-reliance has to be taking responsibility for your own actions. I'm still waiting for Bow to show some sign that he's willing to do that.

Watching A Boxing Match

Yesterday, Bow and I watched a boxing match on YouTube. This is not my normal viewing, but a comment from one of my readers on Hubpages sent me there, and the moment it started, Bow got very, very excited. He insisted that I bring him with me to the other side of the glass, so that he could watch more closely. He was fixated on the screen the whole time it was on. After it was over, we went back to his side of the glass, and he took me by the hand and spelled:

"Every dummy tries to kill."

This surprised me very much. First of all, it was a very civilized boxing match. Nobody killed anybody. There was a referee who kept stopping them every couple of minutes. In the end, the winner was declared and the combatants shook hands and embraced. What made Bow think of killing? And is this really what he thinks about killing?

"You don't want to kill?" I asked him.

"No," he replied.

Is that the truth? Or is that what he wants me to think? Is he worried, because he's heard me talking about chimpanzees and aggression?

But all I could do was reply: "Okay, Bow."

He may not want to kill, but he certainly is interested in hand to hand combat!