Perpetuities in a Nutshell

Bow in the Outer Pen this Morning Enjoying a Persimmon I Picked for Him

At the farthest corner of my land, surrounded by brambles and blackberry thorns, is a tiny persimmon tree that is covered with fruit.

It's the Smallest Persimmon Tree on My Land, But It Bears More Fruit than the Others

It's the smallest persimmon tree on my land, but it bears much more fruit than the others. The other trees usually lose all their leaves by the time the fruit is ripe, and they stand tall and naked, with only a few orange globes hanging from them, which is why I refer to them as my Halloween Trees.

This image is from a post in 2014

None of these trees were planted by me, and they sprang up on their own, because I did not mow the pasture. The landscape of my land changes every year, I think that change is more natural than everything remaining at a stand still, so I wonder about those who are agitating to try to stop climate change.

A View of My Pasture at Sunset a Couple of Days Ago

If you look at the picture of my pasture at sunset, neither the fruiting mulberry in the foreground nor the cedars and pines in the background were there when I bought the property -- and they were not planted by me.

The Weigela Blossoms day before yesterday

It has been unseasonably warm lately, and not only the service berry and the cherry and the apple tree have been blossoming, but on the Weigela bush the fruit and the brand new blossoms are growing side by side.

What if it really is getting warmer here, and what if it has something to do with "global warming"? Does that mean we can do anything about it, or that -- even if we could -- we should?

If change is the natural state of things, should we try to artificially stop the change, preventing bigger harvests and easier living conditions in temperate areas? Why?

I know of people who want to freeze everything, keeping it all the same, because, after all, people and animals depend on the status quo. When a large business goes belly up, they try to keep it afloat at the public's expense, for the sake of the workers and of the economy. But the workers and the economy would be just fine, if you just left everything alone to decay and die and be reborn in the natural course of life. There are business cycles. There are climate cycles, There are winners and losers every time something changes. If you try to help the losers at the expense of the winners, you will eventually bring everybody down.

Take the current state of the Congo. Not very safe for either humans or other great apes. So what do conservationists do? They try to send money to the Congo to help to keep everything the same. Meanwhile they try to destroy the ability of private apes in the United States to keep eking out a living in a new environment. But the greatest hope for non-human apes to survive is among humans in the United States. 

And then there are the researchers who actually believe that some rich donor is going to provide them with funding for their project in perpetuity. But every single time, the particular business that this donor depends on falls on hard times, and there goes their revenue in perpetuity. No business can last forever. The economic climate is constantly changing. It's natural.

When I was taking Trusts &Estates in law school, I happened on a tiny book called Perpetuities in a Nutshell.  For me, it was just a study aid, but it was a good one, and the title was so catchy that it stuck with me.

Here is what I can tell you about perpetuities in a nutshell: Nothing lasts forever. Things change constantly. If you take advantage of those changes that work in your favor, then you can always find a way to survive and sometimes even to thrive.

This means that instead on insisting on having the fruit you have always had under the circumstances that it has always ripened, you look around and see what fruit happens to be ripe for the picking right now.

The Ripe Persimmon

One of the persimmons on the tiny tree was already ripe, so I picked it and brought it home to Bow. I have been told that persimmons should not be eaten until after the first frost, but in that case, why do they ripen without a frost? Surely in some areas it never freezes.

Bow was not particularly hungry. It was not long after breakfast. But he accepted the persimmon from me and ate of it delicately.

What if the warming trend in Missouri continues, making the outdoors safe for chimpanzees here year round? Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing for chimpanzee conservation in the US? Why would you want to reverse this trend for the sake of other animals elsewhere on the globe? If everything had always stayed the same throughout our own history, would any humans have ever left Africa? Do you want to reverse that trend, too? It just does not make any sense. 

Progressives accuse conservatives of wanting to "halt progress." But isn't that exactly what progressive conservationists are trying to do to climate change on this planet -- halt progress? There is really no telling where nature is going with this. It is unlikely that we can stop it, But we can help ourselves and the animals we love by adapting to the change. The entire history of life on this planet is a history of natural migration and natural adaptation. 

Koko's Commercial and the State of Ape Language Research

Yesterday, on my twitter feed, there was much ado about Koko the Gorilla's appearance in a commercial about climate change sponsored by the French conservation organization, NOE. Among the primatologists, there was now a move to distance themselves from this public service announcement, not because they disagreed with the message, but because they believed the messenger did not actually mean what she said, and that quite possibly she was coached to say it, and that her words were elicited in other ways, then edited together to make it seem she said something other than what she actually said. Here is the Huffington Post article that deals with the reactions of primatologists.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/koko-gorilla-climate-change-video_568d2368e4b0cad15e62

Now, to tell you he truth, this video of Koko had appeared in my Facebook feed before, and I was sure it was a hoax. Sickened by the message and by the appropriation of Koko's persona, I had no idea this was the real Koko. I thought it was somebody pretending to be Koko.

But now that it has been confirmed that it was the real Koko, I went back and watched the video. And when he saw me watching it, Bow insisted that he wanted to see it, too.

I tend to agree, from watching the video, that there is no way to tell whether Koko actually said this, and I think it makes sense to take it with a grain of salt, as we take all Public Service Announcements. I mean, if we see a famous child  actress on a PSA tell us to not be a fool and to stay in school, do we assume those are her real words? Do we think she thought of that rhyme all by herself? Do we think she personally agrees with the message? Or do we think: Hey, she probably got paid to say that. After all, she is an actress.

A performance by an actress in a commercial or in a play, movie or TV show does not indicate what she actually thinks. It also, believe it or not, does not prove that she has mastered human syntax. The words were written for her by somebody else. If she flubs a line, they do another take.

Why are these established  primatologists bending over backwards to distance themselves from a PSA with a gorilla delivering the message? Is it because they are worried that people will confuse a commercial with real life? Or is it because they think that the Gorilla Foundation should not allow Koko to work for a living? Or is it because of the bizarre "personhood" controversy that has arisen around apes who can use human language?

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Mastering syntax does not guarantee intelligence. Many people with a low IQ have mastered syntax.
• Intelligence itself does not guarantee that someone is able to give legal consent, which requires not only an understanding of the words in a contract, but also an ability to deal with long term consequences of entering into an agreement.
• Neither syntax nor a high IQ imply the emotional maturity to lead an independent life in human society. Many very smart people who speak their native language perfectly require a legal guardian.
• Impulse control is an issue for many, including humans and other apes. An inability to control impulses can require confinement away from others, even when the individual is intelligent, articulate and otherwise emotionally mature.

At present, we give personhood rights just based on being human to many who cannot live free among us, and they receive government support. Whether this is the correct thing to do or not is a political question. Whether we want to extend such rights to other apes who would need the same level of support is also a political question. It is not simply a matter of proving the many intellectual achievements of speaking apes.

I think it is a good idea to separate politics from science as much as possible. When we see the president crying on TV, we take that with a grain of salt, knowing he is a politician, and somebody probably wrote his speech, and he gets paid to say that. We should do the same when a working ape is trying to earn a living by appearing on a commercial.

Should animals other than humans be allowed to work for a living? Definitely. Is there anything wrong with an ape appearing in a commercial? In my opinion, no, there is not. But let's not get all distracted by the acting to the point where we take the rehearsed words seriously or forget that the author of the words and the one aping those words are not the same person. 

This in no way takes away from spontaneous linguistic output of the same apes when they are not acting. If we want to know whether the president has mastered syntax, we need to catch him in a spontaneous language stream and not try to determine this while he is giving a public speech.

That so many primatologists confuse the question of linguistic competence with other issues is a problem for ape language studies. It does not matter whether Koko cares about climate change in order to assess her language skills. And it's not in the context of a political commercial that we want to evaluate her linguistic competence -- or anyone else's.