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Human Adaptability
Back when I lived in Baltimore, I used to take the Light Rail on occasion out to the county to go shopping or attend to other business. Baltimore itself can be quite a trip, and the Light Rail even moreso. I would go so far as to quote the Star Wars description of Mos Eisley and call it a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” But maybe that’s going too far. Cause I did have some good experiences on the Light Rail, though they were few and far between. One of the more interesting ones was a man who worked at the McCormick spice factory out near Hunt Valley, Maryland.
Though I hadn’t sought this information out (a common opening theme on Light Rail conversations), the man proceeded to tell me a bit about his work history at the factory. Central to it, or at least to my remembrance of it, was how he used to work in the “pepper room.” It may have had a more specific or colorful name than that, but if it did I have lost it along the way. No matter. The point of his story was that when he first started working there, if he even went near the pepper room (red, not black) his ducts would immediately open, his mucous membranes flare and he would invariably begin crying uncontrollably. It was simply a physical reaction to his surroundings - something on the level of chemicals interacting with biology. Nothing more, nothing less.
But over time, he became more and more tolerant of it, until he was assigned to work in the pepper room and he could walk in and out of it freely and not have it bother him whatsoever. I believe the reason he had been on the Light Rail that particular day was because he was attending a weekend sale which McCormick offered only to employees. He would go out there on Saturdays when he wasn’t working, and buy discount spices for friends and family, and he also indicated that he was sometimes able to sell his purchases later on at a profit.
This strange man has, over time, become sort of a symbol for me of human adaptability. He wasn’t anything other than a fairly ordinary work-a-day man, but he somehow had managed to get his biology to overcome chemistry itself. His adaptation to this strange scenario stands out for me as one of many everyday alchemical transformations which all of us go through every day without so much even thinking about them.
Consider athletes, for example. Last year (or was it two years ago?) during the Summer Olympics, one of the things that struck me in watching the different competitions was the great lengths to which the human body will adapt to perform very particular sets of tasks. In particular, I noticed how the champion swimmers all had very similar body types and had trained themselves to move their bodies in very similar ways. It almost seemed like they were made of rubber when they moved through the water - like they had somehow taken on the traits of seals, their nearby aquatic cousins. On the other end of the spectrum were weight-lifters, whose bodies had expertly adapted to the needs of their unique activities. Their bodies were very bulky - stocky is probably a better word - in such a way that their bodies could act as a column of support to lift the tremendous loads they worked with regularly. And then track athletes, runners in particular, have a totally different body type, long and lean legs, and so on.
You could go through all kinds of human activities and look for similar adaptations. I remember when I used to play a lot of guitar, the calluses on my left hand had grown quite thick, and my ability to perform intricate motions with the fingers on my left hand had shot way up. It might be an interesting personal experiment to go through your life and look at what types of actions you perform on a regular basis, and in what ways your body has adapted to accomodate your needs.
Once you’re able to do that, you could also go through your mental processes and emotions and see how these have adapted in similar ways to support whatever it is that you do or are about. For example, when I was doing a lot of computer programming years ago, I would have dreams where I was using web-scripting languages like ASP to program my alarm clock for five minutes in the future. Or I would have dreams where I was working in Photoshop and zoomed into 1600% so I could edit colors pixel-by-pixel.
The point of all this is something I touched on in a recent post about the core values that make up the human experience. It was a post which touched off a firestorm of conversation, some useful and some not so much. At the risk of opening old wounds, I thought I’d offer this post today as clarification on it. I’ve often wondered what it is that humans really are and what it is that we should really be doing with our lives. Again and again, the answer has come back to me that humans are adaptable. And that what we should be doing is adapting. I know that doesn’t make a lot of satisfying intellectual or philosophical sense, but from an everyday perspective, I feel like it does. There’s a Heinlein quote about this which I rather like as well, though he seems to have penned it in a rather different spirit, or maybe:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
I don’t happen to share this idea that people shouldn’t specialize though. Because it seems to be in our nature that some of us are better at some things or like certain activities more. If that wasn’t right and good for us, I don’t believe that our bodies would be so obliging to adapt to become better suited for our particular specializations. I do like what he’s saying though, that even if we do specialize, we ought to be well-rounded and engage in a full experience of all that life has to offer. In that vein, I think we may be able to make a convincing argument that specialization is a good way for you to gain control of or access to deep parts of yourself. But that perhaps maybe the end goal should be a full-experience of being human. If you don’t commit yourself to any one path or specialty (even if you change it later), then you may never be able to experience this wonderful ability of the human body and being to adapt to strange tasks and circumstances.
Here’s to staying flexible!
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October 1st, 2006 at 11:24 am
There are two things that are natural for humans to do. Eat, and have sex. Beyond that the sky is the limit, or used to be.
To me the most important aspect of deciding how to act, is to have fun if possible.
This can be a tough task in the bloodthirsty, materialistic world we live in.
Since we are forever stuck with having to admit that all is value judgement, and all theory, as to the right way to live, it makes sense to me to find ways that cause the least damage to the earth, and empower people to be able to fulfill their particular dreams as much as possible.
A simple and practical approach that allows people to act out , learn, grow, in a good stimulating intellectual environment , seems right to me.
That is a value judgement. All we have are value judgements.
October 1st, 2006 at 1:06 pm
I’ve always loved the superhuman ability to adapt - whether its sleeping suspended from a rope in the thin air off of Mt Everest, or exploring the bone-crushing depths of the ocean floor. Not so much the fat asses most of us seem to be developing, esp in the USA …
Did you use that Heinlein quote before? Because I saw it somewhere and it really stuck with me. Raising 2 teenagers, I’m all about getting them to stretch themselves, while learning to pump gas, and balance a checkbook, etc. But there again is the paradox: we DO need to be well rounded life-long Liberal arts educated humans, and at the same time develop what is our own unique speciality. This is value to ourselves, and our community.
Did you once quote an anthropologist, who said in all cultures studied, the one common value was that everyone valued life for themselves and their family????
I thought that was profound, wherever I read that … and I accept it as an excellent core basis for morality. It seems that which follows needs to be the “golden rule,” and from this develop ways to ensure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” for everyone, as framed by the declarers of independence.
From this it seems laws are necessary to provide the peace for the common good. Unfortunately I can’t see, in this worldly global (universal?) society, how one can escape the need for police, to enforce the laws.
Yes … I recently watched “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Gort nice, or Gort maaaad!!
“Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration…the decision is yours.” Maybe that’s the only compelling way??
October 1st, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Even that though is an adaptation, I have realized!
Yeah a bunch of times. I love it!
October 1st, 2006 at 2:53 pm
I am happy that you’ve begun to use pictures more often. Sometimes long posts can be daunting at first glance. One of my favorite things about the Olympics is looking for that adaptation (particularly Summer, Winter’s a little hard to tell) and seeing how the human body can really adapt to an intensification of each individual sport. I had a discussion not too long ago about how in the distant future we’ll probably see an ever grander warping of the human body; people doing even more superheroic feats of bodily strength and discipline.
My dad used to bodybuild and still has a billion bodybuilding magazines sitting around here. Looking at these weird wasp-shaped bullish men and crazy masculine women, it’s really really bizarre to think about them trying to fit in anywhere. Even Arnold has gone through a lot of adaptations. From a top-heavy/tiny-waisted iconic bodybuilder, to a more Hollywood-action-hero-proportioned actor, aaand of course to Governator-shaped, which is probably the most out-of-shape he’d ever been.
I, on the other hand, admire specialization, but my personality wants to do everything and anything (particularly creative) that I can get my hands on. So, chances are I’m going to end up looking pretty typical, minus the dark-circles under my eyes.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:05 pm
We do adaptation because that is how we have evolved till now. An individual of our species adapts most in the early years, and this may well push us in the direction of being specialised. To avoid being bullied, a child may learn how to make his peers laugh, and become a comedian. Another child who has little opportunity for social interaction may become socially clumsy but rich in inner experience.
Yes, but it is harder to learn a musical instrument when we are older. And whilst I may sympathise with the sentiment that
, I think this is to underrate several things:
— the effect of circumstance on human life
— the spiritual dimension
— the equivalence of one kind of experience with another. I mean that a person who is blind does not necessarily suffer a diminution of “what life has to offer” because the bandwidth of possible inputs is so great.
I find myself at odds with you, Tim, in your assumption of the privilege of choice of “end-goals”. We are all challenged to make something of our lives despite the vicissitudes we suffer. I take that as the given and could not care less what the privileged happen to choose, & what accomplishments they clutter their lives with.
I measure human life against the extreme benchmark of certain congenitally brain-damaged children I encountered at the Mustardseed community in Jamaica, especially one young lady aged 21 whose tiny body is so twisted, deformed and uncontrolled that she can do nothing for herself. She has to be turned over at frequent intervals to prevent bedsores. I am not sure if she can swallow food. This young lady radiates happiness, has an angelic silvery laugh and gives her carers more than she receives in love. I don’t understand it but I saw with my own eyes. This also is adaptation, but I cannot help feeling that there is something else involved too.
I don’t think adapting is what we should be doing. It’s what we do anyway, and we sometimes get stuck in our adaptations and have to seek therapy to escape them. I also think it’s a terrible trap to use philosophy to work out what we should be doing with our lives. Our intellect is not for that. We should let our body-wisdom, a much more reliable guide, take us to wherever feels right - an individual fulfilment for each of us.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:11 pm
I’m not sure I follow what you’re talking about in terms of this idea of “privilege” and “end-goals” and I honestly don’t see where what each of us are saying is at odds with one another…
October 1st, 2006 at 3:21 pm
I’m not sure how this works for other athletes, but being a dancer I’m particularly aware of the ways in which your specialty selects you. Ballet dancers, especially, have the signiature “Balanchine body” as much because their muscles have adapted to the tasks at hand as because those dancers who do not have the potential to develop that body get filtered out. If I were taller and had longer legs, I might be a ballerina instead of the modern dancer I am– a vocation which has its own particular adaptations, physically and mentally. If some of the ballet dancers I know had been less angular and had a lower center of gravity, I know they would have become hip hop dancers. Strange what factors go into choosing a specialty, and how that specialty then changes you.
Human beings have huge reserves of potential. But in the practical sense, that potential has to give-and-take with the natural (and naturally limited) characteristics of the individual. What I find even more interesting are the ways those limitations boost and even force out hidden potential in the way people adapt to get over and around and above them.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Yeah, wow, that opens up a whole other door, doesn’t it?
October 1st, 2006 at 4:58 pm
body shape does infuence athletic adaptation. i am a soccer player, cyclist, weightlifter and sometimes martial artist and my form is suited to those endevours. my nervous system and thinking is shaped in similar ways to allow athletic performance. attitude as well as physique is critical to athletic performance. some don`t seem to be able to get out of thier own way, even though they have the appearance of athletic superiority.
i don`t go on the soccer field without knowing with certainty that i`m going to score goals. i don`t do my work with clients without the certainty of healing.
this sort of attitude has it`s critics………..but i have little time for that.
October 1st, 2006 at 6:37 pm
i wonder were the limit is though. Where is the line were your body say’s “Fuck you brain, I’m not taking this bullshit anymore” and dies? If we had to, could we adapt to live in zero gravity? Could we get used to breathing a freaky liquid mixture (which, when I was learning to scuba dive last summer I heard through the dive-community grapevine to be in development for deep, deep, deep sea divers) How much adaptability have we lost to civilization, and how much have we gained? And when does the human body adapt beyond itself; when does it ceace to be human? (I realize, this would depend greatly on your definition of human)
October 1st, 2006 at 9:35 pm
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-5417019303200331106&q=jets
this might give you some idea of where our boundaries lie. i think we could adapt to live in zero gravity or in a water environment. that`s what technology is for………breaking the barriers of skinbag limits. the soul wants to fly and swim and go into space. not this soul mind you, i like my feet on the ground.
i realised that our neurology is best suited to this high technology living in cities in highrises with faster and faster computers and telecommiunications. something is emerging from all of this. the future hi people were on about this but i disagreed about how it will end. i think we are a transitional species, a caretaker for what`s emerging. our consciousness will survive, b ut not necessarily t he skinbags……….
October 2nd, 2006 at 12:35 am
I’m glad to learn we are not at odds in our thinking, Tim. I was merely being inclusive and counteracting what seemed to be a bias in what you said. You implied that having choices gives us access to more of “what life has to offer”. In one sense this is obviously true - if what life has to offer is different sports, different work-skills, different creative talents. But I did not want us to forget that in another - spiritual - sense, severe constraint is no bar to “what life has to offer” but indeed may lead us to it as freedom of choice never could.
I say “forget” hesitantly, unsure whether readers here ever gave it credence in the first place. There is also an age-bias in our discussions: to those who are young, talented and confident like Alistair - professionally confident indeed:
- limitations are merely mental horizons to be overriden. I’m more than twice as old as some of you, and with age comes a more immediate awareness of insuperable limitations & death.
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:05 am
I don’t remember saying that at all. And if it came off that way, it’s certainly not what I meant. What I meant was that it is our ability to adapt to any circumstance that makes us human - and whether or not we make choices or not, we adapt to circumstances simply by being alive, by continuing to live.
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:12 am
You’re right, now that I check I see that you did not say it. Sorry I jumped to wrong conclusion.
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:21 am
One possibility I always keep in mind is the danger of a cow’s perception of itself. Both we and the cow are pretty adaptable, but only within certain constraints. And perception of that adaptation is coloured by the origin of the observer, in our case, humans observing other humans with our own abilities as the main filter and point of comparison.
A cow, for example, might be 30% smarter than any other cow around it. To the other cows, were they to have the ability to both notice and care about such things, the cow would be remarkably bright. They might be rapt at the sheer mental power of the einstein among them. To us, though, with a different vantage point born of differing celings and basements, the cow probaly wouldn’t be seen as any different than the other cows, and if it were noticed to be slightly smarter, could even be held up as proof that there is no real variation in intelligence within the species.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:18 am
age? i am not made up of my days while alive, so much as what i remember in my dna.
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:45 am
-Robert A. Heinlein
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Indeed, and I have often mused that the people of the Dundalk area of southeast Baltimore are living proof that Lovecraft was right about the “Spawn of the Old Ones”. Hideous.
October 2nd, 2006 at 7:28 pm
You’re absolutely right, Tim—I think one day, the last human will eat the last cockroach. Humans are unbelievably robust. Here we have hunter-gatherers evolved to live in small tribes who can actually stand living in cities on diets of grain that we can just barely digest and the breast milk of other animals. The very fact that we can tolerate such a deep antithesis of human evolution is a striking testament to human adaptability. Could you ever get lions to live in large, packed cities on a vegetarian diet? I doubt it. Compare that to the pickiness of koalas who will only eat eucalyptus!
I’m with you in my wonder at human adaptability, and seeing it at its extremes is a remarkable thing. But let me suggest this: that our extremes of adaptability should be a testament to personal achievement, rather than a basic requirement of society. Should we really be testing the limits of how far we can be pushed, just with the structure of our society? Isn’t society something we created to adapt us to our environment? If we have to spend so much effort to adapt to our society, isn’t that the clearest indication you could ask for that your society is fundamentally broken?
On specialization, I agree with you that there’s a certain degree of natural inevitableness to it; and I also agree with the importance you place on well-roundedness. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Rubicon flows between specialization and exclusivity. If you’re just the guy that really likes making bows, then others might come to you to make their bows, you’ll do it better than everyone else, etc. But if you’re the only one who knows how, you’ve crossed a very dangerous line, because now you can coerce others to do as you say, or you’ll withhold from them the things they need.
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:56 pm
I’m not sure I follow how you took what I said and made it an issue of adapting to society or not. I’m not really saying we have to adapt to society, but that we simply have to adapt. We have no other option.
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:01 pm
i think we are consistantly moving toward a prescribed goal as humans. we are best suited to living with technology to extend our limbs and senses. it`s the only way to evolve, after all. darwin wasn`t able to see as well as mcluhan………..though mcluhan was born later. darwin couldn`t see how the adaptation of opposable thumbs and intellect eould take technology. mcluhan saw a bit more of the curve and so was able to jump ahead.
what is that prescribed goal?
cybernetic bodies, uploaded consciousness………..in the positive. in the negative, nano-tech death, silicon consciousness shutting things down and maybe even attacking humans as vermin…..you know, that kind of fun stuff.
October 3rd, 2006 at 12:54 am
Prescribed goal? Silicon consciousness? Alistair, where do you get this from? Are you poking a stick in someone’s cage to watch the fun?
October 3rd, 2006 at 8:31 am
I didn’t. I’m taking it a step farther, to my own pet project.
It was too close to resist….