I am again pondering the nature of the human animal, seeking details about the condition we find our consciousness in. There is a distinct reluctance among us to embrace our condition as a beast upon this earth. There is fearfulness about the consequence of such an admission. Yet, the world makes so much more sense once it is made.
When I meet someone who is appalled by our behavior, I am the one to say, "really, well I have been rather impressed overall." Instead of seeing ourselves as so far from where we imagine we ought to be, it is more honest to see that we have come a long way from the places we have been.
When someone declares that America is a great scourge upon the earth, I cannot help but think instead about what an epically creative, endlessly inventive, wildly ingenious, fearlessly free speaking, home to the human imagination America has been. Not a melting pot, but a caldron! "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble."
This leads me to my observation that we work hard to deceive ourselves about things. We lead ourselves to believe that we are not beasts at all, but that we are angels who live in a land that does not resist us. No, this is a lie; we are instead beasts living in a land that will devour us. It is these secrets we keep from ourselves and one another that I am thinking about tonight.
When I was a child I remember being quite sure that we were more angel than animal, that we were more beauty than the beast, it was not until later in my life that I realized this behavior was limiting the depth of my experience. I decided that there are some secrets I would not be keeping.
The recent addition of Ardi to the historical record suggests that we may have started keeping secrets a long time ago. Among other things, Ardi may have been able to conceal her state of reproductive readiness from the males in her group. This at first seems like a nominal discovery, but if true it will be seen as increasingly important. If Ardi was able to deceive them in this way, she would certainly have acquired a lot of power, and keeping secrets is about acquiring power.
A friend was lamenting the fact that we lack a tail. Or more accurately, he was lamenting the fact that other humans lacked a tail. To make things more clear, I will say that he and I have dogs in common. So much is communicated by dogs and goats and the like with their tails. When the doe is in heat, she is said to be ‘flagging’, which refers to the position of her tail. When a dog is fertile, she is said to be in ‘standing heat’, and the upright position of her tail is indicative of this. Humans though have no tail with which to communicate their seriousness or their playfulness. Rather, we keep secrets about our selves. We deceive and we conceal.
Now it should be perfectly clear, that this deception and concealment may have been for a good end on occasion, much has been created this way. All along, secrets have been uncovered about the world. Those who discovered them had opportunities to use the knowledge to better themselves, if often at the expense of others.
Humans do communicate many things with their bodies, but much more subtly and guardedly. Those who know the secrets may even be able to read the human body as if it were a dog’s tail. Those who understand how to conceal their emotions or intentions with their bodies know another secret.
Throughout human history, factions have held secrets against one another, great and terrible events have been held in their honor. Cities have burned, and battlefields have been made fertile with the blood of those who were never to be told the secrets they were fighting to conceal.
Humans have built a civilization on secrets. I hesitate to even support this statement as it is so patently obvious. There are secrets we actively keep, and secrets we more casually keep. There are military secrets and government secrets, the secrets that keep us safe. There are secret ingredients in the things that we eat. Our passwords are secrets, and pin numbers too, you keep them from me and I keep them from you.
The free market is all about secrets. That is what the free in free market actually refers to, the freedom to keep secrets, from competitor and consumer alike. There are secrets of the elite, and secrets of the oppressed. In the end each one of us keeps secrets from ourselves and one another.
Playing chess with a child provides an opportunity to undo some of this treachery. When a child makes a foolish move that might cost them a piece, we tell them to reconsider it, take another look. We do not leap on the error and revel in our good fortune.
This mode of being is very instructive to me. Taking it a bit further, we begin to explain why we are moving particular pieces to particular locations. Instead of concealing our strategy, we are intentionally revealing it in an effort to teach the child to play. An element of this lesson is to teach the child to deceive her future opponents in order to improve her chances of winning.