by Dr David, Editor / Publisher
Two hundred years ago peppered moths were light-colored and camouflaged against the light-colored trees upon which they rested. Later, when the smog of England's industrial revolution darkened these trees, peppered moths were born darker. Still later, when environmental standards reduced the smog, the trees brightened up and so did the the peppered moth.
The interesting thing is that the genetic code of the peppered moth contains, and always did, the potential for both light and dark wings. Either trait can be expressed in the next generation depending on what the environment calls for.
Similarly, pregnant laboratory rats, who live in a stressful environment, give birth to offspring who have their genetic code set to best survive life in a stressful environment. The prenatal programming of these baby rats turns on some genes and turns others off so that they are born to be aggressive.
What is true of moths and rats is true of people. If we really wanted to solve social problems, taking care of pregnant women who live in stressful environments would be a great place to start. Doctors who deliver prenatal care already easily identify these "high-risk" future mothers. Having someone step in and visit these women to encourage them to live in a healthier way is a lot more cost effective than responding to juvenile delinquency or imprisoning criminals, to name just two of the social consequences of aggression.
Some aunt-ish or grandmotherly figure stopping over to advise the pregnant woman to stop drugging, stop drinking, stop smoking, to get more rest and eat better would help. Such interventions are generally effective and the maternal instinct is a powerful additional stimulus. Future mothers are powerfully incentivized to provide their offspring with a better, calmer genetic profile and a happier, healthier life.
I don't know what messages I picked up in utero, but I remembered how I was treated as a child, and from that I can extrapolate, can imagine back.
When I confronted her in my mid-forties Mom admitted to not touching us, her children, enough. Tearfully she protested, "But that doesn't mean I didn't love you." But, yes, it does. It means that and more to the infant fresh out of the womb. It means, something is existentially wrong. It means, I am going to die.
Dad was better, but not much. He was embarrassed by affection. Lying alongside him watching television was good until the commercial breaks. Then he might choose to pass the time torturing you, pressing and jiggling his fingertips between your ribs or into your armpit or sawing his hand where your throat meets your jaw or all of the above and more.
Mostly I was ignored. My physical needs were met, but no one paid attention to me. I say, I didn't know that I existed until I was in second grade.
It's hard to change the genetic programming you picked up in the womb or the personality adaptions you made during the first years outside of it.
Buddhist masters insist, "The knife does not cut itself. The mind cannot know itself." The mind is what got you into this mess to begin with. The mind is the mess. My personality, the mechanism I adopted to survive, is the problem.
A Vermont farmer, when I asked about getting to a neighboring road, repeated a line that had always fascinated me, "You can't get there from here." Yes, there was a muddy, rutted path that crossed a field and reached the road, but only a tractor could traverse it. In the truck I was driving, I had to follow the road back down the hill and go around the long way.
"You can't get there from here." With your present attitude, you can't reach the goal. Something is missing from your world view. The way you imagine the problem is the problem.
My life has been an engagement with my own flawed perception, suffering under or transcending the tyranny of my personality.
Following Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," much of my adult experience has been a recapitulation of the lack of affirmation I experienced as a child.
Following Groucho Marx, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member," fullness and success have been hard for me to feel.
After a new understanding, a revelation achieved, I don't stop to pat myself on the back. Instead I deride myself for not having figured it out sooner and mock myself in regard to what other insights I am, no doubt, yet missing, what else still escapes me. I ask, is the glass 90% full or 10% empty?
I remind myself (in a rhythmic ditty of my own creation; try saying it out loud a couple of times): "I know now what I didn't know then, but I don't know yet what I don't know yet."
The final stanza of a poem I wrote a quarter of a century ago sums it up:
