A Humorous Interlude

Come on, admit it, you are ready for a little humor. I promise it won’t take long. And it is relevant to what I have recently written.

I tried and tried to be a great composer. But it was frustrating, because I learned just enough about music to recognize how great the Great Composers were (are?) and how I would never match them. If I had worked on composition all my life, I might have been the late twentieth century equivalent of Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf. Never heard of him? That’s my point.

I recently wrote an essay (August 9) about genius. Humor is a kind of genius. One kind of comedic genius I envy is stand-up comedy. You have to come up with something really funny, with essentially no time for preparation.

Here are a couple of examples of great ripostes that I could have made, but didn’t think of them until it was too late.

I was an incoming freshman at Santa Barbara in 1975, which was, I think, very early in the Anthropocene Epoch. Departments with low enrollments recruited students by having tours during orientation week. I visited the geography department. While I was there, a student (I hope not a graduate student) was practicing his presentation in front of a paper map. When he saw us clueless freshmen walk past, he turned to us, and pointed to the map. “This is a map.”

If I’d been a comedic genius, I might have said, “Oh, really? Is that what they teach you here? Wow, maybe if I’m a geography major I will be as smart as you someday.” But, of course, I didn’t think of this response until decades later.

I was teaching a university botany lab one time about ten years ago. I had the students taste different foods that they, in their rural Oklahoma dietetic narrowness, had probably never tasted. One of them was seaweed. One student in the class clearly considered himself too good to be in the class. He should have dropped it and taken something more interesting to him, like a correspondence course in shit-kicking. He swaggered in, a half hour late, with a smirk on his face. The others had tasted the seaweed. I had him taste it, too.

"Tastes like shit," he said to the silent class.

If I'd been a comedic genius, I might have said, “How do you know?” But of course I didn’t think of it until long afterwards.

Genius requires a lot of neural connections. I have a lot of them. But they have to work fast also. They have to work like monkeys jumping around. Mine sometimes work more like naked mole rats, bringing up a brilliant insight from deep underground just before it decomposes.

Happiness is Fill in the Blank

I’ve been looking through a dull but well-intentioned book from 1937, 101 of the World’s Greatest Books. That is, five to ten page summaries of them. They were the ones you would expect from the era which continued with Great Books of the Western World, whose numerous volumes filled many library shelves even in small towns because teachers and librarians thought these were the books that everyone ought to know about to be considered educated. Great novels, epic stories, great scholarly works, great plays, great works of philosophy, almost all of which were outdated even in 1937. I wasn’t expecting much, not having much interest in the classical authors (Dante was especially silly), but just in case I missed something, I wanted to check.

Rather than to discuss the summaries of the “great” philosophers, which would lull you to sleep, I have chosen one narrow question: What is happiness?

Aristotle answered this question in a prolonged and painful contemplation of the obvious. His was the doctrine of the golden mean, which says that happiness is where you have enough, but not too much, of everything, from wealth to strength. Is there anyone who didn’t already know this? Some people act as if the right amount of sexual pleasure is as much as possible, but even they get worn out once in a while, and they will probably admit this. Some people act as if the right amount of sexual pleasure is none at all, not even accidental thoughts of sex. They are not happy, protestations notwithstanding. But the vast majority of humans already live by the doctrine of the golden mean. I certainly do.

While the golden mean seems obvious, there are lots of people who say that happiness is different for every person. Let me cite, rather than a philosopher, the mid-century musician Ray Coniff, whose song said that “Happiness is different things to different people” (“To a beatnik, it’s a beard, beard, beard…”) In the 1960s, when as a little kid I was absorbing television, I heard the tobacco corporation version: “To a landlord, it’s a great big rent, to a smoker, it’s a Kent.” (I’ve never heard this song on the radio since the 1960s. I assume the tobacco company bought the rights to the original song and is hoarding them.)

I think we all, regardless of philosophy or religion, know that there must be some universals to happiness (except among psychopaths). And, I maintain, many of these universals match the behaviors and feelings produced in our species by evolution. We can only be truly happy when we can honestly feel we are doing the right things with our lives—that is, altruism. We actually enjoy being good (up to a point), and having allies rather than having only enemies and competitors. And having a sense of purpose—which is also the product of evolution—and not just disconnected events.

Happiness is, therefore, not just whatever rings our bells, or floats our boats, or tickles our fancy, or verbs our object. It is a product of evolution, just like language and toenails and the cockles of your heart.

Where New Adaptations Come From

 I posted a video in which I explain where new evolutionary adaptations, and cultural innovations, come from. I filmed the video in Strasbourg, which has many old villages crammed together, such as Hoenheim (where I live) and Bischeim and even one called Souffelweyersheim.

Here is how I learned the process of natural selection. A new mutation appears, then if it is a good one, natural selection favors it. It starts off very rare—only one individual carries it—and ends up common, maybe even going to fixation (completely replacing the other versions of the gene). This is the way I taught it, and the way I wrote about it in my Encyclopedia of Evolution.

But the reality is more complicated, as is usually the case in science. If the mutation appears in a large population, say, a million organisms, then it is extremely rare—one in a million. No matter how good it is, it can get lost by random events before it has a chance to get selected. It has virtually no chance.

But suppose the large population, a million individuals, consists of small interconnected populations, maybe a hundred each. If the mutation occurs in one of them, it has a chance of becoming common, maybe even going to fixation. One chance in a hundred. Then if it spreads to another population, it has another one chance in a hundred to go to fixation. If this happens a hundred times, the new mutation now has ten thousand chances out of a million to be successful.

This is the shifting balances theory of Sewall Wright, who was one of the most important figures in the modern theory of evolution. He was publishing books right up until his death almost at age 100. New adaptations get started in small populations. That is the only way they have a ghost of a chance of succeeding. This is how natural selection must work.

Cultural evolution works the same way, but with ideas instead of genes. Suppose somebody got a great new idea in Hoenheim (or even Souffelweyersheim!). In a small village, the idea might have a chance to spread. If it becomes common in Hoenheim, it might become common in Strasbourg as well. And from there it might have a chance of success in Paris. (This may be unlikely, since Parisians consider themselves the cultural center of the universe, and Strasbourg, to them, is unspeakably provincial.) And from Paris, maybe the world. But the new idea popping up in Paris would get swamped out by all the other ideas in Paris.

This is not the whole story because, of course, Paris consists of lots of small populations, local neighborhoods and arrondissements. A big new idea in the 49^th arrondissement might spread to the 5^th.

One of the major examples of a cultural innovation starting in a place considered provincial is the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg perhaps had to start in an out of the way place—in fact, it was Strasbourg, where I now live. He did not start in Paris or Vienna.

 

The Evolution of Genius

There are geniuses among us. Some of you might be geniuses. But since it is impossible to define what a genius is, few of us can ever know who is or is not a genius. I will just share some insights, from the evolutionary point of view.

First, what genius is not. It is not just intelligence. I am intelligent, as seen from the outside, but when I am being intelligent, as when I am writing, I can see myself from the inside: I am paddling like crazy, like a dog trying to not drown in a flood of stupidity around me.

But for a real genius, everything comes almost without thinking. Mozart would fit anybody’s idea of a genius. He could write the most exquisite music without even having to think about it; in his own words, he wrote music “as the sows piss.” This certainly does not describe anything I do.

Second, genius shows up in the details. I can think of some musical examples. Consider the Nutcracker ballet by Pyotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsy. It is full of delightful melodies, which millions of people know. The ballet is performed hundreds of times around the world at Christmas. I heard that The Nutcracker performance is what keeps a ballet troupe in the black for the season. It may be the most successful ballet in human history.

But that is not what makes it a work of genius. I do not have a score to the Nutcracker, nor can I navigate the online public domain fragments, but I will tell you where to find the music I have in mind. It is in the Danses de Poupées Mecaniques. The magician Drosselmeyer has brought three mechanical dolls for Clara. A lot of skill is required for the three ballet performers since they must all have graceful yet jerky movements that make them seem like robots. The middle one is a woman dancing a waltz, although, this being Tchaikovsky, it is hemiola, with three-quarter time sounding like three-two time. It is not One two three One two three but is One two Three one Two three. It is an exquisite and seldom remembered melody. Right at the end, when the strings repeat the melody one more time, there is a gentle wavering of two flutes. This is the detail that makes it a work of genius. I heard it several times over the years, but never noticed it until my grandkids made me play a video clip of it over and over and over and over.

A similar genius-detail can be found right at the beginning of Hindemith’s Symphony in B flat for band. Few people would rank Hindemith up with Mozart or Tchaikovsky, and I, for one, am not sure. When we rehearsed this piece in band at the University of California in 1977, the director raved on and on about what a genius Hindemith was. Maybe he was right. In the first movement, the trumpets carry a soaring melody (Theme 1). A few minutes later, the oboe introduces Theme 2. But right in the very first measure, just as the trumpets enter with Theme 1, the rest of the band plays just the first five notes of Theme 2. The intervals are correct, but just in the tuba line! Nobody could possibly hear it. Such attention to unseen and unheard detail is something that ordinary composers overlook in their rush to produce something that publishers want.

Third, genius can sometimes work together insights from different realms of thought: music and literature, or literature and science, etc. Leonardo Da Vinci, a genius of both science and art, is everyone’s prime example of this. Isaac Asimov, a biochemist, might have also been an example. He wrote science, fiction, theology, and humor. More often, genius is narrow. Mozart was a genius musician, but who knows if he might have had the rudiments of some other kind of genius. Genius can be narrower yet. John Philip Sousa was a genius in writing band marches; of the best twenty band marches, Sousa probably wrote seventeen of them. He wrote 130 marches, but his operettas, fantasies, overtures, suites, and dances (which add up to 83) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa] have been largely forgotten. According to a 1952 movie, whenever he tried to write something other than a march, it came out sounding like a march. In the movie, he wrote a love song, “My love is a weeping willow down by the streamside fair…” His wife played piano as he sang. Then she started laughing and played the music as a march, the now famous trio of Semper Fidelis.

Fourth, genius can be agony. One thinks of Beethoven struggling with every detail. In fact, most of the great composers seemed to have mental problems, except apparently Bach and Mendelssohn. If this sounds like I have contradicted my first point, about genius being easy, maybe I have, I dunno. But consider Tchaikovsky again. I have heard that Tchaikovsky loathed, despised, hated the Nutcracker. Maybe not his own music, but the plot seemed utterly stupid to him, even though it was written by an author today revered (Alexandre Dumas). It must be admitted Tchaikovsky was under time pressure, having to write an opera Iolanta at the same time. (I’ve never heard it either.) But it is clear that Tchaikovsky jotted down lines of music perhaps with disdain; “There, they’ll love that,” as he scribbled in the little flute murmurs. But he wrote perfect music even for a piece that he hated. I’m sure that I have given more thought to that little bit of music for the mechanical ballerina than he did. The music Tchaikovsky despised has brought pleasure to hundreds of millions of people.

Genius seems like a supernatural gift. But it evolved. The human brain is capable of astounding complexity, more in some people than others, and usually only after a childhood of mental stimulation. The exact form it takes may be a matter of chance. Some people (often autistic) can remember incredibly long strings of numbers. The extreme complexity of the human brain has a very clear evolutionary advantage. Smart people can read the physical and social landscape and use it to their advantage. They can amaze the other people and become revered, and fecund, leaders of the tribe. They could figure out a lot of things, and even if they knew how they did it, they would not have told anybody. They could out-bamboozle everyone else. They were especially good at getting people to believe them. Their intelligence continually contributed to the collective intelligence of their tribes, of related tribes, and eventually of the whole species.

We, all of us, are the evolutionary descendants of at least some geniuses.

Mutualism all around us

After decades of teaching, writing, and reading about ecology and evolution I thought I had heard everything. But just recently I ran across an example of mutualism that surprised me.

Most vertebrates have lots and lots of parasites inside and outside of our bodies. Birds are no exception. They have it worse than humans because, unlike us, they cannot bathe away the oils, dirt, and parasites that accumulate on their skin, well protected as it is by feathers that are really good at repelling water.

But there are some things that birds do to reduce their parasite loads, besides preening with their beaks. They can expose themselves to environmental chemicals which may kill the parasites.

One example of an environmental chemical is smoke. Many naturalists have observed that birds will gather near a fire and extend their wings, allowing the smoke to get into their feathers. The smoke contains some chemicals that might help to reduce the growth of the parasites.

Another example, which I just read about, is that birds (in this case, a Eurasian jay) can stand near the entrance to an ant’s nest. They extend their wings, thus scaring the soldier ants that guard the entrance. The soldier ants squirt streams of formic acid at the birds, which does not harm them, but may reduce their parasite load.

Notice that this particular ecological interaction does not require that either the birds or the ants know what is happening. Natural and cultural selection reinforce the behavior, not the understanding.

The Importance of Urban Trees

 

I have always (even when I was a child) been inspired by trees out in the forest, especially the giant sequoia trees in the Sierra Nevada mountains near the town where I grew up. In contrast, urban trees seemed much less important, especially since many of them are horticulturally altered versions of tree species that are not native to the area. Urban parks and woodlots offer shade and peace in cities, but compared to the canyonlike buildings around them, they seem to be of little importance. A park cannot compare with the grandeur of a forest.

I just finished reading a book by Thomas Brail, The Man who Saved the Trees (L’Homme qui sauvait les arbres; Arthaud 2022). He became alarmed at the many thousands of trees (mostly planes, which we call sycamores) that were being chopped down in cities all across France. He is an expert tree climber, part of his work as an arborist. He climbed into a sycamore tree in Paris, right across from the office of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, which was one of many trees slated to be cut down. (Can you imagine such a department in American government?) He stayed there for 28 days, until the Ministry decided to reconsider whether to save the trees. He admitted that, sometimes, it is necessary to cut down a tree, but many urban trees were being cut down to widen sidewalks and make them sunny. But during hot weather, direct sun is not something you want. And the trees provided many other ecological services to the city and its people and its ecosystems.

Brail correctly gambled that no government agency would cut down a tree that had someone in it; and there would be no point in cutting down the other trees, since the one remaining tree would be in the way of “development.” What he did not count on was how many supporters he got, from social media and from news coverage: sometimes sixty people would gather under his tree, and there were thousands of supporters around France. He even got a visit from the most famous French actress, Juliette Binoche.

But why urban trees? Is it not more important to save forests? Many oak and beech woodlands are still being cut down to make way for conifer plantations. This is what I thought until I put myself inside the mind of Thomas Brail.

It is true that a forest is more ecologically significant than a park. But on a tree-by-tree basis, the urban forest (the park) is more important. Urban trees provide benefits otherwise almost absent from the cities, and offer them directly to more people. It is not just how much oxygen they produce, or how much carbon dioxide they absorb, but where they are doing it. Having one less tree in a forest might not have as much impact as having one less tree shading a sidewalk.

And urban trees keep the natural world squarely in the field of attention of people who might not otherwise give a thought to the natural world. My thought is that urban trees are the missionaries of the tree world into the artificial human world.

Thomas Brail does not live in trees anymore. Nor does he say you have to. What he does and wants you to do is to eat less processed food, and more food from a garden; and to get rid of television, while instead looking for inspiration in the world of Nature. Perhaps most importantly in his work, he remains calm in the face of confrontation. He wants the forces of destruction to be the ones to get angry, thus making them seem to be stupid (ils ont l’air idiot).