Letter Never Sent

Right now juvenile birds all over the northern hemisphere are fledging, growing their flight feathers and learning to fly. You may have noticed some birds looking particularly clumsy, patchy, loud, and awkward. These are likely fledglings, the bird equivalent of a human teenager. Just like teenagers, they are testing their wings, preparing to leave their parents for the world beyond. Also like teenagers, they are obnoxiously dependent, ungainly, and even ugly in a half-baked sort of way.

You will often see fledglings chasing their parents around begging for food. Most young birds make distinct “feed me” calls their parents find impossible to ignore. In a study involving the cagey wild turkey (I can’t remember where I read about this), scientists created a decoy polecat with a tape recorder inside that would play the cheep-cheep call of the wild turkey chicks. As the polecat is one of the turkey’s mortal enemies, the turkey would predictably attack the polecat decoy on sight unless the decoy played the cheep-cheep call. In this case the turkey would hover protectively over the polecat as if it were part of its brood rather than a potential predator. The fact that this behavior is automatic and triggered solely by the cheep-cheep call shows how nature uses instinct as an effective mental shortcut to produce good parenting behavior. From the parent bird’s perspective, they probably don’t realize that their need to feed their offspring is triggered by a particular sound and behavior. In their tiny bird brain, they are probably thinking something like, “Gotta find food now and give it to the baby.” Repeat.

It makes you wonder how much of our own behavior and thoughts are dictated by instincts undetectable to our conscious minds. Why do we really feel and think the things that we do? Do we overestimate the power and control of our own consciousness? What behaviors and feelings do we indulge because of some hidden, instinctual motive? I think about this on the highway where it seems like everyone is talking on a cellphone as they return to their homes. Many people feel this strong desire to stay in constant contact. There has to be some reason we feel the need to socialize in this way.

Maybe depression and anxiety are caused, in large part, by behaving against instinct. Maybe happiness itself is the emotional payoff from acting in accord with Nature. If that is the case, are there any cases where nature/happiness is suspect? In other words, are there times when we should act against Nature to achieve a better long-term dividend of happiness? I think this conflict between what we want and what we think we want is ever present and is responsible for many problems like crime, poverty, violence, and addiction.

It is possible that to achieve larger ends we must act against instinct even to the point of suffering.

From a scene in Frank Hebert’s Dune:

“What’s in the box?”
“Pain.”
He felt increased tingling in his hand, pressed his lips tightly together.
How could this be a test? he wondered. The tingling became an itch.
The old woman said; “You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a
trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure
the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to
his kind.”
The itch became the faintest burning. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded.
“To determine if you’re human. Be silent.”

I have been reading the first volume of Robert Caro’s biography of President Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power, and it is fascinating. I don’t normally read biographies, but I had heard good things about this one. It hasn’t disappointed.

Caro takes his time and paints a complex portrait of LBJ, the man and political genius, rooted in the Texas hill country, but always straining against his own limitations and the limits of his circumstances for more. At times one wonders whether Caro holds a grudge against Johnson since his narrative seems to focus on Johnson’s cynical ambitions for power and prestige, however, by dispensing with sympathy, Caro has created a sense of drama and mystery around the man.

From the story of Lyndon Johnson, you learn a lot about the power of will and the power of dreams and goals. From an early age, LBJ possessed an ambition to be important. While many children have wanted to grow up to be president, how many approached their goals with a single-minded determination? How many have done everything they could to achieve what they wanted out of life? In LBJ, you see a man of extraordinary political genius who, while deeply flawed, worked tirelessly to achieve what he wanted. In that energy and will, there is a compelling example: you can accomplish great things through work and desire.

It is fun to think about life as it will be 500 years from now. While impossible to speculate with certainty in any direction, it helps lend this perspective to everything: much of what seems important now is nothing.

We are allotted a century, at most, to make of our lives what we will. One hundred brief years in the face of a limitless eternity. This is not a morbid thought, but it is a stark one. The recognition of life’s brevity can restore your sense of what matters. If everything is temporary: your loves, your friendships, your family, your work, humanity itself; how should that influence the way you conduct your life? The answer is that we must try to live well. Scarcity creates value. Life is a precious thing. Therefore, life must be valued and appreciated. In attempting to assign the proper value through our conduct, we earn the right to our own life.

Here in Dallas, Texas, it has rained as much in seven months as it would normally rain in an entire year. Five months to go. It’s incredibly unusual. It just keeps raining.