Sapiens, page 5: A Crummy One

One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. 

Page 5

Please forgive the breakfast crumb. After brushing it off, I thought to re-take the photo, until it occurred to me that this really is a crummy page. 

Smack in the middle, there's a mind-blowing bit, the kind that gives you that numinous feeling, or something like it, that I'm going to have to ruin. And it's not going to be easy. If he hadn't written it in the first place, and if it wasn't the internationally best-selling book about human evolution over the last decade, then I wouldn't have to go to the trouble. 

Here's the bit: "Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother."

It sounds amazing and fresh because no one's ever said this before. Why haven't they? Well, it's not because it took a great scientist or a great writer. No one has ever laid out our origins so plainly before because it's not true. 

It is true that genome-based estimates for our lineage's divergence from that which led to modern chimpanzees and bonobos (whom he never mentions and lumps entirely with chimpanzees) converge around 6-7 million years ago. And that's when we like to say our "last common ancestor" with chimpanzees and bonobos lived and died on planet Earth.

To see that estimate of 6-7 for yourself, just type human and chimpanzee into this site: https://timetree.org/

(Word to the wise, until the fad dies completely, you will get roaring laughter if you say something like the above in the lecture hall, and no one will tell you why until days later, and, upon hearing the reason, you will mentally pen your letter of resignation, but a moment later you will mentally wad up that letter and simply carry forward a small but mighty grudge against the students who refused to tell you what was so funny while you checked your fly was not down, or that your shirt was not up, or that a boog was not hanging.) 

So, if Harari's amazing ape trio isn't true then what is? 

Speciation takes time. That is, the separation of lineages is a process over time and space. No matter how drastic the beginnings of that separation, they always begin with populations. Apes today never live like Adam and Eve or like Harari's amazing ape trio. Lineages are always populations of individuals, or "gene pools" if you prefer. 

And, sure, maybe one part of our genome compared to chimps' and bonobos' could be traced to one individual amazing ancient ape mama who birthed two different amazing kids (all mamas always do!), like, theoretically maybe that could be the story for one aspect of our (barely) distinct genomes. 

But I never think about atomized individuals (who each have most but not all of their lineage's variation) in this context. I think about a group of apes who all together carry the whole genome of that phase of space-time for their lineage. 

All that variation, which isn't much within a species, considered all together--that's what we're talking about when we talk about genomes. A bunch of individuals make up the whole picture. 

We have no idea how some individuals of our ancient ape ancestors separated off from one another, either genetically or physically or both, roughly 6-7 million years ago and we never will know how or why that happened. But it did. Using genomic data now, scientists have tried to estimate how long the divergence took. That is, they offer guesses for how many years went by before the genomes were as distinct as they are now. And it may have taken hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. (For example, here's an old paper. And here are doubts about it.) 

However slow or fast the divergence went, the genetic differences between us, chimps, and bonobos did not all appear all at once. And so, no we cannot trace what is genomically different between us and chimps/bonobos to one ancestor who had two kids that originated separate lineages. Like I said, I guess it's possible we could trace one aspect of our different genomes to one ancestor like that. But all our (puny amount of) differences all accumulated at different times and in different places. And, here's the extra complex part: All the differences accumulated, both, prior to full reproductive separation of our lineages, and ever since! There would have been gene flow during the speciation process, which, I think (but could be off) that some might call hybridization, depending on where in the process we're looking.

So, no, there is not one single ancient ape mother who birthed all chimps, bonobos, and humans and there is not one mother who started all chimpanzees or one mother who started all bonobos or one mother who started all humans. There is not even one ancient ape community or population, like in one single moment of space-time, that did. Speciation, or lineage separation, is an ongoing process. That 6-7 million-years-ago estimate is pointing at a phase in time, not a spot you could program into your flux capacitor. 

Notice I said speciation is an ongoing process. We are still evolving in a different way from chimpanzees and bonobos and vice versa and vice versa (it's a three-way). Because we are not sharing any of our genetic material among our lineages through reproduction, then it's likely that we are all evolving to be more genetically different than one another, not more similar. 

I was careful to include "genetically" as a modifer each time I wrote "different" because it is key to remember that our genetic differences and similarities are real and important but they are not the only similarities and differences! We may share 98-99% of our genomes with chimpanzees and bonobos but that does not mean we are 98-99% them any more than they are 98-99% us. That's because our genome is not determining everything about them or us. (Several pages from now, this will be an issue that I'm already girding my loins to revisit. Stay tuned.)

Refusing to reduce our origins like Harari and just trying to imagine reality is worthwhile because that's the really  mind-blowing experience.

Sometimes, it's easier to over-simplify or to make something up entirely than to describe reality. Reality can be complicated and mysterious. I wish I could say that my attempt to tilt better at reality for you, as a replacement for Harari's made-up thing, was a brilliant reflection of reality's complexity and mystery. It's not hard to see why Harari's thing lives in a best-seller, though. 

(For more on how to  think about genetic variation in time and space, check out Graham Coop's Lab's blog and A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford.)

As far as the rest of this page goes, there are a couple more things to address. 

Homo sapiens belongs to the ape family. Yes. Though, it's curios to read that it, "used to be one of history's most closely guarded secrets." Is he referring to history as an agent? Because I know of no conspiracy where actual humans concealed the truth of evolution. So he is referring to history as a thing separate from humans. I am THE WORST with metaphors, but I will try very hard to empathetically understand why he's doing this. Right. History guarded the secret of evolution. I'm trying very hard and... nope. I just don't get it. I think it must be his way of saying that it took a long time between the origins of complex human cognition for anyone to  think evolutionarily. Right. (I mean, right, if you're restricting evolutionary thinking to European history. Indigenous knowledge can sound a heck of a lot like evolutionary thinking if you aren't stuck in the selfish gene metaphor!) Okay, fine. But the metaphor with history as an agent is still really strange for me. 

I sure don't love being so critical about writing style (living in the glass house that I do). I only bring up this issue because the metaphor appears not once but twice on this same page: 

"Homo sapiens has kept hidden an even more disturbing secret." 

A whole species kept a secret? 

I'm sorry. How can I be reading this for the ninth time and only now realizing how weird this page is? Or, rather, realizing how incapable I am of understanding its metaphors...

The big crummy problem above with the amazing ancient ape mama with two amazing kids (which might have been intended to be only a metaphor??? Oh god. What if it's only meant to be a metaphor and not science???) really sent me reeling. I think that's why, in all eight prior reads of this book, I didn't notice the rest of the page.

So what's this second secret that our entire species has been keeping? He's talking about how there were other species of hominins through time besides Homo sapiens. Why he needs to frame that fact as a "secret" that "sapiens has kept" is incomprehensible to me. Is he saying that we could know that, long ago, other species of hominins existed if not for ancient Homo sapiens who intentionally forgot? I'm lost.  I read lots of novels and not an insignificant amount of poetry. I LOVE novels and I often LOVE poetry! But if this is poetry, then it might be Vogon poetry?

And here he's offering "the real meaning of the word human." It's, and he quotes, "an animal belonging to the genus Homo." But he includes no source for the quote.  (My upcoming book's fact-checker would kindly ride my ass if I pulled something like that. I love her to death.) I'm guessing it is a quote from a dictionary. 

It can only get better from here, right? Pages 6-7 are next. To be continued...

Sapiens, page 4: The Most Important Thing to Know

One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. 

Here we are. Just three posts into this journey and it's already feeling like Bible study. (Some of us didn't just to go church most Sundays of our formative years. We also went to religious school with religion class at the start of each day.) 

Open up the book that starts with creation and ends in apocalypse. Think about what some of the words on one of the pages means. Too much. Think about the words, in just one passage, way too much. 

Maybe relate those words to your life, or someone else's, your neighbor's, maybe relate what you're reading to the news, to the wars somewhere. 

Maybe assume there's a lesson to be learned from someone who knows better. Maybe expect to find answers to the big questions we all ask and to questions we never even thought to ask. 

Or, if you're a skeptic and know that the Bible was written by ordinary people just like the rest of us, maybe read it with a sense of irony, instead. And wonder, as you go, if the author is in on the irony or not. But in Bible study, we keep skepticism and criticism to ourselves--at least we (mostly) did when I was a kid. Here,  on the Mermaid's Tale and with this other creation-to-apocalypse tale, we speak freely.

Page 4

We're imagining we're on a nature hike, taking in all the enchanting animals. It's 2 million years ago and we only see (now dead) people who are a "familiar cast of human characters": mothers concerned with babies, children getting dirty for fun, rebellious teens, wizened old farts just wanting to be left alone, ape-like men trying to impress "the local beauty" and (held separately from the aforementioned elders) "wise old matriarchs who had already seen it all." He says that these (ancient imaginary people) are doing what many (2015) animals do and he says that many (2015) animals are doing all that these (ancient imaginary) people do and so, "there was nothing special about humans," at this time in our collective evolutionary history. 

But c'mon... already in that "familiar cast of characters" there are roles that are not necessarily equivalent to other animals. How do we know that mother-child relations in 2-million-years-ago hominins were no different from those in any other animal now, let alone at the time? How do we know that 2-million-years-ago hominins were not impacting their surroundings in more intense or weirder ways than any other organism? We do not. We cannot. 

This time-traveling safari is lovely and is presumably here to spark our imaginations so that we can travel right along with Harari's. But what a way to start a science book, a history book. 

These ancestral portraits aren't beyond the bounds of reality. (But they sure do epitomize the big "hypotheses" for our evolutionary triumph, like Man the Hunter, Man the Sexy Hunter, the Grandmother Hypothesis, and smaller subsidiaries like the importance of childhood play and mother-infant bonding, etc. etc.) 

But to assert, based on these 100% figments that, "The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies, or jellyfish," is wild isn't it? 

Like, sure, at some point our direct ancestors were as insignificant/significant (potato/potahtoe) as all other organisms (which are all, literally, integral to the lives of all other organisms because everything is connected). 

But why plant a stake in 2 million years ago that says they were still just like all the other animals?  Why assert that this completely made-up condition for these ancient hominins is the most important thing about them? 

I think it was the lovely Ian Tattersall who wrote somewhere that humans are "the pinnacle of nothing". Now, that's how you say we're not special. Here, however, Harari is looking back and pointing out how unpinnacular our ancestors were to contrast them against their descendants, us. 

The rest of the page instructs us on "species"—how those that we label separate species based on observable traits are often usually not having sex and sharing genetic material. And, if they were, then perhaps that would cause a scientist to decide to keep or lump them into one species. 

I think the point is to confuse, not clarify, the concept of species so that readers know they are labels/boundaries we put on nature, not categories that we find out in nature, as if nature did the labeling. From an evolutionary perspective, species are so obviously human constructed categories. If we know that nothing comes from nothing and so everything came from something, and when change is constant which means everything came from something different, then we know that labels like species cut up a continuum, arbitrarily. I think that's what he's offering here. 

Or he's just trying to set up the fact that we are Homo sapiens so that the title of the book makes sense. 

Page 5 is next. To be continued...

Sapiens, page 3: This Is a Doomsday Book?

One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. 

Page 2 is blank.

Page 3

Chapter 1: An Animal of No Significance

The Big Bang makes sense as a first sentence. 

We won't bother to see if anyone's changed the estimated date since Harari chose one to put "about 13.5 billion years ago" here. But I think they have changed it or, at least, I've heard a different number. 

"About" helps keep 13.5 fresh. I love a good "about" for dates and ages. It's not a weasel word. It's honesty. These are estimates. 

I'm about middle aged sounds so much better than I'm middle aged. Why is that? Does it make me younger? No. Does it make me somehow above ordinary time? Like, I'm floating on another plane alongside the one that yokes us to eminent death? Yes. 

The second graf is about when atoms formed, just after the Big Bang. I will take his word for how incredibly long that took. No, wait, I mean, for how incredibly fast that was. Only 300,000 years! For clumps to form out of the lack thereof! Amazing. I wonder if that's still the rate of clumping, on that scale, or if things got faster or slower. Does anyone know? 300,000 years ago is the date for the earliest fossil anyone has reasonably (passed peer review) called Homo sapiens. What new clumps have formed in us since then?

I doubt the answers to my off topic questions that aren't at all salient on this page will be living in the endnotes/references. HOWEVER, wondering about these things did cause me to flip back to the endnotes to see what sources contain any of the cosmological information Harari has provided so far. 

For Chapter One there is only one reference listed. 

1. Ann Gibbons, "Food for Thought: Did the First Cooked Meals Help Fuel the Dramatic Evolutionary Expansion of the Human Brain?" Science 316: 5831(2007), 1, 558-60.

Ahem.

No one has ever heard anyone describe the Big Bang followed by "The story of these fundamental features of our universe is called physics."

No one has ever heard about how "the story of atoms, molecules and their interactions is called chemistry." 

And, so, I see a big blast of charm right out of the gate. 

Unfortunately, now that I see zero citations, I think I may also see cover for carefree writing outside one's field. 

Now, in the third graf, Earth has formed and we're onto the origins of earthly life. "The story of organisms is called biology." When I first read that, I loved it. I think I still do? But I'm not sure it's for reasons that Harari intended with this sentence. I'll stop there for now, but as we proceed through the book, "fictions" and "imagined orders" will emerge as key terms for key concepts and key arguments. I'm not sure if "story" here is equivalent to those things or not. I'm not sure how it compares. We will find out! And so, we will find out if he argues that science is like his other fictions and imagined orders, or not.  Or we will find out that he never touches on it beyond this page. (But if you know how beloved this book has been by the tech sector, then you probably already know the answer even if you never read Sapiens.)

Here we go to graf four. After organisms, we have cultures. "The subsequent development of these human cultures is called history." 

So, history, as opposed to the sciences mentioned above, is not a story about. History is.

But maybe because it contains the word "story", the word "history" so obviously implies story? And so maybe that explains the different sentence construction. That is, maybe there is no difference between the meaning of the history sentence and the biology, chemistry, and physics sentences because everyone knows that history is a story, too, and perhaps, everyone might think that history is even more of a story than any of those sciences are.

What is a story? I have no idea. I just ran it right off that cliff into meaninglessness. Story is black lines and shapes. I'll have to give it some time to climb back up to somewhere I can ponder its meaning again before I ponder its meaning again.

In the meantime, here's where we get to the introduction of the structure of the book. "Three important revolutions shaped the course of history," says Harari. The Cognitive Revolution "kick-started history" about 70,000 years ago. Hm. What a curious date. Big brains equivalent in size to our own have been around for over five times as long as that. So has the routine, controlled use of fire. I wonder what 70,000 marks? We'll see.

 The Agricultural Revolution sped the Cognitive Revolution up 12,000 years ago. Okay, we'll see. 

Then the Scientific Revolution, starting 500 years ago, "may well end history and start something completely different." Hang on. If the Scientific Revolution ends history that sounds like... it ends humanity. Hold on. Are you trying to trick me? Is this a doomsday book? THIS IS A DOOMSDAY BOOK? 

Starts with creation, ends in apocalypse. It's a tale as old as whatever Archbishop James Ussher says it can be as old as. 

Calm down. Here is the utterly chill next sentence: "This book tells the story of how these three revolutions have affected humans and their fellow organisms." Bravo. So brilliantly understated. Masterful writing. You think I'm being sarcastic. I am not. This is the Big Bang to Doomsday first page of a blockbuster book and that's how he describes what's inside? How delightful. I get the joke!

But I'm left wondering... we have physics, chemistry, biology, and history, and they're all about the past. So what's the field called that predicts doomsday?

Near the bottom of this page, two spaces prompt us to see the remaining sentences as a new section. This is where he begins to describe "an animal of no significance". "There were humans long before there was history": TRUE, BUT NOT THE ONLY TRUTH. That is, you could argue, if you wanted to, that when history starts, that's when we call the ancestors in our lineage 'humans' and not before.  

"Animals much like modern humans first appeared about 2.5 million years ago.": TRUE, BUT NOT THE ONLY TRUTH. You could say it was pushing 6 million years ago, or you could say it was closer to 2 mya, or much more recently at 300,000, or etc. etc. etc. It's arbitrary where you start the descriptor "much like modern humans" along an evolving continuum traced through an outrageously incomplete fossil record. 

"But for countless generations they did not stand out from the myriad other organisms with which they shared their habitats": TRUISH, PLUS YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO PROVE IT. By "countless" he must mean too many generations to bother estimating because it's a lot and an estimated number would mean less than the word "countless" means to readers.  

By "they did not stand out from the myriad other organisms..." he's right about most of the unbroken, 3.8/9 billion year thread of life. But I'm dying to know if, and when, he seems to be so confidently sure the weirdness began. It sounds like he's about to argue that our hominin ancestors don't get strange in a very special way until 70,000 years ago. I've got to see this...because no one did. So what could he possibly have to form an argument like this? And why must he make it? 

 Page 4 is next. To be continued...

"Sapiens": One page at a time

I've been co-teaching a course for several years in which we read Sapiens. I think I've read it eight times, now. That explains the gumband holding it together. The heavy waxy pages are separating from the spine. Whether I'll teach the course again is currently a mystery but, if I do, Sapiens won't be part of it, which means that I can finally air my thoughts about the book here on The Mermaid's Tale. 

In the photos to come, you'll see that the pages are defiled with moody and often contradictory commentary. Despite this book igniting lots of writerly feelings, I stayed mostly quiet in public. Though the odds would be so low that my students would see any of it, I didn't want to impose my thinking on them. But now that I'm done teaching with this book, I can spew my thinking all over the internet without a care in the world. There are about eight years of it inside of me, but with this newfound freedom to blow, I choose to ooze rather than erupt.

My plan is to review Sapiens one page at a time, over as many posts as I want. I'm not promising anyone or myself that I'll get through the entire book. The further into the book Harari goes, the further away from my areas of expertise we get. But we'll not cross any bridges when we get to them. For now, let's just begin at the beginning...

Page 1

Part One

The Cognitive Revolution

Harari's caption of this stenciled hand in Chauvet Cave from some 30,000 years ago reads, "Somebody tried to say, 'I was here!'" 

And, okay. Maybe, sure. Why not. But that's, like, well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man. An assertion based purely on imagination is an interesting way to start a history book.  I could think of a lot of other things it could have meant to somebody, and I also cannot think of them, given I'm not a human-handed person 30,000 years ago any more than I am my mother and she makes pictures all the time and they always mean something and it's not always what I'd guess, that's for sure. Whew.

Of course I'm not offended by the caption. It's not offensive, and it's fun. C'mon, have a little fun Holly! This is your thing! You love human evolution! 

But it's also setting a tone or an expectation right off the bat, isn't it? Maybe it's meant to be meta? Like, maybe it's meant to enact the amazing human imagination that he's about to exalt and lament throughout the entire book? Maybe I'm in on the joke, then. But, what if I'm not. Or, what if there is no joke. 

Maybe we'll find out. Maybe we won't. See you next time on page 3. Lots of facts to check right off the bat and a big claim, as well, about there being three revolutions in human evolutionary history and history: cognitive, agricultural and scientific.

To be continued...

PUT A DARWIN ON IT: The Latest Call for "Darwinizing" the Social Sciences Sure Is Something (with a Darwin on it)

There's a new essay in the journal Theory and Society and it's concerned for the state of, and future of, the social sciences. 

It's got "evolutionary lens" in the title and it's by Gad Saad (about whom I learned a lot from Jill Lepore in this excellent series on Elon Musk), so I had to take a look. 

This is what I saw...

Portlandia's "Put a Bird On It!"

Are people doubting that evolutionary psychology is scientifically possible,* as in, are they saying that the ideas don't seem verifiable or falsifiable? Put a Darwin on their critiques! 

That, then, transforms their ideas into "ideological brain parasites" which are clearly controlling them via contagious "idea pathogens". And that explains why they're so stupid, but they can be cured if only they ... put a Darwin on it! 

Are people having other ideas that are not shared by us and other like-minded evolutionary psychologists? Put a Darwin on those too! 

Beyond skepticism that evolutionary psychology is a scientific enterprise, other "parasitic ideas" include "postmodernism, cultural relativism, social constructivism, biophobia, transgender activism, radical feminism, a rejection of meritocracy via the promulgation of the diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) [sic] cult, and identity politics along with its ethos of eternal victimhood."  With a Darwin on those ideas, then it's obvious how "human minds could be zombified by ideological capture". 

See? When we put a Darwin on those ideas, they become selfish, viral memes.** And, then, we can speculate about their ancestry: "These ghastly ideas originate from social scientists housed in universities hellbent on creating a utopian world rooted in their progressive idealism." 

And now that we know the source of the outbreak, well, we know what to do to stop it, don't we? Put a Darwin on it! 

What will that do? Only save the social sciences from progressive idealism, and from the suicidal DIE (sic) cult, by converting all social scientists and related scholars to evolutionary psychology!

In the process of this transformation of the social sciences, here are some strategies. 

Are social scientists and other scholars doubting that evolutionary psychology is scientific or possible? Call them postmodernists! Call them moral relativists! Call them science and biology deniers! Call them blank slatists and reality deniers! Call them feminists! Call them cognitive creationists! Call them zombies!

Understanding their stupidity so lucidly, and explaining their condition to them with such scientific rigor, will surely convince them to put a Darwin on their scholarly approach to humanity and to see the world exactly as you do!

Oh and don't forget to call upon other great men in history, like Dostoevsky. We can't leave out the humanities. Put a Darwin on them too!

That way, when people read Notes from Underground, they won't even see the critique of humanity's grasp of the "laws of nature" or there being some "organizing meta-theory" (yearned for and offered up in this essay) like evolutionary psychology to explain and predict the past, present, and future of human nature. Instead they (like this essay) will paint Dostoevsky with the very brush he was complaining about. How ironic. But it's okay because, with a Darwin on the humanities, no one knows what irony is! Put a Darwin on Dostoevsky!

While there are so many harmful viral memes, like the parasitic ideas already mentioned, evolutionary psychology—with bearded silhouette of Charles Darwin as its proud sigil—is a positive meme we should, obviously, intentionally spread. 

But it will be such a challenge because parasitic ideas, like those already mentioned, "possess a fatally negative valence, namely they destroy the capacity of the infected host to apply the epistemology of truth in navigating reality." And parasitic ideas have taken over the social sciences. 

The following examples (of increasing intensity of stupidity) outline how seemingly everyone, if not protected with psychological immunity under Darwin, is vulnerable to the cult of DIE (sic): 

"Being told that the COVID vaccine protects you from being infected might constitute memetic misinformation. Believing that operant conditioning (behaviorism) explains all human behavior might be a non-parasitic false idea. Believing that men can bear children is a parasitic idea pathogen in that it destroys the fabric of reality and hijacks human reason. Parasitic idea pathogens have zombified the social sciences, which eventually led to the proliferation of wokeism across countless business, political, cultural, and academic institutions."

What's happening is, without having a Darwin on it, the social sciences are just too caring and empathetic because the cognitive and emotional systems of social scientists have been highjacked by idea pathogens. 

"All these parasitic ideas start off with the hope of achieving a noble objective rooted in social justice. If along the way truth must be sacrificed, activist social scientists construe this as a small incidental price to pay. The epistemology of truth (the scientific method) takes a backseat to the epistemology of care and empathy...[some extreme examples of quotes by social scientists and some unfair or misunderstood depictions of resistance to evolutionary psychological claims/approaches] ...The social sciences cannot exist when governed by such an ethos of care and empathy." 

It's not that social scientists shouldn't care! It's that they should care, above all, for Darwin! And they should only empathize with others who do!  

And when they FINALLY do, then all critiques of the scientific legitimacy of evolutionary psychology and all complaints about the obsession with, and fanaticism for, Darwinism will FINALLY be seen by EVERYONE as mere "canards". 

*Philosopher Subrena E. Smith published a paper in Biological Theory titled “Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?” Her answer is no. 

**Of course I know this is Dawkins' stamp!  But he's just another "Darwin".  The Darwin they're putting on everything is both Darwin and not Darwin -- "Darwinism" is not the only evolutionary lens, which is why it is not the truth. 

The Story About a Man Who Turned Into a Bug = the Story About an Ape Who Turned Into a Man

Maybe this is you, too. I am slowly reading my way through the classics. Sometimes I think I already know the story because I can recite the movie by heart—like the one about the girl and her friends who go to see the wizard. Sometimes the story is surprisingly funny, enthralling, and profound—like the one about the men who hunt whales. Sometimes the story is not at all what I expected—like the one about a man who turned into a bug, which turned out to be about something else entirely, and twice over. 

By the time I finally picked up Kafka’s book, little did I know what lurked inside. A man had definitely turned into a bug, but as I turned each page, I mainly saw a sister’s trials and transformation under the shadow of her monstrous big brother. This masterpiece was hardly about poor Gregor Samsa at all. Grete’s was the real metamorphosis. 

Nobody primed me to decipher the text with a ladies’ mind. And, I don’t approach fiction by male authors with a smirk, as if daring them to exceed my lowliest expectations. Nothing of the sort. And, given what Kafka I’d already read, I expected genius from Metamorphosis. And so, it was. In my hands, there, in my lap on the sofa. Then, validated by the last line, I clapped the thing shut, jumped up, and shouted through the wall towards Kevin in the other room, “How surreal! It’s about the sister! This girl’s life is a story about a man!” 

I was unnerved, ecstatic. I simply couldn’t be the only person to see it like this. And whatever was happening in the story and, especially, to its interpretation in the zeitgeist seemed like Kafka’s design—as if he knew his story about a girl living in patriarchy would be received as one about a man, making it a work of performance art, too. 

Naturally, I headed to the library for answers. As soon as I started digging, I hit the jackpot. 

In 1989, Nina Pelikan Straus published, “Transforming Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.”  In it, she quotes a fellow scholar who calls the story “a literary Rorschach  test” adding that “Kafka critics have hitherto been looking into the mirror of his works to find reflected there the images of their own interpretative attitudes.” This paper offered better insight into my mind (as a reader) than into Kafka’s, but it was a jackpot nonetheless. 

In the first six decades after its release in 1915, over ten thousand interpretations of Metamorphosis were published, spanning religion, philosophy, psychology, politics, and sociology. Nearly all the reflections in the mirror were men’s. The man who turned into a bug held the spotlight, the wheel, the sympathy, the concern, the symbolism, the gravitas, the humanity. Gregor was taken so seriously, as a sort of hero, that his sister Grete was cast as the villain. Right. Nabokov (author of Lolita) argued that Kafka intended for Grete to play the villain. So, as the whole world began to sing Kafka’s song, Metamorphosis was about capitalism, men’s alienation, oedipal fantasy, and so on.

But, eventually, because of all that interpretation, Metamorphosis developed into something else, more than the sum of those interpretations. Its truth became what Straus showed me: inkblots, a mirror, and everything that could be seen. 

The most recent example I’ve encountered is Frans de Waal’s true-to-form opening thoughts in Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? To start his 2017 book, de Waal describes trying to empathize not with a man who turns into a bug, but with the bug itself. How alien to my own reading experience. 

By the late 1980s, the larger truth that Straus revealed included what Straus herself saw in those pages—a structure that hinges on Grete at least as much as Gregor, and a commentary on the gendered oppression of Grete, Gregor, their parents, their servant, and everyone living in a patriarchal society. Everyone, even the “winners” suffer in patriarchy because, as Carol Gilligan teaches us, patriarchy is the withholding of love. And as bell hooks teaches us, patriarchy is inextricably tangled up with capitalism and with European and white supremacy.

Like people the world over, Franz Kafka was disturbed by the stories we tell about sex, about what being male or female means. Grete was burdened with caring for her terrifying brother. His metamorphosis is a nightmare because so much of the family depends on him – patriarchy makes it so, burdening him because it limits what women can contribute. Women are sidelined in patriarchy. Even fictional women by readers of fiction. Grete was overlooked, diminished, or disparaged in decades of reflections on Metamorphosis. Gregor’s grotesque business overshadows the fact that his sister, too, metamorphoses and hers, too, is not by choice.

But by the time I opened the book with the story that everyone knows is about a man who turned into a bug, I knew nothing of the decades of humanity that had been shining on it. When I finally peered at the words, I only saw what I could see: a story about a girl’s metamorphosis. My own reflection felt so true that I leapt to the conclusion that my take must have been Kafka’s true meaning or purpose for the story. Not only that but the fact that the mainstream made the story about Gregor, not Grete, was even more mind-blowing: this was the very patriarchy in the story being enacted in the world! Grete was being overlooked and subordinated, as the art lived on in us. Kafkaaaaa! You dawg!

Wow. I really went wild. But can you blame me? I was shocked to the core and my response matched.

When Straus showed me the mirror, the high wore off, and I could see what I was doing. But that only freed me up for another high. Another revelation. 

I had been treating Kafka’s text exactly like people treat the facts of human evolution. I had been doing what people have long been doing to nature, to life itself, to themselves and one another.  

People look at the facts of human evolution—the fossils and artifacts, so much of the genome we share with chimpanzees, bonobos, bananas, and fruit flies—and see nature’s true meaning or purpose for themselves and one another. They see old bones and they think of death and violence or they see the same bones and they think of life, and what it takes for life to live: love. Or who knows what they see. But they don’t merely, objectively, like, ever in a million years see only old bones. When they look at the remains of our natural history, people often see what their guide (an anthropologist, a biologist, a geneticist, a science communicator, a journalist, a teacher, a professor, etc.) sees. Or, they see what’s all around them. Of course they do. Of course we do. We see what we already know. 

And so… given the male-dominated history of the science of and discourse on evolution, the story of human evolution has been narrowly focused on men, as distinctively created, to the exclusion and subordination of women. This is what those people knew already. And it’s been like this for so long that, despite massive argument among scientists and scholars, we’re still living in it. From Darwin’s superior, white, male hero’s journey, to the “killer ape,” to Man the Hunter, and all throughout sociobiology and evolutionary psychology which represents how human evolution is popularly understood, today, human evolutionary history has always been and still is a white, masculine fantasy. 

It’s “just science” or “just how we evolved” or “just human nature” that men and women are distinct in their core essences and that patriarchy rules despite societal progress. That these stories are compatible with evangelical beliefs greatly helps with their mainstream endurance. And, as long as people believe we did it, we cracked the laws of nature everybody! then we’ll have these stories. As long as people believe that arguing over plausibility is a scientific enterprise, then we will have these stories. As long as people believe that we can argue over plausibility, as a scientific enterprise, because we know enough about how evolution works, then we will have these stories. And as long as people believe we know enough about how evolution works that we earned the right to treat unverifiable stories about our ancestors, and about the supposed evolved inner essences of theirs that we carry inside of us, as scientific facts, then we’ll have these stories. Whew. So, because the zeitgeist is relying on 150-year-old, “survival of the fittest”-themed evolutionary biology (and so are lots of public intellectuals), our story is still, after all these years, and with all these products of evolution on this planet, one about an ape who turned into a Man. 

I thought my mind-blowing experience reading Kafka would help me to argue that human evolutionary stories like Darwin’s superior, white, male hero’s journey, to the “killer ape,” Man the Hunter, Woman the Gatherer, Man the Sexy Provisioner, the Aquatic Ape, and, our current moment’s unquestioned favorite, that we evolved to be “tribal” or “xenophobic”, are not and can never be the facts of human evolution. 

I thought my Kafka experience could help me convey that the facts of human evolution, like his text, are inkblots, mirrors, and everything else and, as a result, we’ve built up a thick layer of meaning on top of them. In this STEM-above-all world, much of that meaning is passing as science. But, no matter how beautiful or sublime that meaning might be, it is not science. And whether that “science” is offered like a cup of tea or launched like a Molotov cocktail, it’s all 100% bullshit. That includes the belief (not evolutionary fact) that war is human nature. And it’s in this bullshit about “human nature” that we’re stuck living out our bullshit-shaped lives, or … unnecessarily, tragically not.

So, because I thought it could be so helpful, I crammed a brief distillation of my Kafka revelation, complete with Nina Pelikan Straus quotes, into the end of a talk about human evolution. It was a Darwin Day event, where at least a hundred undergrad students had come to earn extra credit from the kind professors who invited me to campus. (Don’t worry. I kept all the darkness about bullshit out. I stuck to the reading experience. The inkblots.)

After the talk and Q&A were over and I was packing up my laptop, a student with handwritten questions approached me. He read the first two off his notepad. One was about gorillas. The other, bones. He was a switched-on first-year. After we chatted about both, he looked back down at his notepad and read a third thing to me, in a new, agitated tone. “I just read Metamorphosis in high school. It’s not about the sister; it’s about capitalism.” After setting me straight, he looked pleased, like he felt taller than just a moment before. Maybe because he was standing taller than before. I said, “Yes. Sure. Like I said, it’s a literary Rorschach test. So what it’s about depends on who’s looking at it.” His face soured. “It’s about capitalism,” he said, and walked away. 

A professor who had been eavesdropping suggested to me that perhaps this student did not know what a Rorschach test was. I could see how that, if true, would be a barrier to our mutual understanding. The older I get, the harder it is grasp what lingering cultural-historical touchstones I share with 18-21 year olds. Still, I had projected 30-foot images of inkblots behind me as I shared these ideas. Maybe that didn’t matter. Our eyes and ears have a penchant for closing when we encounter ideas that contradict our own. We can be so overwhelmed, or trapped in our minds and emotions that we lose our sense and our senses. Maybe we stop taking in more information to protect ourselves from the suffering it will cause. Like when something stinks and we scrunch up our nostrils which physically blocks more stinky molecules from touching our brain. That’s a bit how that student’s face looked before he walked away. New ideas stink because they force a reckoning. I imagine him processing thoughts like, despite my acing that exam on Metamorphosis, is she saying it's not possible to decipher the one true meaning of anything because no such thing exists in the universe? We make it all up? Isn’t that post-modernism? This book that I like so much might be…oh god help me…a feminist book? 

The first of the ten cards in the Rorschach test, according to Wikipedia.

Believe me when I say that I understand how literary criticism is not the typical way into human evolution, especially not on Darwin Day. And I could get out some records and listen to Pink Floyd and the Kinks and The Clash rail against the ignorance, bigotry, and anti-intellectualism that institutionalized education can cultivate and is doing in front of our eyes with its hyper-emphasis on STEM to the disparagement of the humanities and the arts. We’re being fooled into believing that data rules over critical thinking and wisdom.  

I wasn’t asking anyone to replace their interpretation of Metamorphosis. I was merely revealing that there are many ways to interpret the story.  I didn't expect that to be the obstacle! Instead, I thought Kafka would be my clever, easy way in to arguing something much more challenging. And, no, I was not going to argue that just like Metamorphosis, there are many ways to interpret the human evolutionary story. It's the opposite. Scientifically speaking, there aren’t any ways. The facts, like the fossils, are true, but they themselves don't make up a story. That's extra. And none of those stories are true, in the scientific sense, not even the prevailing patriarchal one, because evolution just doesn't work like a story, to my mind. Kafka's text and the fossil record are profoundly different things. If only more people knew what truths they both hold.

How To (Get Free Stuff) With Holly Dunsworth

This post (about real life events that transpired some years ago) is dedicated to everyone who loved How to With John Wilson (2020-2023) and, especially, to everyone who just googled to see if there will be more seasons of it.  

First, drive your car at a high rate of speed over something hard, pull over to the shoulder, walk back, see what it is, and take it home. It’s Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel with a cracked spine. It only needs some duct tape.

You just happen to be on the road “finding yourself" while freaking out about college over winter break. This scientifically rigorous, prehistoric porno is the sign you need to change your major to anthropology. You’ve never had a class in the field, but you’re one hundred percent sure that it’s going to be better than the semester you're facing: Poultry Science 101, and a bunch of other useful, lucrative coursework.

Next, get your Ph.D. in fossil ape feet. That takes about 7 years. Then get a professor job, which means teaching a lot of courses to a lot of students who take your courses because they fit their schedules. But don't let your job get in the way of your dream: writing an anthropology-themed bestseller which could become someone else’s magic roadkill.

An editor calls. Recite your book’s preface which is your manifesto, your soul laid bare, sweaty, alive. Her response is, "you can't curse that early in the book. You have to wait until the second half to say [bleep]."  You don’t even mention the teleportation parts.

Disenchanted with the industry, you decide to finish writing the thing before talking to them again. In the meantime, build your followers on Twitter. It's called a "platform" and you've concluded, based on no evidence, that you need at least 5,000 followers to impress a publisher.

Gaining followers is pretty easy. Tweet about anthropology and science, yours and others’. Tweet the book review that you made all about you. Tweet something that John Hodgman, Katie Hinde, or Neko Case likes. Tweet a feminist pun. Tweet all your naughty little prayers. Tweet your weird syllabus. Tweet a picture of yourself 40 weeks pregnant in a cowboy hat and a bikini. Tweet your dog’s eulogy. Tweet your dog’s skeleton’s excavation. Tweet your c-section. Tweet your lactation. Tweet your melanoma. Tweet about the time you were on the BBC, Netflix, YouTube, that podcast, and larium. Tweet stuff that gets Ben Shapiro to compare you to Insane Clown Posse. Tweet stuff that gets Jerry Coyne to call you a bad writer. Tweet stuff that gets Curt Schilling to yell at you. Tweet stuff that gets Ben Roethlisberger, who you weren't even talking to, to block you. Question Charles Darwin's intelligence, in a tweet. All your tweets are authentic and sincere, but you might not stick your neck out in public if not for the need to collect 5,000 followers. This is a superior path to realizing your book dream compared to the typical ways, like, by choosing a manly pen name, knowing something icky about somebody who’s famous, or having talent. 

Once you have all the followers you need, all that’s left to do is write the book.

So, put your kid to bed, eat a special brownie, curl up on the sofa, and click on the television. There are those rich people HBO sounds. A new show is starting. Watch it. It's lovely and heartachey and hilarious and nerdy. It's wonderful. Too wonderful. Why isn't everything this wonderful? you wonder. Your mind flashes to the mountain of footage John Wilson has shot and stockpiled, and combs through to weave his wonderful stories; you know the answer to your question. 

When the show's over, head to Twitter to scroll its followers. These are your people. Retweet the show’s tweets. But you're trying to stay off Twitter so that you can write your book. Still, make sure to log in at least eighteen times a day. When you do, there's a DM from @HowToJohnWilson. They want to send you a special gift from HBO and they need your address. About two weeks later, the free stuff arrives. Now you have free stuff.