Your Average Joe (Neanderthal)

                                         photo: Eric Draper

This headline is a sitting duck: “Neanderthals in Europe Died Out Thousands of Years Earlier Than Some Thought, Study Says” (NYT, 8/20/14). The substance of the piece is rather bland and one wonders why it even received the amount of space it did, considering the fact that the world is on fire. The crux is that Neanderthals were formerly estimated to have disappeared 30,000 years ago and now the estimate has been changed to 40,000. Big fucking deal! “Where’s the beef?” There is one telling paragraph, however, which reads: “A recent analysis of Neanderthal DNA shows that Neanderthals and modern humans not only crossed paths, but also interbred. For non-African people living today, 1 to 4 percent of their genome has Neanderthal origins.” As Warner Wolf used to say, “let’s go to the videotape!” 1-4%? There must be some sort of mistake. If you look around there are still Neanderthals all over Europe including certainly Russia, Southeast Asia and the Americas and many of them occupy positions of enormous influence and power. Vladimir Putin is a major example of a political leader who seems to possess a good many Neanderthal genes. But the newly indicted Governor of Texas, Rick Perry is someone whose genome should be immediately tested. Turning our attention to the Middle East Bashar al-Assad, along with the recently deposed Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki should receive immediate genome testing by the CDC or whoever is responsible for genetic monitoring of international leaders.  Of course, Neanderthals are not only limited to prominent politicians. Neanderthal like behavior is identifiable at all the levels of society. Despite the article in Nature which is the basis for the Times piece, it’s obvious that Neanderthals are everyone.

Vanity Thy Name is Publication

There has always been a thriving industry of vanity publishing. Vantage Press was a well-known vanity publisher which even advertised in places like The New York Times Book Review. While you had to pay to be published  (instead of the reverse of normal commercial publishing where authors get paid for their work), you would be able to satisfy your ego and see your name in lights. Vanity publishing really was for the vain and particularly those who didn’t like to take no for an answer. Now the vanity idea has caught on in the rarefied world of academic and scholarly publishing. A recent article in the Times, “Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too), NYT, 4/7/13) is causing an uproar among academics and scientists who place great importance in peer reviewed journals. The Times quoted Steven Goodman, “a dean and professor of medicine at Stanford and the editor of the journal Clinical Trials,” as describing the phenomenon as “the dark side of open access.” Often times these open access journals or conferences are a con. “The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association who study insects, “ the Times reported, “But they found out the hard way they were wrong. The prestigious academically sanctioned conference they had in mind has a slightly different name: Entomology 2013 (without the hypen)." As may be obvious the possibilities are vast. Instead of The New England Journal of Medicine, you simply create The Southern New England Journal of Medicine. Instead of Nature you have NaTURE. Back in l996, there was a famous scandal in which a writer for a scholarly magazine called Lingua Franca perpetrated a hoax on the left leaning Social Text. The article, which parodied deconstructionist jargon laden prose, was a accepted by Social Text. The new value free form of vanity scholarly publishing is a deconstructionist utopia. In a universe where everything is relative, there is no right or wrong and all thinking is merely a product of its social context, there is no need for peer review. Let’s say you write a piece entitled “Adultery in the German Diet.” The auspicious and highly respected journal Foreign Affairs is mostly likely to turn it down, no matter how scholarly the research, but you’ll have no reason to despair that your hard work won’t be  rewarded. For a price you can simply have your article published in Foreign-Affairs.

Against Nature

Nature is regarded as a respite, a solace, a source of man’s power and a reflection of his inner being, as in the notion of the pathetic fallacy. But what if nature is inimical to man, dissonant with man’s inner being? The beauty of the natural wonders of the world has the power to ennoble. But these wonders can just as easily alienate when they conflict with the inner sensibility of the perceiver. It is truly horrible to schlep all the way to the Grand Canyon and find nothing but tourists mouthing off meaningless hosannas of “Wow!” “Awesome!” “Spectacular!” Such hyperbole makes it impossible to objectively reconcile the inner our outer circumstances of existence.

Or take the sea. Much has been made of the sea, the waves, the salt water out of which life itself is supposed to have emerged. Yet the sea is also full of riptides, undertows, and ferocious gales. It erodes shorelines and its sandy beaches have increasingly become the repository for shards of glass, due to the resurgence in popularity of the long-neck beer bottle

Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote a book called Against Nature. It is a novel about a cosmopolitan, a dandy, a lover of the culture of the mind, with a penchant for the perverse. It is also an invaluable antidote to the unrealistic overvaluation of the natural, particularly as it relates to sexuality (an alternate translation of the French title, A rebours, is Against the Grain).

It’s not that nature should be destroyed, the seas polluted, the forests leveled, the fish and cattle killed (not to mention the rodents and reptiles). No, the equanimity of the ecosystem hinges on a more pacifist attitude towards nature. Removing greenhouse gases and preventing a meltdown of the polar ice caps is an obvious priority. No sense in turning polar bears into refugees or leaving seals in a sweat.

But nature is a little like government. Nature doesn’t always have the individual’s best interests at heart. Nature is not necessarily an ally. What is the story of Noah but the first attempt in the history of literature to describe man’s efforts to take up arms against nature? Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was another depiction of the battle between man and a supposedly accommodating habitat. The lack of realism about man’s relationship with nature and beauty borders on the criminal, and in this case it is not a victimless crime.

Let’s face it: nature is overrated. The admiration of nature is purchased at the price of self love. Nature is like the kid who figures out the Rubik’s Cube. Most people just can’t keep up with him. The sublime beauty of the deserted factory may be the best testament to man’s place in the universe. Nature is a con artist creating the impression of mystery, of possessing something that others don’t have. Nature is like the soul who seems to have a monopoly on self-possession. Nature has driven men to suicide, and even murder, when the ugly imperfections of human existence stare them mockingly in the face.