The Matter of Love
by Les W Kuzyk
Copyright 2016 Les W Kuzyk
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The Matter of Love
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The Matter of Love
Chris opened the door to the all-too-familiar office. In this last session he would but go through the motions. Gently rubbing at the apple in his suit jacket pocket, he stepped in. Letters lay written on the bureau, one to his wife and apologetic attempts at explaining human love, or lack thereof, to each for his two children. Once and for all he’d prove by action he could step outside the cage of rational thought. City traffic hummed faintly up from the streets through the window.
“Hello Professor Shuman.”
He grunted, almost inaudibly.
“Please.” Counsellor Jamal looked up, motioning. “Have a seat.”
He took his place in the wooden chair, running his finger along the familiar bumpy underside of one armrest to find that protruding staple, keeping his other hand in his pocket. Days had dragged out lately into an interminable struggle for any positive thought. If there was no God, no god, no higher good, he saw no purpose. Rational understanding of a cold world...what for? His look penetrated deep into the floor.
“First thoughts.” The counsellor intoned from behind his desk screen. “What runs through your mind at the moment?”
Suppressing the rage against a chancellor’s directive to be here, he could find among his many thoughts none carrying value. Life had turned into a marketplace of empty shelves, and those few shelves stocked, full of items mislabelled—nothing held true to that advertized. He would expose his inner battle subtly he had promised himself.
With twitching eyes he half raised his head.
“Ohh…been reading.”
The counsellor kept his eyes on screen, nodding.
“Research papers?”
His biologist’s mind had noticed that bird along the walk that morning chirping with all its heart. So uplifting. Yet with the sword in his mind he’d sliced the invasive tweet to ribbons. The twitching notes remaining he powered upward with a rolling wave to pound through the razor edged sands on his beach of despair. Silence. As the moment dragged on, Chris rubbed his finger harder each time along the sharp metal staple. If one could not love one’s own children, those who heard story, why go on?
“Snow White died.” He shuffled in his seat, touching thumb to wounded finger. “That idyllic sleep version of the magic potion was written into a soft modern edition.” A fairy tale shifted all to one’s own childhood; to a person’s deepest inner issues of trust or life’s delusion, he knew enough about psychology. What he did not want the counsellor to know.
“Ummhmm,” the counsellor droned.
“Misinformation, and deceit abound in our world.” Chris scanned the front of Jamal’s desk, fingering the pin prick in his pocket apple. A medieval herb woman might have a wide selection from her forest, but modern science availed one lab chemicals. “The witch and the princess held mismatched individual interests,” he said. “The nature of any human engagement typically plays out through conflicting values.” A characteristic human trait revealed a clever rational witch tricking the naive princess, all to the witch’s gain. If pure evil abounded or even existed, why cast a princess character at all?
“How’s your research Chris?” He could feel the counsellor’s eyes fixed on him. “You do enjoy math, you always did.” This counsellor favoured topic diversion in his psycho analytical tactics—diverting attention quick to gain insight.
“The latest analyses confirm the new theory.” Chris lifted his look to the desk edge. “The old social evolution theory will die, but slowly.” Given a choice, why would anyone want a slow death? Snow White’s demise had been quick, even if not by her choice.
“Inclusive Fitness will fade away?” Jamal asked. “Or was it the Kin Selection theory?”
“One and the same, yes,” he said. “The Kin Selection theory as a model explains the evolution of social behaviors or traits.”
“Well professor, I’ve been doing my reading on the topic.”
“Then you should know Hamilton gained wide recognition by proving out his theory mathematically.” His indifferent tone disturbed, Chris heard the semblance of a student assignment completed, and felt drawn into his professor shoes as in a lecture hall. “Via indirect offspring and based on other than current data.”
Shifting uncomfortably, he decided to ritualize now, to kill time.
He went on. “But in the interim, further eusocial species have been catalogued and they don’t fit well. The probability of sharing an altruistic gene based on kinship has weakened. Many phenomena in eusocial species can no longer be explained. People cooperate with strangers of no genetic relation—people they will never encounter again.” The witch certainly hadn’t. “They pay-it-forward in popular jargon. Kin Selection could not explain this, nor other patterns.” He paused, as he would to allow any lecture hall inquiry. How could any a loving god power allow existence of such a foul woman? Atoms existed, void of love, nothing more.
“Eusocial means highly social?”
“Yes, the eu suffix denotes gentle or pleasant.”
“How does altruism fit?”
“Altruism stands as a primary signature denoting benevolence or affection.” His lecturing professor life had been near fascinating as his research. Half entranced, he continued. “A eusocial species evolves into a state of truly social organization. Humans have evolved into one such species, and theoretically they can evolve further. Once the eusocial bundle of traits is acquired, the species dominates. The eusocial have dominated the Earth’s biosphere for millions of years.”
The biosphere, and human degradation of their ecosystem though climate change, and biodiversity destruction had caught his recent attention.
“Termites first, then ants, bees and wasps. Ants experienced additional evolution—harvester ants live as cooperative farmers, engineers and architects in air conditioned mounds, comparable in many ways to human cities. If you argue for domination, you can estimate the total weight of all living individuals, that being their biomass. Insects, though tiny as individuals, win hands down—ants measure half the biomass in certain ecosystems. Much larger humans are unique coming much later in evolutionary time and taking on a pinnacle role among the eusocial species.”
He almost felt a tinge of the old excitement, but his new sword sliced through that.
“What causes eusocial evolution?”
The counsellor played his questioning student role. A strategy, Chris sensed, but he had strategy too and would piss this time away repeating this lecture by rote. Soon he and the apple would be alone, and one. Old moments of pondering came at him as arrows now, from all sides. Yet each avenue of investigation has turned to anguish, stretching out to point with crooked finger at but one resolution—the Snow White ticket out.
He must lecture.
“The key requisite for eusocial turns out to be what science refers to as a nest...or for homo sapiens a campfire.” He felt that familiar absorption, as he flowed with the concepts. “Among the vast majority of species the young leave the nest and that leaving trait remains genetically prevalent. So a crucial step in becoming eusocial occurs at that evolutionary moment when the young linger, and assist in defending their nest, their den, their campfire.”
The moment of magic, that fit into any story of wonder.
“At that crucial point, a final evolutionary step has occurred and the nest becomes multi-generational. In the case of a campfire, the site became a place to raise the young that could be defended by some while others went off fo
raging and returned with food for all. Evening collection in firelight safety allowed telling of the day’s events, and the trait of storytelling developed.”
His eyes flickered, glancing even to the counsellor’s face. The sword would soon carve this moment into strips, but he could live in elation for this brief time. His audience of one skimmed that screen, as students do. He sensed a list of challenges coming.
“Dogs.” Jamal said. “They defend the campfire.”
“Analysis of symbiotic domestic animals remains an independent study,” Chris said. “Science classifies dogs, and chimps as well, as species that have attained a threshold status. African wild dogs have evolved to a near-eusocial species,” Chris said. “The altruistic traits of a truly eusocial species remain exceptionally rare. They evolve only under exceptional circumstances.”
“Ahh, yes, borderline miraculous,” Jamal said. “Altruism then.”
Chris winced. In apologetic metaphors he had explained his position in his letters to family as best he could. In his effort to explain the human limitations, his limitation, his deduced inability to truly love. When it came to any love he analogized that family dog name from times past. People spend with dogs, getting what they can’t from each other, he had theorized.
“Step back to another species. To define an act of altruism, a suitable social object must be