on the "god gene"

My reply to an introduction post by a peer in an online "Child Development" course

My name is Eric, but my friends call me Smelly.
I'm 25 years old and work at a bike shop in Colorado Springs. I absolutely LOVE bicycles. I've got 4 of 'em: A road bike, a DH moutain bike, a Dirt jumper, and an Ordinary (aka-Bone shaker, Penny-Farthing, Big wheel bike). Im is school for my psych, because I think its fasinating how humans have progressed though time. I would love to become an evolutionary psychologist... I won't make much but I'll love my job!

Cheers!

Hiya Eric...Right on and welcome brother!

Evolutionary Psychology...a very cool and underappreciated discipline.

Do you believe, as I do, that our species' unflappable and nearly universal faith in a supreme puppet master has proved an indispensible trait in fostering the success of our species?

I believe that the introspectively myopic or lazy...let's say, the existentially challenged; the blissfully ignorant, blue-pill dropping majority (Matrix reference there) has been humankind's saving grace. I mean, we're smart...smart enough to grasp our own mortality, so what better philosophical black box—sledgehammer to the skull housing reason—exists for preventing an endemic spiral into the morbid abyss of knowing, based on all available empirical evidence, that this is it and there is no hereafter, than faith? How successful would our species have been (and continues to be) at propagation if everyone was a brooding fatalist? A dark truth indeed, but what are the further implications?

Many of our greatest minds have been locked into such dismal musings, hanging around long enough to shout in a vacuum and recede quietly into the annals of human history as intellectual exhibitionists...remembered only for their eccentricities and the practical, technological advancements they gifted a quick-buck, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, unsentimental public without recompense.

So, will these tortured souls—with their short lives, scant, scattered, and congenitally doomed offspring—eventually fade into genetic oblivion as their evolutionary fitness disposes them to burn fast and bright and leave a legacy of erudition obscura, wounded windmills tilted at but not slain, and social solitude? Will the tormented genius who would not wish to bring a child into a coldly indifferent universe to live among the masses—who, by virtue of their insular groupthink, found it necessary to coin a term like "pariah"—vanish like codpieces, corsets, and a classical education? To those who are irretrievably cursed to live by their wits alone and are constitutionally divorced from (though not necessarily hostile to) the concept of God, peace of mind is a unicorn, and posterity is cold comfort as the context of one's achievements will eventually be lost amid the din of time and the selective, fickle memories of their fellow man (or woman).

In short (ha ha), is there a "God gene" and how much has it contributed to the psychological development of humans individually and collectively? Enthusiastically impaling one's frontal lobe on the nearest crucifix may be a quick, painless, and I'm certain, biologically natural impulse which allows for the sidestepping of deeper ruminations about the meaning or meaningless of life, but there's something to be said for pain and a hole in the soul.


That was a ramble, but a fairly lucid one by my norms. Little to do with this course...familiarizing yourself with teleological arguments are, at its core, a critical component of your chosen field. I look forward to reading your posts.



Glad to hear that you're into psychology! Some people are naturally intuitive and suited to the study of the mind, and many, particularly those you'll find in a clinical or academic environment, have minds that function like an abacus in the hands of a thumbless corpse. Not everyone should be given license to ‘play' with others minds; if you're worth your mettle, you will feel a compulsion, from time to time, to strangle (or browbeat anyway) some of your professors who often (based on my observations as former psych major) harbor a slavish devotion to one school of thought or another and are pathological theoreticians (failed practitioners)...try not to give into temptation...it will bite you in the butt when grades are issued.

Good luck and better days,


Paul

the big tomato

An email reply to Cam--an old friend and restaurant pro in Denver--musings about the restaurant trade and the formative experience it had on shaping my lifestyle for more than a decade.

Cam,

The atmosphere (Anthony) Bourdain painted [in his book "Kitchen Confidential"] reminded me of my first job. I was fifteen and my friend got me a job as dishwasher at the “Big Tomato” (not as kitschy as it sounds). Crowned "best pizza" in Portland nearly every year it was in business. All the ingredients were fresh; from the dough to the marinara, we made everything from scratch. Of course, we did up canoli, calzone, and all manner of pasta dishes. At sixteen, I became the youngest cook ever to sling a pie there. My favorite was our feta, portobello, prosciutto, and roasted red pepper over a pesto base, topped with slivered white truffle.

Ollie, "the boss," owner and manager was a round, bowling-ball-bald, ruddy –faced guy who said he smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. He always looked as though he was about to have a coronary. He was a nice guy, but he tried to stick his fingers in too many pies. When he vanished to open a bistro in Bend, Oregon (of all places), we were pilotless, the most senior member of the staff being the head waiter, a Persian named Humian (though for some reason he wanted us to call him "Paul") whose every sentence ended with the word "pussy"; needless to say, we all loved the guy.

I have mixed feelings about my experience there; it was at "the Tomato" that the seasoned staff introduced me to smoking, booze, and drugs but on the other hand, I was introduced to smoking, booze, and drugs. When I first took the job, I was sheepish and clean; a year in, I was a belligerent, alcoholic pothead, smoking bowls in the alley between loading the ovens and turning pizzas.

Erick Blocker, my hero at the time, was all of nineteen. He was an alternate WHL Hockey (same level as the Colorado Eagles) player on weekends for the Portland Winterhawks and my partner in crime nights and weekdays. Officially, I resided at my Dad’s condo just a stone’s throw away from the second of three high schools I was enrolled in but did not attend except to collect a rabble of pals to come over and get wasted in my Dad’s tiny, gated, Japanese-style courtyard, but I pretty much lived at Erick’s across town. My Dad awoke around 4:30 to make his fifty-odd mile commute to work…he barely noticed I was gone.

Erick and I would roll blunts, drink beer, play hockey on his Sega, and torture his roommate relentlessly for his taste for Zima (a "chick" beverage socially comparable to Schnapps in drinker’s circles).

Anyway, getting back to the restaurant, Ollie liked to micromanage; unfortunately, nobody told him that you can’t be in two places at the same time or entrust your business to a cadre of adolescent degenerates led by a Shiite with a trunk full of porn. Rudderless and without a captain, us kids went native.

The kitchen became a tribute to health code violations and yours truly "cleaned" the restrooms (maybe) once a week. We ate and drank up all the profits. I brought home a pizza at the end of every shift and, unbeknownst to my father who drove me home most nights, in addition to the pitchers consumed on the premises, snuck tap beer for the ride back in a coffee thermos.

I hated getting up at five a.m. on Saturdays to bicycle my ass five miles to make dough and batches of marinara for the next week. I had the place to myself, however, and used the PA system as my own private boom box and was typically drunk, high, or both in time for the lunch crew’s arrival at ten.

In the end, predictably, the joint tanked and we all went our separate ways.

There are, of course, many more characters I wish I had time to recall for you here but doubt that if you’ve read this far you’re looking forward to more musings about my past, so I’ll rap this impromptu history up.

I’ve got a good sense of what life might have been like had I gone on to work my way up the food chain. Fortunately (at least for me as I know I’ve got the kind of personality who’d burn out or give up eventually), I got employment at some horrible chain restaurants where conditions would serve to sour my view of working with food for the rest of my life.

It’s not one big party, it is hard work. I respect you and your craft. I’m glad you’re enjoying your work and I hope you go wherever the food takes you.

Probably the most important lesson I took away from my time at the Big Tomato is, be nice to the help. I can’t begin to relate some the shit we did to some of the non-regular’s food.

Hope to hear from you again soon!

Better days,

Pablo