Survival of the Fattest          

  

Harry T. Cook
By Harry T. Cook
7/18/14


How distinctly it resonates down the years. A Sunday school teacher by the name of Violet Aemisegger repeatedly stressed what she called -- and millions of English-speaking Christians for nearly 400 years have been calling -- "the Golden Rule." She insisted that it was the most important lesson in religion one could learn.

 

Mrs. Aemisegger was certain that God wanted everybody to do unto others as they would have done to themselves, as her Bible told her Jesus had counseled.

 

She was probably not aware that Hillel the Elder already had said pretty much the same thing: "What you hate, do not do to another." And likewise unaware that the same ethical wisdom long since had been expressed in various ways in the literature of most known world religions.

 

And more, what Mrs. Aemisegger doubtless didn't realize is that doing unto others as one would have done to oneself is a form of what those who study evolution call adaptive behavior. She would have turned into a pillar of salt had she learned that later I connected her favorite moral admonition to Darwin's idea of the survival of the fittest.

 

In the Bible, "the doing unto" thing is related to turning the other cheek, walking the second mile and giving up one's coat as well as the cloak. Each is often considered a sterling example of self-abnegating altruism. But they are also employed as survival techniques. Sometimes calculated.

 

As a kid, I was fat, listened to opera, got all A's in school, loved going to church and was allergic to playing sports, preferring a visit to the library instead. You can imagine what life in the schoolyard was like for me. Many years on, I read with knowing appreciation of his point William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

 

To survive socially and not get beaten up, I had to adapt to the threatening environment of daily recess at school. Without at first seeing the connection between my strategy for staying alive and Mrs. Aemisegger's moral lesson, I treated my would-be tormenters as I wanted them to treat me. For example, I helped one big oaf with his geography. He didn't know Europe from Nebraska. In fact, he knew of neither and smelt of cow manure. But as long as my help availed him a passing grade, he saw to my protection from the abuse of other oafs.

 

When chosen for neither team in a work-up baseball game -- not even right field -- and was further denied my request to be an umpire, I volunteered to be batboy. I made myself useful by fetching foul balls that rolled into the weeds, etc., etc. It was humiliating, but I was doing unto them what I wished done unto me, rather than having done to me what otherwise they might have done had I tried to butt into their game.

 

Except for one or two memorable incidents, I made it through the eighth grade mostly unscathed, save for the damage inflicted upon my self-image. I had adapted to my environment.

 

What I wanted for myself, I gave up without a fight -- a fight that in any event I would have lost and lost badly. I walked a lot of second miles and willingly so as to curry favor with those who might otherwise have stomped me.

 

Mrs. Aemisegger would not have understood, had I told her, that I obeyed her precious Golden Rule mostly to spare myself beatings at worst and scorn at best. I feared telling my father the same thing. He would have been unhappy that I had chosen to use Jesus' teaching as a cover for cowardice. The bottom line, however, was the survival of my ego. Was it an example of survival of the fittest?

 

I can tell you that, during my boyhood years, "fit" would not have been a word any observant person would have used of me. Then in 1953, three things happened: I had to grow up in a hurry because my mother died, leaving me at 14 the oldest of three children; I began high school; and my glands declared in no uncertain terms the onset of puberty. At once I had a new and more complex environment to which I would have to adapt.

 

When I had shed some baby fat and worked up the courage, I went out for football and did not embarrass myself overmuch, albeit I was of middling use to the team.

 

It was as a member of the team that I learned another lesson about the "do unto" thing: If I took a hit from the other team's defensive rush and in so doing saved our quarterback from getting sacked, I had done for him what in my wildest dreams I hoped he would do for me if ever I graduated from the line to the backfield. I did not, and that's another story.  

 

It was in football that I began to understand the real meaning of the Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt do no murder. As I would find out more fully in the exegesis and analysis of biblical texts during my graduate school years, the prohibition of homicide was probably first applied to those of one's own tribe, clan, kith and kin. The other guys? Beat the crap out of them.

 

And finally, in and after my initial exposure to contact sport, I had become minimally attractive to girls -- well, some girls. My adaptive behavior had worked just as Darwin would have predicted.

 

Meanwhile, to the memory of the late Violet Aemisegger, I bow my head in apology for turning her well-intentioned lesson about doing the right thing for the right reason into doing it for the sake of not getting kicked around -- and also for being able to have a steady girlfriend or two.


Copyright 2014 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

Readers Write 
Essay 7/11/14: Unhinged

 

Karl Sandelin, Kalamazoo, MI:

Linguistics -- about Hillary -- in giving her attributes such as Medusa redivivus. As Latin recognizes gender in adjectives, should she then not be referred to as Medusa rediviva? Regardless, she has my vote!  

 

[Ed. Note: The late Muriel Neeland, who taught me in Latin I and II, would be appalled at my grammatical oversight. Nevertheless: Quod scripsi scripsi.]

 

David N. Stewart, Huntington Woods, MI:

I agree with you about Limbaugh, Ingraham, Coulter, and Cheney. But there are psychos on the left too, such as Al Sharpton. You accuse Fox News of broadcasting untruth but fail to realize that MSNBC does the same.

 

Blayney Colmore, Jacksonville, VT:

Your essay puts me in mind of Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society. Attempting to make sense of how it is that, with so few psychopaths in a population, an entire society could do the kind of evil that has now come to seem usual in world affairs. We are herd animals. Thinking independently is at best a formula for loneliness, and, at worst, an invitation to abuse. I continue to believe President Obama is a fine man, formed by a difficult life that makes him caring and sensitive to the woes of powerless people. Yet he has for six years led a nation that practices the worst sorts of violations against basic humanity. Yes, I believe it could be much worse under a different president, but I do not believe a nation with unparalleled power, traumatized by what would have once been unimaginable, can be rationally governed. And we will not be until we have been brought even lower. Niebuhr well described the phenomenon of moral individuals co-opted by the power of the larger society; he did not tell us how to fix it.


Douglas Chestnut, Spring Lake, MI:  

Your reference to "... and the truth will set you free" reminded me of a couple of pithy lines from the movie A Few Good Men wherein Tom Cruise, as a prosecutor, had Jack Nicholson on the witness stand. Cruise demanded, "I want the truth!", whereupon Jack Nicholson lost his temper and shouted back, "You can't handle the truth!" And so it seems with the vast majority of Americans. So they listen to the "news" which is nothing but entertainment to them. They really don't want the truth ... because it would strongly suggest that they take action to blunt the decay of a once-great nation. One that only dimly resembles the one I put a uniform on several decades ago to "preserve and defend."

 

Joel Pugh, Dallas, TX:

Truth -- a belief based on facts. Religion -- a belief based on faith. So which is it -- politics? Have politics, like capitalism, become a religion? (The idea that free market unbridled capitalism sustainably functions is a myth, but also a faith belief.) If politics is faith-based, then Fox and Cheney must create facts to encourage believers. If we go ahead and promote capitalism to the status of religion, then Fox, Cheney, and the Tea Party become "religious, but not spiritual," and these mysteries begin to make some sense.

 

Janet Carter, Ames, IA:

The national insanity you write about is getting the best of us, I think. I wonder if the gun violence, the love of guns has any relationship to it. Anyway, thank you for speaking out, especially about Cheney. 

 

Harriet Pryce, State College, PA:

Indeed, you speak -- or write -- the truth of the matter. Personally, I am tired of the insanity that surrounds me. And I live in a university town. How must it be in the wilds of Kansas and Arkansas?

 

Jean Witt, Pentwater, MI:  

I wish I had known about your essays sooner. You are a breath of fresh air for me.

 

Barbara Holmberg, Utica, MI:

I simply don't have the words to describe how I feel about what's happening in our nation. However, you definitely have the ability to verbalize the madness that has become America during these past years. I just finished reading two historical novels about Rome, and the similarities between them and us are amazing. We are watching the burning of Rome and the end of democracy. 

 

Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:

You are right. The public shows a distorted view of reality that endangers what is left of democratic government and the future of the Republic itself. But when five members of the Supreme Court can repeatedly make decisions that threaten a woman's right to use contraception, what are we to think about the rule of law in this country or its highest representatives? That is to say, beneath the popular hysteria, which is steadily growing, there is a dangerous truth. We are fast abandoning the values and principles that have kept hope alive here and been a beacon to the rest of the world. Consider the concentrated effort by Republicans to deny voting rights for which brave people suffered and died during the Civil Rights movement. There has been little public outrage, or rebuke from pulpits, or marching in the streets, while this travesty of democracy is committed. That shows a perilous complacency in the face of a clear threat that is the product of no one's imagination.

 

David Reck, Alden, MI:

You say, "One could make a pretty good case that the United States is a basket case." And yet, I've just worked my way through two wonderful biographies, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals and Truman, by David McCullough. If you changed the names and places and dates for here and now, it all sounds to me very much the same. Jack Kennedy said every generation remembers its youth. While I agree with every syllable of what you write today, I wonder if we're just following the same path as our elders. How I wish we could question our fathers about that.

 

Thomas E. Sagendorf, Hamilton, IN:  

Once again you've nailed it!

 

Robert Causley, Roseville, MI:

You are truly on the mark about our lost country and the poor politics. Let me add a former insider's bit of information. Whenever possible, I try to tell people that the government is out of control. We are spending millions of dollars working on equipment that is of no use other than to employ workers. Most of all keeping a promotion track for U.S. Army project managers and retired generals. I finally had to retire after losing my safety nets that provided me work after being relieved of positions due to failure to follow rules. The voting position I held adjudicated combat vehicles for development, and I refused to accept marginal systems. Hence, I was relieved twice and could not take a chance on a third event. I was heading trouble, because we knew in my office that the casualties in Iraq were partially due to our inadequate systems. You are correct in your essay to relate to the fact no one works together. That is the plan! The only way the current politicians feel they can raise money is to maintain unrest. Through this unrest the feelers go out to find the hot buttons and then produce media to get funds. The prime example is Rush Limbaugh. He only hits the buttons and then commercial after commercial. The cycle is repeated over and over all day. Why? Money and only money with no plan to fix any problem.

 

What do you think?
I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me at revharrytcook@aol.com.