AHA! by Barbara Parker, English, Psychology & Philosophy, Printed Matter

AHA! by Barbara Parker


	Product ID:	43903
	Product Name	AHA! by Barbara Parker
	Special Price	$29.95
	Categories	Psychology & Philosophy
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Brief Description:

TIDBITS FROM 6 CHAPTERS

THE PACKRAT
Long before we were a twinkle in evolution's eye, those precursors whose genetic imprint we share -- fish-reptile-bird-mammal -- instinctively stuffed themselves when good luck or skill presented them with more than they needed to still the hunger of the moment. Most animals hide, bury, store food against a rainy day. Most animals eat all they possibly can during times of plenty, store fat on their bodies, and live off this provision during lean times. The human animal grabs what it can while it can, employing its fearfully well developed cerebral cortex. We can't alter this coding for hoarding even though environment and circumstance are no longer those of the days without shopping channels. And so it is that we pounce with joyful abandon upon the abundance of the marketplace. We get our high from acquisition, and contentment from our collections. As a hoarder, the human leaves the packrat and the squirrel in the dust.

THE CELL-PHONE
Although the key-pad is an integral part of the design of the phone, by happenstance it also fits how we have always tried to get someone's attention. Before we can reach out and touch someone, our fingers have to touch a bunch of buttons. By necessity we have to use our fingers to nudge and prod to attention the voice we want to hear. We can't get attention until we've used our hands. To use one's fingers to get someone to notice us, to talk to, is as old as the hills. From toddlerhood onward we tug on clothes, touch a hand, grab an arm to signal our need or willingness to talk. And often it's done even though the tugger has nothing much to say nor expects even a single pearl of wisdom. It is not the possibility that the connection might sparkle with brilliant discourse that sells a lot of cells! It is that we can establish on impulse that we matter to someone, be it ever so briefly.

THE WEATHER
The elements mattered because they were directly responsible for the seven fat and the seven lean years during that relatively long period of our agricultural past. The elements mattered even more during that much longer time when the only creek nearby dried up, the lengthening of the days didn't bring the expected disappearance of the snow, a hurricane's devastation came unannounced -- all without pantries, super-markets, or international relief organizations. If any proof is needed that humans do not adjust their mental habits to a changed environment, even one so drastically changed as that in the industrialized, digitized, urbanized world in the last 150 years, consider the pre-historic grip the topic WEATHER has on us.

HAIR
In ages when we did not yet know how to modify our environment to be warm in winter or cool in the summer, hair conferred protection from freezing to death or having one's skin roasted. The taming of fire, using caves as shelter, building primitive huts and keeping a source of heat going took almost 300,000 years. Over that time body hair became less and less necessary to keep the DNA container alive long enough to produce a version of itself. Speaking of those replicas: every baby replica found the nourishing nipple beneath some hair, be it the fur or hair of the mom unit or her chest-covering furry garb. That primal memory alone should suffice to make us want to touch, stroke, nuzzle hair.

SAINTS
The celebrity cult of our time is built upon the adoration of the churched saints which, in turn, had its origin in the veneration of animals and those humans who excelled at hunting them down. At one point our clever brains transferred the significance we gave to the hero-animal or hero-human to a representation: a painting on a cave wall. That morphed into an illumination in a manuscript which morphed into the photo in a glossy magazine. Images of the celebrated in moments sublime as well as ridiculous are reproduced millions of times. Anyone who packages and markets the images, lives, or leavings of the famous will not die a pauper. Buying what is associated with the admired entity is a kind of wisdom hard-wired within us from ancient times onward.

PRINT IS TOAST
For our essentially still stone-age physiology, it's not a good fit to get information in print mode. It's easy to look and talk; it's hard to learn to read and write. We're evolved to function in a collection of people who share a relatively small space, mostly stay put, know each other by name, are kin to half the folk in the tribe, are guided by the same beliefs, do some tilling, gathering, hunting. This was, by and large, village life as well. In that setting one's brain was not asked to train the eye along lines made up of variously shaped marks; instead information got picked from a bunch of visual clues. Now it so happens that our latest brainchild, the globe-conquering digital processor, scatters over our information-rich landscape congenial visual clues: icons here; icons there; icons simply everywhere.

Supporting language:	English
Platform supported:	Printed Matter



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