Michael C. Perkins's Blog, page 2
January 30, 2021
The emotional psychology behind white privilege
The insightful passage below made me think of white privilege. In colonial America, white landowners pursued a divide and conquer strategy with the white and black laborers who worked for them for small wages. The owners feared that the laborers, who got along well with each other, would join forces and rebel. The owners convinced white laborers that they were inherently superior to black ones and to prove it they paid white laborers a bit more than the black ones. This practice has continued down to this day and is the basis of white privilege. No matter how poor or uneducated you are you are taught that you are better than any black person.
The author suggests why the loss of white privilege is so threatening engendering an intense fear of a loss of status....
"We still have this primitive cognition. We think in tribal stories. It’s our original sin. Whenever we sense the status of our tribe is threatened by another, these foul networks fire up. In that moment, to the subconscious brain, we’re back in the prehistoric forest or savannah. The storytelling brain enters a state of war. It assigns the opposing group purely selfish motives. It hears their most powerful arguments in a particular mode of spiteful lawyerliness, seeking to misrepresent or discard what they have to say. It uses the most appalling transgressions of their very worst members as a brush to smear them all. It takes its individuals and erases their depth and diversity. It turns them into outlines; morphs their tribe into a herd of silhouettes. It denies those silhouettes the empathy, humanity and patient understanding that it lavishes on its own. And, when it does all this, it makes us feel great, as if we’re the moral hero of an exhilarating story.
The brain enters this war state because a psychological tribal threat is a threat to its theory of control – its intricate network of millions of beliefs about how one thing causes another. Its theory of control tells it, among many other things, how to get what it most desires, namely connection and status. It forms the scaffolding of the model of the world and self it has been building since birth.
Of course this model, and its theory of control, is indivisible from who we are. It’s what we’re experiencing, in the black vault of our skulls, as reality itself. It’s hardly surprising we’ll fight to defend it. A tribal challenge is existentially disturbing. It’s not merely a threat to our surface beliefs about this and that, but to the very subconscious structures by which we experience reality.
It’s also a threat to the status game to which we’ve invested the efforts of our lives. To our subconscious, if another tribe is allowed to win, their victory won’t merely pull us down the hierarchy but will destroy the hierarchy completely. Our loss in status will be complete and irreversible. This removal of the ability to claim status meets the psychologist’s definition of humiliation, that ‘annihilation of the self’ which underlies a saturnine suite of murderous behaviours, from spree shootings to honour killings. When a group’s collective status feels threatened and they fear even the possibility of humiliation by another group, the result can be massacre, crusade and genocide."
-Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling
The author suggests why the loss of white privilege is so threatening engendering an intense fear of a loss of status....
"We still have this primitive cognition. We think in tribal stories. It’s our original sin. Whenever we sense the status of our tribe is threatened by another, these foul networks fire up. In that moment, to the subconscious brain, we’re back in the prehistoric forest or savannah. The storytelling brain enters a state of war. It assigns the opposing group purely selfish motives. It hears their most powerful arguments in a particular mode of spiteful lawyerliness, seeking to misrepresent or discard what they have to say. It uses the most appalling transgressions of their very worst members as a brush to smear them all. It takes its individuals and erases their depth and diversity. It turns them into outlines; morphs their tribe into a herd of silhouettes. It denies those silhouettes the empathy, humanity and patient understanding that it lavishes on its own. And, when it does all this, it makes us feel great, as if we’re the moral hero of an exhilarating story.
The brain enters this war state because a psychological tribal threat is a threat to its theory of control – its intricate network of millions of beliefs about how one thing causes another. Its theory of control tells it, among many other things, how to get what it most desires, namely connection and status. It forms the scaffolding of the model of the world and self it has been building since birth.
Of course this model, and its theory of control, is indivisible from who we are. It’s what we’re experiencing, in the black vault of our skulls, as reality itself. It’s hardly surprising we’ll fight to defend it. A tribal challenge is existentially disturbing. It’s not merely a threat to our surface beliefs about this and that, but to the very subconscious structures by which we experience reality.
It’s also a threat to the status game to which we’ve invested the efforts of our lives. To our subconscious, if another tribe is allowed to win, their victory won’t merely pull us down the hierarchy but will destroy the hierarchy completely. Our loss in status will be complete and irreversible. This removal of the ability to claim status meets the psychologist’s definition of humiliation, that ‘annihilation of the self’ which underlies a saturnine suite of murderous behaviours, from spree shootings to honour killings. When a group’s collective status feels threatened and they fear even the possibility of humiliation by another group, the result can be massacre, crusade and genocide."
-Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling
August 14, 2020
From a long time, loyal Republican..
"I’m a conservative who was a reliable republican voter. But here’s something to chew on: if you cannot win an election by making a convincing argument and instead need to try to rig that election because you know you don’t have an argument, you deserve to lose. Trump is a coward."
July 9, 2020
March 22, 2020
Why our economic measures are dangerously incomplete
The economist cited below used to come by periodically and give talks at Sanford Management Co when my wife was an investment manager there. This excerpt below dates from Friday, March 20, 2020.
=================
begin excerpt.....
I get that the Federal Reserve and the government feel they have to do something. But their tools are generally geared to helping Wall Street, not Main Street. I think this note from Woody Brock sums it up very well.
More on the Crisis and the Markets
Two weeks ago, I sent out a crisis memo warning that the market could soon drop to 17,500 on the Dow. I stressed that the true threat to the economy and to profits and employment was not only interruptions in the supply chain, but more importantly the first implosion of the SERVICE sector we have ever seen.
This is now just what we are seeing as movie theaters, airlines, “events” of all kinds, schools, universities—all closed down. And the Dow today is down from 29,000 to 21,000. A further drop to our predicted 17,500 could occur within a week or two. In this brief Memo I wish to add a few points regarding the volatility of the market.
Pricing Model Uncertainty
The main point concerns the role of what we have called “Pricing Mode Uncertainty” (PMU)—a concept we introduced some 14 years ago.
Our fundamental theorem was that the greater the amount of PMU there is in a market, the greater the degree of price overshot upward and downward there will be.
The degree of PMU rises with the degree to which investors admit that they do not understand the mapping of “news” into prices.
In the efficient market theory, it was simply assumed that all investors would—upon hearing the news—agree on the “correct” new price of the asset. There was thus no PMU and thus very low volatility.
In the current case where no one understands what the “news” really is, much less how it will impact asset prices, PMU is MAXIMAL thus implying huge price swings of the kind we have and will experience.
Intuitively, the reason underlying our theorem is that the greater the PMU level, it will be rational for all investors to drive price trends much further up and down. The logic is fascinating—the math very complex.
One very important form of investor ignorance today concerns the markets view that it is prospects for corporate earnings that will matter most. This is wrong.
What will matter are the collapse in profits and survivability of millions of privately owned proprietorships and partnerships whose profits are not even included in index earnings data.
It is these firms who could end up firing millions of workers and going under. THIS is what will impact Main Street and unemployment—often long before official earnings of large corporations are even computed.
The data we have for understanding the lives and behavior of these small firms that employ most Americans is sparse and scarcely looked at.
This is one further reason not to listen to data-junkies or self-styled “quants” who loathe anything subjective.
This is the time for very subjective judgments—backed up by compelling deductive LOGIC of a kind that has all but disappeared in today’s rage for “evidence-based truth”—a fatuous concept at best.
=================
begin excerpt.....
I get that the Federal Reserve and the government feel they have to do something. But their tools are generally geared to helping Wall Street, not Main Street. I think this note from Woody Brock sums it up very well.
More on the Crisis and the Markets
Two weeks ago, I sent out a crisis memo warning that the market could soon drop to 17,500 on the Dow. I stressed that the true threat to the economy and to profits and employment was not only interruptions in the supply chain, but more importantly the first implosion of the SERVICE sector we have ever seen.
This is now just what we are seeing as movie theaters, airlines, “events” of all kinds, schools, universities—all closed down. And the Dow today is down from 29,000 to 21,000. A further drop to our predicted 17,500 could occur within a week or two. In this brief Memo I wish to add a few points regarding the volatility of the market.
Pricing Model Uncertainty
The main point concerns the role of what we have called “Pricing Mode Uncertainty” (PMU)—a concept we introduced some 14 years ago.
Our fundamental theorem was that the greater the amount of PMU there is in a market, the greater the degree of price overshot upward and downward there will be.
The degree of PMU rises with the degree to which investors admit that they do not understand the mapping of “news” into prices.
In the efficient market theory, it was simply assumed that all investors would—upon hearing the news—agree on the “correct” new price of the asset. There was thus no PMU and thus very low volatility.
In the current case where no one understands what the “news” really is, much less how it will impact asset prices, PMU is MAXIMAL thus implying huge price swings of the kind we have and will experience.
Intuitively, the reason underlying our theorem is that the greater the PMU level, it will be rational for all investors to drive price trends much further up and down. The logic is fascinating—the math very complex.
One very important form of investor ignorance today concerns the markets view that it is prospects for corporate earnings that will matter most. This is wrong.
What will matter are the collapse in profits and survivability of millions of privately owned proprietorships and partnerships whose profits are not even included in index earnings data.
It is these firms who could end up firing millions of workers and going under. THIS is what will impact Main Street and unemployment—often long before official earnings of large corporations are even computed.
The data we have for understanding the lives and behavior of these small firms that employ most Americans is sparse and scarcely looked at.
This is one further reason not to listen to data-junkies or self-styled “quants” who loathe anything subjective.
This is the time for very subjective judgments—backed up by compelling deductive LOGIC of a kind that has all but disappeared in today’s rage for “evidence-based truth”—a fatuous concept at best.
February 24, 2020
“What is the world’s story about?”
“What is the world’s story about?”
From Steinbeck’s East of Eden…..
A child may ask, ‘What is the world’s story about?’ And a grown man or woman may wonder, 'What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about? ’
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence.
Virtue and vice were warp and woof (old terms for weaving cloth) of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite changes we might impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?
Herodotus, in The Persian War, tells a story of how Croesus, the richest and most favored King of his time, asked Solon the Athenian, a leading question. He would not have asked it if he had he not been worried about the answer. 'Who,’ he asked, 'is the luckiest person in the world?’ He must have been eaten with doubt, and hungry for reassurance. Solon told him of three lucky people in old times. And Croesus more than likely did not listen; so anxious was he about himself. And when Solon did not mention him, Croesus was forced to say, 'Do you consider me lucky?’ Solon did not hesitate in his answer. 'How can I tell?’ he said. 'You aren’t dead yet.’ And this answer must have haunted Croesus dismally as his luck disappeared, and his wealth and his kingdom. And as he was being burned on a tall fire, he may have thought of it and perhaps wished he had not asked or not been answered.
And in our time, when a man dies – if he has had wealth and influence, power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man’s property and his eminence and works and monuments – the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil? – which is another way of putting Croesus’s question. Envies are gone, and the measuring stick is: Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come of it?
I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said: “Thank God that son of a bitch is dead!”
Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I wondered if he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died, the nation rang with praise, and just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.
There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance, but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when there were ugly forces loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by the few. When he died, the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, “What can we do now? How can we go on without him?”
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved, his life must be a failure to him, and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action we should remember our dying so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly re-spawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new, fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
From Steinbeck’s East of Eden…..
A child may ask, ‘What is the world’s story about?’ And a grown man or woman may wonder, 'What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about? ’
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence.
Virtue and vice were warp and woof (old terms for weaving cloth) of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite changes we might impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?
Herodotus, in The Persian War, tells a story of how Croesus, the richest and most favored King of his time, asked Solon the Athenian, a leading question. He would not have asked it if he had he not been worried about the answer. 'Who,’ he asked, 'is the luckiest person in the world?’ He must have been eaten with doubt, and hungry for reassurance. Solon told him of three lucky people in old times. And Croesus more than likely did not listen; so anxious was he about himself. And when Solon did not mention him, Croesus was forced to say, 'Do you consider me lucky?’ Solon did not hesitate in his answer. 'How can I tell?’ he said. 'You aren’t dead yet.’ And this answer must have haunted Croesus dismally as his luck disappeared, and his wealth and his kingdom. And as he was being burned on a tall fire, he may have thought of it and perhaps wished he had not asked or not been answered.
And in our time, when a man dies – if he has had wealth and influence, power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man’s property and his eminence and works and monuments – the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil? – which is another way of putting Croesus’s question. Envies are gone, and the measuring stick is: Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come of it?
I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said: “Thank God that son of a bitch is dead!”
Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I wondered if he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died, the nation rang with praise, and just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.
There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance, but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when there were ugly forces loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by the few. When he died, the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, “What can we do now? How can we go on without him?”
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved, his life must be a failure to him, and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action we should remember our dying so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly re-spawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new, fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
December 17, 2019
some brilliant insight from Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges wrote a brilliant short story about Don Quixote titled "A Problem"
What would happen, wonders Borges, if due to his belief in these fantasies, Don Quixote attacks and kills a real person? Borges asks a fundamental question about the human condition: what happens when the yarns spun by our narrating self cause grievous harm to ourselves or those around us? There are three main possibilities, says Borges.
One option is that nothing much happens. Don Quixote will not be bothered at all by killing a real man. His delusions are so overpowering that he will not be able to recognise the difference between committing actual murder and dueling with the imaginary windmill giants.
Another option is that once he takes a person’s life, Don Quixote will be so horrified that he will be shaken out of his delusions. This is akin to a young recruit who goes to war believing that it is good to die for one’s country, only to end up completely disillusioned by the realities of warfare.
But there is a third option, much more complex and profound. As long as he fought imaginary giants, Don Quixote was just play-acting. However once he actually kills someone, he will cling to his fantasies for all he is worth, because only they give meaning to his tragic misdeed. Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.
What would happen, wonders Borges, if due to his belief in these fantasies, Don Quixote attacks and kills a real person? Borges asks a fundamental question about the human condition: what happens when the yarns spun by our narrating self cause grievous harm to ourselves or those around us? There are three main possibilities, says Borges.
One option is that nothing much happens. Don Quixote will not be bothered at all by killing a real man. His delusions are so overpowering that he will not be able to recognise the difference between committing actual murder and dueling with the imaginary windmill giants.
Another option is that once he takes a person’s life, Don Quixote will be so horrified that he will be shaken out of his delusions. This is akin to a young recruit who goes to war believing that it is good to die for one’s country, only to end up completely disillusioned by the realities of warfare.
But there is a third option, much more complex and profound. As long as he fought imaginary giants, Don Quixote was just play-acting. However once he actually kills someone, he will cling to his fantasies for all he is worth, because only they give meaning to his tragic misdeed. Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.
December 8, 2019
Trump's minority rule
Why are evangelical conservatives and Republicans so willing to defend President Trump’s “indefensible behavior”? asked E.J. Dionne Jr. They deeply fear the demographic and cultural changes transforming the electorate, and “want to lock in their current policy preferences, no matter how much the country changes or how sharply public opinion swings against them.”
As the country grows less white and less conservative, GOP leaders are well aware that maintaining power will require minority rule, which is why they are aggressively pushing for voter-ID statutes and purging voter rolls. It’s also why Republicans adamantly defend the Electoral College; in 2020, Trump might lose the popular vote by up to 10 million and still be re-elected.
Trump has bought off the evangelical vote by filling the federal courts and the Supreme Court with arch-conservatives who share their opposition to gay marriage and abortion. The wealthy and corporations also are counting on Trump’s judges to protect them.
Since Trump is giving Republicans control of the courts for decades to come, everything else he does “is negotiable, or ignorable.” No matter what Trump says or does, Republicans won’t turn on him, because they believe he’s essential to their “minority-rule project.”
-The Washington Post
As the country grows less white and less conservative, GOP leaders are well aware that maintaining power will require minority rule, which is why they are aggressively pushing for voter-ID statutes and purging voter rolls. It’s also why Republicans adamantly defend the Electoral College; in 2020, Trump might lose the popular vote by up to 10 million and still be re-elected.
Trump has bought off the evangelical vote by filling the federal courts and the Supreme Court with arch-conservatives who share their opposition to gay marriage and abortion. The wealthy and corporations also are counting on Trump’s judges to protect them.
Since Trump is giving Republicans control of the courts for decades to come, everything else he does “is negotiable, or ignorable.” No matter what Trump says or does, Republicans won’t turn on him, because they believe he’s essential to their “minority-rule project.”
-The Washington Post
August 22, 2018
How Amazon has fostered a world of shopaholics
"Fifty years ago, the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick coined a phrase for these “useless objects” that accumulate in a house: “kipple.” In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for the movie Blade Runner, he theorized that “the entire universe is moving toward a state of total, absolute kippleization.”"
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...
July 31, 2018
Fingers of the Wind: Africa and the Elephants I Came to Love
"Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you"
-Toto, Africa
Africa, there’s no place like it on earth. The translucent orange and lavender skies. The thrum of life beneath your feet. The fingers of wind that caress. The giraffes, the lions, the leopards, the cheetahs, the hyenas, the wild dogs, the black rhinos and, of course, the magisterial elephants.
First stop was Cape Town. The drive from the airport takes you past Cape Flats, a remnant of apartheid that displays small, boxed dwellings that stretch as far as the eye can see, housing the poorest of the poor. In Cape Town, on the water, I think of San Francisco—magnificent gardens, quaint architecture—but with huge Table Mountain looming as the backdrop, instead of the Golden Gate Bridge.
South of Cape Town, down the peninsula, takes you to Cape Point, populated by aggressive baboons that just as soon steal your food as look at you. Around the Cape and back north is Boulder Beach, home of Jackass Penguins. Farther north, still, you can see the famous, flying Great Whites that haunt Seal Island.
But, most of all, we had come to this land, “beautiful beyond the singing of it” (Alan Paton), to go on safari. This meant a flight north of Cape Town in a small plane to a private game reserve. As the plane touched down on the narrow airstrip and the storks scattered, we felt at once relief and excitement. Upon embarking from the plane, we were greeted by our amiable ranger-guide, Hermann Loubser.
After a lovely dinner and then drinks by the fireplace, in the twilight Hermann escorted us, rifle a-ready, to our cabins. For animals in Africa, you see, are most active at dusk and dawn. Tomorrow would be an early day.
A startling voice announcing breakfast called from out of the dark. It was the time of day that the Zulus term uvivi, literally meaning “darkest before the dawn.” We struggled out of bed, hair askew, and put on our jeans. We smelled hot coffee and spiced tea as Hermann led us to the food hut. Over rolls and fresh fruit, we could hear Africa begin to stir. The game was afoot. We had a couple minutes to brush our teeth before meeting at the vehicle; showers would have to wait.
Our family of four, along with a Dutch family of four from Rotterdam, scrambled on to the large Toyota land rover. The mother and daughter were dressed as if they were going to a dinner party. Hermann drove and was accompanied by a local tracker, who could read any footprint or pile of scat on the trail. Amazingly, she told us that she had never seen the ocean.
As the rover rumbled through the bush, we first encountered a pride of lions lying about, obviously full after a recent kill. They looked at us languidly, but it was hard not to feel startled at being so close to these predators out in the open. Hermann explained that we were perceived as being part of one large creature that included the rover, but warned that someday the predators might finally make the distinction between machine and man. I would not want to be around for that moment.
Farther into the bush, we saw huge, galloping giraffes that would stop and munch from the tops of trees and, now fortified, bang necks with each other in combat. There were also magnificent martial eagles, with their 7-foot wingspans, on the look out for vervet monkeys they might pluck from tree branches. But it was at a muddy waterhole where we hit the jackpot----a herd of elephants cooling themselves in the shade, a mother elephant constantly pouring the darkened water over her mischievous baby.
Elephant herds are matriarchal, led by an alpha female, assisted by a bull male whose job it is to mentor the young males into the social structure. Sadly, poaching and indiscriminate culling often disrupts the structure of herds. Without a matriarch or a bull mentor, the young males can easily turn into rogues that rampage through villages or attack every animal in sight.
A later encounter with elephants came in Kruger National Park, northeast of Johannesburg, along the border of Mozambique. In Kruger, we saw hippos (in and out of water), hyenas, cheetahs, and crocodiles. Yet, it was when we were driving down the paved road of Kruger, in another rover, that to our right and left we saw elephants knocking over trees----crack, crack---and then, with amazing dexterity, pick up the fallen fruit and put it into their mouths. Herds of elephants like this can flatten entire forests.
But it was the encounter with a massive bull elephant coming straight at us that had even our veteran guide alarmed. This pachyderm was in musth, meaning his testosterone had spiked 60% and he was looking to mate. The ranger pointed out the tell-tale streams of the hormone running from the eyes down each side of the monster’s face. The driver found the first avenue he could use to pull us away from the main road and into the cover of the bush.
But elephants are more than muscle machines. They are tremendously intelligent creatures. Our Kruger guide told us the story of coming upon a herd and stopping to watch. Sitting in an elevated seat at the back of the rover was a 10-year old boy with Down’s Syndrome. One of the female ellies, sensing something was different about this child, approached the rover. The guide commanded the passengers to stay perfectly still. The female began to gently pat the boy on the head and then caressed his cheeks and the back of his neck, as if to comfort and heal him, as she might one of her own babies. This went on for about ten minutes, before the female returned to the herd.
Elephants are only one of three mammals, other than humans, that can recognize themselves in a mirror. The other two are chimpanzees and dolphins. This mark of intelligence sets them apart from all other animals. Two biologists, Joyce Pool and Petter Granli, who have spent more than 37 years with elephants in the wild, discovered that these creatures have sophisticated communication ability. Through low rumblings in the stomach they not only communicate with the immediate herd, but the sounds can also travel through their feet into the ground and send signals to other herds, up to 10 kilometers away, telling them where a watering hole is located, for example.
A curl of the trunk, a step backward, or a fold of the ear are other means to communicate with the herd; and the holding of the trunk periscope-style, to sniff the wind, is a way of detecting approaching danger. Ninety percent of the time these biologists could detect what an elephant would do next. The spreading of the ears, fully, meant an elephant was angry and might charge. There were also humorous mock charges, where elephants would charge the research vehicle, but pretend to trip to stop the charge.
Elephants also have palpable emotional intelligence, as shown with the Down’s Syndrome child. If a baby elephant is injured, for example, the whole herd will take care of it. And if one of the herd dies, the elephants will gather around it, mourning, and will return to that spot every year to mourn again.
But this sense was taken to an even more extraordinary and inexplicable level in the case of the author of The Elephant Whisperer and owner of the Thula Thula game reserve in South Africa. In his book, Lawrence Anthony, recounts the story of how he took in a rogue herd that otherwise was going to be shot. Through a very brave and painstaking process, he befriended the matriarch, Nana, and from there the entire herd, except for one male rogue. Eventually, the elephants morphed into two herds and returned to the wild.
But right after Anthony’s death, of a heart attack, an extraordinary thing happened. The herds of elephants, sensing that they had lost a beloved human friend, moved in a solemn, almost funereal procession for 12 hours through the Zululand bush in order to pay homage at the deceased man’s home on Thula Thula. The surviving human family was more than a little astonished.
The herds remained there for 24 hours. As Dr. Seuss might remind us: “an elephant is faithful 100 percent.”
-Toto, Africa
Africa, there’s no place like it on earth. The translucent orange and lavender skies. The thrum of life beneath your feet. The fingers of wind that caress. The giraffes, the lions, the leopards, the cheetahs, the hyenas, the wild dogs, the black rhinos and, of course, the magisterial elephants.
First stop was Cape Town. The drive from the airport takes you past Cape Flats, a remnant of apartheid that displays small, boxed dwellings that stretch as far as the eye can see, housing the poorest of the poor. In Cape Town, on the water, I think of San Francisco—magnificent gardens, quaint architecture—but with huge Table Mountain looming as the backdrop, instead of the Golden Gate Bridge.
South of Cape Town, down the peninsula, takes you to Cape Point, populated by aggressive baboons that just as soon steal your food as look at you. Around the Cape and back north is Boulder Beach, home of Jackass Penguins. Farther north, still, you can see the famous, flying Great Whites that haunt Seal Island.
But, most of all, we had come to this land, “beautiful beyond the singing of it” (Alan Paton), to go on safari. This meant a flight north of Cape Town in a small plane to a private game reserve. As the plane touched down on the narrow airstrip and the storks scattered, we felt at once relief and excitement. Upon embarking from the plane, we were greeted by our amiable ranger-guide, Hermann Loubser.
After a lovely dinner and then drinks by the fireplace, in the twilight Hermann escorted us, rifle a-ready, to our cabins. For animals in Africa, you see, are most active at dusk and dawn. Tomorrow would be an early day.
A startling voice announcing breakfast called from out of the dark. It was the time of day that the Zulus term uvivi, literally meaning “darkest before the dawn.” We struggled out of bed, hair askew, and put on our jeans. We smelled hot coffee and spiced tea as Hermann led us to the food hut. Over rolls and fresh fruit, we could hear Africa begin to stir. The game was afoot. We had a couple minutes to brush our teeth before meeting at the vehicle; showers would have to wait.
Our family of four, along with a Dutch family of four from Rotterdam, scrambled on to the large Toyota land rover. The mother and daughter were dressed as if they were going to a dinner party. Hermann drove and was accompanied by a local tracker, who could read any footprint or pile of scat on the trail. Amazingly, she told us that she had never seen the ocean.
As the rover rumbled through the bush, we first encountered a pride of lions lying about, obviously full after a recent kill. They looked at us languidly, but it was hard not to feel startled at being so close to these predators out in the open. Hermann explained that we were perceived as being part of one large creature that included the rover, but warned that someday the predators might finally make the distinction between machine and man. I would not want to be around for that moment.
Farther into the bush, we saw huge, galloping giraffes that would stop and munch from the tops of trees and, now fortified, bang necks with each other in combat. There were also magnificent martial eagles, with their 7-foot wingspans, on the look out for vervet monkeys they might pluck from tree branches. But it was at a muddy waterhole where we hit the jackpot----a herd of elephants cooling themselves in the shade, a mother elephant constantly pouring the darkened water over her mischievous baby.
Elephant herds are matriarchal, led by an alpha female, assisted by a bull male whose job it is to mentor the young males into the social structure. Sadly, poaching and indiscriminate culling often disrupts the structure of herds. Without a matriarch or a bull mentor, the young males can easily turn into rogues that rampage through villages or attack every animal in sight.
A later encounter with elephants came in Kruger National Park, northeast of Johannesburg, along the border of Mozambique. In Kruger, we saw hippos (in and out of water), hyenas, cheetahs, and crocodiles. Yet, it was when we were driving down the paved road of Kruger, in another rover, that to our right and left we saw elephants knocking over trees----crack, crack---and then, with amazing dexterity, pick up the fallen fruit and put it into their mouths. Herds of elephants like this can flatten entire forests.
But it was the encounter with a massive bull elephant coming straight at us that had even our veteran guide alarmed. This pachyderm was in musth, meaning his testosterone had spiked 60% and he was looking to mate. The ranger pointed out the tell-tale streams of the hormone running from the eyes down each side of the monster’s face. The driver found the first avenue he could use to pull us away from the main road and into the cover of the bush.
But elephants are more than muscle machines. They are tremendously intelligent creatures. Our Kruger guide told us the story of coming upon a herd and stopping to watch. Sitting in an elevated seat at the back of the rover was a 10-year old boy with Down’s Syndrome. One of the female ellies, sensing something was different about this child, approached the rover. The guide commanded the passengers to stay perfectly still. The female began to gently pat the boy on the head and then caressed his cheeks and the back of his neck, as if to comfort and heal him, as she might one of her own babies. This went on for about ten minutes, before the female returned to the herd.
Elephants are only one of three mammals, other than humans, that can recognize themselves in a mirror. The other two are chimpanzees and dolphins. This mark of intelligence sets them apart from all other animals. Two biologists, Joyce Pool and Petter Granli, who have spent more than 37 years with elephants in the wild, discovered that these creatures have sophisticated communication ability. Through low rumblings in the stomach they not only communicate with the immediate herd, but the sounds can also travel through their feet into the ground and send signals to other herds, up to 10 kilometers away, telling them where a watering hole is located, for example.
A curl of the trunk, a step backward, or a fold of the ear are other means to communicate with the herd; and the holding of the trunk periscope-style, to sniff the wind, is a way of detecting approaching danger. Ninety percent of the time these biologists could detect what an elephant would do next. The spreading of the ears, fully, meant an elephant was angry and might charge. There were also humorous mock charges, where elephants would charge the research vehicle, but pretend to trip to stop the charge.
Elephants also have palpable emotional intelligence, as shown with the Down’s Syndrome child. If a baby elephant is injured, for example, the whole herd will take care of it. And if one of the herd dies, the elephants will gather around it, mourning, and will return to that spot every year to mourn again.
But this sense was taken to an even more extraordinary and inexplicable level in the case of the author of The Elephant Whisperer and owner of the Thula Thula game reserve in South Africa. In his book, Lawrence Anthony, recounts the story of how he took in a rogue herd that otherwise was going to be shot. Through a very brave and painstaking process, he befriended the matriarch, Nana, and from there the entire herd, except for one male rogue. Eventually, the elephants morphed into two herds and returned to the wild.
But right after Anthony’s death, of a heart attack, an extraordinary thing happened. The herds of elephants, sensing that they had lost a beloved human friend, moved in a solemn, almost funereal procession for 12 hours through the Zululand bush in order to pay homage at the deceased man’s home on Thula Thula. The surviving human family was more than a little astonished.
The herds remained there for 24 hours. As Dr. Seuss might remind us: “an elephant is faithful 100 percent.”
