Author: Eric Helland

Canis Lupus XXI

wolf 21

Twenty-one was “the perfect wolf”: He was a legend—he never lost a fight, and he never killed a vanquished rival.

Looking through telescopes in subfreezing weather while watching wolves eating an elk a mile away on a frozen, snowy slope. Rick, a ranger here in Yellowstone National Park, conducts the whole conversation without taking his eyes from his scope. Rick follows free-living wolves every day. I’ve never seen real wolves before, so my eyes are glued to my scope too.

“If ever there was a perfect wolf, it was Twenty-One,” says Rick, using the wolf’s research-collar number as his name. “Twice, I saw Twenty-One take on six attacking wolves from a rival pack — and rout them all,” Rick recalls. “I’d think, ‘A wolf can’t do what I am watching this wolf do.”

Wolf territorial fights resemble human tribal warfare. Wolves often target the rival pack’s alphas, seemingly understanding that if they can rout or kill the experienced leaders, victory will be theirs.

Twenty-One distinguished himself in two ways: He never lost a fight, and he never killed a vanquished rival. But why? A wolf letting vanquished enemies go free seems inexplicable.

Twenty-one was like history’s highest-status human leaders: Not a ruthless strongman but a peaceful warrior.

Rick is saying that history’s highest-status human leaders are not ruthless strongmen like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. They are Gandhi, King and Mandela. Peaceful warriors earn higher status. Muhammad Ali — who has been called the most famous man in the world — was a practitioner of ritualized combat who spoke of peace and refused to go to war. His refusal cost him millions of dollars and his heavyweight title, yet with his refusal to kill, his status rose to unprecedented height.

For humans and many other animals, status is a huge deal. For it, we risk much treasure and blood. Wolves do not understand why status and dominance are so important to them, and for the most part, we don’t either. In wolf and human alike, our brains produce hormones that compel us to strive for status and assert dominance. Dominance feels like an end in itself. We don’t need to understand why.

Here’s why: Status is a daily proxy for competition. Whenever mates or food are in short supply, the high-status individual has preferred access. What’s at stake is survival, and ultimately, reproduction — the chance to breed, to count. Our genes don’t need to let us understand why; they just need us to want it. One could hardly expect that wolves would understand, any better than we do, what drives us all.

—From an article published Saturday, Jul 4, 2015 04:00 PM MST by Carl Safina, writer for Salon an online magazine.

Canis Lupus XXI was indeed a most notable wolf.

The statement: “In wolf and human alike, our brains produce hormones that compel us to strive for status and assert dominance. Dominance feels like an end in itself. We don’t need to understand why.” would seem to be made as a statement of truth equally applicable to both wolves and humans … a shared truth for both groups.

“Dominance feels like an end in itself.”

This truth may illuminate the frequently observed tendency for youthful adult humans to exhibit: irreverent; confrontational; argumentative; bullying; blustering and similar attitudes and behaviors. These tendencies are symptomatic of hormone driven teenage life.

The story of Canis Lupus XXI is an exceptional display of hormonal control not often seen in either human or wolf.

 

Multiverse

Alan Guth“It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead to a multiverse. It’s not impossible, so I think there’s still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking (the idea of a) multiverse seriously.”
― Alan Guth

Essence

“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.”
― Lao Tzu

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”
― Maimonides

“Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

It would seem that what we may have is a personal relationship to that which is the truth.

 

Humility

“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”
― Thomas Merton

“Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life.”
― George Arliss

“Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.”
― Saint Augustine

“Our best thoughts come from others.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is constant continual dynamic change. We participate in life as we live our lives. We participate in constant dynamic interaction with everything around us. When we effect change in the world we build off what has already changed; indeed what continues to change even as we add our own changes.