Horny Toad is Niether

The heat of summer came rolling invisibly across the high desert today. In a minute the temperature raised ten degrees (Fahrenheit) and a wind rose from every swirling direction at once. It will be hot, hot, hot this weekend, and I am hoping some of that will be in a good way.

A windy rise in temperature apparently puts the local large long-nosed leopard lizards “in the mood” for love. I saw a large female firmly in the grip of a much smaller male. They looked like an eight legged two tailed awkwardly hobbling mutant lizard. They could barely run away as my shadow fell across them and their tiny lizard brains yelled “RUN” someplace in their heads.

long-nosed leopard lizard, Gambelia wislizenii

 

The lizard brain is thought by many to be capable of only four or so thoughts, emotions really. This is largely because lizards are only seen as displaying a vanishingly small subset of the capabilities inflicted on humans by their big primate brains.

“The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.” - Seth Godin

The “lizard brain” spoken of most profoundly by thinkers is not the evolutionarily untouched (mostly) actual lizard brain found in actual lizards; it is the core feature of the big fatty tissue in our head that is the human brain.

It is popular, slightly illuminating, and incredibly easy to view the human brain as a series of layers that represent stages in evolution. On the outside is the cerebrum where all of the advanced skill sets have been mapped. Nestled inside the squishy shell of the cerebrum are the elements of the Limbic system; you can find many of the primal mammalian capabilities mapped to this region. Nestled in the Limbic system, perched on top of the spinal column, is the reptilian complex; aka the “Lizard Brain”.

Those feelings the lizard brain purportedly enables for us are strong behavior drivers. We tend to think of them as the cause of uncontrollable obsessive activity. The very idea of lizard fear can conjure images of a trembling crouched figure hugging their legs in anticipation of doom. However, there are a lot of evidenced control mechanisms for the lizard brain feelings; even in actual lizard lizard brains.

This is the time of year that I see many species of lizard out walking. In addition to the amorous long-nosed leopard lizards, I also saw several “horny toads” today. The “horny Toad” is a species of lizard –not an amphibian like true toads- that has patches of short tiny spines on it. All the “Horny Toads” I saw today were solitary. The temperature shift had not informed the “Horny Toads'” lizard brain to begin mating; in other words the “Horny Toads” were neither.

Despite the fact that the lizard brain feelings are obviously controlled anyone who has a brain knows that they are marvelously powerful once invoked. It is easy, therefore, to picture the rest of the brain huddled close to this source of power so that the connections to it could turn it on without bouncing around the skull a few times first.

By manipulating the lizard brain we add power to the bonding feelings that make us humans such a cohesively gregarious species. We eat together and so hunger bonds us. We feel safe from being ostracized from our social clique when we are in it. We feel anger at those not like us, in thinking or appearance, and that bonds us to those that are members of our tribe. Lastly we feel a yearning to be intimate with specific members of our tribe; by modulating this very powerful urge the brain creates a set of emotion patterns known as “Love”.

I know this whole post is an exercise in hand waving masquerading as neurobiology, but it allows me to now describe Love as a series of connections between the powerful lizard brain motivations and all the other layers of the brain.

• Bad poetry get you to fall a little too hard with that inappropriate significant other who never got a real job? Well, there are a couple synapses for that.


• Did your daughter interpret her social status wrangling of the football star as love after a couple months? Well, there are synapses for that.


• Did your father suddenly become immune to his drinking problem because of the way his new bride took up all his attention? You guessed it, synapses.

The effects of love may be the creation of neural paths that re-enforce the recognition and bonding with a lover. These can be mapped and measured. The causative phase of love remains only poorly understood through the analysis of related phenomena like nurturing or lust. This allows me to wave my hands with impunity. Not that actual facts would stop me when I am talking about love.

Snake in the grass sighting

On occasion one comes across the odd idiom while out hunting metaphors. Idioms are a much more rare form of metaphor, but provide a pleasant diversion from the task of taking things too seriously. The relative rarity of idioms is due in part to the fact that every aspect of reality can be made part of a common metaphor; idioms must be established by common usage, and this fermentation can take decades.

Today I saw a “Snake In The Grass”.

It was a small snake, and there really was not much grass. I took this picture to provide proof of my sighting. The snake was very still and accommodating as I took it.

 

This metaphor for treachery, alluding to a poisonous snake concealed in tall grass, was used in 37 b.c. by the Roman poet Virgil ( latet anguis in herba). It was first recorded in English in 1696 as the title of a book by Charles Leslie.

From what I know of snake biology the act of purposefully hiding in order to get close enough to effectively strike a human would not be a very good survival mechanism. Striking humans is a defense mechanism, and it does not increase the odds of getting food or help to establish some territorial boundary. The snake strikes to dissuade the human from killing, which some humans do because snakes strike and are sometimes poisonous.

So why isn’t this idiom a metaphor for generations of miscommunication becoming codified in a pattern of negative interactions?

Pulse

I insist that there were at least a dozen other people, like myself, who did not have a clear picture of what happened at the Pulse nightclub massacre until this morning. Notifications popped up on my phone that people I was actually unaware lived in Orlando were “checking in” as ok. News notifications popped up saying that they knew nothing or contradicting what had just been said in previous notifications. Stories about multiple gunmen wounding a dozen people gave way to one gunman killing a couple dozen. Donald Trump apparently said something, and the motivations for the killings were unclear.

Near some fetid swamp and Disneyland, a description of the whole of Orlando, a man slaughtered people he did not know for reasons that sound alien when I read them aloud from news stories. The hundred people who were gunned down were not engaged in anything profound or particularly worthy. They were doing things a lot like what was distracting me from the news of their plight. There was nothing more subtle in my tasting the flavors of a meal I had just bought on the tongue of the acquaintance I had bought it for; is that Sriracha, and was there even Sriracha on the table? These are not questions whose answers will shake the world, but what other questions are worth asking when eyes sparkle and smiles melt together.

The morning’s news was already full of spin about the motivations, and I learned all the petty justifications for not thinking this or that had anything to do with the reasons behind the horrific realities of the massacre. I read that it was homophobia, but not religious. I learned that it was not due to ISIS despite some declaration because of something. Donald Trump had said something. Whacky, and not in a good way, Christian pastors were declaring some harsher judgement on the victims than the perpetrator.

The confusion was all too familiar, and in the coming weeks we will surely see older cars plastered with stickers proclaiming this event to have been staged as false flag theater to promote the gay agenda. Donald Trump will say something. We will be told over, and over, and over that this has nothing to do with Islam and that most Muslims do not shoot up nightclubs.

Islamic scripture unambiguously calls for killing homosexuals, and many Islamic states regularly execute people for the crime of engaging in homosexual activity (“kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.”). Homosexual acts are not the only activities requiring harsh sentences. Applying the rules of the Quran (and more specific supporting scripture) to American society would be impossibly damaging. American Muslims have begun the process of secularizing their belief system in ways that make incorporation possible. The scripture may require the killing of homosexuals, but “we don’t actually do that” is the method of living the scriptural teachings.

It is VERY good that there is a moderating movement amongst the vast majority of the millions of Muslims in America. Christians have, for the most part, grown out of the extremely punitive interpretations of their scripture, while mostly maintaining that they have not fundamentally changed the way scripture works in their lives; Muslims should be able to do the same.

Most people have an internal moral compass that prevents them from going out and killing people. They have this regardless of what their religion says they should do. Can we blame the religion when someone without a working sense of right and wrong does something horrific in part because they find justification in the scripture of their religion? I think we have to!

Discarding bits of obsolete mythology of imaginary beings is not hard. There is no reason to keep it. There is no reason to give lip service to a religion’s innocence when it refuses to expunge those parts that explicitly call for actions that resonate with the motivation behind an atrocity like the Pulse nightclub massacre.

We can enthusiastically agree, as a culture of actual humans, that murdering people en masse for trivial actions, like trying to chisel companionship out of mutual attraction, is just wrong. This is a guiding principal. Any scripture or teaching that muddies the water or contradict this clear idea is just wrong as well. A religion that upholds a scripture that explicitly calls for hating and killing people for reasons innocuous to any reasoned human does not get a “pass” because most of their adherents are actually not out killing folks; it is just wrong.

Stop the hate.

Stop the killing.

Pull down the walls of the temple that protects the words of hate.