Human See, Human Do
“Human See, Human Do”; if we view human behavior that is exactly what has led us down the Path of Destruction. Of course, it is a take-off of the common idiom “Monkey See, Monkey Do” which may be a very simplified version of learned behavior long before our mental capacity and language developed to the stage of evolution we are at today. It’s a process of learning without an understanding of why. Watch a parent with their infant and you will see mimic behaviors. And, indeed, children can learn behavior by copying what they see happening around them. Having served on The Child Protection Team in our county, I am well aware of abused children having a high potential for repeating the abusive behavior. We mimic behaviors. There are terms that connect back to ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’ such as the following; ‘I’ll be a monkey’s uncle’, ‘Make a Monkey of Someone’, and ‘Monkey Business’.
As humans we are social beings; we share emotions, we mimic behaviors and we repeat the same actions. Mimicking physical actions is a primary behavioral action and we can readily see this in the field of sports where we follow the guidelines of previous athletic behaviors to improve our abilities on the field. Coaches develop athletes by repeating the positive results of previous athletic behaviors. And we try to succeed in most of our daily behaviors by following the basic tenets of successful behaviors in life. In society today, there is concern for our survival: our health, the health of our animals and our home, Earth are all under siege. So now we must ask ourselves, have our mimicking behaviors led us astray?
Being social, that is getting along with others so to speak, is an instinctive survival strategy that has been formulated by our ancestors to maintain social stability. Social rejection would lead to being banned from the group and living alone in pre-historic times would lead to one’s demise in rather quick fashion. Even prisons have a social system in which ‘child molesters’ are socially banned and sometimes harmed: at best they will be isolated. Many will find that they aren’t welcome to sit at certain tables in the chow hall, or might have to spend years in protective custody (i.e., the hole). Some will be robbed, beaten, or even killed. Survival is primary. This concept alone gives one enough logic to assume that we are social creatures; it allows us the opportunity to stay alive.
We engage in storytelling and listening; it’s our way of personal communications. Psychologists have revealed that we share mirror neurons that allow us to match each other’s emotions unconsciously and immediately. We anticipate and mirror each other’s movements when we’re in sympathy or agreement with one another—when we’re on the same side. We have learned social cues from internal and external stimuli. Humans see, and humans do. That all sounds good however, with our rapid advancement in the past thousand years or so that may be our downfall as well.
And it may be the competitive nature of survival that could do us in. To put everything in a nutshell, let’s take a look at the concept of marketing. To get ahead in today’s society marketing is the form of communication that we are all subject to and that, in a nutshell is our downfall. We want to listen to others to gain information because the more information we have, the better we can protect ourselves– thus gaining information is an instinctual protective action for survival. So what’s the problem?
The problem is that giving out information to maintain a hierarchy in the tribe, the community, the society, the culture has become a ‘survival of the fittest’. Except now the huge majority has come under the spell, our natural instinctual survival drives are no longer effective. We have gotten too hungry, we eat too much of the wrong foods, we follow the marketing advice of too many false leaders, and we may not survive as a species. Unless we change. Stay Healthy My Friends, Vegan Doc 3/31/2019
