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Man's ability to confront uncertainty has been at once both an evolutionary strength and a weakness. Man as a creature is like a fine-tuned musical instrument, capable of the greatest beauty but difficult to play, easily put out of tune and needing regular re-tuning. And man's sense of future time, while an evolutionary advantage, is also a source of anxiety which is potentially debilitating and which may even remove an individual from the survival stakes altogether. It is evident that individuals can be debilitated, incapacitated, by particular combinations of uncertainties: the result may be mental illness, or compensatory behavioural excesses, or the consumption of oblivion-inducing drugs, or even suicide. Suicide, affective mental disorder, and the conscious induction of oblivion are uniquely human characteristics. Yet in spite of all these threats, man as a species has continued to function, with a remarkable degree of success. It is
evident that man has found ways of overcoming
those life-threatening uncertainties, in the dimension of the mind. Countervailing systems have been developed to overcome the dysfunctional effect of man's exceptional analytical abilities.
Meeting, Mating
Central to the evolutionary challenge is that these uncertainties, both cognitive and affective, should be kept at bay for sufficiently long periods to enable the species to get on with the ordinary business of survival - growing to adulthood, procuring food, clothing and shelter, finding a mate and mating, managing pregnancy and parturition, and in turn raising young to adulthood. Man as a species is evidently very flexible in these matters: mating may take place at any time of day or night, without any elaborate prior ritual; while the menstrual cycle limits
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procreation, this is not constrained by year or other season, and its limitations are partly offset by the very ease of mating; pregnancy can be pursued to successful conclusion even in the most adverse of physical circumstances; and in the absence of "natural" parenting, surrogate parenting systems have been demonstrably successful. This flexibility has had decided evolutionary advantages.
The Young
And man as a species displays certain natural traits which help to counter the destabilising effects of uncertainty. The young of the species, before their brains are fully developed, lack the ability to perceive the longer time-horizons, thus enjoying a natural immunity from uncertainty; and social convention in many societies actively protects young children from adult uncertainties. This is emphasised by the occasional exceptions. There are the tragic examples of exceptionally able children who are destabilised by being exposed too early to such uncertainties, with tragic results: suicides amongst "the young" are poorly understood, although MDU suggests an explanation. And it may be that the ability to cope with distant time horizons emerges earlier than conventionally thought: the Jewish convention of acknowledging adulthood at 12, and the political sensitivity of many teenagers who are more keenly aware than adults of the dangers of environmental
degradation, suggest that intellectual
innocence may be over by the age of 10 or 11. Equally there is no doubt that, before that age, the species has a natural resistance to uncertainty, an ability to rest content with simple explanations, perhaps even a preference for convincing fantasy. It may be that, once a disbelief in Santa Claus has dawned, the protective cocoon is already wearing thin.
Falling in love ...
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