Notebook Entries July 2007

Notebook entry July 15th, 2007

There was an interesting piece in the news from Reuters online titled: "India to register pregnancies to fight feticide," by Kamil Zaheer, dated July 13th, 5:33 am ET.

It seems that the Indian government plans to create a registry of all pregnancies to help curb widespread female infanticide and infant mortality. This government agency is called The Ministry of Women and Child Development.

"Many Indian parents prefer a boy as he is seen as a future breadwinner who will take care of them in their old age, while a girl is perceived to be a burden for which a large dowry will have to be paid at the time of marriage."

But, as the article continues, critics say that in a country where of 1.1 billion people where more than 50 percent of women deliver children at home without medical assistance, the idea is nothing more than a mess brewing in governmental red tape.

"We cannot give elementary health services in a satisfactory way to most of our citizens, and to talk about registering pregnancies is ridiculous," said Alok Mukopadhyay, head of the Voluntary Health Association of India."

"Public awareness, empowerment of women and extension of health services are key in fighting infant mortality and feticide, as well as implementing the existing laws that forbid sex determination."

I agree with the critics of the plan because it won't work. Female infanticide bubbles up from the basements of our collective cultures due to the lack of resources. Parents kill female babies because their societies do not empower women. They do not empower women because of our evolutionary cultural hangover establishing that males go off to wars to protect our respective borders, provide for child assistance and sometimes -- in the case of G. W. Bush - invade other countries for their bounty because of the evolutionary knowledge of males that know that the more resources that a male has, the more access to female pussy he will have. Sadly, it is knowledge known also to females who gives access to sex in exchange for resources while leaving their sisters behind.

To the ladies: solve the problem of empowering your sisters below your hierarchy class rank and you will have peace on the planet.
To the male CEOs: dead people don't buy your products; war is merely a disease to be eliminated. Be aggressive for peace by empowering women.

Notebook entry, July 11th, 2007
There was an interesting news item that came from Yahoo! News today which has a link with "LiveScience.com." The title: Women Are in Charge at Home. Well, there's a bit a news that has been known in the evolutionary feminist movement for some time now - and has been the untold truth for perhaps, several hundred thousands of years as an underground secret amongst women.

In a study by lead author David Vogel, a psychologist at Iowa State University 72 married couples and were video taped while they discussed each of the issues for 10 minutes each.

"Trained volunteers coded the videotapes using a scale that rated couples' interactions based on words and behaviors associated with blame (blames, accuses and criticizes the partner); demand (nags, pressures for change, requests); withdrawal and avoidance (avoids discussing the problem by hesitating, changing topics, diverting attention or looking away); and discussion."
"Wives were more demanding - asking for changes in the relationship or in their partner - and were more likely to get their way than the husbands.
"It wasn't just that the women were bringing up issues that weren't being responded to, but that the men were actually going along with what they said. Women were communicating more powerful messages, and men were responding to those messages by agreeing or giving in."
"Women are responsible for overseeing the relationship, making sure the relationship runs, that everything gets done, and that everybody's happy. Wife power could signal a harmonious couple. "There's been research that suggests that's a marker of a healthy marriage - that men accept influence from their wives, said Megan Murphy, also of Iowa State U.'"

So the adage: "She, who must be obeyed!" is not just a sigh of anguish from "girlie men" who are "pussy whipped." The only complaint that I have about the study is that it involved only 72 couples.

I also remember my Italian-American childhood in Northern New Jersey in which my mother ran the house and my father ruled the outside of the house. I believe that in resourse-poor families it was the female who kept the family together while the male "roamed" in search of resources.

Notebook entry, July 4th, 2007.

Happy 4th of July greettings from America. The holiday used to have a special meaning to Americans, but I sense since the start of the invasion of a country that was no threat to us over five years ago, it has become almost a painful embarrassment. I will not elaborate.

As for myself, it is a day away from the very painful job of delivering mail. We are delivering more pieces of mail then ever, but it now almost 75% "junk" mail - advertisement mail from corporate giants, and now, even some smaller companies trying to become large. Since we are carrying more pieces of mail that means the total weight of the items we carry is increasing, and as a result, it gets transferred to my back which, as you now knows, suffers from terrible arthritis. I'm counting the days till retirement which appears to be somewhere around January 2008. Also, please note that I have entered a new Who is William A. Spriggs entry along with the two previous ones.

On the essay front, after finishing Menstrual Odors, Dirty Diapers, and the Male Dominated Religious Quest For Purity, I started going over my old essays and found that I was writing about similar origins of discriminations almost from the start of my studies. I then placed the four essays that I found and placed them at the tail end of the Menstrual Odor essay. I think that when I have time, I should put them all together and make an online book. Sure….when I have time.

In the meantime, you can see the ending of the Menstrual Odor essay and the four earlier essays that I placed on the end of that essay.

Below are four of my ealier essays with excepts from each below the link. They all take a similar path in that they discuss biological memes as they evolve into "higher" human, social norms and behavior.. Since they are written over a period of 13 years by a man with limited college education, they may seem a bit disjointed, but I think they weave a fairly accurate pattern. Enjoy

Evolutionary Psychology and the Origin of Eugenics: Reflection about Group Selection and Rejection. June 1994

In either case, I theorize, that today we "view" others in our social groups as either winners or losers in an unconscious, innate way. We begin to evaluate these people in terms of being able to win or lose the race against the predator. We tend to flow toward those we think of as "winners," and we tend to shun those whom we think are "losers." This, I speculate, was the origin of ranking which leads to the behavior mechanism we know as eugenics -- the judging of who is, or not, worthy to carry on the genetic line within a particular cultural context. There are no cultural People magazines devoted to "losers" or the "poor." I know that this sounds like I am simplifying life to its barest, but that is what evolutionary psychology does -- It is the language of our DNA. Thirty thousand years ago, there were no philosophers, no scientists, no psychologists, no crystal balls to consult to solve our "problems" -- just our emotions adapting to our harsh ancestral past. All is open for speculation.

 

Evolutionary Psychology and the Origins of Bigotry and Prejudice: Perhaps Evolutionary Psychology Unravels the Mystery
William A. Spriggs
August, 1995

After our species evolved into a conscious conceptual creature identifying external friend and foe, I believe that prejudice and bigotry were then the result of hoarding resources in times of shortage for (in order of importance) one's self, one's clan, one's tribe, and one's village. (I call this behavior The Resource Retention Theory -- those that have the gold, do everything within their power to keep the gold for their benefit).  In times of plenty, of course, the opposite occurred -- generosity, or altruism towards one's fellow creatures. What is often called "greed" by moralists springs from one's desire to live and to perpetuate one's own genes into the next generation. Our bodies can't live forever, but gene transference is the closest we come to succeeding. The "conceptual extension" from self to clan to tribe to village naturally continued, finally including one's nation, which is what we call nationalism. Simply, this "extension" merely represents that we are conceptually expanding our "turf." The larger turf area that we "possess," the greater the feeling of security in the area in which we physically live. The greater the area of security in which we live, the greater our feelings of comfort. Comfort and serenity allow our brains to think, to process new information at maximum efficiency. Sitting under a shade tree in summer with a cooling breeze can be very pleasant. We can more easily focus on problem-solving within the sphere of a calm situation, than we can while dodging bullets in a gang war.

Evolutionary Psychology and the Origins of Racism, Prejudice, Bigotry, and Discrimination: An updated View
by
William A. Spriggs
August 14, 2001

Now, I want you to return to the opening quotes I used to set the tone with white males giving comments about blacks in general. And below, I give you three cases where discrimination has been recorded of one group against another, and I want you to notice the similarities. Also note that none of them are about whites showing disrespect towards people with black skin.

  1. Black vs. Black. The first example is that of the history of Rwanda and Burundi in regards to the two dark-skinned Hutu and Tutsi clans. When the Belgians took control of the area in 1956, they picked one group to serve as their proxies. Even though the Tutsi clan was in the minority (14%), the Belgians picked them to run the governmental organizations based on the "pseudoscientific" studies in vogue at the time that led them to think that the Tutsi were biologically superior. Taking advantage of their dominate position, the Tutsi took all and gave little back to the Hutus. The result of this resource separation was dramatically played out with the 1994 holocaust between the two clans.
  2. Black vs. Brown. The second example that I want to cite are the April 1997 incidents in East Palo Alto California where the Hispanics went before the East Palo Alto California school board, which was then controlled by the African-Americans, and demanded better education for the children. In particular, the Latinos wanted better bilingual instruction and a greater say the school board. In 1985, East Palo Alto was 85% black, but in 1997 the city was 70% Latino. What basically transpired is that the African-Americans, by right of hard work and prior territorial positioning, became the dominate culture in the East Palo Alto school system. If the rule of Resource Retention holds, then the African-Americans will do all they can to maintain that resource advantage for their genetic advantage. But as demographics change their population into a majority, the Latinos press up against that dominate black culture and thus causes the increased ethnic and racial tension.
  3. White vs. White. In this example, we focus on the article that appeared in the Time magazine, June 15, 1998 issue, p. 34: Revolt of the Gentry, by Tamal M. Edwards, on the growing class war that was evolving over the efforts to equalize public school funding in Vermont. Under the planned Vermont Act 60, rich communities faced higher taxes and reduced school budgets, while working-class communities could expect the reverse; a complete reversal of resource retention. Crying the loudest was novelist John Irving, quoted as saying: "This is Marxism. It's leveling everything by decimating what works..." The Irving quote is very typical of wealthy conservatives who repeat over and over, that, what works well, (for the elite in a position of privilege) should not be penalized.
  4. Protestant vs. Catholic.  Perhaps the best example of religious prejudice is the conflict in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in which we find the Catholics (who are the minority, and thus the submissives) pitted against the Protestants (who are considered the majority, and thus the dominates). Although the conflict is over 30 years old, the most recent incident is centered around the Catholic residents of a local territory called Ardoyne attempting to place their female school-aged children, 4 to 11 years old, into a Catholic school, Holy Cross Primary School, that is located in the Protestant territory called Glenbryn. The Catholics were told that if they wanted to avoid any "trouble," then they should use a rear entrance. The Catholic's refused to bend to "inferior" and submissive behavior by using the back door; the Protestants responded to the Catholic's refusal by throwing rocks and verbal insults at the school aged children, culminating with the throwing of a pipe bomb on the third day that injured a Belfast police officer. One leader of a Catholic parents group said that "This looks like Alabama in the '60s." (A reference to when Blacks tried to integrate White schools in America during the 1960s).

The Scent of Diversity: Is the cure for discrimination in all forms as close as your nose?

by William A. Spriggs, July 2004

Another way of looking at discrimination policies is that they just don't exclude others on flimsy evidence, but that dominate groups create these mechanisms to enhance opportunities for their own group members over others. The myth of cultures creating "meritocracies" with images of individuals clawing their way up a ladder of success fits very nicely into the propaganda messages of those already on the top of a local hierarchy. True, there is some competition, but dominates seem to fail to recognize that half the struggle of climbing to the top of this fictional hill was already aided by those that preceded them within their own particular safe circle of similar phenotypes; the competition that they face has been stripped of all those from the subordinate classes. Think of global economics: Do we place barriers in front of people, like countries place barriers for importing items so that their own country has an advantage? How come those individuals that preach free trade of products and commodities between countries don't also promote "free trade" between all groups of peoples? What if the world was dominated by DNA Free Traders?

 

Notebook entry, July 22nd 2008
Posted Nov. 28, 2008

In a continuing effort to update to clean my hard drive of old documents and placing them on my web site, I once again I found a letter that I sent to Mary Ann Touitou, the educational outreach directory for Red Rocks Community College at the Jeffco Action Center with my idea that involves the Jeffco Action Center.

-----Original Message-----
From: wspriggs9911@comcast.net
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 4:11 PM
To: Touitou, Maryann
Subject: Message from William Spriggs, Commissioner, Lakewood City ACIC

My name is William Spriggs and I am a commissioner with the City of Lakewood Advisory Commission for an Inclusive Community – ACIC.  We are volunteer citizens attached to nine sub-committee groups whose primary function is to advise the Mayor and City Council on various subjects.  My sub-committee is Diversity Education and I am now attending regular meetings with the Red Rocks Diversity Council.

What makes this grouping of various sub-committees so interesting is that even though we are assigned to one sub-committee, we are free to join any project that any sub-committee is working on at that moment.  This brings me to why I am writing to you.  I have a keen interest in the work that you are doing with the Jeffco Action Center and RRCC’s attempt to break the cycle of day laboring and the associated difficulties that the poor have in establishing a firm hold on their future.  I have a strong belief that poverty is the major cause of discrimination, not one’s skin color, nationality, ethnic origin, nor religion.

My interest lies in the near future with the arrival of FasTracs and the fact that it will pass near the Jeffco Action Center with a stops at 13th and Garrison Street, continue westward with stops at the New St. Anthony’s Hospital and Red Rock Community College.

I don’t know if you have seen this coming, but some of us on various sub-committees see a “perfect storm” of job opportunities and positive neighborhood improvements approaching with the relocation of St. Anthony’s hospital to the Federal Center.  In fact, one of the ideas being kicked around is getting the State, County, and City to back legislation that would put money into a common pool and distribute funds to various state and local agencies, real estate developers, retail and corporate entities based solely on the locations near future transit lines.  These are called LEF’s (Location Efficiency Funds). 

If more jobs and residences are located near the future transit lines, then the theory goes, there would be more incentives for the poor not to use automobiles, and hence, the greater the take-home pay.  [Based on estimates several years ago, suggests that a family spends 19% of its household expenses on the automobile – today in the summer of 2008, it now may be as high as 25%.]

I would like to set up an appointment with you at either Red Rocks Community College on July 30 before my meeting with the RRCC Diversity Council at 3:30 pm or sometime soon at the Jeffco Action Center when you are there.

I want to discuss what sort of entry level jobs might be needed at St. Anthony’s Hospital and gather any suggestions concerning my idea for a Elder/Child care occupation (of which, I would have to sell the advantages of to the administration at St. Anthony’s).

William A. Spriggs
Lakewood citizen
Member Commissioner Advisory Commission for an Inclusive Community.