It's not within human nature to want to know less; curiosity fulfills | MARK HUGHES COBB
This is sometimes called a "humor column" ― I've got several awards attesting to that ― or arts consideration, or as some of my favorite reader-pals say "That thing you do that I don't always understand ... but I still read."
Gotta warn you there's little funny or artsy about this piece. It'll have to fall under another category, the one Evans Fitts dubbed "Thanks for making us think." Making? Now that's a laugh, imagining these words could have the power to force action, beyond a few smoking ears and nasty emails, maybe.
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But I get you, pal. Pondering stuff sits near the heart of what it means to be human. The animals described as most intelligent, aside from us ― the other great apes, corvids, columbidae, dolphins, elephants, pigs, dogs, and strange but true, octopuses ― are quite often those who have demonstrated an ability to not just remember, as in know a thing because they witnessed it, but to recall, to be able to put that memory, that knowledge, into current motion, action that might serve their future. For a given value of thought, they think. They have conceptions of self, and time, despite what we believed, or rather didn't yet understand, a century or so ago.
With the exception of the octopus, who tends to be solitary, most of those are herd folk, which feeds into the social intelligence hypothesis: The challenges of living in a community, the collaboration, the frictions, our feelings of love, joy, togetherness even frustrations that drive us to adapt or change, those create space for, well ....
Daydreaming. Wool-gathering. Pondering. Goofy Golf.
I mean goofing around, though I do believe humankind's active engagement with and investment in psychedelically absurd frivolity stands among our top arguments against eradication from intergalatic bypass-constructing aliens.
If you've got a team, a few will be faster, quicker, stronger. They'll bring home the bison. Others might have an attachment to hearth and utensils, a yearning toward fire and chemistry, the desire to draw communal satisfaction through shared energy ingestion; they'll fry it up in a pan.
Others yet might be more laid-back and yet able to look forward, to what might be, and become planters, farmers, harvesters, and Goofy Golf builders. A couple might stand aside, get a wider view of the colony at work. They might rise up ― as hominids will, perhaps with a bone weapon-tool ― and say "Hey, we could use a little more oomph over there. Pizzazz would not go amiss, and I didn't get a harrumph outta that guy!" and become the bureaucrats, poets and professional bloviators, who never ever let you forget the duties of man.
OK, so I'm a little silly today. That's kind of my contribution, if I have such a function, and it's definitely in my nature.
But fair warning: Spoonful of sugar.
Our mental wandering, made possible by family-teams that utilize individuals to the best of their abilities, and thus fill in gaps, make living better, giving everyone an occasional break? That achieved leisure has led to wonders and miracles, revelations and inventions, resolutions and satisfaction.
And sometimes not.
It's almost impossible to avoid talking about it, because everyone is, on social media, in clusters at coffeeshops, hunkering around steaming heaps of mis- or disinformation. I am purposefully not adding specifics here, in part because I know you can follow, but in part because I am morally against the idea of click-bait when darkness falls, as tragedies and nightmares unfold.
Some of y'all have been igniting wild straw-man conflagrations. Understandable. Straw men burn white-hot, torched by the dragon-breath of indignation.
But cooling breaths now, because:
It is entirely possible to both be joyful about a peaceful outcome to a nightmarish situation, and yet curious on how it all came to be.
Humans will think, and ponder. That is, fair to say, thoroughly and utterly human, not in-human, as some newly-anointed denizens from the Holier-than-Thou Scream-Landing of High Dudgeon type-roared.
We've got to know by now that haranguing folks, trying to tell them what to do, how to be, how to think? That has never worked. It will never work. You needn't cogitate on human nature long for that light to dawn.
Attempted prohibition whips to backlash, because obstinance also burrows root-deep in humanity.
No legal booze? Well hello Lucky. Swell to know ya, Bugsy. Viva Las Vegas!
Cemented careers recipe: Mix five parts self-righteous blather, one part decent intentions, with a heaping helping of utter misunderstanding; whip into a religious frenzy, never allow to cool, and welcome to artistic infamy Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorcese.
While I've no doubt the usual hideous, absurd 'net trolls oozed out in sweat-oiled force "demanding" to know the whole whatever about this sad situation, most everyone from within the collaborative of humanity understands that this family deserves time, and peace.
We also know the police are continuing to investigate. There as well, we hope for nothing but the best, which should, at some point, include as much truth as can be found.
To express curiosity is not the same as insisting. It may feel insistent, but that's from the nature of a compelling tale that rippled nationwide, and internationally — The Guardian, at least, is following the ongoing saga — before that dark 48-hour night came to an ending. It is concern, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the wishes, hopes and prayers of all those who were ecstatic to hear that door open.
The truth matters, for reasons beyond reasoning, beyond accounting. I hope we accept that, or else we'll be here lifetimes, compiling and rewriting libraries of philosophy.
Violent criminals are often recidivists. Someone who's raped, killed, kidnapped? They'll do it again.
If there's a baby-manipulating creature around, that's right within the public's "need to know."
That there hasn't been such a warning from law enforcement is reassuring. But until it's definitively known there's no need for alert, folks will worry.
It's yet another feature of human nature to assume the worst, which, sadly, leaves some vulnerable to conspiracy theories: What aren't THEY telling us?
But assuming the worst is also an evolutionarily-useful trait, which explains why people tumble for urban legends, even when, under the most cursory examination, they fall apart; the cabal cannot hold.
When we all lived on the veldt, and no one lived anywhere else, nine times out of 10 that rustling bush proved to be the wind. But that one tiger? Smaller mammals who assumed the worst bolted, and lived to reproduce another day.
Being fearful can protect, even as your stress pounds through the surface because you're jumping at every noise, or a seemingly inexplicable news story.
The sad truth is such horror-show beasts — An insult to the animal kingdom, as other fellow planeteers tend not to kill for sport — rarely get caught on first attack. The FBI estimates there may be as many as 25 to 50 serial killers operating in the U.S. now. Profilers need patterns, information, and sometimes that comes from the public.
Joe Average might own a piece of a puzzle, may have key-holed some nugget that caught attention, aberrant behavior, but not witnessed what they'd think of as a crime. Added to accumulated knowledge, though, that corner piece can help the rest fall into place.
There's no such thing as too much knowledge, when it comes to crime, and public safety.
If you or anyone you know has information on any of the — by Monday's count — 152 active missing-persons cases within Alabama, please know your puzzle-piece could help bring a happy ending, or at least a resolution.
You can contact law enforcement such as the FBI, or a state agency like ALEA (the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, www.alea.gov), or the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
There are roughly 100,000 missing persons cases currently active across the U.S. Hundreds of thousands are reported missing every year — from 2007 to 2020, the average was 664,776 per annum — and though the majority eventually resolve, and some happily? Not all do.
They're regarded as active cases, and they need all that can be brought to bear.
There are literally thousands of collections of human remains stored in morgues throughout the country. A 2004 census estimated 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered each year, by coroner and medical examiner offices, with about 1,000 remaining unidentified after a year.
Tragically, most crimes of violence never get solved. Why? A terribly complex question and answer, but think of the scenario posited by more than one fiction writer, FBI profiler, detective or ex-Secret Service agent: Anyone determined enough to commit destruction probably will. With information, diligence, digging, sharing, a bit of luck, the aftermath-debris may be swept away, and perhaps, maybe, those responsible disposed of likewise. Maybe, even, what's learned from one case will aid another. Heck, maybe even prevent.
Some families never get an ending, happy or otherwise. Ignoring that won't make it better.
Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Time to cool down when curiosity burns hot | MARK HUGHES COBB
