totems, Intellectual property, animal rights

Humans need animals. Not just as food, or as company or for security. Humans also need animals for a deeper reason; animals - as beings - are windows to other ways of being. As highly conscious animals, humans can see the world differently through animals, and in doing so see ourselves differently, and become different. Animals allow us to transform ourselves.

This need has manifested itself since humanity began. Totems (associations between family lines and specific animals) have existed in many cultures since time immemorial. Dogs have been buried with humans for around 12ooo years. In fact the capacity to vividly imagine what another being is is a good definition of the human condition.

As humanity developed language, myths grew and evolved, and from the basic need was born a fantasmagoria of minotaurs and angels, pans and kheirons, each of them expressing the human minds hunger for the animal. In more literate times fables have illustrated moral virtues and vices by explicit comparison to animals.

The most famous ant researcher in history. E.O.Wilson has described something like this "animal need" with the word "biophilia"; an innate appreciation of animals and life. And while this sense can be blunted by the organic sterility of life in cities, we need only scan the TV guide to see that nature documentaries are very popular, and that urban life may even accentuate the hunger.

And even if we ignore the slightly worthy topic of documentaries, we don't have to look far to see that totems still exist. Football teams are named after animals, as are cars, and many company logos rely for their power on the natural potency of animals. Some companies go all the way and present a pantheistic image where the entire animal world is their logo - Optus.

What is often jarring about the use of this imagery is the fact that it is commonly used to promote consumption on a scale which is clearly detrimental to the environments and viability of the actual animals that are being used. The companies themselves add further irony to the situation when thery sponsor rare examples of their mascot species in zoos.

What is needed is explicit recognition of the animals' rights, in much the same way that celebrities are rewarded for use of their image. These could be thought of as "Commercial Totems" where a royalty is paid by any commercial organisation using an image of an animal, and that revenue used to maintain and protect territories where that animal is resident.

anti-search engines

When a search request produces no result, most often it is because of a typo. In such cases, it is useful when the engine offers alternatives.

But sometimes it is not because of a typo but rather because the requested item is not on the web at all. In those cases the search request is a bit special, and defines the limits for the set of data within the web.

This anti-search engine information is valuable and, with enough examples, it could be used to identify areas where fruitful research could be directed, patents applied, web addresses registered, and products and services produced.

autism and the placebo effect

There is an argument that the placebo effect works because there is an evolutionary advantage in our ability to respond to treatment (no matter what), but I think that one thing worth considering is the fact that medication very often represents treatment by others.

Perhaps as social organisms our awareness of being valued by others is reason in itself to respond to placebos. This could be the case when we are provided with medication by another person (representing to us our value or worth to others) or in the case of an ill person with dependents, self administration would be symbolic of the dependents' need for the ill person. In either case the medication or treatment becomes a token of social status and worth.

By this reading the placebo effect could be explained as part of the same spectrum of phenomena that includes at one end very ill people's apparent capacity to live long enough to see important events in their lives (births, marriages etc.) and at the other end the clearly detrimental effects of treatments representing low worth (e.g. solitary confinement.)

Autism is (as I understand it) the inability to read social cues. If that is the case it may be worth investigating whether autistic people have a relatively diminished response to placebos...