…deer…occupy a middle zone between …extremes of domestication and wildness. Far from tame, they are nonetheless experts at living with people, and
…deer…occupy a middle zone between …extremes of domestication and wildness. Far from tame, they are nonetheless experts at living with people, and in many ways, they actually prefer to share habitat with us. All across North America, as in many other parts of the world, we exist in intimate proximity to deer.
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The FAA considers white-tailed deer more hazardous to U.S. civil aircraft than any other animal.
Many images might pop to mind when we think about deer. I am sorry to say that the first one in my tiny mind is the sad vision of road kill. The second is the sheer joy of spotting wild deer in woods, or yards, or, more grandly, in national parks, whether the white-tail native to my part of the world, the mule deer and caribou more prevalent in the west, and even moose. I cannot say I have seen reindeer in the wild, unfortunately. Many visits to the Bronx Zoo introduced me to a much wider range of cervids, the family to which deer belong, including the diminutive muntjacs.
[image] Erika Howsare - image from her site
Erika Howsare has had more of a connection to deer than, I expect, most of us. She grew up in western Pennsylvania in a family that hunted. In fact, the Monday after Thanksgiving is an unofficial holiday in our state, with most schools, and many businesses closed due to expected high absenteeism. This is one of many foci of interaction between deer and people.
I’d had an inkling, even before writing the book proposal, that deer were involved in all manner of controversies, contradictions, and human strivings. That was what got me interested in them. But I didn’t know too many specifics. When I started researching, one of the first things I did was to set up news alerts on deer and several other related terms.
Within a week, I had a rough outline of some of the major roles deer play in our world. They are victims; they are pests; they are something to hunt as well as something to study and protect. They are the targets of culling operations and the objects of sentimental love. They are trophies and intruders. It was all there in the news cycle. - From the Lithub article
Thankfully, Howsare, a published poet, offers a lot more than the daily deer chyron.
I did start the book from a fairly cerebral place where I thought, “Oh yeah, great subject. Like, this will bring up all kinds of great questions, and I’ll be able to go down all these roads in terms of the research and make these points, and it’s gonna be a really great opportunity to dig into these intellectual questions.” What I wasn’t expecting was how much it would change me as a person. - from the Phoebe Journal interview
And a wondrous opportunity it proved. You will learn a lot about the human/deer connection, and a bit about deer behavior as well.
[image] White tailed deer - image from PennVet – University of Pennsylvania
One thing to consider is just how long deer and humans have been interacting. Pretty much as long as there have been people, judging by the content of ancient cave art. They appear in all cultures, and are a rich presence in mythology worldwide. As our first-hand experience of deer is usually liminal, many have come to see deer as ambassadors of the wild world, crossing from theirs to ours, and maybe offering a route away from the world of living humans. Of course, for many of us there is an UR deer image that has been burned into our brains. Really, can you name any other deer this side of Santa’s team?
[image] Bambi - image from Disney via KRCA.com
They are beautiful and offer us an image of wildland innocence. But for many they have become pestiferous. Consider having spent months planting and tending your beautiful back yard garden, only to wake one day to find that real-life Bambis and their kin have laid waste to all your work. There is also the carnage caused not just to deer but to people and their vehicles from collisions with deer. There are folks whose job it is to collect the bodies. Howsare spent time with one of them.
Deer have been a crucial source of food for people across the millennia, but also of a wide range of materials. Howsare gets trained in earth skills to find out how to make buckskin, and many other useful items formed from deer parts.
We usually think of reintroduction of wildlife having to do with trout, or other finned creatures. You may have heard of attempts to reintroduce predators, like wolves in Yellowstone. But the largest and most successful reintroduction in US history occurred in the early 20th century when deer, which had been driven near to extinction, were reintroduced in many parts of the nation.
[image] Sweet Tooth - image from Netflix via BBC
Ok, this was not at all included in the book but I kinda hoped it would gain at least a mention, as it does speak to the closeness of our species.
Factlets abound. Did you know that deer can suffer from a chronic, deadly disease that we usually associate with cattle, chronic wasting disease? Or that maybe the notion of adorning rulers with crowns was a way of imitating the stag rack? You will gain an appreciation for the use of deer-based imagery in the film Get Out. There are plenty more.
One of the main points to be gained is seeing how deer are actually quite adaptable, and have managed to carve out an ecological niche at the perimeters of human population.
[image] Moose - image rom Britannica
A survey course on cervid-sapiens connection makes for an entertaining, informative read on its own. But Howsare incorporates a personal journey into her narrative. Never a hunter, at least not one who shoots anything, she has enough personal connection to folks who do, relations, to want to gain a better understanding of the hunting culture and the rationales of those who kill deer. She looks at her own feelings about deer and hunting. Not all who hunt actually shoot. Hunting can be a group activity, with a diversity of roles, very reminiscent of our prehistoric ancestors. One very appealing element of this learning curve for Howsare was becoming more comfortable with being still, settling into a place and letting herself experience the environment, the moment, fully, a form of meditation almost.
She looks at some of the outrages associate with hunting as well. Like releasing or breeding deer in fenced areas to be killed by people fond of killing things, but not much interested in doing all the research and preparation that serious hunters undertake. Think Dick Cheney hunting quail.
My only gripe about the book is a petty one. I find that science/nature books always go down easier when the information is spiced with a bit of humor. No danger of that here. So, past my personal preferences, The Age of Deer is an easy thumbs up. You will learn a lot and gain a far greater understanding of the relationship between humans and cervids throughout history and our interactions today, finding yourself saying, whether aloud or internally, “I never knew that.”
In the Anthropocene, it seems that far too much of humanity has assumed the position of the prototypical you-know-what frozen in place as the headlights of global doom approach at increasing speed. Deer, at least, have an excuse for such behavior, as their woodland-creature-instinct, however misguided it might be on a paved road, is to become very still so an approaching predator might not see or hear them. Given their abundance on the planet, it is a strategy that has worked out well for them, despite the roadside carnage, as deer remain the last large wild animal in most places. The roaches and rats will not be alone after we are gone. Deer, icons of woodland beauty, are adaptable. They are survivors, and will be keeping them company.
If the American project was, in part, to make a pastoral landscape out of a wilderness, deer benefited from that project in a cultural sleight of hand. We thought of them as part of the wild, but we had misconceived them. Their secret was that they, like us—like squirrels, corn, apple trees, clover, ands sparrows—would flourish in our human garden.
Review posted - 03/22/24
Publication date – 01/20/24
I received a hardcover of The Age of Deer from Catapult in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks.
Profile – from Catapult ERIKA HOWSARE holds an MFA in literary arts from Brown University and has published two books of poetry. She also worked in local journalism for twenty years, covering culture and environmental issues. She teaches writing and contributes reviews and essays to various national outlets. A native of Pennsylvania, she lives in rural Virginia.
Tribalism is governed by a force so motivationally powerful that it predicts more of your behavior than your race, class, nationality, or religion
Tribalism is governed by a force so motivationally powerful that it predicts more of your behavior than your race, class, nationality, or religion. The formal analysis of this incredible phenomenon has only just begun, but the emerging science reveals that these factors are mere subjugates to our primal instinct to be a member of a tribe. This “Tribe Drive” is an ancient adaptation that has been a prerequisite for survival for 99.9 percent of our species’ evolutionary history. It is a critical piece of cognitive machinery—honed by millions of years of evolution—that gave us the ability to navigate, both cooperatively and competitively, increasingly complex social landscapes. But now that our species spans billions across the globe, does this adaptation continue to serve us, or is it mismatched to its environment? In other words, what happens when humans become either tribeless or destructively consumed by tribalism?
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So next time you hear a raving demagogue counseling hatred for other, slightly different groups of humans, for a moment at least see if you can understand his problem: He is heeding an ancient call that—however dangerous, obsolete, and maladaptive it may be today—once benefited our species. — CARL SAGAN AND ANN DRUYAN, 1993
There is a reason birds of a feather stick together, that fish swim in schools, and that gnus migrate in large herds. It increases the survival chances for the group, if not necessarily the individuals within it. So it is with people. We do not have the canines of the saber-tooth, the bulk and muscle of the bear, the speed of the leopard, the poison of the snake or many of the other tools available to creatures eager to dine on the special meat. Even our relatively advanced gray cells were not enough to consistently keep us off the dinner menu. But getting together helped, big-time. E pluribus unum, baby. And grouping together allowed us to hunt in packs, which was much more effective than hunting individually. So, how did we shift from independent contractors to company people?
[image] David R. Samson - image from his Facebook pages
It is obvious to any observer that we are a tribal species today. Samson looks at the elements that make up this trait. He wrestles with the lion of the issue, why are we the way we are? And how what he calls our innate tribal drive, which may have served us well on the savannah, serves us less well in the modern world.
The core of the mismatch is that modern society has made us more physically isolated by decreasing our social support; all the while it has made us more mentally unstable by increasing social pressure, tricking us into thinking that low grade online and institutional social interaction is good enough to live a healthy and fulfilling life. In this sense, the people who dwelled in the first tribes were not challenged as much as we are today. Their units were glued together in a common struggle for survival, not the weak ideological grounds many use as the foundation to their tribal social identities today.
Samson begins by looking at how our tribal drive causes more trouble than it solves. Then heads off into the history of how human organization evolved. For example, before there could be tribes there had to be camps. (The People’s Front of Judea?) This material is fascinating, as he builds up the structure of prehistoric human grouping. There are organizational layers that needed to develop and join together in order to make up early human tribes. He goes into what early human needs were, the reason for being of groups, the need for food, shelter, and avoidance of incest. And beyond that, there was a need to cope with ill fortune. Stuff happens, and your group can survive such stuff more robustly if it is larger. Thus tribes, which still carry within them the need for assurance about who is trustworthy. This leads to a need for some sort of recognition mechanism. When a group gets beyond the magical Dunbar number, how do we know if someone is safe? If they are one of us and not one of a potentially threatening them.
The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship. . . . Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar. — ROBIN DUNBAR, 1996
Well, you can see how this might be endlessly fascinating. And it is. Tribalism is what allowed us to survive as a species. When the going got tough, the tough formed tribes.
He traces the steps that were needed to achieve tribe-dom, and looks at how they functioned once established. He offers considerable intel on how tribalism changed over time, how it developed diverse forms, how we developed ways to tell tribal friend from foe without knowing them personally. Great stuff. I worked my poor mouse and keyboard down to bare metal copying passages from this book.
Part 2 (of two) refocuses on the contemporary. How our need for tribal connection impacts our lives. He talks about how increasing class separation has resulted in the well-to-do being able to buy the social support they need, while us plebes have had to scramble to make do with our declining slices of the national pie. He offers sundry ways in which we can mitigate the impact the world has had on us, how it has deprived us of our tribal needs, primarily of personal contact with a trusted bunch. Samson looks at ways in which we can find a better balance, offering some real-world examples.
There were several times, I was pulled up short by Samson’s social analysis. He quotes Robert Putnam on a decline in family togetherness over the ten year period between 1985 and 1994. Yet he does not seem to consider it worth noting that this corresponds roughly with the Age of Reagan, and a turn away from community and toward the individual. He also does not include any significant discussion on the general decline in religious affiliation, which surely would be relevant to stresses on tribal identification.
A particularly egregious example of both-siderism entails looking at the different responses to a handwriting expert’s analysis of Donald Trump’s signature. The entirety of that can be found under a spoiler tag in EXTRA STUFF, so you can see for yourself. In focusing on how different groups reacted to the analysis, he does zero follow-up to look at whether one group or another turned out, based on observable real-world facts, to have had a better handle on things. That did not kill the book for me, but it was a red flag.
It is often the case that social scientists do a decent job of examining society, ferreting out specific elements that might be causing this or that bad result. But it is just as often the case that the solutions that are proposed fail the political sniff test. Not political as in party affiliation, but political in the sense that any social change has to be applied in a medium that is comprised of human beings. On the other hand, there are myriad nuggets of information in Our Tribal Future that enrich the reading experience, like his look at the basis of ethics, and a dive on how The Dunbar Number came to be.
For many, these days, much of our political discourse appears to be driven more by tribal identity than by rational consideration of policy merits or disbenefits. I was able to glean some significant bits of wisdom to apply to this from Samson’s discussion of tribal psychology, but I had hoped he would have done more with it. Where he does go is to examine some ways of social organization that offer opportunities for improving our lot.
He is wise in noting that community-level engagement is the best way to not only effect direct change, but to gain links to other nearby people, creating or reinforcing social cohesion, and mental health. But then he ignores what might be done for national issues like abortion, national tax policy, national defense and health care coverage and availability. It is a narrower focus, which is certainly Samson’s right, but there seems to be a pretense that local arrangements exist in a bubble, unimpacted by the larger world.
You may have heard of the uncanny valley. The expression refers to the creeped-out feeling one gets when seeing/interacting with an animation or robot that is intended to be very human-like, but is not quite there. (Ron DeSantis?) Likewise, David Samson’s Our Tribal Future tries to be an accessible, pop-science look at a very significant element of contemporary life, particularly in the political sphere. He mostly succeeds when writing about our deep history. But there is some drift into a more academic presentation that shifts towards the science and a bit too far away from the pop. It is when he tries to look past what is to what could be, that the Philistines of reality swarm him. So, if you are academically inclined, by all means, dive in. There is much of value here. But if the hint of textbook makes your blood run cold, you may want to explore elsewhere. A compromise might be to take in Samson’s wonderful presentation on human historical self-organization, then see how you feel moving forward. But if you are looking for a fully accessible pop-science read, you may find yourself in an uncanny valley.
When we grow, develop, and live in a world where everything is geared toward the individual, how can we help but view the world with a more narcissistic lens? When we live with other people, share resources within the environment, and work through problems together, the outcome is an individual that is less self-centered and more psychologically flexible.
Review posted - 08/18/23
Publication date – 05/30/23
I received an ARE of Our Trtibal Future from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review, and becoming a member of their group. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.
Items of Interest -----The People’s Front of Judea? -----Wikipedia - Uncanny Valley -----Handwriting Analysis(view spoiler)[… example of mirror game psychology. Michelle Dresbold, a handwriting expert who has been trained and worked with the Secret Service, analyzed Donald Trump’s signature. In her analysis, she described his handwriting as “bold, condensed, angular signature shows someone who is rough, tough, aggressive, competitive, can never relax and is not nurturing.”490 She further expounds that his angular writing style with minimal curves shows up in the signatures of some sharp-minded and competitive workaholics that are prone to anger, hostility, and fear. Whether there is truth to her analysis is beside the point. The insight is how people interpreted her observation about Trump’s signature. Dresbold was shocked by the public response, as conservative audiences (corporations, business groups, and entrepreneurs) reacted positively to her analysis of what she considered mostly negative attributes. However, liberals in the academy, at universities, and other progressive hot spots had mirror opposite responses, using the identical data as proof of Trump’s corruption. Dresbold recalls: “When I say something like ‘his check-mark-like stroke, called a tick-mark [in the bottom left-hand corner of the D in Donald], it indicates that Trump has explosive anger and a very bad temper,’ the conservative interpretation is, ‘Of course, he’s angry about what’s happened to America.’ The liberal interpretation is, ‘Yes, he’s a very angry man with childlike temper tantrums.’” Continuing on theme, if Dresbold remarks that his signature is unreadable which indicates that he keeps his feelings hidden from the public, the liberals’ interpretation is that he’s sneaky and untrustworthy, whereas the conservative interpretation is that it he is intelligent because he doesn’t want our enemies to know what is in his mind. Same data, same analysis, two different universes of interpretation. (hide spoiler)]...more
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