Almost everything we wear today, then, is the result of this Stimulus Struggle principle of ringing-the-changes to produce the shock effect of sudden novelty. What is daring today becomes ordinary tomorrow and stuffy the next day, and we quickly forget where it has all come from. How many men, climbing into their evening dress clothes and putting on their top hats, realize that they are donning the costume of a late eighteenth-century hunting squire? How many sombrely lounge-suited businessmen realize that they are following the dress of early nineteenth-century country sportsmen? How many sports-jacketed young men think of themselves as horse-riders? How many open-neck-shirted, loose-knitted-sweatered young men think of themselves as Mediterranean fishermen? And how many mini-skirted young girls think of themselves as tennis-players or ice-skaters?
The shock is quickly over. The new style is quickly absorbed, and another one is then required to take its place and to provide a new stimulus. One thing we can always be sure of: whatever is today’s most daring innovation in the world of fashion will become tomorrow’s respectability, and will then rapidly fossilize into pompous formality as new rebellions crowd in to replace it. Only by this process of constant turn-over can the extremes of fashion, the supernormal stimuli of design, maintain their massive impact. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but where the super-normal stimuli of fashion are concerned it is also true to say that novelty is the mother of necessity.
Up to this point we have been considering the five principles of the Stimulus Struggle that are concerned with raising the behaviour output of the individual. Occasionally the reverse trend is called for. When this happens the sixth and final principle comes into operation:
6. If stimulation is too strong, you may reduce your behaviour output by damping down responsiveness to incoming sensations.
This is the cut-off principle. Some zoo animals find their confinement frightening and stressful, especially when they arc newly arrived, moved to a fresh cage, or housed with hostile or unsuitable companions. In their agitated condition they may suffer from abnormal over-stimulation. When this happens and they are unable to escape or hide, they must somehow switch off the incoming stimuli. They may do this simply by crouching in a comer and closing their eyes. This, at least, shuts off the visual stimuli. Excessive, prolonged sleeping (a device also used by invalids, both animal and human) also occurs as a more extreme form of cut-off. But they cannot crouch or sleep for ever.
While active, they can relieve their tensions to some extent by performing ‘stereotypes’. These are small tics, repetitive patterns of twitching, rocking, jumping, swaying or turning, which, because they have become so familiar through being constantly repeated, have also become comforting. The point is that for the over-stimulated animal the environment is so strange and frightening that any action, no matter how meaningless, will have a calming effect so long as it is an old familiar pattern. It is like meeting an old friend in a crowd of strangers at a party. One can see these stereotypes going on all around the zoo. The huge elephants sway rhythmically back and forth; the young chimpanzee rocks its body to and fro; the squirrel leaps round and round in a tight circle like a wall-of-death rider; the tiger rubs its nose left and right across its bars until it is raw and bleeding.
If some of these over-stimulation patterns also occur from time to time in intensely bored animals, this is no accident, for the stress caused by gross under-stimulation is in some ways basically the same as the stress of over-stimulation. Both extremes are unpleasant and their unpleasantness causes a stereotyped response, as the animal tries desperately to escape back to the happy medium of moderate stimulation that is the goal of the Stimulus Struggle.
If the inmate of the human zoo becomes grossly over-stimulated, he too falls back on the cut-off principle. When many different stimuli are blaring away and conflicting with one another, the situation becomes unbearable. If we can run and hide, then all is well, but our complex commitments to super-tribal living usually prevent this. We can shut our eyes and cover our ears, but something more than blindfolds and ear-plugs are needed.
In extremis we resort to artificial aids. We take tranquillizers, sleeping pills (sometimes so many that we cut-off for good), over-doses of alcohol, and a variety of drugs. This is a variant of the Stimulus Struggle which we can call Chemical Dreaming. To understand why, it will help to take a closer look at natural dreaming.
The great value of the process of normal, night-time dreaming is that it enables us to sort out and file away the chaos of the preceding day. Imagine an over-worked office, with mountains of documents, papers and notes pouring into it all through the day. The desks are piled high. The office workers cannot keep up with the incoming information and material. There is not enough time to file it away neatly before the end of the afternoon. They go home leaving the office in chaos. Next morning there will be another great influx and the situation will rapidly get out of hand.
If we are over-stimulated during the day, our brains taking in a mass of new information, much of it conflicting and difficult to classify, we go to bed in much the same condition as the chaotic office was left in at the end of the working day. But we are luckier than the over-worked office staff. At night-time someone comes into the office inside our skull and sorts everything out, files it neatly away and cleans up the office ready for the onslaught of the next day. In the brain of the human animal this process is what we call dreaming. We may obtain physical rest from sleep, but little more than we could get from lying awake all night. But awake we could not dream properly. The primary function of sleeping, then, is dreaming rather than resting our weary limbs. We sleep to dream and we dream most of the night. The new information is sorted and filed and we awaken with a refreshed brain, ready to start the next day.
If day-time living becomes too frenzied, if we are too intensely over-stimulated, the ordinary dreaming mechanism becomes too severely tested. This leads to a preoccupation with narcotics and the dangerous pursuit of Chemical Dreaming. In the stupors and trances of chemically induced states, we vaguely hope that the drugs will create a mimic of the dream-like state. But although they may be effective in helping to switch off the chaotic input from the outside world, they do not usually seem to assist in the positive dream function of sorting and filing. When they wear off, the temporary negative relief vanishes and the positive problem remains as it was before. The device is therefore doomed to be a disappointing one, with the addition of the possible anti-bonus of chemical addiction.
Another variation is the pursuit of what we can call Meditation Dreaming, in which the dream-like state is achieved by certain thought disciplines, yogal or otherwise. The cut-off, trance-like conditions produced by yoga, voodoo, hypnotism, and certain magical and religious practices all have certain features in common. They usually involve sustained rhythmic repetition, either verbal or physical, and are followed by a condition of detachment from normal outside stimulation. In this way they can help to cut down the massive and usually conflicting input that is being suffered by the over-stimulated individual. They are therefore similar to the various forms of Chemical Dreaming, but as yet we have little information about the way they may, in addition, provide positive benefits of the kind we all enjoy when dreaming normally.
If the human animal fails to escape from a prolonged state of over-stimulation, he is liable to fall sick, mentally or physically. Stress diseases or nervous breakdowns may, for the luckier ones, provide their own cure. The invalid is forced, by his incapacity, to switch off the massive input. His sick-bed becomes his animal hiding-place.
Individuals who know they are particularly prone to over-stimulation often develop an early-warning signal. An old injury may start to play up, tonsils may swell, a bad tooth may throb, a skin rash may break out, a small twitch may reappear, or a headache may begin again. Many people have a minor weakness of this kind which is really more of an old friend than an old enemy, because it warns them that they are ‘over-doing’ things and had better slow down i
f they wish to avoid something worse. If, as often happens, they are persuaded to have their particular weakness ‘cured’, they need have little fear of losing the early-warning advantage it bestowed on them; some other symptom will in all probability soon emerge to take its place. In the medical world this is sometimes known as the ‘shifting syndrome’.
It is easy enough to understand how the modern supertribesmen can come to suffer from this over-burdened state. As a species, we originally became intensely active and exploratory in connection with our special survival demands. The difficult role our hunting ancestors had to play insisted on it. Now, with the environment extensively under control, we are still saddled with our ancient system of high activity and high curiosity. Although we have reached a stage where we could easily afford to lie back and rest more often and more lengthily, we simply cannot do it. Instead we are forced to pursue the Stimulus Struggle. Since this is a new pursuit for us, we are not yet very expert performers and we are constantly going either too far or not far enough. Then, as soon as we feel ourselves becoming over-stimulated and over-active or under-stimulated and under-active, we veer away from the one painful extreme or the other and indulge in actions that tend to bring us back to the happy medium of optimum stimulation and optimum activity. The successful ones hold a steady centre course; the rest of us swing back and forth on either side of it.
We are helped to a certain extent by a slow process of adjustment. The countryman, living a quiet and peaceful life, develops a tolerance to this low level of activity. If a busy townsman were suddenly thrust into all that peace and quiet, he would quickly find it unbearably boring. If the countryman were thrown into the hurly-burly of chaotic town life, he would soon find it painfully stressful. It is fine to have a quiet week-end in the country as a de-stimulator, if you are a townsman, and it is great to have a day up in town as a stimulator, if you are a countryman. This obeys the balancing principles of the Stimulus Struggle; but much longer, and the balance is lost.
It is interesting that we are much less sympathetic towards a man who fails to adjust to a low level of activity than we are to one who fails to adjust to a high level. A bored and listless man annoys us more than a harassed and overburdened one. Both are failing to tackle the Stimulus Struggle efficiently. Both are liable to become irritable and bad-tempered, but we are much more prone to forgive the over-worked man. The reason for this is that pushing the level up a little too high is one of the things that keeps our cultures advancing. It is the intensely over-exploratory individuals who will become the great innovators and will change the face of the world in which we live. Those who pursue the Stimulus Struggle in a more balanced and successful way will also, of course, be exploratory, but they will tend to provide new variations on old themes rather than entirely new themes. They will also be happier, better adjusted individuals.
You may remember that at the outset I said the stakes of the game are high. What we stand to win or lose is our happiness, in extreme cases our sanity. The over-exploratory innovators should, according to this, therefore be comparatively unhappy and even show a tendency to suffer from mental illness. Bearing in mind the goal of the Stimulus Struggle, we should predict that, despite their greater achievements, such men and women must frequently live uneasy and discontented lives. History tends to confirm that this is so. Our debt to them is sometimes paid in the form of the special tolerance we show towards their frequently moody and wayward behaviour. We intuitively recognize that it is an inevitable outcome of the unbalanced way in which they are pursuing the Stimulus Struggle. As we shall see in the next chapter, however, we are not always so understanding.
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Childlike Adult
In many respects the play of children is similar to the Stimulus Struggle of adults. The child’s parents take care of its survival problems and it is left with a great deal of surplus energy. Its playful activities help to bum up this energy. There is, however, a difference. We have seen that there are various ways of pursuing the adult Stimulus Struggle, one of which is the invention of new patterns of behaviour. In play, this element is much stronger. To the growing child, virtually every action it performs is a new invention. Its naivety in the face of the environment more or less forces it to indulge in a non-stop process of innovation. Everything is novel. Each bout of playing is a voyage of discovery: discovery of itself, its abilities and capacities, and of the world about it. The development of inventiveness may not be the specific goal of play, but it is nevertheless its predominant feature and its most valuable bonus.
The explorations and inventions of childhood are usually trivial and ephemeral. In themselves they mean little. But if the processes they involve, the sense of wonder and curiosity, the urge to seek and find and test, can be prevented from fading with age, so that they remain to dominate the mature Stimulus Struggle, over-shadowing the less rewarding alternatives, then an important battle has been won: the battle for creativity.
Many people have puzzled over the secret of creativity. I contend that it is basically no more than the extension into adult life of these vital childlike qualities. The child asks new questions; the adult answers old ones; the childlike adult finds answers to new questions. The child is inventive; the adult is productive; the childlike adult is inventively productive. The child explores his environment; the adult organizes it; the childlike adult organizes his explorations and, by bringing order to them, strengthens them. He creates.
It is worth examining this phenomenon more closely. If a young chimpanzee, or a child, is placed in a room with a single familiar toy, he will play with it for a while and then lose interest. If he is offered, say, five familiar toys instead of only one, he will play first here, then there, moving from one to the other. By the time he gets back to the first one, the original toy will seem ‘fresh’ again and worthy of a little further play attention. If, by contrast, an unfamiliar and novel toy is offered, it will immediately command his interest and produce a powerful reaction.
This ‘new toy’ response is the first essential of creativity, but it is one phase of the process. The strong exploratory urge of our species drives us on to investigate the new toy and to test it out in as many ways as we can devise. Once we have finished our explorations, then the unfamiliar toy will have become familiar. At this point it is our inventiveness that will come into action to utilize the new toy, or what we have learned from it, to set up and solve new problems. If, by re-combining our experiences from our different toys, we can make more out of them than we started with, then we have been creative.
If a young chimpanzee is put in a room with an ordinary chair, for example, it starts out by investigating the object, tapping it, hitting it, biting it, sniffing it, and clambering over it. After a while these rather random activities give way to a more structured pattern of activity. It may, for instance, start jumping over the chair, using it as a piece of gymnastic equipment. It has ‘invented’ a vaulting box, and ‘created’ a new gymnastic activity. It had learned to jump over things before, but not in quite this way. By combining its past experiences with the investigation of this new toy, it creates the new action of rhythmic vaulting. If, later on, it is offered more complex apparatus, it will build on these earlier experiences again, incorporating the new elements.
This developmental process sounds very simple and straightforward, but it does not always fulfil its early promise. As children we all go through these processes of exploration, invention and creation, but the ultimate level of creativity we rise to as adults varies dramatically from individual to individual. At the worst, if the demands of the environment are too pressing, we stick to limited activities we know well. We do not risk new experiments. There is no time or energy to spare. If the environment seems too threatening, we would rather be sure than sorry: we fall back on the security of tried and trusted, familiar routines. The environmental situation has to change in one way or another before we will risk becoming more exploratory. Exploration involves uncertainty and uncertain
ty is frightening. Only two things will help us to overcome these fears. They are opposites: one is disaster, and the other is greatly increased security. A female rat, for instance, with a large litter to rear, is under heavy pressure. She works nonstop to keep her offspring fed, cleaned and protected. She will have little time for exploring. If disaster strikes—if her nest is flooded or destroyed—she will be forced into panic exploration. If, on the other hand, her young have been successfully reared and she has built up a large store of food, the pressure relaxes and, from a position of greater security, she is able to devote more time and energy to exploring her environment.
The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal Page 21
