Do you have an inner caveman (or cavewoman)?

[SilentMute]

Okay, we've all heard about the inner child. In addition, I've always known I've had an inner sociopath. Today, I also realized that I have an inner cavewoman.

I should have been suspicious when I had the urge to get a boyfriend by clubbing him over the head and dragging him home so he can mow my lawn. You would think that was the inner sociopath, but that side never keeps people alive. (I want to assure people that the inner sociopath never comes out in real life. Fortunately, this side has no concept of reality, and so I can sate it by watching horror movies and playing violent video games).

What is embarrassing is that my inner cavewoman always comes out when I should be acting like an intellectual. I'm intelligent! Really! But put me in a discussion about literature or philosophy or politics, and I'm like, "ME NO LIKE JANE AUSTEN! JANE AUSTEN SUCKS! ME USE SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AS TOILET PAPER FOR NEXT HURRICANE!"

It is getting worse with age too. Sometimes I even worry if I'm fit to write the summaries for LitNet, but so far Admin seems satisfied. Fortunately, I don't have to interpret anything really--just write what is going on.

Part of it may be a prejudice. I always got frustrated in literature classes. Often they were very exciting for me. However, I never got my literature teachers or my classmates. It always seems to me that intellectuals take great pleasure in focusing on the most obscure thing in a book.

I remember taking a class that was a book with a film class. We would read the book, and then we would see the movie based on the book. It was rather fun, particularly as we went out to dinner afterwards. It was nice not being cooped up in a classroom all the time. We had read Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I was prepared to discuss what I thought was important:
--How there had been people who had initially supported the Nazis views and didn't realize perhaps the full extent of them
--How other countries may have participated in the Holocaust
--What is our responsibility to other people. Is it ever okay to go with the popular opinion?
To a lesser degree, I also thought it was interesting to see how this character's devotion to his job cost him personal happiness in other areas of his life.

So the professor assigns an essay. Do you know what the essay is about? What does the dove mean at the end of the movie? In the movie, a dove flies into the mansion. I was so ticked. I wanted to throttle my literature teacher. It was all I could do not to write, "IT MEANS SOME MORON LEFT THE WINDOW OPEN, AND NOW THE AGED BUTLER IS GOING TO HAVE TO CLEAN UP BIRD SH**! THAT IS WHAT THE F***ING BIRD AT THE END OF THE MOVIE MEANS!"

I guess part of me always thought these people were a little affected. They felt superior because they knew what the dove meant and didn't discuss the main point of the story like all us plebeians did. Though I am just as exasperated by this in my old age, I am beginning to wonder if I'm not missing something by dismissing the symbolism. I know I have no idea what is appealing about Jane Austen. To me, it is like being stuck in a never ending conversation with my family. The only difference is that Mrs. Bennet doesn't chase people with a shotgun when they cut her off in traffic.

[SilentMute]

By the way, the point of this thread is to ask if any of you have anything that seems to bring up a primitive side to you.

[Calidore]

What is embarrassing is that my inner cavewoman always comes out when I should be acting like an intellectual. I'm intelligent! Really! But put me in a discussion about literature or philosophy or politics, and I'm like, "ME NO LIKE JANE AUSTEN! JANE AUSTEN SUCKS! ME USE SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AS TOILET PAPER FOR NEXT HURRICANE!"


Not to worry, then. Real cavewomen don't use toilet paper.

[Maximilianus]

It is getting worse with age too. Sometimes I even worry if I'm fit to write the summaries for LitNet, but so far Admin seems satisfied. Fortunately, I don't have to interpret anything really--just write what is going on.
Mind you, writing summaries is a very fine skill too, because you need to interpret the main events going on in a story in order to write an accurate summary that allows readers to grasp the plot without ever having read the story itself. Many of my classmates fail at picking the plot and come up with the strangest conclusions in their summaries. If you're still writing summaries then you have some skill to write them well.


I guess part of me always thought these people were a little affected. They felt superior because they knew what the dove meant and didn't discuss the main point of the story like all us plebeians did. Though I am just as exasperated by this in my old age, I am beginning to wonder if I'm not missing something by dismissing the symbolism. I know I have no idea what is appealing about Jane Austen. To me, it is like being stuck in a never ending conversation with my family. The only difference is that Mrs. Bennet doesn't chase people with a shotgun when they cut her off in traffic.
Some analysts claim that when a story's curtains are blue then the writer must have been melancholic. Later on when asked, the writer said the curtains were blue just out of picking a color, or something like that. Some analysts believe they know the story better than its creator, but truth is that quite often not even the author knows why the story takes a particular turn. The point is that the same tale can hold as many meanings as the number of people who read it, so worry less about their interpretations and worry more about the meanings you find yourself.


By the way, the point of this thread is to ask if any of you have anything that seems to bring up a primitive side to you.
I think one way or another primitiveness is somehow at the core of our nature. I've often wanted to get a viking out of me and ax a few heads http://smiles.kolobok.us/user/commander_01.gif

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Hello SilentMute,

In the office I’ve acquired the moniker; “human garbage disposal” a characteristic of my hunter gatherer instinct. One of the commandments to survival, whether it be at the office, at home or in the wild, is to treat each morsel as if it might be your last. So I tend to hoard coworkers leftovers. If they’re perishable I’ll consume them in short order, non perishables will be cached away either in my satchel, lateral file or in the console of my car for future access.

When I join my coworkers for lunch, I order light knowing that most of them will not finish 30% to 60% of their meal. Bring it on!

Outside of the office, I’ve always cherished any opportunity to be outdoors on the trail, backpacking/ camping, paddling down a river. I had spent many nights on the ground or in a tent and would still gladly do it if the opportunity presented itself.

I keep my powder dry and my knives sharp in case I have to bring down a cotton tail, raccoon or opossum for dinner.
I’ll eat nuts, berries, nettle, dandelions, cattail roots, etc., if need be. Not sure if that is considered a Paleolithic diet, but as long as it fills my gut and keeps me going I’m fine.

Here's a pic of my field guides. You will see a book on edible wild plants and one on outdoor survival skills.

(Click on image and then again for larger view)

http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae114/tabuka1/Books/th_IMGP2434.jpg (http://s963.photobucket.com/albums/ae114/tabuka1/Books/?action=view&current=IMGP2434.jpg)


My son has been learning stone knapping, to him it’s just a hobby, and to my lithic sensibilities, it’s a possibility given the current economic uncertainties.

http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae114/tabuka1/Misc%20Album/th_IMGP2671.jpg (http://s963.photobucket.com/albums/ae114/tabuka1/Misc%20Album/?action=view&current=IMGP2671.jpg)


You mentioned Jane Austen, so I can’t help but feel that I may have missed the boat. I took your heading at face value and conclude with the beliefe that I do have an “inner caveman”.


.

[Maximilianus]

I'm more or less in an equivalent syntony with what Gilliat stated above, mostly about morsels. Part of my upbringing revolved around not wasting any single bit of food. We were never a well-off family, so managing resources was imperative to make ends meet. On top of that, and to add an extra touch of primitiveness, I've been wearing a long hair lately... though that's more likely to be related to my Heavy Metal tendencies :p

[Shevek]

I am extremely primitive with humour, and not just regarding the content of jokes. I usually keep cool in frustrating conversations about politics/philosophy/religion/etc., even if I secretly want to smack the person I disagree with. But I find some very strange things funny, like my avatar for example, and I can never hide my laughter. I am completely unsophisticated about not laughing or making jokes in certain tense or uncalled-for situations. If I think of something funny when I'm by myself in public I'll smile or laugh; I have little control over it.

[SilentMute]

I've always actually had an interest in survival and liked gladiator movies myself. I've gotten addicted to The Hunger Games series, though I'm glad such a thing doesn't exist. I don't really believe the world is going to end, but I always did want to learn survival skills. Who knows? It could be useful. With me, my interests in gladiator games or survival has always been a challenge for myself. What can I survive?

I do a little writing myself, and I know that often my stories don't end the way I expect them to. For me, writing is like watching a movie in my head. You would think I would know the ending, being the creator, but my stories tend to surprise me.

However, I already have had experience with people interpreting my stories in a way I hadn't intended. School psychologists were often concerned, fearing I was being abused or destined to become a prostitute. It never occurred to them that I was being influenced by a popular movie I had seen and had done my own rendition of it.

My mom also often focused on some minor thing in the story that often surprised me. She gave it meaning, and I suppose sometimes she was right--it just wasn't something I had intentionally thought about.

Humor, though, is something I think everybody agrees is different for each person--though I guess there are some things most people will find funny. I will usually laugh at Jeff Foxworthy's jokes, but for the most part Saturday Night Live went totally over my head.

[Maximilianus]

What can I survive?
I think we can never be sure. The usefulness of survival skills may be just around the corner.


However, I already have had experience with people interpreting my stories in a way I hadn't intended. School psychologists were often concerned, fearing I was being abused or destined to become a prostitute. It never occurred to them that I was being influenced by a popular movie I had seen and had done my own rendition of it.
According to most of what I've seen, the ologies are sheer pseudosciences based more on preconceptions than on real facts. In other words, they rarely see beyond the tip of their noses :p Disregard them! :icon_bs: :)


My mom also often focused on some minor thing in the story that often surprised me. She gave it meaning, and I suppose sometimes she was right--it just wasn't something I had intentionally thought about.
Gail does have that particularly perspicacious touch :)

[Sydneysider]

Interesting thread idea. I would like to point out that the very beautiful woman who posted the idea is hardly a cavewoman.

Me? I am a drummer. I have nowhere to hide. ;-)

[cacian]

By the way, the point of this thread is to ask if any of you have anything that seems to bring up a primitive side to you.

Interesting thread SilentMute.
I am mysefl wondering about what primitive actually mean.
Cavemen/woman for me means someone who lived in a cave because
a) they did not have choice
b) not consider a house out of straw/wood essential
or
c) a cave appealed because it acted as a shelterfrom something rather then a mean/place to survive.

Caves are often mentioned in religions and there is one story about the prophet Mohammed retrieving a cave to receive the words of god.
References to caves have a variety of meanings in this case it is the idea of mysticism remoteness and inspirational. I am guessing Mohammed did not excerce or feel remotely cavemanish after spending most of his enlightenement moments in a cave trying write the words of God and come out with a new religion.
Rather inspirtational and not all caveman if I may note.

So to go back to the original post I think primitive is perhaps dependent on the environment one finds themselves in.
I guess primitive could be a prison cell where one is to act to be a rough ragged insensitive person in order to survive the peer pressure.
Cavemen primitiveness is slightely less unihibiting as a prison cell but I can imagine to be on the wild side.
Wilderness and cave are related in this sense.
Is there an inner wild something in me I can quite frankly say no. I have had all the trimnming and the soft faceting of what society has to offer in terms of parentage, family, frienship, large and confortable houses, education,books travels and other luxuiries for me to feel entirely docile and sensible.
I can make decisions based whata decent enviroment bestowed upon me including intelligence, throughout the years and so would I have no exuse to find an innercave person inside me.
I have never lived a cave and I guess my answer is based on this very fact.

[Volya]

cacian: the term caveman generally refers to mankind when they were still in the stages of hunter-gatherer communities, and no real civilisation was around.

[tonywalt]

I should have been suspicious when I had the urge to get a boyfriend by clubbing him over the head and dragging him home so he can mow my lawn.

Cavewomen would drag us home and make us mow the lawn?!

Lol - what a fantasy. If, and it's a big IF-I was ever clubbed and made to mow the lawn I would want some sort of Reward.

[Emil Miller]

I should have been suspicious when I had the urge to get a boyfriend by clubbing him over the head and dragging him home so he can mow my lawn.

In the French vernacular a woman's pubic hair is known as le gazon maudit which means dreadful lawn. Perhaps it's just as well that your putative boyfriend isn't a Frenchman.

[SilentMute]

In the French vernacular a woman's pubic hair is known as le gazon maudit which means dreadful lawn. Perhaps it's just as well that your putative boyfriend isn't a Frenchman.

Ouch.:eek6:

@tonywalt--well, of course, I guess that is part of the bargain.

@Volya--excellent definition.

@SydneySider--my avatar is actually Jane Badler, an actress that played on a popular sci-fi miniseries in the 1980s called "V".

@Max--I have definitely disregarded psychiatrists. Talk about the blind leading the blind. I always found that the doctors were always more nuts than me. I discovered this at thirteen, when my doctor was telling me about how she loses her temper and scratches her husband.

@Calidore--sorry, it took me a while to get the joke. That is the problem when you look at threads when you first get up in the morning.

[cacian]

In the French vernacular a woman's pubic hair is known as le gazon maudit which means dreadful lawn. Perhaps it's just as well that your putative boyfriend isn't a Frenchman.

Emil I misread that for public hair there you go.
Indeed maudit is a rather curseful a word.
Glad it is just the hair.

[Varenne Rodin]

I think sexy thoughts all the time. Does that count? Cave people were instinct driven, am I wrong?

[cacian]

I think sexy thoughts all the time. Does that count? Cave people were instinct driven, am I wrong?

Hi Varenne aren't we all? instinct driven that is?

[papayahed]

For the most part I'm a genteel Southern Belle. But there is. on occasion. times when I want to rip somebodies head off and stuff it down their throat hole. That's my cavewoman right?

[Hawkman]

I have always found that the happiest and most well adjusted people I know have lots of sex and get to kill something on a regular basis. I'm afraid my inner caveman is going hungry. Unfortunately I'm too civilized. I dare say that, should I be pushed far enough, I will one day rampage through the streets shagging anything which I deem shaggable and killing anything I think I can get away with killing, like Bankers, Middle Management Executives and Civil Servants. Of course, there is bound to be a certain degree of crossover in my scope of unadulterated lusts, in that some Middle Management Executives, Bankers and Civil Servants, may well be shaggable, in which case I will shag them first, and then kill them. When this happens I will doubtless join the ranks of the well adjusted, at least for a while. It is a state I will enjoy, right up until the moment some police marksman decides to ruin my day.

Until then I'll just be the miserable bastard I am now and occasionally vent my frustration in cuttingly witty satirical poems. Ain't civilization depressing!

[Hawkman]

I think sexy thoughts all the time. Does that count? Cave people were instinct driven, am I wrong?

This is a debatable point, I feel. I think it would be more accurate to say they were driven by need. If one accepts the concept of Kunst Wille, then the need to express themselves in art, as in the many instances of cave art dating from the paleolithic, this need might be deemed instinctual, at least in some cases. The basic needs of humanity are food, shelter, security and sex, but does art truly belong in any of these categories? True, representations of hunting scenes and quarry animals might be seen as comprising part of a tradition of hunting, but not all cave art is limited to this narrow field. Is religion/sprituality a basic requirement for the human psyche? It has been speculated that some cave art might have spritual or religious significance. Much however, does not. Hand prints are a kind of prehistoric graffiti, indicating self awareness and the need to leave an impression of self in time and space.

Other purely representational images simply seem to record what the "artist" has seen in his territory.

Perhaps the inner caveman is not actually an unthinking dullard locked into the pursuit of lustful appetites, but is actually a spiritual being in tune with his environment and possessing a highly developed sense of his place within it.

Live and be well - H

[SilentMute]

Oh, definitely! It is always the civilized ones you have to worry about.

[cacian]

For the most part I'm a genteel Southern Belle. But there is. on occasion. times when I want to rip somebodies head off and stuff it down their throat hole. That's my cavewoman right?

Hi papayahed what does a genteel southern Belle aspire to ?
The occasional feeling of anger/frustration to that description you have just put so eloquantly is more or less commom for all characters.

[Emil Miller]

Emil I misread that for public hair there you go.
Indeed maudit is a rather curseful a word.
Glad it is just the hair.

This is why one must always check one's spelling even though it's in the nature of things that the occasional error will get through.
There was a British film comedy years ago in which a sculptor was painstakingly working on a statue of a local dignitary and he sweated blood to get every detail right before the statue was finally located in the town square. At the opening ceremony the mayor pulled on a rope and the drapes fell away to reveal carved on the plinth: This statue was erected by pubic subscription.

[cacian]

This is why one must always check one's spelling even though it's in the nature of things that the occasional error will get through.
There was a British film comedy years ago in which a sculptor was painstakingly working on a statue of a local dignitary and he sweated blood to get every detail right before the statue was finally located in the town square. At the opening ceremony the mayor pulled on a rope and the drapes fell away to reveal carved on the plinth: This statue was erected by pubic subscription.

Haha. I love predestined mistakes especially when films take them for granted but in a fun way.
Thank you for bringing up this up Emil.
Sorry to the OP I do not mean to derail the thread.

[Varenne Rodin]

Hi Varenne aren't we all? instinct driven that is?

Sure, to an extent. We frequently override our instincts with reasoning.

[Varenne Rodin]

This is a debatable point, I feel. I think it would be more accurate to say they were driven by need. If one accepts the concept of Kunst Wille, then the need to express themselves in art, as in the many instances of cave art dating from the paleolithic, this need might be deemed instinctual, at least in some cases. The basic needs of humanity are food, shelter, security and sex, but does art truly belong in any of these categories? True, representations of hunting scenes and quarry animals might be seen as comprising part of a tradition of hunting, but not all cave art is limited to this narrow field. Is religion/sprituality a basic requirement for the human psyche? It has been speculated that some cave art might have spritual or religious significance. Much however, does not. Hand prints are a kind of prehistoric graffiti, indicating self awareness and the need to leave an impression of self in time and space.

Other purely representational images simply seem to record what the "artist" has seen in his territory.

Perhaps the inner caveman is not actually an unthinking dullard locked into the pursuit of lustful appetites, but is actually a spiritual being in tune with his environment and possessing a highly developed sense of his place within it.

Live and be well - H

I don't disagree with any of that. Cerebrally, their brains were more active in the pleasure/pain cortex and in the amygdala than in the frontal cortex (emotional and logical reasoning zone); they probably had a ways to grow in the motor cortex as well. Instinct would have been the rule, but obviously there was a spark of curiosity at some point that gave rise to more complex thought development.

As for religious significance, I never wanted any. Am I spiritual? How should I be classified?

[cacian]

Sure, to an extent. We frequently override our instincts with reasoning.

I thought instinct is a reasoning a primary one.
Obviously I only see instinct as a positive input and not a negative one because it implies survival.
If cavemen was instinctive why did he live in a cave and not somewhere on dry land in the open and fresh air with nature had to offer?
Animals do not live in caves they live amongst nature in the wilderness in the open air.
Caves suggests reclusivity and the need to remove oneself from reality nature and its surrounding.
Caves are rocks and rocks are harsh dark and cold.

[Hawkman]

I think you might be going further back in human development than Homo sapiens sapiens. Certainly, Homo sapiens sapiens have been "cavemen" in that they lived or took shelter in caves and produced cave art. Homo sapiens sapiens or modern man, has been around for some 200,000 years and most known cave art is probably no older than around 30,000 years. So, caveman as modern man is essentially us and brain development the same, i.e. ours. If your idea is that "caveman" equates with Neanderthal I'm not sure that I would agree that this should exclude modern humans from the definition. Therefore I would argue that assertions that caveman brain development was different from ours should necessarily be considered speculative.

Certainly cavemen would have been better able to survive in a wild environment and they would definitely be more in tune with nature and its resources. In short, they had a highly developed, intimate relationship with the landscape, which we, at least most of us, have not.

As for religious significance, at least yours, you should not confuse modern, organised, authoritarian religious observance with natural spirituality. The two are not the same, in fact in contemporary society I'd be more inclined to equate the former with religiosity rather than genuine spirituality. Spirituality can be as little, or as much, as an instinctive sense of place, an emotional or intellectual reaction to the environment. It doesn't mean you have to subscribe to any established religious group's theology.

I suspect that everyone has an element of spirituality at their core, even you Varenne - lol.

Live and be well - H

[papayahed]

Hi papayahed what does a genteel southern Belle aspire to ?


Drinking mint julips on the veranda.

[Sancho]

Splendid thread, Silent.

Alcohol. A few high balls and I am in full caveman mode – albeit a charming caveman, if I must say so myself. Caveman mode, of course, comes after progressing through the smartest-man-in-the-world and the strongest-man-in-the-world phases of being drunk. (side note: after the caveman phase comes a level of drunkenness known as – being invisible)

Traffic. Two or three pinheads in bubba trucks cut me off in traffic and I’m ready to string ‘em up with their own pork-rind impacted intestines, but then my prefrontal cortex usually takes over and I mash play on the CD player and crank a righteously mellow Grateful Dead track: Truckin’ like the Doo-Da Man… Far out, man. Peace and Love.

Shooting dice. I’m at a craps table in Vegas and the shooter is on an unbelievable hot streak: “Roll dem bones, baby, roll dem bones! ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS on a Six – the hard way. I can NOT lose tonight.” In other words, I’m going totally ape with my chips. Wait a minute – is going ape further down the evolutionary chain than going caveman?

Politics. In a political discussion I usually turn the clock back another couple hundred million years and go reptile on my opponent because I’m only using that little nugget of my noggin somewhere between my cerebral cortex and my spinal cord – the Basal Ganglia, or thereabouts.

Ooou, that fly looks tasty.