Have You Ever Been Kissed By a Chimpanzee?

Or even hugged by a chimpanzee?

I haven't, but Zoologist Desmond Morris relates his experience of both in his book Initmate Behaviours:

"If you have ever had a close personal relationship with a chimpanzee, you will know that back-patting is not a uniquely human activitiy. If your ape is particularly pleased to see you, he is likely to come up, embrace you, press his lips warmly and wetly to the side of your neck, then start rhythmically patting you on the back with his hands. It is a strange sensation, because in one way it is so human and yet in another it is subtly different. The kiss is not quite like a human kiss. I can best describe it as being more of a soft-open-mouth-press. And the patting is both lighter and faster than human back-patting, with the two ape hands alternating rythmically. Nevertheless, the actions of embracing, kissing and patting are basically the same in the two species, and the social signals they transmit appear to be identical. We can therefore start out with a resonsable guess that back-patting is biological feature of the human animal."

And you thought you chose to do that? Nah. You're an animal, sorry.

Being in the closing stages - emotionally - of a break-up, Morris turned out to be the perfect book to be reading. His take on behaviour dovetales neatly with FM's own exhortations that a vast majority of our behaviour is sub-consciously driven.

And as if the syncronisty of Desmond's book and my breakup was not enough for me to do away with the pretence that I planned all this, suddenly - TODAY - an email arrives announcing an article in the "New Scientist" quoting ex-Congress guest and Alexander fan Lucy Brown:

“The big question about why we mammals affiliate with one potential partner versus another finally has a handle we can use in a small animal model,” says Lucy Brown at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. “Not surprisingly, it involves reward-evaluation functions learned from the outside world and processed in ‘newer’ parts of the brain.”

Both these observations start to strip away the pretense that we are behaving by making informed decisions, and bares raw the primitive drives pulsing up deep from within recesses in our brains.

So much of what we do is primitive. I didn't intend to fall in love with this man.

We dress it up with nice verbs, flourishes, hand gestures and cultural accessories - but strip all that away and what's left is basic, primitive stuff. Species level behaviour, manifested by a majority of mammals, not just the homo-sapien variety.

On Lucy's quote I had been wondering just that - why did I fall for this guy? Why not another? If - as Byron Katie keeps insisting - I am projecting on to him every thing I feel, think and see, then why him? Why not other? Is it just a matching story?

There has to be SOMETHING special about your partner, right?

We want to believe that, and yet the New Scientist article articulates how voles - like humans - become life long partners based on chemical reactions in their brain. A reaction that researchers were able to manipulate to "encouage" love-at-first-sight: a vole-to-vole romance set up to last a lifetime.

Wouldn't that be nice for all the lonelys out there?

Gather us all together in a room, pump our brains full of light and presto! Love-at-first-sight. Scary stuff. Shades of Brave New World. Huxley, also a fan of FM, offered many predictions that are today slowly panning out.

Many years ago, I decided to conduct research on this my Self.

There was a woman I liked, but felt no strong sexual attraction - and proposed we spend the summer together as mates. She was happy to agree and so our affair began.

At the very end, as we were making love for the last time, I felt something deep and warm towards her. Was that just my oxytocin working it's wonders, or had my consciousness shifted?

I shall never know because just then she declared an end to it, telling me:

"I've learnt more in the last 2 months than I have in 5 years, and I never want to see you again."

And we never did see each other again, that was 27 years ago.

Which all goes to point to the truth of FM's observation about the power of habit and how we are driven into behaviours thinking we have choice, when choice has very little to do with it.

Changing behaviours is an incredibly time-consuming affair.

Any member of a 12 step program can confirm that. It's a daily affair. My own research on change led me to the enneagram, and creating what I call the Change Compass: a guide to how behaviour is consciously evolved on a daily basis.

All explained in my essay on the genesis of the Change Compass, which you can download and read here if you haven't already registered:

ThinkingBody Online.

Picture credit: Pixabay.com