I read a research paper entitled "Do Animals Have Culture?"
The answer seems to be — well, it depends on what you mean by culture. Oh.
They define culture as behavior learned socially, i.e. not purely instinctual or a result of the pressure of environmental contingencies. From this they conclude, unexpectedly, that fish have more culture than most primates. We tend to look at other primates as being the most likely candidates for possessing culture because of our bias — being one of them ourselves. There's also a bias in attributing culture to beings with larger brains.
Turns out that's just not the case. Fish adapt to social situations and learn in new social environments much more than many primates do. You don't have to have much brains to be cultured.
So then, what ARE our large brains for?
Went to a Christmas extravaganza in Williamsburg put on by a pal of the Fischerspooner crowd. It was a campy sloppy version of a Radio City Christmas spectacle — dancing Cossacks, a karaoke disco version of the Messiah (very funny), girls doing gymnastic choreography on ropes suspended from the ceiling. In between acts a man in a rented costume and crown narrated a slide show about the history of St. Nick.
(the following from various web sites):
Every comic book hero worth his salt has an archenemy. Batman has theJoker, James Bond has Dr. No, Luke Skywalker has Darth Vader, and Santa Claus has Krampus.
...Wait a minute, Santa has an archenemy?
Krampus is one of those quirky survivals of a pagan tradition that preceded Christianity. Much like Santa himself. Or Jesus. Oops, did I say Jesus? Never mind.
Santa Claus is a Christianization of a handful of traditional winter solstice figures, who morphed into St. Nicholas after the Catholics swarmed into Austria. Santa was most heavily influenced by the Norse Thor, who had a long white beard and cheerfully rode a flying chariot. The enemy of good in Norse mythology was Loki, a figure usually depicted as falling somewhere in the range between Satan himself and Carrot Top.
Here's St. Nick with Krampus Klaus (yes!) hovering in the background:
In Bavaria St. Nikolaus may be followed by the hideous Klaubauf, a shaggy monster with horns. In Lower Austria the saint is followed by a similar horned creature, called Krampus, covered with bells and dragging chains; in Styria this attendant is named Bartel.
The lingering afterimage of Loki became part of the template for Krampus.
Here are some Austian Krampus pix:
One of the relative benefits of paganism over Christianity is that paganism usually has holidays devoted to wild orgiastic excess. The Celts indulged in this behavior around Easter, which led to the adoption of the Easter bunny as mascot for the Christian version. Austrians liked to keep warm during those cold winter months, if you catch my drift.
Once the Christians criminalized orgiastic excess, the Krampus-fertility nexus evolved into more of a taboo-stalker kind of scenario, in which the devilish figure, traditionally depicted with a swollen foot-long red tongue, malevolently thrusts himself on nubile women who are eternally "protesting" his advances. But not protesting too much. After all, he had a foot-long red tongue.
As a warm up there were folks dressed in fuzzy versions of Christmas animals wandering around. They referred to it as a human petting zoo. Some of them were holding drinks. Furry reindeer, mice and penguins. A woman asked if I knew about plushies. I replied I knew about the people who dressed up as animals at football games and other sports events. Why, I asked, is there another kind of plushy?
It turns out there are conventions of people who are "into" plushiness. It definitely has a sexual side, and how silly or kinky that gets is anyone's guess. I said this sounded like one of those sexual areas I don't want to know about. As a college acquaintance once said, when informed about some of the more unusual practices in the big cities, "I'm going back to Sheboygan!"
From a website:
A plushophile is someone who loves plushies. This can be for any reason and ranges anywhere from those who love to collect them to those who like to cuddle, sleep with or who become sexually involved with their plushies. Many, probably most, plushophiles are also furries. It is never safe to assume that particular plushophiles are sexually active with plushies, nor that they are inactive with people because of their plushophilia. Each individual is different.
