“The fruit falls not far from the tree.” That’s atavism.
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Recently I bought a DNA testing kit. Who’s not curious about their lineage and the latent atavisms that linger there? Let me tell you about it.
Don’t let anybody fool you…there are some traits and family traditions you’re not responsible for. They’ve been dumped on you by some twisted act of fate. Like chips off the old block, you might say, the luck of the draw.
These aberrant idiosyncrasies are peculiar to birth and genetic malfunctions. They’re passed down through some wild gene pulsing through our ancestral blood. Watch your actions, listen to your vocal inflections. Your proclivities are like ancient arrowheads, fragments of the past that remain.
That settled, we can relax in absolute assurance of self-acquittal, right? Wrong. There’s one small detail: the ‘momentum of atavism’ can erupt at any time. The iniquities of the fathers continue to visit the children well past the 3rd and 4th generation. The mirror lies…we’re more than we see.
These words were written by Martin Amis in his book, Koba the Dread. Whenever you sit around feeling sorry for yourself, enjoying a pity party and lamenting on how life has let you down, then read a few chapters of this book. It details the atrocities of Josef Stalin, a man who displayed a certain sadistic enthusiasm for violence in the maniacal extermination of 20 million countrymen. It offers a perspective on life.
And if that’s not enough to jolt you back to reality, pick up the Bible and read about the apocalyptic consummation of history in John’s book, The Revelation. Volcanic flare-ups, bimbo eruptions and mea culpas extracted by the #MeTooMovement are entertaining, but they are no comparison to the lake of fire and the bowls of wrath.
Who knows where atavism starts, much less where it ends. It’s systemic to the species. I speculate it originated with Cain, Adam’s first son who murdered his brother, Abel. He was, you know, the de facto progenitor of the human race; and, he was a murderer. We live in savage times.
My first experience with an atavistic sideshow was a Sunday excursion to the Angola State Prison rodeo. Yes, the prisoners were the cowboys in a real live rodeo. Obviously the warden utilized his own gulag goading to encourage volunteerism.
We sat among several thousand spectators, many of whom reflected familial resemblances to the inmate cowboys. Their lifeless smiles and wild, glittering eyes gave them away. Maybe it was just too many encounters with mug shot cameras that exposed their atavistic throwbacks. Not their fault…who asks to be born?
Culture has its own current. It drifts along with the memes prevailing at the time. Look anywhere. Like today’s so-called ‘fake news’—lies, wild pontifications and outrageous fabrications, repeated long enough, can sway a collective mindset from covert to overt in a short time.
Now take Big Harvey W, a mogul crazed with hubris at the head of the line of narcissistic display. He has sown a whirlwind by mixing money and power without restraint. His scandal paints a visual exposure of atavism at its low-rent apotheosis.
But he’s not alone. Daily doses of decadent impropriety assail our senses. The gene of lust is a raging fire. It’s shut up in our very bones and flows hot in the circuits of our blood. Men everywhere are running for cover, hiring ‘fixers’ for their follies and proving that atavism is rampart among us.
Now back to my DNA test. It pays to be cautious about these tests. A friend told me he discovered he had two children in California that he didn’t know about. His wife was more than curious. I was hoping for no such surprise.
I finally received the results: 65% English-Irish; 15% French-German; 15% Northern Europe; a little bit Eastern European and the rest Iberian. Harmless enough, except for one small detail.
At the bottom of the report, almost like a post script, these words appear: “Of special note, your DNA indicated 79% more of the Neanderthal variable than all of the other tests we have ever performed.”
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After the shock wore off, my family accepted the news. They weren’t all that surprised. It probably answered a lot of heretofore unanswered questions.
But thankfully I had no children in California. Which proves that Neanderthals are atavistically monogamous or, it’s the reason the species is now extinct.
Bud Hearn
June 9, 2018