The Strauss-Khan Syndrome

Evolutionary processes took eons to come up with a rational civilized up-right walking human. Through cataclysmic weather changes, pandemic diseases, gene mutations, adaptations, and eventual bottle-neck phenomena, about two hundred thousand years ago modern man emerged—complete with a central control systems that regulated the internal working systems and response to external stimuli. While this man could make tools, it was only forty thousand years ago that his tools became more complex as he began to associate with his neighbors. The dawn of human civilization had arrived, and by ten thousand years ago began the ascent to the present days. Thanks to the Holocene period of relative climatic calm.

If we take the premise that all sentient beings came from the same source, human beings should have similar basic mechanisms for regulating our activities, such as internal workings, desire for protection from danger, and desire for feeding and replicating. These basic qualities took millions of years to encode into our genetic make up. What happened forty thousand years ago was a fortuitous change (mutation) that happened only to the Homo sapiens. This brought about self-awareness and a sense of reading others and relating, and eventually to sound-making that evolved into systematic language.

We now know that the basic coding relate to lower parts of the brain, and we share that with other sentient beings. This is the seat of survival and self-perpetuation—the home of instincts. The upper part is the seat of reason that builds cathedrals, high-speed trains, civilizations, or reflects before acting.

Now, in a clutch of civilization versus instincts, which would win? The former has been around for about forty thousand years. The latter has been refined for millions of years. If experience counts, you do the math. The answer can come by way of examples. The president of the most powerful nation in the present world dips a cigar inside a student intern working for him. Is this sexual depravity, or having been a victim of an ambush by a force greater than his reputed intellect? An eloquent governor, who shook up Wall Street’s greedy titans and is destined for the White House, spends thousands on escort service, aka, hooker service. Is this stupidity or what? A Bible-Belt preacher man gets hooked on the inside rear end of male orifices. Then we have priests who like boys a little too much. What’s up with that?

And, of course, we have the story of the day: Strauss-Khan, the masterful IMF managing director, who is built like a Spanish fighting bull. He is the man who would be King of France. Now, his chances are dashed to ashes, and we scratch our heads.

“There, but for the grace of God, goes I,” the man said. And we should join in chorus if we are wise.

The same heuristic tools we often use for learning and making quick decisions, sometimes ambush us to our detriment. As the upper brain function is crowded out, we cut to the chase: reach for the jugular; save a child from danger, oblivious to our own safety; or go for the cunt or die.

The top dogs whose dick-brains take over are not doing these things because of power as some women think. These testosterone-laden executives are often sharp and witty, caring family men who are men’s men. May be in the scramble to reach the mountain top they forgot to mindfully throw a lasso and tame the beast, which is at the same time a source of their effectiveness.