When I was 14, a schoolfriend lived on a chicken farm. Her parents would get crates of day-old chicks from the commercial hatchery, 50,000 or 100,000 at a time, in trays of 100, stacks of 2000, delivered on one or two trucks. They would go into sheds with hanging automatic feeder dishes, water drips, and clean sawdust. There they would jostle and peck and grow and crap until they were 12 weeks old and 1.5kg each and still going "peep peep", wherupon other trucks would come, they would get packed into crates of 20, stacks of 160, and ten trucks, and off to the processing plant they would go. In a hot summer, 30% of the chooks would die on a 40 degree day. Otherwise, the yield was 90%.
A few times, my friend held a 'chicken throwing' party and sleepover, which for her parents meant cheap labour. Our job was to unload the day-old chicks into the big shed.
The thing is, day-old chicks have brains which are programmed to follow anything that moves and doesn't eat them and isn't another chicken. Specifically, gumboots. Or mother hens. But mostly gumboots. There isn't much that is funnier than being followed around a shed by 50,000 fluffy yellow pompoms.
By the time they have been left more or less alone in the shed for 3 weeks, they have forgotten their imprinting and don't flock to your gumboots.
Human brains have the same flock triggers in them, craving closeness and protection and benign authority.
The things we follow are only a little more sophisticated than gumboots.
Our own parents and parent-like figures.
Charismatic dictators and celebrities.
Sexual partners, particularly your first one or first few (Take note, if you tell yourself you can have sex without attachment - your primitive brain attaches itself to your partner during sex and you can't stop it! So for the sake of your brain, don't shag someone if you don't mean it.)
In fact, our brains are imprinted by anyone who evokes a feeling of connection and trust.
I am following the gumboots of one particular man, just like a fluffy baby chicken.
He is off to bed right now and so am I.
A few times, my friend held a 'chicken throwing' party and sleepover, which for her parents meant cheap labour. Our job was to unload the day-old chicks into the big shed.
The thing is, day-old chicks have brains which are programmed to follow anything that moves and doesn't eat them and isn't another chicken. Specifically, gumboots. Or mother hens. But mostly gumboots. There isn't much that is funnier than being followed around a shed by 50,000 fluffy yellow pompoms.
By the time they have been left more or less alone in the shed for 3 weeks, they have forgotten their imprinting and don't flock to your gumboots.
Human brains have the same flock triggers in them, craving closeness and protection and benign authority.
The things we follow are only a little more sophisticated than gumboots.
Our own parents and parent-like figures.
Charismatic dictators and celebrities.
Sexual partners, particularly your first one or first few (Take note, if you tell yourself you can have sex without attachment - your primitive brain attaches itself to your partner during sex and you can't stop it! So for the sake of your brain, don't shag someone if you don't mean it.)
In fact, our brains are imprinted by anyone who evokes a feeling of connection and trust.
I am following the gumboots of one particular man, just like a fluffy baby chicken.
He is off to bed right now and so am I.
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