Being direct... AdVantage Oct 2005
What Can 160 000 Gall Wasps Tell Us About Human Communication?
Large-scale aggregation of information can help us to better understand the individual ...
A long time ago, a teacher of mine strongly recommended to his young class that whatever else we might choose to do with our lives; we should always find the time, and therefore make the effort, to read as much as possible. He taught us that human life is a constant process of experience and of learning.
It seems to me that our world may have 'evolved' to the extent that the focus today has become one of chasing 'pleasure' almost to the exclusion of all else, and any concerted effort at expanding one's learning through reading - is now considered a waste of 'limited' time. Remember too - last month I wrote about the sad sound-bite world of business communication and how 'being too busy' has almost become an excuse for customers (who have ALL the rights remember) not to pay attention to communication detail.
Isn't this just a cop-out? Isn't the quality of our lives also influenced by the things we learn as well as the pleasures we experience? Is it not absolutely vital that a positive attitude towards being prepared to learn should coexist with our desire for pure pleasure? Is learning itself not also a pleasure? Fortunately I am a voracious reader of all sorts of books, as I believe that reading has helped me to gain much insight into using appropriate communication to try and change customer behaviour.
It was with this in mind that a couple of Sundays ago I picked up a copy of the book: Kinsey - a Biography which is a story of the life of the (in)famous researcher of the mid-1950's: Alfred Kinsey, author of The Kinsey Report. Now, before anyone suggests that I chose this book because of its salacious and controversial subject matter - human sexuality, let me put the record straight and say - absolutely!
But, jokes aside, I had become aware of publicity surrounding the film of the same name, yet for reasons that I simply cannot remember now, did not get the opportunity to see the film before it disappeared from our movie screens. So, when I saw the book on the shelf, I decided that it may perhaps be worth reading.
What I did not expect was to be able to expand my appreciation of the complexities of human interaction and communication through reading about the history of this most remarkable individual, whose understanding and personal celebration of life - both drove him incessantly, as well as liberated him from the environmental restrictions of his upbringing.
Amongst many other things, Kinsey was a most accomplished musician who also discovered rather early in life, that he had both the passion and the patience to undertake enormous amounts of research into a chosen field, and it was this research that enabled him to learn more and more through extensive personal observation.
Kinsey graduated from university with very high honours and decided that he would join the Bussey Institute of Applied Biology to pursue his interest in Taxonomy. Taxonomy is the study of variation, of variety, and Kinsey elected to put his particular research emphasis on studying the American Gall Wasp. He apparently chose the Gall Wasp because in the whole field of biology, it was rather under-researched.
Kinsey was a committed believer in Darwin's theory of evolution, but it was through his work on studying literally tens of thousands of Gall Wasps over some 12 years - that he was eventually able to demonstrate that while all cellular organisms - plants, animals, insects, humans etc may have common genetic and other characteristics; they each remain individual examples of their species.
'…New species do not appear by an accretion of small variations, but by abrupt and substantial changes….He also showed that as far as Galls went, isolation was probably more important as a factor in species evolution than survival of the fittest…' This factor alone is important in realising the individual character of human beings, and how people's understanding of all sorts of communication can be influenced by their unique conditioning and experience.
What drove Kinsey to move his field of study from Gall Wasps to human sexuality? As a result of some changes to Indiana State law, the University decided to start some 'Marriage Courses' as a means to teach sexual health - a perceived requirement in the fight against a 'VD epidemic' raging through parts of the US in the 1930's. Kinsey became driven by the opportunity to teach a course based on
- the sexual bases of society - from insects to anthropoids;
- reproductive anatomy;
- the techniques of sexual release and so on.
One must appreciate that all of this took place in the mid-1930's when people simply did not discuss sex at all. As more and more students took his 'Marriage Course' so his prodigious approach to research began to kick in. He started to ask his students to volunteer their own sex histories. It was through his ongoing detailed analysis of many people's sexual history that he was able to grasp the influence of (mainly) psychological factors in the liberation or repression of - an individual's approach to sex.
Should anyone be interested in how large-scale analysis of individual behaviour can throw light on a myriad of human attitudinal and communication issues - then do get yourself a copy of this book as a possible aid to expanding your learning!