Laughter

Welcome to class everyone, today in “Intro to Xenobiology” we'll be discussing a soft-bodied biped supported by a rigid axial endoskeleton. Turn to page 213. From this organisms’ perspective, it was long ago, but for the universe it was a moment. At the time, this organism was beginning to develop into a herding species and one of the first things necessary for any herding species is communication. Some organisms do this by evolving bodily structures that allow their colors to change, some do it by movement, some do it by chemical pheromones, and the list goes on and on. The organisms we’re discussing today have fallen down a common evolutionary path for herding creatures; they have acquired the capabilities of creating and interpreting sound waves for communication. I know this may sound ridiculous from our perspectives, for our ancestors only discovered sound waves just recently, yet on many worlds detecting sound waves is an important evolutionary trait that typically develops a few billion years after abiogenesis. The organisms that evolve sound for communication are almost always ones which use air as a part of one or more essential chemical processes. This organism’s chemical process uses a biofuel, Oxygen, to power an unusually slow combustion reaction which converts a simple biomolecule constructed from Hydrogen, Carbon, and Oxygen into the waste products Carbon Dioxide and Dihydrogen Monoxide. Of the species on this world, the use of Oxygen as an oxidizer allowed them to go from producing 2 of their energy storing biomolecules all the way up to 38 after multiple processing phases. When this aerobic process evolved, the cells that used it were able to support larger and more complex structures. Today nearly every multicellular organism on this world uses this same process which accounts for approximately 15% of the biomass on the planet. The origin of the process however is quite striking… and may shock some of you. The process works by means of permanent enslavement of purple non-sulpher bacteria. This was achieved by using complex import machinery to insert the bacteria into a macromolecule structure within their inner membranes for the purpose of extracting energy for the host... Now there are two sides to every story and I want you to know both sides and I don’t want to influence your opinions. Some say that the organisms are in a mutualistic relationship… Some say that the organisms benefit each other, let's call them ‘Mutualists’. Mutualists believe that the aerobic organism provides the energy for the engulfer and that the engulfer creates a protected environment with a comfortable amount of nutrients… Now to explain the next part you need to know something. Over time the engulfed cell and most of the engulfers became inseparable… They just can’t survive without each other. But even with this, let’s call the other side ‘Separationists’. Separationists see this as a clear individual organism and that this organism should be given the choice to leave… IF THEY WANT. But that’s a huge political debate that I don’t want to get into. So we’ve established the foundations of the organism now, the usage of air for their most basic chemical process. This organism has an intake valve that keeps a rhythmically refreshing pool of molecular Oxygen supplied to the larger ‘body’ and this very mechanism is used for primary communication. As an organism grows into a communal species, oftentimes the first form of communication they need is for identifying threats. Within this organism, threats could be identified by pushing air out from their internal pool of Oxygen and constricted using specialized tissues to produce sound. This noise is often a high frequency ‘scream’ that can easily cut through the lower frequency ambient noise of the environment. Oftentimes herding organisms' communication elicits the same emotions in other organisms in a way that is especially potent to members of their own ‘species’. With this being said, the louder and higher the pitch, the greater the threat and the greater the emotional response. Now here is where the interesting piece of their history comes in. If a member of the species communicates a threat via a cutting noise, the other members would be on high alert… Overestimating a threat could lead to ‘embarrassment’ or ‘guilt’, which are feelings of distressful self-reflection or self-reproach respectively. These are both common emotions in herding creatures. The embarrassment comes from believing that other members of your species have ill opinions of you. In communal species the fear of damage to one’s social identity can be overwhelming; the idea that they think you do not possess ‘positive qualities’, or that you do have one or more ‘negative qualities’ can ostracize herd members from social interactions that the organism craves. The fear of embarrassment is one that has helped the species survive by reducing the number of mistakes and helping the species connect with each other through homogeny achieved by striving towards the same valued qualities. Guilt however is the belief that one ‘deserves’ to have negative consequences for one’s actions. In communal species there are often social systems that develop to enact a system of accountability. Guilt is a more internal emotion that can be hard to detect, but just like laughter there are forceful signs that have evolved that other herd members can sometimes intuitively detect. Guilt therefore is an emotion evolved for self-punishment which has helped the species survive because of the self-governing nature of the emotion, even the very fear of acquiring guilt is a powerful self-governing tool. Because of the fear of ‘embarrassment’ and ‘guilt’ an organism may not want to communicate when a threat was misidentified, yet the organism has evolved a system in place to combat this desire. The way it has evolved to do this is by forcefully triggering a physical response using the same ‘scream’ at a lower stress level. The laughter, much like the scream, is propagated amongst other members by forcefully causing the reactions within members who ‘hear’ either sound. This is a complex system and herd members could attempt to withhold either sound, but sometimes the force is so powerful they can’t resist. Holding in a scream by choice can oftentimes be beneficial for hiding because predators can detect the sound waves used for communication – as such screams are less difficult to resist, but laughter is different. Laughter is a reaction that is so forceful because the information given to herd members is so beneficial. Furthermore, because laughter is important, it is an extremely difficult sound to be made on purpose – that is to say other herd members can clearly identify inauthentic laughter easier than other inauthentic communication. With all this being said however laughter is actually seen quite positively because the organism evolved to derive pleasure from the reaction to further incentivize its usage. Laughter today is most commonly used for that relief and is used as a form of bonding between herd members. Over time, the species further developed to have specialized sections for communication clustered within the center of their nervous system. This allowed them to produce more complex sounds which were assigned a variety of meanings, while the original sounds separated ever further as the capability to create and perceive them did. Over time the species learned ways of triggering the response purposefully because they desired the pleasure response. They even invented a system of currency which could be exchanged for goods and services, and soon after, specialized herd members practiced triggering ‘laughter’ as a service. Emotions can do all sorts of things for the organism though, and could be considered the main motivator of the species. Generally they desire ‘happiness’ and avoid ‘sadness’, they seek ‘pleasure’ and avoid ‘pain’, they’ve created concepts of ‘power’ and ‘status’ and wish for that while simultaneously fearing other concepts they created like ‘poverty’ and ‘oppression’. These are only general rules though. Many people seek specific emotions, and they have craftsmen to produce work that elicits these responses. Even though they generally seek ‘positive emotions’ and avoid ‘negative emotions’, most members purposefully sample a variety of emotions along many spectrums – but each member has individual preferences. Craftsmen among the herd have a wide range of techniques and technologies to assist in delivering emotional responses as a service. They may create one or more visual representations that can be interpreted by their photoreceptors. They produce specific patterns of sound waves that can be interpreted by auditory organs. Even organic matter consumed for sustenance can be interpreted by specialized chemoreceptors. Narrative, emotion, and meaning can be derived from any and all of their senses and range from representational to abstract forms. These feelings are present in most of the life of this world as an important survival mechanism. Over time the organism drastically changed their environment by eliminated ancestral threats. Yet, even with all their effort many threats still exist in their freshly formed environment. Their nervous system attached their survival responses from old threats onto these new threats even though they were not as deadly physically. New threats formed from both internal and external stimuli and could arise from anything between the fear of mishandling inconsequential communications to the dread they feel from exiting their state of self-sustainment. This doesn’t make the threats any less however, regardless of severity of the threat, the scale of the emotional response, or the ratio between them. For the emotions these organisms feel are as real as anything that can quantitatively be measured. Sometimes the negative emotions are so overwhelming that even the forceful reaction of ‘laughter’ is suppressed. For these herd members they can often times be in danger of purposefully exiting their state of self-sustainment. That's all for today, remember to pick up your graded exams on your way out and don't forget that your essays on the ‘Principles of Interspecies Ethics’ are due next class.