Chapter 5 Chapter 4 Exploration

All mammals have a strong urge to explore, but for some it's especially important.The importance of exploration to various mammals depends largely on the degree of specialization they have achieved during evolution.If they had devoted all their energy in evolution to perfecting a particular means of survival, they would not have bothered to manage the complexity of the world around them.As long as anteaters have ants and koala bears have trees, they will be content and their lives will be easy to maintain.In contrast, non-specialized mammals—the opportunists of the animal kingdom—don't dare to slack off.They never quite grasp where the next meal will come from.They must know every nook and cranny where they can find food, try every possible opportunity, and keep an eye out for the lucky ones.They must be explored, and must continue to be explored.They must investigate and constantly retest their findings.They must maintain a high level of curiosity at all times.

Exploration is not just about solving the problem of eating, self-defense also requires mammals to explore.Hedgehogs, porcupines and skunks can sniff and run around without any scruples, making a lot of noise and not caring if they startle their natural enemies.Unarmed mammals, however, must always be on their toes.They must recognize signs of danger and know escape routes.To survive, they must know their range well.From the above perspective, not going down the path of specialization seems like a poor solution.Why are there still opportunistic animals?The answer is: there are unexpected serious difficulties in the specialized life path.As long as specialized means of survival work, all will be well.But once the environment changes drastically, specialized animals run into trouble.If it went to extremes in specialization and outstripped its competitors, it would have to undergo a major change in its genetic makeup; and once stuck, its genetic makeup would be irreversible.If the eucalyptus forests are wiped out, the koala bears will become extinct.If a carnivore with teeth as strong as iron could chew up the hard spines on the hedgehog, the hedgehog would be an easy animal to hunt.Life may always be hard for the opportunistic animal, but it is always quick to adapt to whatever drama its circumstances play out.If you take away the rats that the mongoose eats, it will eat eggs and snails instead.If you deprive a monkey of fruits and berries, it can eat roots and shoots instead.

Of all the non-specialized animals, apes and monkeys are probably the most unscrupulous.As a group, their specialty is not to specialize.Among apes and monkeys, the Naked Ape is unparalleled in its unscrupulousness.This is another aspect of its neoteny mechanism.All young monkeys have a strong sense of curiosity, but the intensity of their curiosity gradually diminishes during the course of adulthood.In us, the curiosity of childhood is gradually strengthened, and it accompanies us into adulthood.We never stop investigating.We are never content to scrape by in our pursuit of knowledge.After solving a problem, we move on to solve a new problem.This has become the greatest survival secret of our species.

The tendency to be attracted to novelty is called neophilia, and it is the opposite of neophobia.Anything unfamiliar is potentially dangerous.Maybe you should avoid unfamiliar things?But if you avoid it, how can you understand the unfamiliar?The urge to be new drives us on, sustaining our interest until the unknown becomes known, until well-informed knowledge makes us despise it.During this time, we have gained valuable experience and stored it for later retrieval when needed.The child repeats this process from beginning to end.His urge to seek new knowledge is so great that he needs to be restrained by his parents.However, although parents can channel their children's curiosity, they cannot suppress it. As children grow older, their tendency to explore increases surprisingly.We often hear grown-ups say, "A bunch of young people are going crazy like wild horses."However, the opposite is true.Had these adults bothered to study the behavior of adult wild animals, they would have discovered that the so-called "wild horses" were themselves.It is they who try to frame human beings' exploration, and it is they who abandon the human spirit of exploration and return to the conservative habits of animals to seek comfort.Fortunately, there are enough adults at any one time to maintain the creativity and curiosity of teenagers, and they push people forward and pioneer.

Watching the play of young chimpanzees is immediately struck by the similarities between their behavior and that of children.Both young orangutans and children are obsessed with new "toys".They all couldn't wait to start fiddling with the toy, lifting it, lowering it, twisting it, banging it, and taking it apart.They all invented simple games by themselves.The intensity of the baby gorilla game is comparable to ours.They play as well as we do in the first few years of life—better than we do, in fact, because their muscular systems develop more quickly.However, after a few years, they lost the competition.Their brains are not sophisticated enough to capitalize on this good start.Their focus is weak and does not increase with physical development.Most importantly, they are incapable of communicating in detail the innovative techniques they discover to their parents.

The best way to illustrate this difference is to give a concrete example.Drawing (or image exploration) is clearly an example of choice.As a mode of behavior, painting has been extremely important to human beings for thousands of years.We can cite the prehistoric frescoes in the caves of Altamira and Lascaux as proof. Given the opportunity and the right materials, chimpanzees are as excited as we are to explore the possibility of scribbling marks on white paper to form visual images.The beginning of interest is related to a principle.This principle is: investigations that achieve greater results with less effort - the principle of rewards.We can see this principle at work in a variety of games.A great deal of effort can be invested in game activities; but the most satisfying actions are those in which unexpected feedback adds value.We can call this the game principle of "value-added compensation".Both chimpanzees and children love to bang on things; their favorite thing is the loudest thing with the least amount of force.A ball that jumps high with just a light throw, a balloon that flies across the room with a light touch, sand that can be formed into a ball with a light pinch, a wheeled toy that rolls easily with a light push—these things is the most attractive toy.

Babies don't think they're going to do much when they first face pencil and paper.At best he can tap a pencil on a blank sheet of paper.To his surprise, the sound made was delightful.The act of tapping not only produces a sound, but also a visual effect.Pencil light draws marks on paper.He inadvertently drew a line. The moment a child or chimpanzee first discovers an image is a moment of fascination.They stared intently at the line, intrigued by the unexpected visual gain of the beating.They looked at it, and tried it again.Sure enough, the second time was also successful, and the next experiment was also successful.After a while, the paper was filled with all kinds of Taoism.As time goes by, they work harder and harder at applying it.A single tentative line gives way to a multi-line back-and-forth daub.Given the choice, they prefer crayons, chalks, and oil paints because they create a more intense effect and a more striking visual image when smeared with them.

The interest in smearing begins around one and a half years old, both in chimpanzees and children.Bold, confident, and varied smears don't really add momentum until after the age of two, though.By the age of 3, the average child enters a new image stage: simplifying the original messy smearing.In an exciting mess of scribbling, he began to distill the basic shapes.He began to experiment with drawing crosses, circles, squares and triangles.The meandering lines travel on the paper until they meet end to end to form a closed figure.So the lines outline the outline. Over the ensuing months, these figures were combined to form simple and abstract patterns.The circle is cut by a cross, and the diagonal is drawn in the square.This is an extremely important period, the eve of the first batch of portraits.In children, this great breakthrough comes at 3½ or early 4 years of age.However, in chimpanzees, this breakthrough never occurs.Chimpanzee Magic can draw fans, crosses and circles.It can even draw a circle with a mark inside, but it can't go beyond the limit.What is especially provocative is that the marked circle is the eve before children enter the stage of composition.By chance, some points and lines were drawn into the circle, and suddenly, as if by magic, a human face appeared on the paper.It is looking at the children who are drawing pictures.With a sudden flash of light in his mind, he recognized a face drawn on the paper.The stage of abstract experimentation, the stage of creating patterns is over.Now for a new purpose: the goal of perfectly portrayed.New faces are drawn.More realistic faces emerged, with eyes and mouths finding their proper places.Then added details - hair, ears.Houses, animals, ships, cars.Such heights seem to be never attained by young orangutans.After the baby chimpanzee reaches its own height—a circle with some marks painted on it—its body continues to develop.But the image it smears does not grow.Perhaps, one day, a gifted chimpanzee will be found, but that seems unlikely.

For children.A new phase of image exploration unfolds before the eyes.However, although this is an important area for children to discover new things, the influence of abstract patterns learned earlier is still there, especially at the age of 4-8.Children's drawings during this period are particularly remarkable because they are still built on the solid foundations of the abstract figure stage.At this time, the image of the painting is still in the stage of simple composition with little distinction.But they combine with a confident, firmly grasped figure-pattern arrangement to form contagious pictures.

The process of adding points from the circle to an accurate full-body image is very interesting.It was found that adding dots inside the circle can represent the face, and the process could not be perfected in one night.Clearly, perfecting this process became the dominant goal, but it took time (actually more than a decade).First of all, the facial features should be drawn correctly - two circles represent the eyes, and a strong and steady horizontal line represents the mouth.Two dots or a circle in the center represent the nose.Hair is drawn on the large round edge of the outer layer.Here, there may be a short-term stagnation.The face is, after all, the most important and attractive part of the mother's body, at least in terms of visual signals.However, after taking steps, some progress can be made.In a simple way, draw some of the hair on the circle longer, and the little person will grow arms and legs, and the arms and legs can grow fingers and toes.The basic figure at this moment is still a circle before the picture.It is an old friend of children, and it is reluctant to leave.It went from a circle to a face, and then to face and body.Children at this stage don't seem to worry about why the little people's arms seem to grow on their heads.However, everyone in this small circle will not remain the same forever.Like a cell, it divides and a second cell grows underneath it.The two legs always meet successively on the body formed by two circles, but the intersection point must be above the feet.No matter where it is crossed, the body of the little person is born.But either way, the arms hang dryly over the sides of the head.They hang here for a while before they come down and settle into a more appropriate position - stretching from the top of the body to the sides.

It is fascinating to watch the gradual, step-by-step progress of the voyage of the discovering navigator, as he moves on tirelessly.He gradually tried more graphics, gradually tried to combine various graphics, and gradually tried more diverse images, more complex colors, and more diverse structures.There will come a time when accurate representation will be achieved, when delicate imitations of the outside world will be captured and preserved on paper.By this stage, however, the exploratory nature of the initial smear campaign was overwhelmed, and the imperative to communicate ideas with pictures took over.Early drawings, whether made by children or chimpanzees, had nothing to do with conveying ideas.It is an act of discovery, an act of creation, an act of experimenting with the possibilities of graphic change.That's "painting action", not signaling.It requires no reward—the act of smearing is the reward itself, the act of playing for play's sake.However, like so many childhood games, the child's smearing soon finds its way into other adult pursuits.Social communication has taken over it all at once, and the innovative spirit in painting is inseparable, and the pure passion of "taking line drawing as walking and exploring" is gone.Adults allow this spirit of exploration to revive only in absent-minded scribbles. (This is not to say that adults have lost their innovative spirit, I just mean that the world of innovation has shifted to more complex technical fields,) Fortunately, the exploratory art of painting, a far more effective technique that values ​​the image of the environment, has been developed.Photography and its offshoots have made representational "information painting" obsolete.This breaks the chains of responsibility that have long crippled adult art.Painting is once again an art to be explored, this time in the form of full-fledged adult drawings.Needless to say, this is exactly what is happening today. I use this example of exploratory behavior because it reveals so clearly the difference between us and our closest relatives, the chimpanzees.Similar comparisons can also be made in other fields.One or two of them are worth mentioning.The exploration of the world of sound can be seen in both species.We have seen above that, for some reason, vocal innovations simply do not exist in chimpanzees, but "drumming" is crucial in its life.Young orangutans tap, stomp, and high-five repeatedly, exploring their vocal potential.In adulthood, this tendency develops into a persistent period of group beating.Chimpanzee after chimpanzee stomped, screamed, shredded trees, banged on stumps, and hammered hollow logs.Such a group performance may last half an hour, or even more than half an hour.Exactly what their function is is not understood, but they clearly enable group members to motivate each other.In our human life, drum music is also the most popular form of music expression.Like chimpanzees, children try early on to tap on objects around them to see what sounds they can make.Whereas adult chimpanzees can only produce monotonous clucks, we make them rhythmically complex, louder and louder through pitch and pitch changes.We can also make sounds by blowing air into hollow objects, and by scratching and plucking metal pieces.The screams and roars of chimpanzees are expressed in us as creative chant.In simple social groups, the complex musical recitals we put out seem to serve a similar function to chimpanzee taps and roars, that is, to motivate group members to each other.Unlike painting, music is not a mode of activity that must transmit information on a large scale and in detail.The practice of some cultures using drums to convey messages is an exception.But, generally speaking, music is used to arouse public emotions and set the pace of public.The innovative and exploratory content of music became more and more intense. It got rid of any important "representational" function and became a major field of abstract aesthetic experimentation. (Painting has only recently caught up with music in this respect, since it has other privileged functions.) Dance has undergone much the same development as music and singing.During the beating ceremony, the chimpanzee group added many movements of shaking their heads and dancing their hands and feet.We humans are also accompanied by dance moves such as head shaking in the music performance that stimulates emotions.Like music, these dance movements start from here, become increasingly refined and expanded, and evolve into complex dances with rich aesthetic value. Closely related to dance was the development of gymnastics.Rhythmic body movements are commonplace in young chimpanzees and in children's play.These actions are quickly stylized, while retaining a strong element of variation in their established structural patterns.But the physical game of the young orangutan does not mature, but declines and dies.Instead, we explore its possibilities fully, distilling them into the many complex gymnastics and movements of our adult lives.Gymnastics and sports are equally important means of group coordination; however, they are essentially vehicles for maintaining and extending our ability to explore our bodies. Writing, a derivative of stylized painting and verbal communication, has become the main medium for transmitting and recording information.However, they are also used as tools for large-scale aesthetic exploration.The groaning, babbling and babbling of our ancestors evolved into a complex and elaborate symbolic language, which allows us to sit down and "play" with our thoughts, playing with our (mainly for imparting knowledge) word series, making it Use as a toy for aesthetics and exploration. Thus it can be seen that in the following fields--painting, sculpture, drawing, music, singing, dancing, gymnastics, games, sports.In writing and speech—we are all open to complex and specialized explorations and experiments, to explore and experiment as much as we want, for a lifetime.With careful training, we, both performers and spectators, can become very alert; we can be very responsive to the enormous potential for exploration that these activities have.If the secondary function of these activities (earning money, gaining status, etc.) The "rules of the game" above the information exchange system. These game rules can be expressed as follows: 1.Study the unfamiliar and make it familiar; 2.Repeat the familiar things regularly; 3.Make some variation as much as possible in the process of repetition; 4.Choose the most satisfactory variation to play, and ignore other variations; 5.Combining satisfactory variations repeatedly; 6. All of the above items are games for the sake of games, and the game itself is the purpose. These principles apply across the entire play ladder, from one end to the other, whether a young child playing with sand or a composer composing a symphony. Rule 6 is particularly important.Exploratory behavior also plays a role in basic survival modes such as eating, fighting, courtship, etc.; however, in these activities, exploratory behavior is limited to its initial appetizing stage and is only suitable for the special needs of various activities.For many animals, exploratory behavior stops there.For them, there is no such thing as exploring for exploring's sake.For higher mammals, however, exploration has been liberated as a distinct, independent drive, and in us it has grown to the point of no return.Its function is to give us as fine and complex an understanding as possible of the world around us and of our abilities in relation to it.The mountainous development of this understanding is not manifested in the specific environment of the basic survival goal, but pervades all environments.What we acquire in one way can be applied anywhere, anytime, and in any environment. I have left out the development of science and technology from discussion because it is primarily concerned with the specific improvements employed in the pursuit of basic survival goals.The basic survival goals are combat (hence weapons), food (hence agriculture), building shelter (hence architecture), and comfort (hence medicine).Interestingly, however, as time went on and technological developments became more and more intertwined, the pure urge to explore invaded the realm of science.The name scientific research means play—and I mean play.Etymologically speaking, the word research (research) can be parsed as re-search (re-search).Scientific research strictly follows the six principles of the game mentioned above.In "pure" research, scientists use their imagination on the same principles as artists.He is talking about the perfect test, not the expedient one.Like an artist, he is concerned with exploring for the sake of exploring.If the results of his research proved to be helpful for some survival purpose, that would of course be of great benefit; but that was a secondary thing. In all acts of exploration, whether artistic or scientific, there is always a tug-of-war between the impulse to love new knowledge and the impulse to fear new knowledge.The urge to learn drives us to acquire new experiences, drives us to crave new knowledge.The urge to fear the new makes us cringe, making us seek escape in the familiar.We are constantly seeking a shifting balance between the conflicting attractions of exciting new stimuli and friendly old stimuli.If we lose the urge to learn new things, we will stagnate.If we lose the urge to be afraid of new knowledge, we will rashly plunge headlong into disaster.This tug-of-war of impulses not only explains the more obvious ebbs and flows of fashion mores, such as changes in hairstyles and fashions, furniture and cars; it is the basis of all our cultural progress.We both explore and move forward, and at the same time seek stability while studying carefully.Step by step, we expand our knowledge and awareness of ourselves and the complexities of our surroundings. Before leaving to explore this topic, there is one last unique aspect that cannot be ignored.It is associated with a key social game of infancy.Early childhood social play is directed at parents.However, as the child grows older, the social play of the toddler gradually shifts towards children of the same age group.Children become members of juvenile "playgroups".This is a crucial step in a child's development.As a step in participating in exploration, it has a profound impact on the individual's later life.Of course, all forms of exploration in childhood have long-term effects. Those who have not explored music and painting in their youth will find these subjects difficult to learn as adults.However, face-to-face play contact plays a more critical role than other forms of exploration.Adults who are exposed to music for the first time, without the experience of exploring music in childhood, may find music difficult to learn, but it is not impossible to learn music.Conversely, if the child is strictly controlled from social contact as a member of a playgroup, his participation in social intercourse as an adult is greatly hindered.Experiments with monkeys have shown that monkeys that were isolated in infancy are socially averse as adults and become anti-heterosexual and anti-parent monkeys.When the isolated monkeys were older and put into a group of young monkeys of the same age, they were reluctant to participate in the activities of the play group.Although these isolated baby monkeys were healthy and developing normally, they were unable to participate in the rough play of the monkey group.Instead, they huddled in a corner, did not get up, often hugged their bodies with their arms, or covered their eyes with their hands.As adults, they may also be healthy specimens, but they have no interest in sexual partners.Female monkeys grown up in isolation can also give birth to healthy baby monkeys if they are forced to mate.But they regard the baby monkey as a huge parasite attached to the body, so they attack the baby monkey and drive the baby monkey away, either killing their own baby or ignoring it. Similar experiments with chimpanzees have shown that the chimpanzee species, after long periods of rehabilitation and special care, can to some extent compensate for the impairment of behavior caused by isolation.Still, the dangers of isolation cannot be overestimated.In our own case, children who are overprotected by their parents invariably suffer losses in adult social contact as adults.This is especially relevant for only children.They are always at a disadvantage in the early years of their early lives by having no siblings of their own.If they do not participate in the slapstick scenes of their teenage partners, without this kind of socialization experience, they may live in fear of strangers, withdraw from others, find it difficult to find sexual partners, and even find it difficult to find a mate.Even if they get married and have children, they cannot be competent parents. From this, it is clear that the parenting process falls into two distinct stages—an early introverted phase and a later extroverted phase.Both stages are extremely important.We can learn a lot from the behavioral changes in monkeys as they grow up.In the early introversion stage, the baby monkey is caressed, rewarded and protected by the mother monkey, and it learns what it means to be safe.During the later extraverted phase, the mother encourages her offspring to develop outwardly and to meet other young in the group.Her caressing behaviors were reduced, and her protective behavior towards the children was limited to moments of severe panic and serious danger; she protected the young only when the herd was oppressed by external dangers.In fact, when there was no serious panic, she punished the monkey if the monkey insisted on clinging to the mother, seeking protection in her furry apron.Then, the little monkey realized that he had to be self-reliant, so he accepted the requirement of self-reliance. For our children, the situation is basically the same.If a parent's handling of parenting behavior is inappropriate during either of the two stages of parenting, the child will suffer serious difficulties later in life.If the child misses the early security stage, but becomes quite active after the independent stage, he will find it easy to meet strangers, but he will not be able to maintain long-term contact with partners, nor can he make real deep contact.If a child enjoys a very secure life in the early introverted stage, but is overprotected in the later extroverted stage, he will find it difficult to make contact with others as an adult, and he will desperately cling to the people he used to know. . The most extreme and typical form of opposition to exploratory behavior can be found if one looks at extreme examples of solitude.People who are very withdrawn may be socially inactive, but they are far from being physically inactive.They focus on repeating habitual movements.They may waddle, nod, twirl, muscle spasm, repeatedly use scratches, etc., for hours after hours.They may eat fingers and other body parts, poke and twist themselves, make repetitive strange facial expressions, and beat and flip things rhythmically.From time to time, we all exhibit these types of "twitching" movements.For them, however, jerky movements became the primary and permanent form of physical expression.They feel that the environment poses a great threat, that social contact is very scary, that making friends is impossible, and they seek comfort and security by repeating their very familiar behaviors.Rhythmic repetition of an action makes it increasingly familiar and "safe".For the withdrawn man who sticks to the few movements with which he is most familiar, instead of engaging in a wide variety of activities of a disparate nature, the proverb "No risk, no gain" becomes: "No risk, no gain." lost". I have already mentioned the comforting regressive character of the heart rhythm.The same holds true for the behavior of the solitary.Many of their behavioral patterns also appear to be at the pace of the heartbeat.Even those movements that are not at the same rate as the heartbeat have a soothing function, because through constant repetition they become familiar movements.It has been noted that habitual movements increase in socially retarded individuals when they are sent into a strange room.This is consistent with our above point of view.The more unfamiliar the environment, the higher the degree of fear of teaching strangeness, and the higher the requirements for means to calm emotions and counteract fear. The more this old habit is repeated, the more it resembles the artificial mother's heartbeat, and its friendliness becomes higher and higher until it becomes completely irreversible.Even if the extreme fear of new knowledge that caused the habit is eliminated (in fact, this kind of psychology is very difficult to eradicate), the habit will still flare up. I have already said that people who are well adjusted to social activities sometimes show "crazy" movements. "Jerking" movements often occur during times of tension, in which case they also have a soothing effect.We are familiar with all the signs of tension.Administrative officials banging on their desks while waiting for an important call, women clasping their fingers into their handbags and then relaxing them while waiting in the waiting room, embarrassing children swaying from side to side, expectant fathers pacing back and forth outside the delivery room At the same time, students in the examination room will bite their pencils, and anxious officers will stroke their mustaches.If in moderation and in moderation.These small means of countering exploration are quite effective.They help us tolerate the "overdose of novelty" we expect.However, if these methods are used, there is always the danger of irreversibility and addiction, which will stubbornly appear even when they are not needed. The above-mentioned habit can also appear in situations of extreme tedium.This situation can be seen very clearly both in us and in animals in zoos.These caged animals are willing to engage in social contact whenever given the opportunity, but they are involuntarily and artificially prevented.It is much the same with withdrawn persons.The confines of the zoo environment prevent their social contact, forcing them into a situation of social isolation.The bars of animal cages are physical barriers as real as the psychological barriers faced by solitary people.This barrier constitutes a countermeasure against exploration, leaving the caged animals with nothing to explore, so they can only express themselves in the only way, namely rhythmic cookie-cutter movements.We are all familiar with the pacing of caged animals, but this is just one of the many strange behavior patterns that result.Stylized masturbation may occur, sometimes without direct manipulation of the external genitalia, the animal (usually a monkey) simply moves its arms and hands back and forth without touching the genitals.Some female monkeys repeatedly suck on their own nipples.The baby monkey sucks its paw repeatedly.Chimpanzees may poke grass into (originally healthy) ears.The elephants kept nodding their heads for hours on end.Some animals repeatedly bite themselves and pull out their hair.Severe self-harm can also occur.Some of the above responses are issued in stressful situations, but many are responses to sheer boredom.When the environment remains the same, the urge to explore stalls. Just watching an isolated animal repeat a cookie-cutter movement makes it impossible to pinpoint its cause.It could be from boredom, or from nervousness.If it is nervous, it may be caused by the surrounding environment, or it may be a long-term behavior formed by abnormal parenting.A few simple experiments will give us the answer.Put an unfamiliar object in a cage, and if the animal's cookie-cutter behavior disappears and exploration begins, then the cookie-cutter behavior is obviously caused by boredom.However, if the movement continues unabated, it is caused by nervousness.If several animals of the same kind are placed in a cage and a normal social environment is created, but the same behavior remains the same; it is almost safe to say that that animal spent its childhood in abnormal isolation. The various characteristics shown by the animals in the cages mentioned above can all be seen in us humans (probably because the zoos we design are too similar to the cities we live in).This is our lesson, and it reminds us how important it is to strike a fine balance between our love of new knowledge and our fear of it.Without this balance, we cannot function properly; although our nervous system helps us to the best of its potential, the result is always a parody of our human behavioral potential.