A Tale of Two Fires
How my experience with two wildfires helped me find my passion
Ah, the holiday season. I used to only have positive memories about this time of year. But on an evening just after my family and I had decorated our Christmas tree in December of 2017, something very scary happened; a wild, wind-driven fire came close to burning our entire community, including our house. I will never forget looking out the window of our home and seeing the ominous orange line of glow engulfing the houses on the hill above our neighborhood.
As calmly as I could, I woke the kids (then 9 and 12) and told them we had to spend the rest of the night at their Aunt Judy’s house, and that we would have to leave right away. We attempted to pack overnight bags and loaded the dog’s crate into the car. The husbands on our street had decided not to evacuate since one of the neighbors had offered the use of a water truck from a relative’s construction site to help protect the properties. So I took the kids and the dog and left. It was around midnight when we drove past the center of town, watching a seemingly relentless line of wind-whipped fire move toward Main Street–as well as the freeway we were traveling on.
“It looks like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride,” one of my kids whispered. Except in this case, the fire was real. Many family friends who lived in the hills lost their homes and everything they owned that night. We were very thankful our home was spared, but I would later be grateful for another reason. Evacuating my home caused me to experience some involuntary time away from the internet.
At the time of the fire, I was addicted to a TV show. But in my mind, it was not an ordinary show. The story was about survival, and the main characters of the show simulated superior leadership. This was not unlike the conditions our species lived under when we lived as cave-dwellers — but it would take me a long time to realize these things. While I was away from my iPad, unable to escape from the rigors/monotony of day-to-day modern life, I had time to reflect on my own behavior.
I gradually realized that I had been existing in a fantasy world, and that the characters on my show had become like real-life heroes in my mind. I came to recognize that I was not making conscious decisions to watch my show. I realized I NEEDED to watch my show. And as the proud owner of a Master’s degree in human psychology, I wondered how such a circumstance could have come to be. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of how a human mind works. How could I be addicted to anything, especially a syndicated TV series? How could this have happened to me?? It was that musing that sent me on a 7 year research journey that has resulted in a new way to look at the world…and the people who live in it.
I had once taken a learning disability test that told me I would make a good writer, so I started writing about the way my show was making me feel. I also wrote about how I was less able to explain or control my own behavior when it came to anything related to this specific show or the actors who played the characters. I shared what I wrote with people I trusted. One friend commented on how my behavior reminded her of hunting behavior, and that caused me to remember a class I had taken in college, and about an interesting book about human behavior I had bought in the early 90s. I had found it in a used book section, and I had only picked it up because it was my favorite color.
It was called The Adapted Mind, and it was written by two professors who were still teaching at the same university where I had earned my Bachelor’s degree (which was only about 20 miles from where I live.) I emailed one of the professors and asked if she would be willing to meet me for lunch. She did! She signed my book and invited me to attend a symposium. She introduced me to her co-author and he signed my book too. They suggested I attend any of their weekly symposiums. I did! I also attended a lecture I would have never known about if not for already being on campus. It was given by the first person in the academic realm who supported my research efforts. He was a stranger to me, but he reposted something I had written on Twit (which is singular for Twitter). He gave me a sense of confidence. There would be many other researchers who would initially give me support, then ghost me. While I have my own theories about these occurrences, they have little to do with how I was feeling at the time. I was experiencing a new high. A new escape. I was replacing my addiction to my show with a different one. I was obsessed with learning about the origins of human behavior.
The way I now see it, the psychological conditions under which we existed when we lived in small, nomadic, isolated, largely language-less groups have not really left us. As a species, most of the mistakes we make with each other make sense when viewed through a cave-dwelling lens. But even the people who helped me along my research journey only partially agree with me. The foiled attempts I have made to be included in international online gatherings/discussions is somewhat understandable since I am an outsider to most official participants. The initial friendliness I experience when attending academic conferences that is replaced with reluctant tolerance by the second or third day is disappointing, but I am not deterred. I even have predictions about how my ideas will be responded to by the incoming political administration that might sound ridiculous to most. But I am on to something important.
My academic journey has been bookended by another wind-whipped wildfire that threatened my neighborhood the day after the most recent presidential election. Only this time, the lesson I learned from the threat was that even though the leadership I voted for did not prevail, the immediate outcomes could have been much worse for me and my family if the wind had not died down that day. So I found hope. And it’s a feeling I hope to share with many more people in the months and years to come. Thank-you for your time and attention. And if you are ready to learn about human behavior from a new — but very old — perspective, you should visit my website. https://www.cavedwellerclub.com/
