Groomin' in Progress

Let’s go back five million years or so to the moment when the first alpha monkey learned to voluntarily contract the small muscles at the base of his hair follicles which caused the first intentional, political piloererction. His hair stood on end which made him appear a lot bigger than he actually was. After the bristle, he went semi-berserk and started making threatening moves towards every other monk in his immediate vicinity. The male monks backed away and the females hid their babies. A few minutes later, several of the males and even more females stepped forward and started grooming the new boss, let’s call him Hobb.

Hobb repeated this mechanism on a daily basis and the results were always the same although every once in awhile one of the male monks made the mistake of looking Hobbs in the eyes rather than side eye. This would cause an exponential increase in aggressive signaling from Hobbs until the offender backed off and boogalooed before stepping forward again and grooming Hobb. For Hobb there was no concept of future as every moment of everyday was consumed with maintaining power.

This Hobbsian hierarchy lasted about a year until a younger, stronger monkey dethroned Hobbs. Let’s call this monkey Dobb. Dobb could get even more erect, even quicker than Hobb. As soon as Hobb became aware of this uncomfortable and undeniable reality, he immediately began grooming Dobb. Dobb took over and so it went for the next few million years...Dobbs replacing Hobbs only to be replaced by youger Hobbs who would be replaced by stronger Dobbs etc until somebody discovered fire and maybe a thousand years later somebody else let’s call him Cobb, invented cooking.

Cobb began to attract a following of his own not based on his erections or threats but rather because of his ability to put fire to good use for the common cause. In the hierarchy of Cobb, power was earned by expertise. Expertise could be transferred and every monk who grabbed some of the transference was contributing to a growing universal good and thus found himself the recipient of more frequent grooming and mating.

The dominant descendants of Dobb, always reluctant to concede any power, came to realize that they had to be more respectfull of the common good because no matter how erect or aggressive Dobb could become, he was no match for the growing numbers of Cobbs who through their shared leadership were multiplying rapidly. Cobbs promised something beyond the present moment...something we might call a "future."

Along the way, a female monkey named Sobb learned some methods of improving the food on the fire. This left more time for the other monks to explore two new areas of expertise known as hunting and gathering.

These escapades were led by Hubb and Gubb who inherited hierarchies of their own who groomed them as fervently as Hobb had groomed Dobb etc.

A few million years passed between the first piloerection and the invention of cooking which made use of the discovery of fire. These million years were the domain of the powerful rather than the inventive. Hobb and Dobb and the descending Hobbs and Dobbs needed to piloerect and go “berserk” every single day in order to maintain their groomers and maintain their power.

Every day.

Millions of years.

No strategy needed. Only tactics need apply. Nothing new to worry about until Cobb started cooking.

Millions of years will leave a mark on even the least primal of primates so even within the realm of the creative, there remained the threat of competition and reversion to Hobbsian dynamics. Every once in awhile a Hobbsian would come across a developing Cobbsian and primitively synthesize by throwing the weaker and milder Cobbsian into the very fire that had been intended to cook something else.

You had to be good if you were going the Cobbsian route which meant you had to be the best or show promise of developing into the best if you wanted to avoid being barbecued in your own fire by a berserk Hobb and his followers known as Mobb.

Individuals in the Mobb who were particularly good at the side eye were not considered to be threatening so they learned from the sad fate of those less able to “side the eye” and less willing to “groom the Dobbs”, that it was better to go along than to stand out. Eventually, they became the majority of monkeys. They were known as Bobb.

Fortunately for the Cobbsians, there was a whole lot to be discovered as the Hobbs crowd and the Mobb concentrated only on breeding, grooming, eating bananas and getting by without any thought of any future. Everything else had yet to be discovered and once a discovery was made, another discovery would follow. So Cobb and his followers maintained their prestige with ongoing improvement of every discovery. The followers of Cobb who showed promise and proficiency became untouchable by the Mobb because of the protection of Cobb and the concept of “progress”.

A future Cobb came to realize that every step towards “progress”, known as Prog. was a result of combining and refining discoveries rather than coincidence or magic although both coincidence and magic played a major part in Prog. When a monkey demonstrated an awareness of Prog and spent time grooming his Cobb, the Cobb of his Prog would offer him the protection from the Mobb earned by the Prog and that newly ordained monkey would be called a Job. The Job would go about his day refining the Prog of his Cobb until, he finally combined a refinement with another refinement and came up with a brand new Prog or an improvement on the Prog of his Cobb which earned the Job a promotion to Cobb and a grooming from his Job.

Everybody won. The Hobb, the Dobb, the Cobb, the Mobb the Jobb the Bobb the Hubb the Gubb the Sob and the Prog.

Progress began its march but tension was in the air as everybody wanted more. Millions of years of berserk behavior had left its mark and affected everybody in different ways.

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A Hubb was similar to a Hobb, other than one big difference. A Hubb was less threatened by a Cobb than was a Hobb. Since a Cobb had come up with the idea of cooking, somebody had to come up with the idea of what to cook and how to get whatever it was that the Cobb could cook. A Hubb named Kub, sure enough found a bone in an elephant graveyard and began to use it as a weapon. This discovery helped the Hubb to hunt and provided the Cobb with something to cook which delighted the Sobb, who were getting tired of frying bananas.

The Sobb began to take on more power everytime that she had something new to cook. The power of the Sobb was resented by some members of the Hubb who felt that they deserved the power for bringing the food back to the Sobb. These members were called Clobs. They weren’t the best of hunters and often had the smallest weapons. Still they used whatever they had to clobber the Sobbs and remove some of their cooking prestige. Eventually these Clobs stopped hunting altogether and concentrated on clobbering the Sobbs into domesticity which didn’t bother the Hobbs or the Hubbs who collected Sobbs of their own while maintaining their basic aggression. The Clobs however lost most of their aggression except for the propensity to clobber Sobbs. They become very territorial. Eventually many of the Clobs became Slobbs as all they did was clobber their Sobbs and consume whatever the Hubbs had brought to the community for the good of the community. This lack of productivity among the Slobs eventually wore thin on the Hubbs and the Hobbs and the Cobbs and since with every discovery meant there was more to do, the Hobbs decided that if they didn’t want the Bobbs in their Mobs to become Slobbs, the Bobbs were gonna have to get Jobbs.

Prog continued more rapidly than ever before.

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Along with the Hubbs who did the hunting so that Sobbs could cook for the Slobbs and Bobbs who did not yet have Jobbs and were thus part of the Mobb, there existed a Cobb group that gathered food, firewood and tools known as the Gubb. The Gubb was always off finding stuff for the Cobb to be used in further discovery. The Gubbs also proved to be proficient at gathering Bobbs and Slobs together and helping them figure out what the hell they should do because Bobb and Slobbs didn't have the ingenuity to be any kind of Cobb and thus were causing widespread mayhem and confusion with their purposeless meanderings and over agressive matings as they avoided Hobbs and Dobbs and clobbered Sobbs while struggling with the most basic Jobbs. The Gubbs gathered a few Clobs who forced the Bobbs and Slobbs into a less selfish and chaotic existence under "rules" established by the Gubbs. These basic rules for behavior as well as those inventing and enforcing those rules became known as Gubberment and the Clobs who enforced them were called Copps..  Another Cobb group learned how to convey these rules with grunts and drawings. This group was the Nobs. The Nobbs were helpful to the Gubbs in gathering and organizing the Bobbs and Slobbs. Thus began the process known a Cooborating. The Nobbs also became closer to the Hobbs than any other Cobb because the Nobbs were a Cobb that could calm a Hobb as well as a Dobb with communication called Hobb Nobbing. The Nobbs kept inventing new signals for communication and eventually came up with words...first verbs than nouns than adjectives then Yes then No. A Nobb told a Cobb the first joke "Sobb clob Slob Fire". The Cobb who heard the Nobb joke about the Sobb clobbing the Slobb into the fire, had a unusual reaction something like a cough and a growl without pain or agression. The Nobb called it a Laff.