The Naked Ape (25 page)

A third form of verbalisation is exploratory talking. This is talking for talking’s sake, aesthetic talking, or, if you like, play talking. Just as that other form of informationtransmission, picture-making, became used as a medium for aesthetic exploration, so did talking. The poet paralleled the painter. But it is the fourth type of verbalisation that we are concerned with in this chapter, the kind that has aptly been described recently as grooming talking. This is the meaningless, polite chatter of social occasions, the ‘nice weather we are having’ or ‘have you read any good books lately’ form of talking. It is not concerned with the exchange of important ideas or information, nor does it reveal the true mood of the speaker, nor is it aesthetically pleasing. Its function is to reinforce the greeting smile and to maintain the social togetherness. It is our substitute for social grooming. By providing us with a non-aggressive social preoccupation, it enables us to expose ourselves communally to one another over comparatively long periods, in this way enabling valuable group bonds and friendships to grow and become strengthened. Viewed in this way, it is an amusing game to plot the course of grooming talk during a social encounter. It plays its most dominant role immediately after the initial greeting ritual. It then slowly loses ground, but has another peak of expression as the group breaks up. If the group has come together for purely social reasons, grooming talk may, of course, persist throughout to the complete exclusion of any kind of information, mood or exploratory talk. The cocktail party is a good example of this, and on such occasions ‘serious’ talking may even be actively suppressed by the host or hostess, who repeatedly intervene to break up long conversations and rotate the mutual-groomers to ensure maximum social contact. In this way, each member of the party is repeatedly thrown back into a state of ‘initial contact’, where the stimulus for grooming talk will be strongest. If these non stop social grooming sessions are to be successful, a sufficiently large number of guests must be invited in order to prevent new contacts from running out before the party is over. This explains the mysterious minimum size that is always automatically recognised as essential for gatherings of this kind. Ball, informal dinner parties provide a slightly different situation. Here the grooming talk can be observed to wane as the evening progresses and the verbal exchange of serious information and ideas can be seen to gain in dominance as time passes. Just before the party breaks up, however, there is a brief resurgence of grooming talk prior to the final parting ritual. Smiling also reappears at this time, and the social bonding is in this way given a n al farewell boost to help carry it over to the next encounter.

If we switch our observations now to the more formal business encounter, where the prime function of the contact is information talking, we can witness a further decline in the dominance of grooming talk, but not necessarily a total eclipse of it. Here its expression is almost entirely confined to the opening and closing moments. Instead of waning slowly, as at the dinner party, it is suppressed rapidly, after a few polite, initial exchanges. It reappears again, as before, in the closing moments of the meeting, once the anticipated moment of parting has been signalled in some way. Because of the strong urge to perform grooming talk, business groups are usually forced to heighten the formalisation of their meetings in some way, in order to suppress it. This explains the origin of committee procedure, where formality reaches a pitch rarely encountered on other private social occasions.

Although grooming talk is the most important substitute we have for social grooming, it is not our only outlet for this activity. Our naked skin may not send out very exciting grooming signals, but other more stimulating surfaces are frequently available and are used as substitutes. Fluffy or furry clothing, rugs, or furniture often release a strong grooming response. Pet animals are even more inviting, and few naked apes can resist the temptation to stroke a cat’s fur, or scratch a dog behind the ear. The fact that the animal appreciates this social grooming activity provides only part of the reward for the groomer. More important is the outlet the pet animal’s body surface gives us for our ancient primate grooming urges.

As far as our own bodies are concerned, we may be naked over most of our surfaces, but in the head region there is still a long and luxuriant growth of hair available for grooming. This receives a great deal of attention—far more than can be explained on a simple hygienic basis—at the hands of the specialist groomers, the barbers and hairdressers. It is not immediately obvious why mutual hairdressing has not become part of our ordinary domestic social gatherings. Why, for instance, have we developed grooming talk as our special substitute for the more typical primate friendship grooming, when we could so easily have concentrated our original grooming efforts in the head region? The explanation appears to lie in the sexual significance of the hair. In its resent form the arrangement of the head hair differs strikingly between the two sexes and therefore provides a secondary sexual characteristic. Its sexual associations have inevitably led to its involvement in sexual behaviour patterns, so that stroking or manipulating the hair is now an action too heavily loaded with erotic significance to be permissible as a simple social friendship gesture. If, as a result of this, it is banned from communal gatherings of social acquaintances, it is necessary to find some other outlet for it. Grooming a cat or a sofa may provide an outlet for the urge to groom, but the need to be groomed requires a special context. The hairdressing salon is the perfect answer. Here the customer can indulge in the groomee role to his or ‘her heart’s content, without any fear of a sexual element creeping in to the proceedings. By making the professional groomers into a separate category, completely dissociated from the ‘tribal’ acquaintanceship group, the dangers are eliminated. The use of male groomers for Males and female groomers for females reduces the dangers still further. Where this is not done, the sexuality of the groomer is reduced in some way. If a female is attended by a male hairdresser, he usually behaves in an effeminate manner, regardless of his true sexual personality. Males are nearly always groomed by male barbers, but if a female masseuse is employed, she is typically rather masculine.

As a pattern of behaviour, hairdressing has three functions. It not only cleans the hair and provides an outlet for social grooming, but it also decorates the groomee. Decoration of the body for sexual, aggressive, or other social purposes is a widespread phenomenon in the case of the naked ape, and it has been discussed under other headings in other chapters. It has no real place in a chapter on comfort behaviour, except that it so often appears to grow out of some kind of grooming activity. Tattooing, shaving and plucking of hair, manicuring, ear piercing and the more primitive forms of scarification all seem to have their origin in simple grooming actions. But, whereas grooming talk has been borrowed from elsewhere and utilised as a grooming substitute, here the reverse process has taken place and grooming actions have been borrowed and elaborated for other uses. In acquiring a display function, the original comfort actions concerned with skin care have been transformed into what amounts to skin mutilation.

This trend can also be observed in certain captive animals in a zoo. They groom and lick with abnormal intensity until they have plucked bare patches or inflicted small wounds, either on their own bodies or those of companions. Excessive grooming of this kind is caused by conditions of stress or boredom. Similar conditions may well have provoked members of our own species to mutilate their body surfaces, with the already exposed and hairless skin aiding and abetting the process. In our case, however, our inherent opportunism enabled us to exploit this otherwise dangerous and damaging tendency and press it into service as a decorative display device.

Another and more important trend has also developed out of simple skin care, and that is medical care. Other species have made little progress in this direction, but for the naked ape the growth of medical practice out of social grooming behaviour has had an enormous influence on the successful development of the species, especially in more recent times. In our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, we can already witness the beginning of this trend. In addition to the general skin care of mutual grooming, one chimpanzee has been seen to attend to the minor physical disabilities of another. Small sores or wounds are carefully examined and licked clean. Splinters are carefully removed by pinching the companion’s skin between two forefingers. In one instance a female chimpanzee with a small cinder in her left eye was seen to approach a male, whimpering and obviously in distress. The male sat down and examined her intently and then proceeded to remove the cinder with great care and precision, gently using the tips of one finger from each hand. This is more than simple grooming. It is the first sign of true co-operative medical care. But for chimpanzees, the incident described is already the peak of expression. For our own species, with greatly increased intelligence and cooperativeness, specialised grooming of this kind was to be the starting point of a vast technology of mutual physical aid. The medical world today has reached a condition of such complexity that it has become, in social terms, the major expression of our animal comfort behaviour. From coping with minor discomforts it has expanded to deal with major diseases and gross bodily damage. As a biological phenomenon its achievements are unique, but in becoming rational, its irrational elements have been somewhat overlooked. In order to understand this, it is essential to distinguish between serious and trivial cases of ‘indisposition’. As with any other species, a naked ape can break a leg or become infected with a vicious parasite on a purely accidental or chance basis. But in the case of trivial ailments, all is not what it seems. Minor infections and sicknesses are usually treated rationally, as if they are simply mild versions of serious illnesses, but there is strong evidence to suggest that they are in reality much more related to primitive ‘grooming demands’. The medical symptoms reflect a behavioural problem that has taken a physical form, rather than a true physical problem.

Common examples of ‘grooming invitation ailments’, as we can call them, include coughs, colds, influenza, backache, headache, stomach upsets, skin rashes, sore throats, biliousness, tonsillitis and laryngitis. The condition of the sufferer is not serious, but sufficiently unhealthy to justify increased attention from social companions. The symptoms act in the same way as grooming invitation signals, releasing comfort behaviour from doctors, nurses, chemists, relations and friends. The groomee provokes friendly sympathy and care and this alone is usually enough to cure the illness. The administering of pills and medicines replaces the ancient grooming actions and provides an occupational ritual that sustains the groomee-groomer relationship through this special phase of social interaction. The exact nature of the chemicals prescribed is almost irrelevant and there is little difference at this level between the practices of modern medicine and those of ancient witch-doctoring.

The objection to this interpretation of minor ailments is likely to be based on the observation that real viruses or bacteria can be proved to be present. If they are there and can be shown to be the medical cause of the cold or stomach ache, then why should we seek for a behavioural explanation? The answer is that in any large city, for example, we are all exposed to these common viruses and bacteria all the time, but we only occasionally fall prey to them. Also, certain individuals are much more susceptible than others. Those members of a community who are either very successful or socially well adjusted rarely suffer from ‘grooming invitation ailments’.

Those that have temporary or longstanding social problems are, by contrast, highly susceptible. The most intriguing aspect of these ailments is the way they are tailored to the special demands of the individual. Supposing an actress, for example, is suffering from social tensions and strains, what happens? She loses her voice, develops laryngitis, so that she is forced to stop work and take a rest. She is comforted and looked after. The tension is resolved (for the time being, at least). If instead she had developed a skin rash on her body, her costume would have covered it and she could have gone on working. The tension would have continued. Compare her situation with that of an all-in wrestler. For him a loss of voice would be useless as a ‘grooming invitation ailment’, but a skin rash would be ideal, and it is precisely this ailment that wrestlers’ doctors find is the muscle-men’s most common complaint. In this connection it is amusing that one famous actress, whose reputation relies on her nude appearances in her films, suffers under stress not from laryngitis, but from skin rash. Because, like the wrestlers, her skin exposure is vital, she falls into their ailment category rather than into that of other actresses.

If the need for comfort is intense, then the ailment becomes more intense. The time in our lives when we receive the most elaborate care and protection is when we are infants in our cots. An ailment that is severe enough to put us helplessly to bed, therefore, has the great advantage of recreating for us all the comforting attention of our secure infancy. We may think we are taking a strong dose of medicine, but in reality it is a strong dose of security that we need and that cures us. (This does not imply malingering. There is no need to malinger. The symptoms are real enough. It is the cause that is behavioural, not the effects.) We are all to some extent frustrated groomers, as well as groomees, and the satisfaction that can be obtained from caring for the sick is as basic as the cause of the sickness. Some individuals have such a great need to care for others that they may actively promote and prolong sickness in a companion in order to be able to express their grooming urges more fully. This can produce a vicious circle, with the groomer-groomee situation becoming exaggerated out of all proportion, to the extent where a chronic invalid demanding (and getting) constant attention is created. If a ‘mutual grooming pair’ of this type were faced with the behavioural truth concerning their reciprocal conduct, they would hotly deny it. Nevertheless, it is astonishing what miraculous cures can sometimes be worked in such instances when a major social upheaval occurs in the groomer-groomee (nursepatient) environment that has been created. Faith-healers have occasionally exploited this situation with startling results, but unfortunately for them many of the cases they encounter have physical causes as well as physical effects. Also working against them is the fact that the physical effects of behaviourally produced ‘grooming invitation ailments’ can easily create irreversible body damage if sufficiently prolonged or intense. Once this has happened, serious, rational medical treatment is required.