Tool use in Wingnuts (Wingnut dingbattus)

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

According to the eminent phrenologist Ayn Rand, phylogeny is best represented as a ladder, not as a tree or bush, as some have understood it.  Standing athwart geological time at the top of the “ladder of life” is “Mankind,” in particular, white capitalists.  Rand’s objective reality indicates that in the “clades as rungs” variation of phylogeny, there are grades within clades, or more aptly, rungs between rungs, due to more or less successful versions of Mankind’s singular adaptive advantage:  volitional consciousness.  To be fair, at the time of her writing, it was not then known that some percentage of squirrel monkeys would also volitionally drink themselves into a stupor if liquor were freely provided, and that these same monkeys would also learn instrumental behaviors to earn drinks, thus becoming classic functional drunks.  Nevertheless, the a priori assumptions that Man is an infinitely rational tabula rasa operating solely on a pleasure/pain continuum, is obviously indisputable.

Rand’s thesis that there were no limits to human potential due to the combination of the infinite potential for rationality operating in an infinite universe, resulting in infinite growth^2 riding steamy laissez faire orgies of self-satisfaction, was rigorously tested in the case of one of her own protégés and experimental case studies, including Alan Greenspan, who demonstrated that human potential was indeed unlimited.  This same study also showed that no matter what circumstances in which exceptional individuals find themselves, the virtue of selfishness would always lead the rational man to the top-most rung on the evolutionary ladder, an admittedly singular affirmative case study.  In another affirmative study, a top-rung male successfully argued that the salvation of the entire world, depending critically on society not being left bereft of their talents, hinged upon himself and his friends.   Unfortunately, a critical control group that left society bereft of their particular talents was unavailable for testing.  While there remains some dissent on the entire concept of evolutionary ladders among fringe scientists and unrepentant bloggers, consensus on the so-called “Masters of the Universe” hypothesis remains both optimistic and uncontested.

As the evolutionary ladder hypothesis cannot even imagine rivals, we now turn our experimental attention to the sub-hypothesis that there exist, in the old parlance, grades within clades, or in the newer, more accurate parlance, rungs between rungs, e.g., there’s rich, and there’s rich, and  there’s poor, and there’s poor.   Accordingly, within the rung known taxonomically as the Masters of the Universe, we turn our attention to the poorest of the so-called Masters of the Universe.  Specifically, we intend to examine some of the ethological roots of culture among socioeconomically disadvantaged members of the MoU, those who have no money, no education, no job prospects, no health care, and generally no control over their lives whatever, i.e, the worst of the fittest, i.e., that place where  Ayn Rand leaps to her apotheosis.