Social Style and Self-Judgment

My Social Preferences

I see the conversation as the most fundamental social unit. To me, all relationship begins, ends, and thrives on conversation. I enjoy deep meaningful conversations that develop, that delve, that gain momentum. I also enjoy more lighthearted fare-- topical, cultural, comedic riffing, etc. My favorite conversations are the ones that feel organic, that find their way through topics and through personal passions, with equal engagement by its participants. My favorite people are the ones with whom this seems to happen organically and consistently. These are people who both share some part of my range of interests, and who are about as skilled and motivated as I am to ask questions and self-disclose.

Then there’s a number of conversations I stay out of, either for lack of interest (sports, reality TV, most material culture, etc.) or distaste (cliche conversations, arguments in which I or the other party are not well-read on the subject, etc.). If someone tends towards those kinds of conversations, we don’t end up as friends.

I find that I’m not that into parties, whether I have many, few, or no friends at them. At a party, I’m likely to talk to one person at a time, and find myself unsure what to do in between those one-on-one conversations, and at a certain point I’ll just leave. (Of course, if alcohol is involved, this changes greatly.) Depending on the quality of relationship or quality of conversation, I’m often anxious during those conversations, unsure if the other person is wondering when it will end, or myself also wondering where this is going, when it will end. I’m very unlikely to talk to strangers there unless I am new to the area (and therefore have to make that effort), playing host, or drinking. My favorite social events are structured, even content-driven (cultural academic spaces, themed gatherings, etc.).

If I am around a conversation with more than one person, I’m likely to split off one person into a separate conversation. If that’s not an option, I’ll usually just observe, not desiring to engage in the attention-seeking strategies required to take the floor, or I’ll ask follow-up questions of others but not actually weigh in. And I’ll get disappointed or annoyed when others just weigh in and never ask follow-up questions.

There are a lot of social gatherings in which I see the socializing as an afterthought. In high school, I was very active in a non-school based youth group, so I saw school mostly as a place to learn, not socialize. When I used to be religious, I would go to shul to pray fervently, and then not really understand why there’d be a social gathering afterwards-- I thought we all came here to talk to God! Even when I invite people to go to concerts, it’s also a strange experience, since my primary reason to be there is to enjoy music, not to make conversation.

Introversion and Self-Judgment

Based on the above description, I think I’d be called an Introvert. Most people who identify as Introverts embrace the label, seeing the social style described above as healthy and fine. I can see that perspective, and yet I find myself with a lot of negative self-judgment for being like this. Here are the various ways I might judge myself or feel inadequate:

• People who enjoy parties are having more fun! Wouldn’t I like to have more fun?
• Shouldn’t I be starting more conversations, especially with strangers? Am I not friendly enough? Do I lack a natural curiosity about people? Am I too self-centered?
• Are my interests too narrow? Shouldn’t I have more topics that I find interesting? Shouldn’t I be more well-read on the things people want to discuss?
• Why don’t I have the interest/skills to be start or join larger conversations?
• Am I an introvert because I lack the social skills to get even more enjoyment out of being with people?

Growing out of It

This topic is an example of the personal limits/boundaries paradox. The pains of being limited turn into suffering when I vacillate between accepting and challenging the limitations. What is the appropriate path of growth here? I keep wanting to ask “Can I grow out of it?” but I’m ambivalent about which “it” to grow out of:

It = My particular way of socializing

It = My habit of judging myself harshly for my particular way of socializing

So that’s the struggle as it currently stands. I imagine, vaguely, that the solution lies somewhere between the two. I know this harsh judgment doesn’t help much, and yet I also know that it’s a deeply ingrained habit. I also think that the ability to check in with myself, to identify my social desires independent of any internalized/imagined peer pressure, is an essential skill and practice to develop.

Managing Monomania: Addiction, Monotheism, and Monogamy

Monomania is a fixation on a single thing. Addiction is a fixation on a single substance or behavior (or in the case of polysubstance abuse, a fixation on a single state-- intoxication). Monotheism is a fixation on a single god. Monogamy is a romantic fixation (ideally, a mutual one) on a single person.

I appreciate the appeal of monomania-- there’s a simplicity and elegance to orienting one’s life around a single point. I’ve always been drawn to the romance of monogamy, of having a person I can call “my one.” And people say that finding one’s drug of choice is like falling in love-- just ask Paul McCartney. When I was still religious, my monotheism inspired theocentrism, with all things coming from God and directing thought back to God. Monomania helps to organize the self, relationships, and time by providing a single foundation for understanding and motivation.

There’s also danger in monomania, and here is where my observations need to be more nuanced.

Addiction

The problem of a behavioral addiction is that it drains resources (time, money, energy, care) from the many, many behaviors that are needed to create a healthy balanced life. The problems of a substance addiction are the same as behavioral, plus the direct/collateral physical/emotional damages of substance use. If a person can use a substance or do an activity in a safe and balanced way, they do not have an addiction.

How does this imbalance arise? One way of telling the story of addiction is that the addicted individual finds that the drug meets certain essential needs better than any other resource could. Nothing brings them as much joy, relief, confidence, hope-- as powerfully or as quickly-- as the drug does. No wonder, then, that any stressor-- sadness, tension, insecurity, despair-- leads them right back to the drug. If a drug appears to be the answer to every problem, the drug will become a problem.

Within this particular narrative of addiction, what then is needed for growth and healing? More tools for meeting needs. New loves. Belief that intoxication is an ineffective response to the conditions of life or, at least, belief that intoxication as the only response is not enough.

Monotheism

Among the potential problems of monotheism are theodicy and chauvinism. With theodicy, a single god is overburdened by the task of establishing and maintaining a good and ordered world. The monotheistic believer faces a lot of anguish, trying to hold the world together with one god in the face of chaos and evil. With chauvinism, that one god must be defended/promoted as best among all other possible one-god, multi-god, no-god scenarios. The monotheistic believer must hold a triumphalist/imperialistic stance towards all people and situations in which the one true god has not yet been recognized and respected, a stance which can engender arrogance and violence.

How does monotheism get so firmly established? One possible narrative is that the one-god belief itself is rooted in a fixed desire for order and authority in the world, or a desire for absolute/ultimate meaning in life. Any other theological scenario (including no-god) offers an intolerable amount of uncertainty, powerlessness, or meaninglessness to the individual and community.

Within this particular narrative of monotheism, what is needed for growth and healing? The problems of chauvinism might be addressed through humility and pluralism. With humility and pluralism, uncertainty can become a theological virtue rather than a failing. The problems of theodicy might be addressed through inclusive monotheism such as Kabbalah offers, so that an underlying unity is expressed and not threatened by real/apparent divisions in reality. (Of course, polytheism and atheism are also live options, but likely not to the committed monotheist --- however, death-of-God theology as expressed in anatheism or the ‘God above God’ might work). With inclusive monotheism or these other options, the experiences of powerlessness and confusion about meaning become part of the holy work of authentic living.

Monogamy

The possible problems of monogamy include loneliness/boredom, conflict/abuse, and cheating. Loneliness/boredom stem from the attempt to have a single partner satisfy one’s every social need. Conflict/abuse stem from the attempt to force that partner to satisfy those needs. And cheating is the illicit attempt to violate the exclusivity of monogamy.

Unlike the sections above, I want to jump directly into the discussion of how people temper monogamy to keep it from becoming toxic. They do this by minimizing the categories in which exclusivity is required, usually down to just sexual exclusivity. A couple which can abide an opening of intellectual intimacy, social intimacy, etc., outside of the relationship, face far fewer of the challenges of expecting one person to be all things for one person. The monogamous romantic relationship can then exist in a constellation of social relationships, with the stability of primacy rather than the isolation of the solitary.

How do these different topics shed light on one another?

The active themes across all of these topics are: Needs, Relationships, Exclusivity, and Organizing Principles. In monomania, the partner, the god, or the drug are used as sole organizing principles, the exclusive means or relationship through which needs are met. In each scenario, the monomania can be loosened and its toxicity defused through diversification.

I put these three together because, no doubt, you (the reader) have different feelings about each one, and yet I think that they shed light on one another. Personally, I endorse monogamy for myself, while rejecting the commitments of monotheism, and being sporadically tempted by the allure of addictive behaviors. What makes exclusivity attractive or useful to you in some situations, but odious or damaging in others? Of these monomania which appeal to you, how do you manage their problematic tendencies?

*Thanks to Mimi Arbeit and Natalie Russ for some of the major insights that led to me writing this piece.

Return to the Folly of Love - April Fool’s 2017

Hello and welcome to my 12th annual April Fool’s Day observance. For those of you new to this tradition, the idea is that I try to pick a topic close to my heart, then tell you how foolish it is to invest in this topic, then tell you to do it anyways. I try to pick a new topic every year, except in years when I don’t, and also if you think too hard about it all of my topics are really the same. But some of you keep coming back and listening, so maybe I’m not the biggest fool in here. (Also, expect to be listening to me for 11 minutes).

            Today I’m repeating a topic which I covered 6 years ago, and I’ll admit that I’ve got a lot of fear about repeating this topic. Don’t get me wrong-- I love it, I’m committed to it, and I’ve prepared as much as I can, but we just never know what the future will hold, do we? So how can I just return to this topic and hope everything will go better this time around? At least you’ll all be with me, right?

            Also before beginning, I’d like to thank the following people who have served as consultants for this speech: Mimi Arbeit, Fonda Lowe, Yotam Schachter, Naomi Zaslow, and my therapist Mjriam.

           

            When I last spoke about the folly of love, I closed by noting how “sometimes love makes me feel like I’m two things, like I’m one thing, like I’m one-half, and like I’m nothing.” I quoted my partner at the time, Mimi Arbeit, who once asked me: “So if I’m yours, and you’re mine-- whose are we?” Throughout that speech I was realizing, without fully diving into, the fact that the follies of love are just propped up on top of follies about the self. Questions about love expose problems in how we conceptualize ourselves. So I’ve been wanting to pick this theme back up by going into the deep end of relationship as a dilemma of self.

I find “Who am I?” to be a rather difficult question. My current favorite philosophical answer to this question is that I am a shifting bundle of characteristics. This answer allows me to gesture vaguely at myself, while leaving essentials of “who I am” undefined. I resist talking about anything “essential” for two reasons:  (1) The deepest parts of me may not actually be accessible to my own consciousness, so I may not know my own essence, so, strangely enough, I can’t factor it into my sense of self; or (2) There may be no such a thing as “the deepest part of me.” I really can’t say whether I have some solid unchanging core. My sense of self is as a shifting bundle of characteristics, some of which stick around longer than the others; beyond that, or deeper than that, I don’t have much to say. To paraphrase Augustine, I know who I am, until you ask me, and then I don’t.

            In facing the challenge of lasting partnership, these poorly defined dimensions of self are leading to a lot of anxiety. How does one commit to a long-term relationship when self-knowledge is so limited? And the word “love”-- to me, it’s a word that expresses deep resonances, contact between the deepest parts of two people-- what can “love” mean if one’s own deepest parts are inaccessible or simply an illusion? In my last speech on this topic, I noted Ayn Rand’s wisdom that “To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say ‘I’”-- so if we believe that the self is folly, then love must be folly too.

I mean, I’m not saying that the self is folly, I’m saying that self-definition is folly, and since loving partnership (or any collective identity) is an attempt at constructing a compounded-self and therefore an attempt at compounded-self-definition, it is a compounded form of foolishness.

We could think of self and love as mereological dilemmas, that is, dilemmas of parts and wholes. To say “I” about myself is this attempt to muster all the parts of me together into a whole. To say “We” is to do the same, except to include a whole extra person in the claim of wholeness.

            Existentially-speaking, this is all fraught with risk. To say “I” or to say “We” is to commit to an identity, which means tending it, defending it, and facing its loss. To have an identity means to be jerked around emotionally by it, to feel threatened by anything that threatens that identity. To choose to be part of a couple or a group is, in one sense, to reduce myself to a part, and to attach my individual destiny to the destiny of a larger unit. Do I really want to do this?

Plato says yes. In the Symposium, he has Aristophanes tell the story of human creation, one echoed in Midrash, in which humans begin as double-sided, four-legged creatures later split up by fearful and jealous gods. Love, according to Aristophanes, is “the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man.” There are two key statements in here that I question: (1) that we are essentially united, with the individual as only a fragment of that larger whole; (2) that each “I” is better off united into a “We.” How much do we actually want oneness with others, and how much might we simply prefer individuality? And am I being more “true” to my “original nature” by seeing myself as a part of a larger whole? Am “I” better as a “We”?

            I keep returning to this one question split into two-- how is the nature of self fulfilled or troubled by engagement in partnership? Is the self in partnership a fragment finding its whole or is the self in partnership a whole risking fragmentation? This is exhausting, and I don’t feel like I’m getting any closer to making sense.

            Naomi gave me an engagement ring with an inscription referencing a page of Talmud-- Sotah 2a. In a passage on that page, one rabbi claims that God matches partners according to their actions, and another chimes in that this task is as difficult for God as it was for God to split the Red Sea. The text brings in a third rabbi who states that people are actually matched before they are born, and so they are not matched according to their actions. So which is it? Does matchmaking happen by a simple divine command before birth, or does it happen through the complex algorithm of some divine matchmaker? The text reconciles the two sayings by explaining that first marriages are decreed by heaven, and second marriages according to one’s actions. Which is fine-- except is the upcoming wedding for Naomi and me a first or a second wedding?

            Let’s ignore that last question, because I’d rather unpack how this passage actually incorporates and organizes the elements of my talk so far.

            One scenario is that God announces the partner of an individual before they are born. I’ll label this scenario “essentialist”-- God proclaims the person’s identity and, in doing so, associates their soul with some other soul. The essence of one paired with the essence of another; soulmates before the rest of the self even forms. This understanding of partnership stems from the framework of essential selfhood, and suggests a framework of essential couplehood. Being my partner’s partner would thus be essential to who I am.

            The other scenario is more complicated to unpack, so bear with me. In the second scenario, people are matched according to their actions, which is described as “as difficult as splitting the Red Sea.” Now, what’s going on here? If you’re God, what’s so difficult about splitting the Red Sea? Also, what sense does it make to compare the pairing of two people to the splitting of other things? Rabbeinu Tam, a 12th century French Rabbi, provides commentary which I find useful-- he explains that the difficulty for God in splitting the sea wasn’t producing the miracle, but choosing to save some of his creatures while killing others. Rabbeinu Tam makes the analogy more direct by providing the specific example of a 2nd marriage between a widow and a widower; it’s super-morbid, but it’s an example of God bringing two people together while having to ‘sacrifice’ their previous partners. Ok, that’s very morbid, so let’s abstract it extensively-- a match is difficult for God, and for the partners, because it necessitates sacrifices, requiring each person to cut off possible partners, possible paths for themselves, and even parts of themselves that might not be nourished by this particular partnership. If I called the first scenario “Essentialist,” we’ll call this second scenario “Existentialist”-- just as God at the Sea faced the anxiety of choosing some and nullifying others, a person choosing a partner faces the existential anxiety of affirming and rejecting parts of themselves.

            And the heart of existential anxiety in coupling is built on our uncertainty about self. If we have an essential self, it’s hard to access it. If we have no essential self, then it’s our responsibility to create ourselves, and that can be overwhelming. Somehow, acts of self-creation in one regard are acts of self-destruction in some other regard. Among all the parts of ourselves, how is it that we’re able to choose who lives and who dies?

            This is very real, and it’s inescapable-- that is, it’s an anxiety built into both marriage and divorce. There’s a violence in self-creation that makes me cringe because it’s coupled with such uncertainty. I’ll quote Garnet from Steven Universe, who captures this feeling: “Why am I so sure that I’d rather be this than everything I was supposed to be, and that I’d rather do this than anything I was supposed to do?” Can you feel that? I feel it when I face the decision to leave Boston after 10 years, just to follow Naomi to New York City. What identity, what self-knowledge, what attempt at self-- what is it that is enabling me to choose this person over my life here? I also felt this when I was going through the split with Mimi-- I felt exactly that, split, having to choose between parts of myself as individual and parts of myself as the couple. Heart-breaking choices. How did I choose? How did I know, or think I could know, what of me was ok to leave behind?

Can you see how both pairing and divorce involve sacrificing parts of self, making decisions about who I am and who I will be? What qualifies me to make these decisions? Whether there is or isn’t an essential self, how can a person wisely commit such acts of self-reckoning?

            Ok. As I say every time, but more and more in recent years, this is getting long. If I recall correctly, my responsibility is now to convince you all to engage in the folly of love, despite (and probably because of) its foolishness. And, this year, I think I have a double burden, which is to also endorse continuing the folly of self.

           

            I think I’ve got it. There are two follies involved in both self and love, and I think I can explain both their foolishness and then endorse them anyhow. These follies go together-- they are called “objectification” and “attachment.” The folly of objectification occurs when we try to fix in place something that changes, and the folly of attachment quickly follows, when we become emotionally invested in that illusion of a permanent thing. In the long run, there is no Matt Lowe, and in the short run, Matt Lowe changes-- so, in a sense, I’m more of an event than I am a thing. The same is true for our partners and our relationships. But I easily forget this, and so I get invested in these things, and then threatened when these things change.

            We become foolishly attached to illusory objects, whether the object be ourselves or our partners. Caught up in attachment to these illusions, we face striving, suffering, existential dilemma, loss, and death. If it’s so foolish, shouldn’t we drop the charade?

(Sigh.) Of course not. We love objectification; we love to do it to ourselves, we love to do it to others, and have it done unto us. Naomi has fallen in love with an image of me, and I’ve encouraged that illusion every step of the way, because her loving image of me is a major factor in the image I attempt to use to love myself. The same is true for how I’ve fallen in love with her. And if there is no essential self, then this is the best we get. If the loss of these illusions leads to a feeling of foolishness and senselessness, that’s because the only meanings we do get in this world are the ones we build and prop up ourselves, as long as we can. The illusions are the meaning. If it is foolish to invest in our sense of self or in relationships, it would be far more foolish to forego these things and simply begin and end with meaninglessness.

I’ll close by ripping off and corrupting a Tibetan story about illusion and attachment. Let’s say you see me, sometime around the wedding, looking very, very happy. And you might say, “Matt, why are you so happy with yourself? You teach that the self is an illusion.” And my answer is: “Self is an illusion. And the love of another self is an even greater and wonderful illusion!”

Thanks for your time today.

What it feels like to be a therapist (after one year of practice)

I’m still trying to put words to a feeling I’ve been having about being a therapist. I will try to write “the short version” here, in hopes that I can feel that I’ve expressed this thing, and then maybe know what to do with it.

I think there are two feelings at play, which I’ll call “Awe” and “Isolation.”

Awe - It’s special work. Preparing to do it, doing it, reflecting on it, I feel purposeful, helpful, engaged in something holy (meant in a secular sense, if that’s possible). Emotionally, the awe informs feelings of both joy and fear (serving the client, failing the client), pressure and shame/ambition (feeling myself to be not enough, feeling driven to improve).

Isolation - There are so many separations built into the work!

• Being the only therapist in the session
• Knowing the client but not letting anyone else know that I know
• Setting aside my own life issues to focus on someone else’s
• Rejoining my own life and its issues following long periods of focus on others
• Sifting through my internal reactions to the client, choosing responses
• Developing a therapist personality, authentic and yet separate from out-of-session personality

Yeah. I think that covers a lot of it. I’ve been wanting to express this to someone (friends, family) outside of the profession all year, but I’m still not sure what I want from that interaction. Do I just want to “feel felt”? To be seen in that complex experience of connection/isolation which is k’dushah (in Hebrew, this word means ‘holy’ but it also means ‘separate’)? Maybe. Maybe I’m hoping that I will have some experience of expressing it that just leads to some catharsis.

I’m not sure. It does feel good to have a shorthand for the experience: “awe and isolation.”

Tidying Up the Mind?

I haven’t read it, but this post is inspired by what I have read/heard about Marie Kondo’s “the life changing magic of tidying up.” My understanding of the core of her message goes like this: In determining whether to keep or get rid of some item you own, hold it in your hand, ask yourself if it “sparks joy,” and then keep it if it does.

This morning, I was thinking about what it would mean to apply Kondo’s method to mental objects, such as memories and emotions. Wouldn’t it be healthier to stop torturing myself with certain (apparently) unproductive emotions or with nagging memories?

Quickly I realized something about joy. Joy is something I’ve struggled with, as a concept (probably also as an experience), specifically in my desire to understand how it relates to other terms like pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, and meaning. In thinking about tidying up the mind and tossing out “the bad stuff,” I realized that joy is contextual. My experiences of joy always occur within the larger context of my life, within the context of my struggles, failures, and regrets-- not as contrasts, but as foundations.

I have plenty of memories that spark anything but joy; but, for the experiences that do spark joy, those other ones are the kindling.

Against Monotheism

I recently found this lost in my emails. 

I wrote it in 2009, during my last semester at divinity school, about a year before I realized I was a nonbeliever.

They tell me that God is One.  But I keep wondering, whether,

God being One,

He might also be many other numbers.

If "this and this are the words of the living Torah," then the one God is also Two.

If God is the dilemma and the resolution, then the two God is also Three.

And so on, right?

If God is One with those who suffer, then isn't God also Six Million?  Twelve Million?

Isn't God 12 children every minute?

If God rests where "two gather in His name" at the same time as "three gather in His name" somewhere else, while I "sit alone in meditative stillness," and you and a few others sit at "the table before God," then God is any number between One and I'm-not-sure.

And they tell me that God is One, but not in the same way that one is one.  Not the same way that I am one, or that the world is one.  The One that stands above all numbers.  Is that number still really one?  Can a number lie on and above the number line?  Perhaps that number is actually None, or just some number we haven't invented yet.

They tell me that God is One.  But I keep wondering, who,

who made One so goddamn important?  Since when was there ever really

One Truth?  Since when did all of this make sense and add up to One?

I've seen fragments, I've seen composites, but I've never seen or thought an Absolute Whole.

Is this ridiculous?  I'm not saying that there's no unity; I'm just saying that not everything fits into a perfect unity. 

Yes- we live in one "world.'

Yes- we are all interconnected, interdependent, interpenetrating.

Yes- we may indeed all have one source.

But that is different than "God is One." 

God is One, to me, means one purpose.  God is One, to me, means one truth.

God is One, to me, means one that is the best, over all others which are less-than.

God is One means my One, and perhaps your One but an indirect way, and his and her One is just way off.

God is One, to me, means the subsuming of particulars in the One, a higher unity

that cancels far more regularly than it keeps.

I'm just trying to say that Oneness is just our trip, our obsession.  The world might have other plans. 

An Atheist Theological Perspective

I was recently invited/honored to contribute to a project collecting Jewish perspectives on God. Each section below (after the disclaimer) is based on a prompt from the organizer of the project.

Disclaimer on Sources

It seemed simpler to write something myself rather than cobble together a sheet of primary sources from more public (and scholarly) atheists, but my thoughts are definitely not original. Here are my major intellectual influences on this subject, in chronological order: Pseudo-Dionysius, Maimonides, Meister Eckhart, Rabbi Sherwin Wine, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Rabbi Adam Chalom, Rabbi Greg Epstein, and John Figdor, MDiv.

How do you understand God?

Some answers that atheists give:

• As an anachronism of pre-scientific society
• As a projection of childish fantasy on the universe
• As a human concept that people use for dubious moral purposes
• As a human concept that people use because they need meaning to be absolute, and they need the universe to have a Face
• I don’t know and I don’t care (“apatheism”)
• God cannot be understood; all attempts to understand God are idolatrous (“atheology”)

What is the nature of your relationship with God?

Some answers...:

• Similar to my relationship with unicorns and other fictional things
• No relationship with God; angry at believers for their intellectual/moral failings
• I don’t really think about it
• I used to believe in God but now I don’t; it’s been a major loss in my life, but that’s no reason to return to belief

Why isn't God a part of your Jewish experience?

Answers...:

• My relationship with Judaism is focused on the Jewish people, history, culture
• My relationship with Judaism is my relationship to the Jewish state, etc.
• I care about Jewish values of social justice and activism; God part is unnecessary
• Because I don’t believe in God and, fortunately, Judaism can be engaged meaningfully from SO many other points of contact. To take one example: for Shavuot, I stay up all night learning, socializing, eating cheesecake, and then I leave before services.

If I were to ask you about God, what would you talk about instead?

Let’s talk about what we really want to talk about when we talk about God. Instead of talking about “Our Father” let’s talk about family. Instead of talking about “the true Judge,” let’s talk about justice. Instead of saying “God is love,” let’s talk about love. Instead of “Messiah” let’s talk about a better world; instead of “heaven”, death and legacy. Instead of assuming that only God can provide a sense of good and/or meaning, let’s take the risk of seeking/making those things for ourselves, and braving the fragility and fallibility of their human origins.