A Crickets Losing Streak

"Each cricket can be thought of as constantly updating his own estimate of his fighting ability, relative to that of an average individual in his population." pg 81. Dawkin introduces his point of view on what he thinks might be the competition between individuals and how some might alter their behavior based on past events. He talks about how species might go into a fight of some sort, and if they lose under the circumstances of that fight, it might take them to doubt their fighting abilities with those same circumstances in the future. He makes a point in explaining how its different between crickets and say, chimpanzees, where crickets remember not an individual but rather every member of the specie as the cause of his win or loss, while a chimpanzee remembers that individual. In other words, once crickets win or lose a fight, they will remember they lost to a specie, rather than remembering exactly which individual it was. This is very similar in human beings, since we also tend to moralize or demoralize depending on how we do on a certain occasion.

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"All that happens is that individuals who are accustomed to winning become even more likely to win, while individuals who are accustomed to losing become steadily more likely to lose." pg 82. Once we make a mistake, one of two things happen. We either take action based on it or ignore it. If we take action we tend to either prevent that moment or provoke it, depending on whether it was good for us or not. This sometimes prevents us from making things we normally can do, but are afraid of because of a bad result in the past (as mentioned in "Sink-or-Swim?"). In our case as humans, it happens both in the way of the cricket and of the chimpanzee. Since we have culture, we follow a set of rules on acting with other human beings, and therefore tend to direct some actions not to an individual but to the human race as a whole. We think we cannot perform an action because it will have an effect we know of, since we understand how culture tends to function. This may limit us in what to do and what not to in terms of thinking on what could happen generally with any human being, but then we also tend to understand consequences based on a specific human being. We also get to know people and measure how our acts are to be done with that human being in order for us to know if we'll lose or win. Therefore our actions are being oppressed by individuals as well as by the general population. Many things we can do become something in our mind which we consider impossible to achieve, end therefore don't carry them along. If only we were able to really understand what we are able to do and what not to by not thinking on past incidents but rather on Will and a positive attitude, the extent to which our abilities could grow would become indescribable.