Blood (Transcript) (Patreon)

Here is the transcript followed by the lyrics of the new OP-1 video, Blood.

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/Z-q7JaMlMRE

Hello, today we are talking about altruism in the animal kingdom while we make a sort of 90s 2000s industrial pop rock track. Also, there will be BLOOD. 

In the last video, we talked about free will, and later I talked to my partner about it. I’m not sure how we ended up there, but.

We started looking up altruism in nature, like do animals engage in acts that could be considered altruistic? 

Altruism is when we act to promote someone else's welfare, even at a risk or cost to ourselves.

I assume that man is inherently selfish, and so is nature; that nature exists to propagate and man exists to complain about taxes. 

I don’t know about you, but altruism isn’t easy for me, and that’s exactly why it feels like I should try. 

So if it’s hard for a human to act altruistically, what about animals? Well, there are documented cases of animals acting altruistically. 

In biology, altruism refers to behavior by an individual that increases the fitness of another individual while decreasing their own. It is different from the philosophical concept of altruism, in which an action would only be called altruistic if it was done with the conscious intention of helping another.

So now that we have a basic understanding of the concept, let’s look at specific examples. Let’s start with the African grey parrot. In a study published by Current Biology, a parrot would give a partner a metal token that could be exchanged for food. In their experiment, this exchange window was covered up and closed on one bird's cage, making it impossible for that bird to trade. The bird had a pile of tokens in its cage but no way to use them. Meanwhile, its neighbor in an adjacent cage had an open exchange window but no tokens for food. After sizing up the situation, the token-rich bird would help out its pal by passing tokens through an opening between the two bird enclosures, and the bird shared even though it didn't partake in the walnut payoff. 

In 2011, it was discovered that a group of sperm whales had adopted a dolphin. Sperm whales typically do not form bonds with other species. The adult dolphin had a deformed spine, curved in an s-shape, which likely made life difficult for it. This deformity may have been the reason it sought contact with the whales. However, it remains a question why the whales accepted it. One theory suggests that sperm whales engage in babysitting behaviors with their calves, so the dolphin may have been perceived as a young one in need of care. Essentially, it was treated like a baby by the whales.

In another example involving dolphins, they have been observed aiding injured companions by keeping them near the water's surface so they can breathe. 

Let's shift our focus to African wild dogs. After successfully capturing prey, every member of the pack is permitted to eat. Even disabled pack members are included in the sharing, alongside healthier adults, and pups are fed regurgitated food by any adult in the pack. This behavior is quite different from that of other large carnivores like lions, who typically engage in aggressive competition over a carcass, often jostling with each other for access to food.

By the way, if you see an African wild dog, you’re legally obligated to take it to the store and let it pick out anything it wants. 

One of the more interesting cases of animal altruism and the basis for this song is the case of the Vampire Bat. Vampire bats are the world’s only known blood-sucking mammal outside private equity CEOs. They’re highly social and have been shown to maintain decade-long relationships, unlike private equity CEOs. 

In 2020, a study published in Current Biology examined how the connections develop between bats. They start by developing trust with other bats through grooming each other, eventually, they share meals by regurgitating blood into each other’s mouths. This particular act of reciprocal altruism got me thinking about blood as a metaphor for bonds, family, and sharing, but also blood as a curse, a prison, a chain to a part of you that you didn’t ask for. Our blood family isn’t always our chosen family, but with vampire bats, blood does define their chosen family.

Growing up queer with no queer peers or role models was a pretty isolating experience. I didn’t even know I was queer until years after I spent every day being told I was an insult. I think the first time I felt like I had a real family was working as a bike messenger at ABC Legal in the 2000s in Seattle. We were all pretty weird and poor, some of us were queer, and we were all just sort of weird together. But it wasn’t until moving to San Francisco later that I knew what ‘chosen family’ meant.

I moved to San Francisco in my early 20s, and I didn't know anyone or anything. There was an offer for help to get settled there, and I was like “A gay dude gotta live there once, right?” In the first year, I met friends that not only became my chosen family but also through them and their friends I learned how to be myself and be queer. 

There is this group I was introduced to called the Radical Faeries; it’s a “loosely affiliated worldwide network and counter-cultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through secular spirituality.” Sometimes deemed a form of modern Paganism, the movement also adopts elements from anarchism and environmentalism. I had a hard time identifying with all the elements of what the Radical Faeries were about, but it was the closest thing to a queer family I had ever had.

There are many ways in which you can feel like you don’t have a center; for me, finding a group of people who participated in reciprocal altruism while also encouraging radical self-expression was like getting fed blood by a friend for the very first time.  This isn’t an endorsement of organized spirituality; it’s not even an endorsement of the Radical Faeries. More so, it’s an acknowledgment that there are some things in life we just cannot do on our own. 

The blood we are born with isn’t the blood that defines us unless we have a genetically inherited blood disease. If so, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be insensitive. What I mean is that the feeling of being seen and loved is powerful, and sometimes we don’t get that from the family we got when we were born, and sometimes that family doesn’t know how to teach us what we need, and sometimes we need to be seen and loved like the blood in our veins needs to pump.

If you haven’t found your family yet, don’t worry. I didn’t even know I needed one until I found mine, and now I can take what they taught me and pass it along, the bad, the good, all that family inadvertently teaches you. I’m going to pass this off to my writing partner, Aran, and she’s going to make this mess into something listenable. I’ll upload the track and the files to Patreon, and later this year an album. A transcript of the video is available via a link in the video description. As always, thank you for watching.

Blood

innocent, innocent

all that you wanted was a chance

to feel something

innocent, innocent

all you remember is the scent of something tempting

what a sin, what a sin

to feel the the heat beneath your teeth

to take a sip and feel complete

and now you got these deep needs

polite society can't provide

they've got you on your knees

pleading for another bite 

there's nowhere left to feed

and there's nowhere to hide

you've disobeyed the creed 

and for that they're gonna ruin your life

your blood is killing you slowly

your blood is hunting you down

your blood is your greatest weakness

so let it run dry

rub the salt from your eyes 

we are your family now 

we are your family now

our strongest work in the daylight

the rest beg, borrow, and steal

we wish we could offer you safety

but the best we can do is a meal

so come on in, have a bite, you'll be our guest

stay with us for the night, have a nice rest

you'll be alright, we'll tuck you in tight, 

'cause charity's all we got left

so come on in, have a bite, you'll be our guest

stay with us for the night, have a nice rest

you'll be alright, we'll tuck you in tight, 

'cause charity's all we got left

your blood is killing you slowly

your blood is hunting you down

your blood is your greatest weakness

so let it run dry

rub the salt from your eyes 

we are your family now 

we're a coalition of defectors on a noble mission

they keep insisting that we're wicked and doomed to perdition

the friction fabricated; they delight in picking fights with  

people paralyzed and persecuted by the opposition

we need no permission to exist, no more reason to persist

than kith who suffer the volition of their own kin

grieving parents mourning for their heir apparent

who would would rather see 'em dead than living happy in the Mission

one little kiss, a frisson of bliss, a chance to reminisce

about the time before we knew what we were missing

we were innocent, innocent, we were just kids 

'til their love turned out to be a fiction

your blood is killing you slowly

your blood is hunting you down

your blood is your greatest weakness

so let it run dry

rub the salt from your eyes 

we are your family now