The First to Fall

Human self-domestication, Pathological Demand Avoidance, and “self-control” walk into a bar…

I’ve been circling something for a while now…trying to find the thread that runs through human self-domestication, self-control, and this term people throw around, PDA.

I think it comes down to:

Who (or what) is in control? and
How do we decide what counts as a legitimate signal?

Self-Domestication

Over thousands of years, humans slowly became tamed. Depending on who you ask, they either tamed themselves (social pressure and mating preferences) or they tamed each other (slavery and control of reproduction). I’m of the latter opinion, but the point here isn’t the process, but its consequences…like less reactive aggression, more social tolerance, tighter symbolic governance, and the gradual internalization of rules. We stopped punching each other and starting performing for each other.

Domestication was physical (smaller faces, softer jaws, reduced sexual dimorphism), but the the real shift was behavioral. We began outsourcing our regulation…from our gut/instinct to law and role. We made and obeyed rules…and over time became people who needed rules. You might say control became internalized (caged from the inside?).

And I think this is where something like “self-control” shows up (and wearing a halo, no less).

“Self-control.” Anyone with a brain should find that term suspicious. It splits the self in two: some sort of wild part that has to be restrained, and a righteous part that does the restraining? (what weird fucking animals we are) Honestly, I think it’s just a theological concept dressed up as psychology. And like most civilized “virtues,” it smells like bullshit once you sniff past the incense.

Here’s what I think “self-control” really is: the cognitive costume of domestication.

Think about it. It’s what supposedly lets us suppress emotion, delay gratification, comply with symbolic norms, and function in environments totally divorced from our biology…schools, offices, courtrooms, churches. Self-control sure as hell doesn’t mean living wisely…it’s about sitting still when your body says move, smiling when your nervous system screams no, and nodding along when everything inside says get the fuck out.

In a natural system, “regulation” evolved to keep us alive (avoid cliffs, dodge snakes, read the tribe’s mood, etc.). But what is regulation in civilized systems? In modern society? It’s self-suppression in the name of some symbolic performance.

Now enter “PDA” (Pathological Demand Avoidance). Or as I prefer to think of it…one of many glitches in the domestication software.

Here’s the narrative: PDA is often seen in autistic and ADHD individuals. It’s marked by an intense resistance to demands (even “reasonable” ones) along with panic, shutdown, or rage. Notice the language: it’s “pathological” and it’s “avoidance.” Some smart people have suggested we change the P to “persistent,” and I think that’s a good start. But what about avoidance? Is resistance to control really “avoidance?” Defiance? Oppositional? I don’t think so. I think it’s a nervous system that reacts to control like poison…civilization-induced anaphylaxis.

What if PDA is part of a broader biological resistance to domestication that still rattles the bars?

Let’s go back to human self-domestication (which I’d argue is synonymous with the process we call “civilization).

Civilization built a) systems and b) people who fit them. It selected for internal submission…people who could smile through exploitation, obey without understanding, perform without protest. And over time, the organism (us) adapted to control (because it survived).

Great…it’s adaptive then….what’s the problem?

The problem is that not all control is created equal.

In living systems, control is ecological. Emergent. Immediate. You overhunt, food disappears. You act like a jerk, the group boots you. You walk through stinging nettles to take a pee…you learn. The feedback is timely, proportionate, local, and meaningful. And it regulates your behavior in ways that support life.

Compare that to the feedback in our civilized systems.

You break a dress code and lose your job.
You poison a river and get a bonus.
You speak truth and get punished.
You conform and get promoted.

This isn’t feedback…it’s symbolic distortion (bullshit mostly). Consequences are delayed, inverted, or entirely fake. We no longer act based on what is…we act based on what signals approval.

What are you up to today? Are you going to school to pass tests that mean fuck all? Filing a report that no one will read? Obeying rules that no one really understands? Working a job that’s killing you…because your health insurance depends on it?

It’s control as abstraction / simulation and it severs feedback from function. And when a system loses real feedback, it can’t adapt anymore. It can’t course-correct. I can only punish, delay, distract. (This is how collapse happens.)

I’m rambly and angry today…

PDA isn’t rebellion for its own sake. It isn’t resistance to structure. It’s resistance to unlinked structure…to rules with no grounding, demands with no meaning, performances with no reality beneath them. To papers with numbers on them. To digital clocks and alarms and metrics and schedules….

It’s an involuntary response to any sort of control that bypasses sense and body and consequence.

And yeah, I get it…some people will say I’m romanticizing resistance or prehistory…that “nature controls too,” and I’m just pissed off at society.

Maybe. But have you ever asked yourself what the purpose of the control is? Or what the quality of it is?

Does it really keep you alive…or does it keep you in line? I’d say ecological feedback is the only feedback that teaches you anything real.

When we resist a meaningless demand, we’re not being defiant…we’re being awake (even if we don’t know it). We feel some distortion and some lie behind the request. We’re not okay performing a role that destroys something real. To me, that’s a sign that some part of the original organism (human) still exists and resists and still rings the alarm when the world goes insane.

Written by

Ken

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I’ve been circling something for a while now…trying to find the thread that runs through human self-domestication, self-control, and this term people throw around, PDA.

I think it comes down to:

Who (or what) is in control? and
How do we decide what counts as a legitimate signal?

Self-Domestication

Over thousands of years, humans slowly became tamed. Depending on who you ask, they either tamed themselves (social pressure and mating preferences) or they tamed each other (slavery and control of reproduction). I’m of the latter opinion, but the point here isn’t the process, but its consequences…like less reactive aggression, more social tolerance, tighter symbolic governance, and the gradual internalization of rules. We stopped punching each other and starting performing for each other.

Domestication was physical (smaller faces, softer jaws, reduced sexual dimorphism), but the the real shift was behavioral. We began outsourcing our regulation…from our gut/instinct to law and role. We made and obeyed rules…and over time became people who needed rules. You might say control became internalized (caged from the inside?).

And I think this is where something like “self-control” shows up (and wearing a halo, no less).

“Self-control.” Anyone with a brain should find that term suspicious. It splits the self in two: some sort of wild part that has to be restrained, and a righteous part that does the restraining? (what weird fucking animals we are) Honestly, I think it’s just a theological concept dressed up as psychology. And like most civilized “virtues,” it smells like bullshit once you sniff past the incense.

Here’s what I think “self-control” really is: the cognitive costume of domestication.

Think about it. It’s what supposedly lets us suppress emotion, delay gratification, comply with symbolic norms, and function in environments totally divorced from our biology…schools, offices, courtrooms, churches. Self-control sure as hell doesn’t mean living wisely…it’s about sitting still when your body says move, smiling when your nervous system screams no, and nodding along when everything inside says get the fuck out.

In a natural system, “regulation” evolved to keep us alive (avoid cliffs, dodge snakes, read the tribe’s mood, etc.). But what is regulation in civilized systems? In modern society? It’s self-suppression in the name of some symbolic performance.

Now enter “PDA” (Pathological Demand Avoidance). Or as I prefer to think of it…one of many glitches in the domestication software.

Here’s the narrative: PDA is often seen in autistic and ADHD individuals. It’s marked by an intense resistance to demands (even “reasonable” ones) along with panic, shutdown, or rage. Notice the language: it’s “pathological” and it’s “avoidance.” Some smart people have suggested we change the P to “persistent,” and I think that’s a good start. But what about avoidance? Is resistance to control really “avoidance?” Defiance? Oppositional? I don’t think so. I think it’s a nervous system that reacts to control like poison…civilization-induced anaphylaxis.

What if PDA is part of a broader biological resistance to domestication that still rattles the bars?

Let’s go back to human self-domestication (which I’d argue is synonymous with the process we call “civilization).

Civilization built a) systems and b) people who fit them. It selected for internal submission…people who could smile through exploitation, obey without understanding, perform without protest. And over time, the organism (us) adapted to control (because it survived).

Great…it’s adaptive then….what’s the problem?

The problem is that not all control is created equal.

In living systems, control is ecological. Emergent. Immediate. You overhunt, food disappears. You act like a jerk, the group boots you. You walk through stinging nettles to take a pee…you learn. The feedback is timely, proportionate, local, and meaningful. And it regulates your behavior in ways that support life.

Compare that to the feedback in our civilized systems.

You break a dress code and lose your job.
You poison a river and get a bonus.
You speak truth and get punished.
You conform and get promoted.

This isn’t feedback…it’s symbolic distortion (bullshit mostly). Consequences are delayed, inverted, or entirely fake. We no longer act based on what is…we act based on what signals approval.

What are you up to today? Are you going to school to pass tests that mean fuck all? Filing a report that no one will read? Obeying rules that no one really understands? Working a job that’s killing you…because your health insurance depends on it?

It’s control as abstraction / simulation and it severs feedback from function. And when a system loses real feedback, it can’t adapt anymore. It can’t course-correct. I can only punish, delay, distract. (This is how collapse happens.)

I’m rambly and angry today…

PDA isn’t rebellion for its own sake. It isn’t resistance to structure. It’s resistance to unlinked structure…to rules with no grounding, demands with no meaning, performances with no reality beneath them. To papers with numbers on them. To digital clocks and alarms and metrics and schedules….

It’s an involuntary response to any sort of control that bypasses sense and body and consequence.

And yeah, I get it…some people will say I’m romanticizing resistance or prehistory…that “nature controls too,” and I’m just pissed off at society.

Maybe. But have you ever asked yourself what the purpose of the control is? Or what the quality of it is?

Does it really keep you alive…or does it keep you in line? I’d say ecological feedback is the only feedback that teaches you anything real.

When we resist a meaningless demand, we’re not being defiant…we’re being awake (even if we don’t know it). We feel some distortion and some lie behind the request. We’re not okay performing a role that destroys something real. To me, that’s a sign that some part of the original organism (human) still exists and resists and still rings the alarm when the world goes insane.

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