Influencer!

May 8th, 2021| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

One day, in the Chimfunshi wildlife sanctuary, Zambia, Julia, an 18-year-old chimpanzee, created something new. A style. She began to put long, stiff blades of grass into one or both ears. And then she continued her daily life, those new accessories of style clearly visible.

Apparently, other chimps at the sanctuary were impressed. And pretty soon, they began copying her fashion statement: first her son, then a couple of female friends, then a male buddy. Eight of the ten animals in the group began mimicking Julia’s haute couture.

Said Dr. Edwin van Leeuwen, a student of animal “culture” at the University of Antwerp, and lead author of “A Group-Specific Arbitrary Tradition in Chimpanzees,” in Animal Cognition.

It was quite funny to see. They tried again and again without success. It’s not a pleasant feeling, poking a piece of grass far enough into the ear to stay there. But once the chimpanzees had mastered the technique, they repeated it often, proudly, almost ritualistically, fiddling with the inserted blades to make sure others were suitably impressed.”

The originator of this trend died two years ago, but her chic lives on, despite there being no discernible purpose to this behavior. In fact, other chimp groups in the same sanctuary did not engage in such elegant decorations (labeled “GIEB”—“grass-in-ear behavior”!).

van Leeuwen and Co.:

Regardless of the precise mechanism underlying the behavioural diffusion, our observations importantly show that chimpanzees spontaneously copy arbitrary behaviour from their group members. … The fact that these behaviours can be arbitrary and outlast the originator speaks to the cultural potential of chimpanzees.”

Well, so it turns out that humans are not the only ones with “culture” that can be transmitted by influencers.

Declared Dr. Andrew Whiten, neuroscientist at the University of St. Andrews, and author of “The Burgeoning Reach of Animal Culture,” in Science.

If you define culture as a set of behaviors shared by a group and transmitted through the group by social learning, then you find that it’s widespread in the animal kingdom. You see it from primates and cetaceans, to birds and fish, and now we even find it in insects.”

Whether it is clothing, art, music, sport, or whatever, there are influencers who direct our likes and our dislikes.

All that is well and good, I suppose. But there is a more significant kind of influencing that the Bible talks about.

I solemnly charge [you] …
preach the word, … reprove, rebuke, exhort
with all patience and teaching.
1 Timothy 4:1–2

We can sum up all four imperatives by the single phrase, Scripture-based influence of others: 1) preaching right doctrine and 2) reproving wrong doctrine; 3) rebuking wrong behavior and 4) exhorting right behavior.

This Scripture-based influencing is what grows God’s kingdom, and it can be done formally and informally, from the pulpit and in the coffee shop, in front of crowds or face to face with one person, in school, in the marketplace, anywhere and everywhere, with one and with all.

Scripture-based influencing.

[I]n speech, conduct, love, faith and purity,
show yourself an example of those who believe.
1 Timothy 4:12

Influencing others for God, a solemn charge for all of us.

This is the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat. The former is simply influenced by what’s going around it. The latter influences what happens around it.

Paul was a thermostat:

Brethren, join in following my example. …
The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me,
practice these things.
Philippians 3:17; 4:9

Let’s go influence the world! GIEB!

SOURCES:
The New York Times; Animal Cognition; Science