ah. I have always assumed the hokey pokey to be one of the last surviving rituals of the pagan sex rites of the ancient Celts. Perhaps it's not as brash as the maypole dance, with virginal girls adorning a mythic phallus, but the symbolism is blatant, isn't it?

You put your ***** in
You take your ***** out
You put your ***** in
and you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
and you turn yourself around
that's what it's all about!

Really now.

In, out, in.

The term "Hokey Pokey" itself can only be a lightly veiled euphemism for the act of coitus, peut il pas? Visualize it with me now: a giant circle drawn on the ground, with children singing a "nonsense" tune, thrusting various parts of their anatomy into it in chorus. Interesting; the mythic phallus has been replaced by the mythic yonus. Frazer would be all over this.

"You turn yourself around"? Could that be an obscure Jungian reference to re-creating yourself in the form of offspring?

The reader may argue that the writer is simply oversexed and reading too much into this. Maybe that's true. The writer is in no position to judge that, being on this side of that perception. What about that lollipop song from the fifties - it's amazing that it ever got past the censors in that day and age. If that's not a euphemism for fellatio then I'm the green manalishi with the two-pronged crown.

That is what it's all about, is it not? Sit in your back yard and watch. In all of nature, rule number 1 is "the big fish eat the little fish" and rule number 2 is "go forth and multiply". Eat, Drink, Man, Woman.

Maybe the characteristic which separates us from the lower animals is the ability to go against instinct, which, truly, no other animal is capable of. Many such theories about what separates us from animals have been proffered: Tool use was a very popular theoretical delineator in the past few decades, until it was observed that many lower animals use tools; thrushes, ants, beavers, monkeys, etc. etc. etc. I myself was a vociferous proponent of the idea that the prime delineator is the fact that we alone, among all the beasts in nature, create likenesses of ourselves, like those creepy porcelain dolls,  but I've since learned of two so-called "lower" animals that come close to doing so: namely, the bowerbird, which fashions glorious nests that mimic and advertise their physical assets and characteristics in order to lure a mate, and the Cyclosa Mulmeinensis, a spider which lives on Orchid Island off the southeast coast of Taiwan that makes decoys of itself in order to confuse predator wasps. It is interesting to note that the first propagates rule 2 (mating) and the second is related to rule 1 (the food chain).

Indeed, even only a few humans are capable of denying instinct, apparently. Some amongst us have denied either rule number 1 and/or rule number 2 as a course of life. Vegans and vegetarians deny rule 1, alone amongst all the creatures of the earth. There is no other animal that regulates its diet for either moral or health reasons (I cannot even conceive that this is possible in lower animals), but only if instinct dictates such behavior in reaction to environmental necessities. Many humans also deny rule 2, and refuse to propagate. This latter is evident in two distinct forms; one in the form of a segment of the population who feel that they need not contribute to human overpopulation, and the other in the form of human homosexuality. Members both contingents sometimes refer to the rest of the species as "breeders". These are both denials of instinct which would seem bizarre to the casual outside observer. There is a portion of the species homo sapiens who do not feel compelled to disseminate their genetics and another who deny natural sustenance at the cost of some hardship to themselves.

Perhaps both of these "denials of instinct" are actually compelled by collective instinct. Maybe the survival of the race as a whole depends on reducing overpopulation and altering our means of sustenance.

I am reminded of the opening line from a song by an eighties musical group called "Love and Rockets"; You can never go against nature, because if you do, that's part of nature too....

Hell. Maybe the prime delineator that separates us from the lower animals is the ability to rant and wonder.