Rion Scott - Insurrections

Police circled 15him as he squatted on the ground soiling his torn blue jeans. According to onlookers, it seemed he had long forgotten about the woman with the dyed golden hair. At that moment, defecation was his whole world.

Cornered by police who looked at him with disgust while speaking a language he could no longer understand, Louis decided, like any trapped animal, to go on the offensive. As they approached, he flung his warm new feces in their direction. Excrement splattered against the officers as they rushed to subdue the bawling Louis Smith. They wrestled him to the ground, cracking his skull and three of his ribs in the scuffle. Louis Smith, that poor confused creature, must have had no understanding of what was going on.

Having gone through this experience, Louis in captivity rapidly sped through the stages of Reverse Animalism, 16often hooting like the primate he had become. The River Run Mental Health Facility on the Southside of Cross River had — and sadly still has — no procedure for controlling a person who insists on grooming peers who are, no doubt, struggling with mental disorders as serious as his own. Louis often violently attacked other males for supremacy, sexually accosted female patients, and swung through the facility, hopping from wall to wall as if they were jungle trees. Before long he resisted even wearing clothes.

It was a controversial decision to turn Louis Smith loose into the wild to live out his life as a simple primate. Some found this course of action an unnecessarily cruel choice. Many mental health advocates, those with little understanding of the stages of Reverse Animalism, who have often never encountered a BEP, said a round of treatment aimed at bringing Louis back into society or, at the very least, easing some of the symptoms, would have been best. But the decision to turn Louis loose is one we stand by. There is no coming back from this particular descent. Much might have been gained from studying him up close, but was his life created especially for curious researchers? If we were to keep him unhappy and in captivity, how would we be any different from common slaveholders? In addition, we had to think of the safety of the other patients at River Run. Proposals to hold him in captivity at the Cross River Zoo, the Alfred McCoy Museum of Science, or B. J. Arcom’s Traveling Parade of Oddities were quickly rejected. Louis Smith is not the Hottentot Venus, 17and we, it is to be hoped, have moved forward as a society from such gross and primitive displays. If we were to return to such a disgusting spectacle, how could we even call ourselves modern men and women? The authors could not answer that question in a way that we were comfortable with. We took what we believe was the most honorable route and released him into the wild where his current mental state tells him he needs to be. 18Louis Smith, or the man who was once Louis Smith, lives in the Wildlands 19on the edge of Cross River, which is home to all types of creatures, according to myth and urban legend. 20The once erudite young Louis Smith now roams naked, but happy and free. 21

1. The disorder is most often called Reverse Evolution. The authors of this study find that term problematic, as it is imprecise and, frankly, politically fraught. We propose the less controversial Reverse Animalism, as evolution, like climate change, is simply a theory and not a unified and complete one. We find it awkward to compare a real condition, albeit one many researchers and psychologists have trouble acknowledging as genuine, to a theory that has hardly been proven. The authors of the study will continue to use the phrase “backwardly evolved person” or BEP when referring to one who is suffering from the disorder, for want of a better term. We find the phrase “reverse animal” condescending and disrespectful, as sufferers of Reverse Animalism are, after all, still human.

One of the frustrating things about researching this disorder is that the scientific community currently lacks an accurate vocabulary to properly discuss Reverse Animalism. Because of a certain dogmatism and mental ossification among researchers, developing politically neutral and accurate terminology has been difficult. We believe that adopting the term Reverse Animalism is a small but crucial positive step toward creating a precise language around the disorder. Readers more familiar with the term Reverse Evolution are reminded that Reverse Animalism and Reverse Evolution are synonymous. Also, it is good to keep in mind that we are discussing a psychological disorder and not the proposed scientific phenomenon that posits a reversal of the so-called evolutionary timeline or a literal reversal of evolutionary biology.

2. The subject’s real name and some identifying details have been changed to protect his identity. He is an African American male who resided on the Northside of Cross River, Maryland (with the exception of his brief time at River Run Mental Health Facility and his days in the Wildlands of Cross River), in the years covered by this study, which runs roughly from his tenth to his nineteenth year. All other names have been either omitted or changed.

3. The symptoms of Reverse Animalism can vary but often include taking excessive pleasure in excretory functions; a lack of interest in traditional basic hygiene, including bathing, shaving, and combing of the hair; an abnormal, sometime prurient, interest in domesticated and, later, wild animals, particularly mammals, including but not limited to dogs, wolves, bears, horses, monkeys, and apes; and a gradual loss of language functions, beginning with a slow shedding of vocabulary and ending with grunts, howls, and gestures substituted for speech.

4. Louis Smith earned the sobriquet “erudite” as a child. He had a stellar academic career up until high school, where he experienced a sudden and shocking decline. We now know that this decline can be attributed to his condition, but at the time, to his family, it was quite puzzling. Louis had once won awards for public speaking and for a time studied French and Spanish alongside his native language. Here was a boy who received all As and positive reports throughout his elementary school career, a boy who once placed first in the school’s spelling bee and did well in the regional competitions. Suddenly he began failing classes and incurring suspensions for fights. These fights, placed in their proper context, were really, to Louis at least, challenges for male dominance over his peers, who to his devolving mind were really a herd or a pack.

5. Approximately 1 million people in the United States alone suffer from some form of Reverse Animalism. Most cases are very mild. The vast majority of BEPs are never diagnosed and never know that they are living with Reverse Animalism. In this report we discuss, for the most part, the symptoms and stages of the harsher manifestations of the disorder.

By some estimates, there has been an almost 1,000 % increase in the number of diagnosed cases in the past ten years. This shocking increase has inspired many theories, but no definitive one as yet. Extreme cases, such as the one discussed in this study, are, for reasons not yet fully understood, becoming more common.

6. R. Burns et al., “Undoing the Descent of Man: New Effective Approaches in Treating Reverse Evolution,” American Pharmacological Concerns Quarterly , Fall 2014, 1–14. We find the Meratti report to be a self-serving piece of corporate propaganda that only aims to absolve Meratti of any responsibility toward Smith. After his capture, he was treated with a cocktail of medications and briefly became part of an ill-conceived study of Panofil, an untested Meratti Pharmaceuticals product. This medication, we believe, likely accelerated the progress of the disorder and should not be administered to anyone who suffers from Reverse Animalism without further study. Meratti, Inc., predictably disagrees.