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CopyRight @ 1997
This book includes an analysis of: Everyone knows that the world is changing. We are heading into the unknown and anyone aware of it must know some fear. We know a little bit about where we have come from. We certainly don't know where we are going let alone the path to get there. We have only a limited idea of why we are here or why we live. New beliefs, especially science, have called into question the underpinnings of the moralities and beliefs of millinea. Humanity has lost an innocence. We will not survive without being able to answer these things. This book is intended to show how to answer those particular questions. These are not just questions of science. These are questions of morality and survival. Some require more than just reason to answer.
This is a description of a Moral Philosophy. There are a number of well known
moral philosophies based on a number of different premises, but if you research
them you will not find any that are based on biology and survival. It is just not
well enough described yet. This description of a Moral Philosophy is based on human
survival. It is written as a description of human genetics and beliefs in the context
of major challenges to human existence. The problem is that humans are already in a crisis that threatens our survival, so this must be more than a collection of information. It must be an anaylsis of what we face and what we can do about it. The potentials are greater than even the danger and that is great.
Since humans created agriculture, animal husbandry and cities, we have
lived in a fundamentally changing ecology that is not stable and that we
are not adapted to. So this book is formed about how we can again achieve a
stable ecology that we are adapted to. Some of that is about what we will
require in an ecology and part of it is about what humans will have to do to adapt
genetically and behaviorally to survive the Transition to this new ecology.
Humans are not only their genes and instincts. The mark of a human is that we
survive by
what we know and believe. We survive by the use of learned survival strategies
called Moralities. This is the second problem we must solve and the second part
of the book. The question is do we have or can we develop a survival
strategy and method, or morality, that will allow us to survive into the
future ecologies. It seems that we do have at least one existing morality
that will. The problem is that most existing moralities, most of which are
known as religions, are based on precedence and authority. For many reasons,
in the future, moralities will also have to be based on logic and reason or
they will not be used. Describing the reason and logic of morality has
required a lot of analysis in the second part of the book.
Many people, especially when young, feel that there is a better way for humanity to act and survive. Many people have looked for these same answers in many places, especially religion. Religions can provide many answers about how a person can live, but no explanations about why. If you are a person who needs explanations, you will need to look further. Science is a great tool for developing an understanding of the unknown. Unfortunately, the question of how humans can survive, is incredibly complicated and little science about it has been developed. Many people have devoted their lives to trying to figure it out though and we can stand on their shoulders. The basic concepts behind how genetics work are quite recent and have not been integrated with the rest of human knowledge. What would it look like if religion was compared to our scientific knowledge of life and survival? What would it look like if our scientific knowledge of life and survival was compared to our religion? Understand, this exploration took the path of science rather than the path of religion, but because it is a view of morality, where it ended up would look very familiar to any person of faith. How familiar is for you to decide, but I did the same thing that so many people have done when they wanted to understand more than what they were taught as children. All of this is supposed to sound familiar, because it is something that you have thought of before, but have not been able to put into words or make complete. I'll tell you up front that much of what we need to know about human survival relates to what makes us human, morality and genetics. Most of the rest of the required information has already been well explored. Originally, I asked "why is that person different from me"? But then I was trained as a biologist and I put the question in another form. I then asked "how could humans again achieve a relatively stable ecology that we can survive in"? I asked that first question over 33 years ago. What I found since then might amaze you. Many unexpected and very important answers arise about human potential and hazard. Bibliography... and how I came up with this, such as it is. If you are interested in this topic, you can email me at seahunt@diver.net. The First Section of this book is a set of five summaries. The General Summery, Summary of Human Ecology, Gentics and Artificial Selection and the Summary of Morality. The second section is about human ecology and genetics as they are and how they came to be that way. The third section is about how genetics and human ecology will be. The fourth section is a look at human survival strategies in terms of biology and common behavioral responses to the ecology. This includes things like marriage, cooperation, status, etc. The last section looks at these same strategies, but in terms of human moral systems and survival. In the 5 chapters of the Second Section of the book, the first chapter describes something about the massive "Changes" going on in the world. The next two chapters talk about what humans are and how they have gotten to this point, through "Pre-history" and "History". Socially, we are still basically tribalists. The fourth chapter talks about our use of "Technology" in terms of the resources we use to survive and the limitations these impose. These chapters are all just to lead up to the fifth chapter, which talks about "Genetics and Natural Selection". This is the kicker. The human world has undergone massive change, but human genetics change much slower. This is where the book really starts. In biological terms, natural selective effects have drastically changed. This book is about how must respond to these changes. We have a genetic disaster coming soon and a disaster from disease coming sooner. The solution to that problem though, will open up other potentials. We can become more than tribalists and almost certainly must. There are amazing potentials that can be easily realized. That is what leads to the Second Part of the book, which is about how humans can develop morally to survive in a post tribal society. Currently, the Fifth Section of the book is the Morlity Monographs that examines individual topics of morality and applies the patterns from the genetic and morality studies to each topic. Here I try to offer judgement based on the foundation already created.
Remember that when all is said and done about genetics and morality,
this started as a question of how humans could survive the problem of
disease. Trying to solve that, led to recognition of the problems
and amazing potentials of human genetics. Numerically, the population
density of civil populations is the biggest change in human ecology.
The next biggest is antibiotics. Both of those change the biggest selective
factor effecting humans and present out biggest immediate challenge.
Please understand that there is a roughness to this that is unavoidable, because I Current working form of the book as of 03/10/04 This is not current. Work has been moved off line and the book has been re-written up to the monographs, but it is here, it just needs more time and work. Update 11/17/04. Work is now on the Morality Monographs. You might want to check it out. It is the conclusion of the book after all the science is written. Section 1 - SummariesSection 2 - Human Ecology and Genetics DetailsThese chapters are many years old, but they contain the original human ecology andgenetic material that is the beginning of the book. They are the start of the book and are also quite current. This is the first half of the foundation of the book The original book was to be 9 chapters long with chapter 9 being about morality. In its present form, the morality section has somewhat taken over the book, but these chapters about human ecology and genetics are still the beginning of the book and still are where it must start. Section 3 - Human Beliefs and Survival MethodsThese chapters are just observations of how humans operate and survive. These are behavioralprocesses described in terms of strategies common to many species in different ecologies. In the Morality monographs, they are described again, but in terms of them being elements of morality, rather than ecology. This is the second part of the foundation of this book. They are mostly current and they really do need to be fit in to this book. All it takes is time. Section 4 - MoralityThis is what is built on the foundation of the last section. At this time, this section is basically storage. These are the Unfinished Morality Notes written for the Morality section of this paper. The 'Human Ecology Summary' above is the 'finished' form that derived from these notes. These were written over a period of many years. Some are pertinent, some are repetitive, some are ... odd, all are disorganized. They are put here mostly as part of a process that is supposed to lead to a summary that organizes them and states the conclusions I have reached. Really, they are an accumulation of rough data about methods humans have used to survive. The conclusions are a bit different from the data here. It represents a lot of try, much creativity, many restarts, many failures and much frustration. Make a part about humans, beliefs, factors that could be skipped, but is before the end of the morality or is an appendix |