Copyright 1994
CopyRight @ 1997
This book has undergone a great deal of evolution. It started as an examination of human variation. Why is one person different from another? What are the ranges of psychological, physiological and morphological variations in the human race? Initially the problem is looked at from a view of human biology and ecology. Immediately it is noticed that human ecology is undergoing what is in many ways the most profound change that any organism has ever experienced. *We are entering a completely new ecology, but are still basically adapted to older ecologies. So human variation and adaptation must be examined in relation to more than one ecology. Finally, the book became an examination of the survival strategies that humans have used in the various ecologies and what we might use in the future. The final orientation of the book is about these survival strategies. Human survival strategies are called moralities and they have generally been preserved and taught by religions. The better known moral systems are known as religions. Normally, moralities are primarily passed from parents to children. Moralities are the learned behaviors that we have used to replace and augment our instincts. A learned survival strategy is a morality. To a large extent, human ecologies are defined by our use of learned survival strategies rather than instincts.
This study is primarily formed around the context of what it would take for humans to create another relatively stable ecology. If we cannot find a long term niche, we will not survive. The intent of the book is to produce a way of examining and evaulating various factors of human existence as elements that can be evaluated by the methods of science. In general, the sciences used were biology and its sub-discipline ecology. Each factor or change is studied in the context of: multiple ecologies and niches; genetics, selection and hybridization; beliefs, moralities and survival strategies; technology and knowledge. Topics are referenced from multiple views.
It works out a lot better than that sounds.
2. The changes in both human ecology and human nature are so basic that the effects will be just about all pervasive. Many changes are predictable for particular elements of the ecology and possible human responses, but more than to describe any feature of the ecology or human nature, this is to describe how to categorize elements and features of human existence, as elements that can be given systematic study as biology. From that, a view can emerge of the problems and potentials we face. In this book, the primary changes in human existence are described in three categories, with varying time frames.
Normally, when an ecological analysis is performed, it is primarily a study of a species energetic and reproductive characteristics, here called technology and genetics. For humans, beliefs must be added as a primary catagory.
2a. The first catagory examined is technology and its effect on our resource acquisition and utilization strategies. The time frames considered here are Paleolithic humans before 400,000 years ago, Neolithic toolmaking hunters, agriculturists and then "post depletive agriculturists". Humans have used simple tools for a very long time. Yet, for however long humans have used tools, there was a qualitative change in the significance of technology when it reached the utility required by the neolithic big game hunter. This time frame could be looked at as the past 400,000 years (Leaky). This is when the present changes in human ecology really started. Neolithic hunting was what destroyed the ecology of the paleolithic and eventually, the neolithic. Agriculture was a by product. The time frame of simple agriculture is not likely to be older than 80,000 years. The next time frame to consider would be when we develop non-depletetive agricultural and energy production technologies.
It may not be flattering to say, but most present technology is similer in effect to the neolithic hunting and cutting tools. It has opened up available resources that were easily depleted. This catagory would even include petroleum based technologies and almost all present farming techniques. It represents an increase in energetic resource. Use of solar, wind or fusion energy sources should be clean and non-depletable. Modified terrace farming, hydroponics and other newer techniques will allow non-depletive food production. This would be a qualitative change in the nature of the technology and its effects. A description of humans surviving on clean, non-depleting technology is a future time frame.
2b. The second catagory of change is in our genetic nature. The first time frame could be the family groups and tribes of the paleolithics. These groups were relatively isolated reproductive populations and evolved along seperate routes. They occasionally intermingled, especially when moving ice would have caused mobility. The second time frame would be what was called the neolithics to refer to their technological characteristics. In terms of genetics and society, they were family and tribal groups evolving in relative isolation. The next time frame would be the cities and the stratified society. It is a time when communication has removed the isolation of the tribes and the cities have brought them together to hybridize. It is a time when humans have battled disease and so started effecting our own evolution in a signifigant way. It was and is a transition period from tribal to a post tribal form of society. Another time frame is from the near future, when we start conciously and methodically effecting our genetics, until the far future.
2c. The third catagory relates to our beliefs, strategies, and the philosophical tools available to us. It is hard to give time frames to beliefs. It can be important though. The study of this is refered to as the History of Conciousness. It is hard to describe beliefs or their importance. Beliefs is just a word, used here very broadly to describe many things. It is hard to know what was or is actually believed. There can be baffling subtlty to beliefs, their connections and consequences. At least, it can be said with some certainty that beliefs are of overwhelming importance to human survival. The mark of humans is the use of learned behaviors rather than instincts. Luckily, for the purposes of this book, beliefs that are current or recent are the most important. The ecology that we exist in now, pretty much replaced the previous ecology. The beliefs of tribes are fairly simple and common. This mostly concerns beliefs related to the consequences of agriculture - cities, warfare, science, etc. Socrates proposal of the world being causal and the development of Greek science and philosophy was revolutionary. Still, the most immediately pertinent consideration is about the beliefs and strategies attendant to the opening of the niche of warriors, because it is their beliefs that we primarily live with at present. At present, about 7000 years later, the niche of the militarist is narrowing. Consequently, many of our fundamental beliefs and strategies, called moralities, developed during that time period and for that niche, will change. In terms of human belief and development, the time of the cities and warfare usually represent a disturbed ecology. The strategies of survival developed during that time are not the strategies that humans will use in a more stable ecology. Our adaptations to a more stable future ecology will be in the direction of how we were before the city niche, the ecology that we are still most adapted to. This is the change that seems so immediate to both intelligent creative people who desire change and are trying to develop new survival strategies and to conservative people who prefer not to change the systems inherited from the warriors.
Behaviors are described in this book as actions, technology or energetic strategies, personal strategies including reproduction, and multi-generational behaviors called institutions that serve ongoing human needs. Examples are education, science, industry, religion and family.
3. This book is written in a form to discuss energetics and then beliefs, so as to lead into an examination of reproduction and more specifically genetics. It was the development of knowledge of agriculture that led to the cities and warfare. It is the development of medicine and genetics that will dictate much of the appearence of the next stable ecology. Genetic consequences and potentials are what will lead to the most important events.
4. Here, ecology and sociobiology are the methods of descriptions of the difficult issues that are so immediate to humans during the changes the specie is experiencing. This then is a tool for any individual or institution trying to understand and evaluate their actions and goals within the context of their changing society. Some people are more adapted to the consequences of these changes and to them the issue can take on great personal importance. They seek the answers. For most people, the most pertinent change relates to changes in belief and value within a relatively short time frame. This speaks to the person whose intelligence and consequential creativity has presented them with a need for ideas and values broader than the current superficial, shortsighted, archaically or irrationally based values so common to our society today.
So often there are questions that should have answers. Do you approach understanding that cannot quite be grasped? Important decisions are based on values of great importance, yet of so little clarity. Yet decisions are made and a person functions, even with limited understanding of the values behind the decisions made or the source of the values. The third change discussed is the change in beliefs that is occuring because people are examining their values and developing new ones. Analysis of the value systems and their basis provides tools to solve the problems of value and belief that the individual encounters. It is a tool to help clarify perceptions of the world, since we observe, interpret and react to our world through our values. The source of the values are moral systems. This book specifically addresses the inadequacies and conflicts of present moral and value systems in the changing world. It discusses the basis of these value systems and the great changes that are restructuring them, within specific forms and time frames. The overwhelming significance of the family in human society and its values must be understood.
This directly speaks to the individual who perceives the changes and feels a response of understanding the beauty and potential we approach for humans. They also sense the inadequacies, hindrances, and dangers. It also speaks to any parent who feels the challenges, potentials and hazards ahead for their offspring.
The problem was approached from all available avenues of analysis, but was given basic form as a biological problem that includes human variations and variations in human ecology. The same questions have been asked in many other ways, many other times, but as Michael Polanyi pointed out, study what you like, you're studying humans.
5. These changes in ecology is are beautiful and significant phenomena to consider. Usually the ecology of an organism is primarily dictated by its energy supply, but as mentioned before, it is rather different for humans. It turns out that presently there are physical effects of communication and genetics, where evolution can be expected to focus now, presenting the human race with the potential for a step in maturity to far more than we are now. Before that happens we will have to create a niche environment appropriate to our potentials. Much of that has to do with what knowledge we can command. It is amazing that human belief will affect human evolution and vice versa. This is the power of technology and morality. That holds great promise for the evolution of humans. This is what this book is supposed to illuminate for those who look for a way for humans to live and grow. We are not evolving towards some preset evolutionary goal. We are trying to find a viable survival route with what we have got or can create. Sort of like a marriage.
The beliefs and philosophies of the old ecology are well known and developed. They brought us this far. The beliefs, philosophies and techniques of the new ecology, including tool use as well as social institutions, .. technologies and beliefs.. must be created and understood for how far we have to go. They will have to be developed from careful thought and awareness of natural bias. Luckily, many of the behaviors evolved and developed for previous ecologies will serve very well in making the next ecology workable, seemingly natural and comfortable. To a large extent we will make our next society look like the ones we are most adapted to, what we were before the niche for cities and warfare opened. That will probably include the reflection of extended family and tribe as represented by community. Maximal utilization of the forms that we are most adapted to, adjusted to present circumstance, will offer the best social form. *Simultaneously, our social form and institution must respond to the social consequence of physical and electronic communication. That is a fundemental change in an important feature of humans existence. The importance and limitations of conservatism must be understood and not forgotten.
This is written about the development of a "stable ecology". That can end up being a contradiction. We will develop a resource base with a potential for very long term use and consistent characteristics, but humans are going continue to change rapidly for a long time. No one can guess the place of warfare in the future of humanity. Creativity has come primarily from chaos, not order. The moral systems, genetics, social forms and technology will evolve at different, but related, rates. The terrace farmers and river valley agriculturists had a relatively stable agricultural base, but there were other internal and external instabilities. Even with nothing else, as isolated populations, they would have been at risk from disease. Since humans started to hunt big game animals, we have occupied Transitional Ecologies. They are stable enough for survival of families and cultures, but the rapid and ongoing changes preclude any human society yet, from being called a stable ecology.
6. As a tool, Sociobiology is used to describe the nature and consequences of humans transitioning from hunter/gatherer/scavenger social systems to the social forms necessary to the technological societies and ecologies developing. Between these two is are a couple of important transitory ecological forms, including the relativetly stable terrace/river valley farming ecologies. This could be called history, which is the civil ecology based on the stratified society with its sub-niches or occupational "caste" systems. There seems reason to describe this period as the time when a new niche opened for farmers, warriors, priests, kings, scribes and craftsmen. More critically, this was a time of large scale intermingling and hybridization of different populations. Organizational systems were developed. Technically, this is a change in communication. The result of this genetic intermingling has allowed development of science, philosophy, art, technology and so much of the more observable aspects of human progress. Another result is a real and potential genetic evolution with its subsequent potential for social, philosophical and technical evolution, including evolution past the recent ecologies that were largely based on war.
This is written in the form of an ecological analysis, yet the issues relate to very current and everyday situations. Anyone with a questioning awareness of their world cannot miss noticing the massive conflicts and changes affecting our lives and institutions. Most of the issues described in this book are supposed to seem familiar, because the problems it examines are familiar. The reason that this is written as a complex biological, historic, social, etc. study, is to be able to put some more subtle issues into the picture, that relate to multiple complex factors interactively operating in different time frames. To put it simply, the game that humans play, is about to change and it will be more because of genetics and belief than more visible or intuitive factors.
This paper is rooted in the thermodynamics of evolution, the biochemistry of genetics and the patterns comprising ecology and sociobiology. Hopefully, it still makes some sense.
7a. The family and community are the basic units of human survival. The individual is the basic unit of human existence. These are different moral frames. Many parts of this book describe the same events and consequences from these different points of view. Their divergence is something that we deal with daily. At different times it is the moral view of the family or the community or the individual that is shown. Different views are examined at different times.
7b. This is written primarily from two points of view, the human/behavioral and the biological. The biological view describes much of where we have come from and how we can live into the future. The human/behavioral view describes why. It is meant to be a science produced in a moral context as opposed to a social theory created in an objective vacuum. The biological view is a beautiful and complex, systematic study of human survival, hazards and potentials. Biology as a description of real human existence, is like using quantum physics to describe gunpowder. The link is direct and must be understood, but it is best if they are described as separate items. Also, some of the most important effects will not necessarily relate to what humans commonly think about. In this case both descriptions are necessary, because the pragmatism of biology does not well describe the human experience. Here, the biological analysis and the human view are strung out together so that some of the links between the two can be seen. Another divergent point of view can be projected from here. Call it the biological view verses the personal view. It is the contrast between any measure of evolutionary success and all other measures that the society utilizes. Creativity is almost always a part of long term evolutionary success. Survival is the measure. Widely separating the values of personal happiness from biological values is not only hazardous, it usually is not very comfortable.
Also, different views are created by evaluation of events in the moral context of the individual, family, community, society and nation. These are all different moral contexts and may be in conflict. These conflicts lead to the form of this paper sometimes being essays connected only by what is being examined, not by moral conclusions about what its nature is.
8. The variety of human survival will never be chronicled in one book. Tomes of words to praise triumph against all odds or endurance beyond hope are illuminating and more fun to read. This paper does not attempt that. Those are exceptions with risks that evolution would catch. This paper states many things which can be challenged easily due to exceptions of noticeable probability. Sometimes those exceptions are mentioned, but if this is to be one readable book instead of some Magnum Opus, much argument must be left out. None have been forgotten and hopefully all aspects of each argument are presented with consideration of the low probability potentials keyed into the phrasing of the primary argument that is presented.
Anyone can argue with it that wants to, but there is hard biology behind it. It accounts for many diverse phenomena and more importantly, if a person follows the logic through to the end, the form is based on extrapolation from the past to a useful description of a specie surviving into the future in a stable ecology. There are millions of places to make mistakes along the way. They are discussed or hinted at, but extensive discussion of dead ends seems futile. This paper is not to discuss survival by luck or survival against all odds, it is to discuss survival of the human race by development of ideas, habits and tools that lead to a liveable ecology. We are too new at this game to be taking too many risks.
8a. This leads to an important point. It is time to mention some biases that are part of this book. An ecologist examining humans could very well conclude that the best niche for humans has little to do with their aspirations, wishes, successes, art, knowledge or destination. This is biased towards humans successfully entering a new type of niche. It is also biased towards a continuation and strengthening of human cooperative abilities and strategies. The visable changes will relate to industrial technologies. The most profound changes will be in beliefs, values, methods and genetics.
This book inevitably reflects the western culture that it focuses on and that the author comes from. The archetypes used are western. Many social customs have profound significance to survival and ecology.
There are other biases as well.
9a. Class is a term that refers to economic group. Caste is a term that refers to genetics or tribal background. This is written for what will be called the middle class. As a caste, they are the hybrids of the tribes. As a class, they are fairly affluent, based on the creative potentials of the technologies that they use. The world will not be inherited by the meek or the militarists. It will belong to hybridized technicians and artists. This is written as a tool for them. It describes strategies that they can use to survive, as well as how to protect what they create.
Of course, usually, power has been the ability to kill.
9b. This is also written for a small special group, that mostly comes from the hybrid middle class. They are intelligent enough that they are forced to question the beliefs and values of the society. They would like to find something that is better than the archaic and irrational systems that we have inherited from the tribes and the militarists. They will lead their people to a new ecology that can be stable.
One description of the hybrid of the future is that they will have inherited the ability of warriors, but not the habits of conquerors. It would probably be better to call the middle class, the creative class, but there is so much emotional load on the word used, because of the connotations relating to status. The middle class might not like being called the working class. It might not be fashionable according to some attitudes of status.
This is written for many special people. These are the best people in the world as judged by their abilities and ideals. Consciously and unconsciously they work for their own survival and the survival of their society. They are strong and brilliant, but they are at the forefront of these changes and it presents extreme risk. Presently, our society does not know where to go and it risks forgetting why. We are quickly losing where we have come from and they are the ones who must find some "place" new to go and live. This is a brand new niche, never exploited before, because the potential and tools never existed before. These people are in great danger, from the militarists of the stratified society, the superstitions of the tribes and time, as the hazards grow until we can develop a new stable niche. If they do succeed, it will be a niche that will accommodate and utilize great diversity.
10. This book is written to show how to understand the changing human situation and how to use the understanding to make the necessary changes gracefully. We cannot survive the way we have in the past. Given the possibilities of the future, what do we want? One man said that he wanted his son to grow taller than himself. We want social equality and justice. We want to live in the equality, community, creativity and stability that was a feature of the tribe. We want freedom from aggression and domination by power. That is something that will probably only be achieved by deterrence. We want a better world. This is meant as a tool to help create it, mostly by describing it as an ecological and behavioral potential. I call this the Dream Belief, because it is the common dream of so many people. I reserve comment. There are other dreams mentioned here as well.
Freedom from fear, want and ignorance...?
What changes are available and are they for the better? Present changes will define potentials of the future. This is the basis of how we can survive into the future and mature. Here is a description that refers to what has been the third of the categories used to describe the changes in human existence. It is the presently occurring change in belief, back towards the more creative beliefs of the tribal society before the cities and war.
Mister Thoreau pointed out that most individuals live lives of quiet desperation. Life is often short and tough. A related point is the question of how can the full potential of an individual be stimulated to development, short of threatening their life? How can an individual be convinced of the danger of laziness and the need for personal development? How can self awareness be awakened. Without that, we are little more than animals.
Think of the dolphin. It is so well adapted to its environment that, though there are the lean times of selection, most of the time, it is so well adapted to its environment that it can take the time to play when it wants to. We are so new to this ecology that we must struggle constantly for bare survival. When we are better adapted, survival will not be such a struggle. We must make an ecology that we can adapt to that we will be comfortable in and have the time to play. Still, we must be uncomfortable as to cause continued growth. Beyond the scope of this book are other questions.