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Morality Monographs Here is another perspective, but it must not be forgotten. It is all well and good to artificially select for the traits of beauty, but one must also carefully select for the traits that allow for the appreciation of beauty. These would often or perhaps always be different than the traits that create beauty and could ultimately be more important #end Wealth and Beauty # # # 16. Organization This is meant to be a brief discussion of various human organization systems. Organization is critical to complicated social systems. Caste is a term that refers both to a groups tribal nature and their occupational nature. The basic castes are ruler, priest, warrior, scribe, craftsman and peasant. They are so basic to the organization of a society, that a description of castes was how Plato described his idealistic utopia. In terms of occupation, these castes were the functions necessary to the existence of a society. Since they come from a tribal origin, they also have the added natural cooperative characteristics of a family and community. Caste also relates to occupational intelligence. Competition has been highest in the ruling castes. Their skills must include organization. Class is an economic term. The commonest basic description of classes is that of a farmer that brings grain to a miller. The miller just naturally has more economic wealth than the farmer that brings their grain to the miller. Much of the economic organization of a society is based on features of the class system and its attendant economic features. Circumstances also promote cooperation within the class. There is also a natural symbiosis between the classes. While there has often been contention between the classes, over all it has contributed to the organization and cooperative potentials of the society. Institutions are considered to be multi-generational behavioral patterns. Things change and families mature, but each generation has the same immediate needs, many of which are based on the requirements of families. Really, most organizational devices can be called institutions, but it is a useful way of categorizing different needs and methods of filling those needs, in a society. Industries fulfill the material needs of a society. They provide the food, clothing, shelter and other devices we use to survive. In itself, that is not so remarkable, but the cooperative systems that make industry work, are remarkable. Industry brings together entrepreneurs, designers, labor and financial specialists to create a product. The organizational system of an industry can rival that of a military organization. Religions also provide organizational functions, but for groups with homogenous belief systems. At different times religions have fulfilled all the various functions of a society, including most organizational forms, but their most fundamental importance is promoting morality for their group. Government and politics are many things, but primarily they reflect organization of economic, tribal, moral and philosophical factions in a society. Government is also supposed to provide leadership in war and peace. The role of government is to minimize conflict and promote cooperation. It should promote economic health and all forms of social justice. It should be a conservative, prudent, forward looking force of survival. #end 16. Organization 16a. Jobs Work Ethic Technology is what has brought us here and is what has the potential to bring us to a new ecology. Technology is also known as tools. Without the drive to use tools, they contribute nothing. In terms of current morality, work ethic is a moral component that says to work smart and hard to succeed. The value of that principle cannot be over stated. We see this in genetic terms of occupational caste and in philosophical terms of vocation. As we understand survival now, work, an occupation, is part of the individual’s identity and a fundamental part of survival. #end 16a. Jobs Work Ethic # # # 17. Beliefs #end 17. Beliefs # # # 17a, God, no God, Other God, what a concept. In this book, God has been described in two terms, how a belief in God effects survival and as a description of the next stable ecology. God must also be considered in much broader terms including memes, neurobiology, politics and society. There is a big difference in the question of does one believe in God and does one believe God exists. …. #end 17a, God, no God, Other # # # # # # 18. Faith - The Key to Survival Faith. What a loaded word. Because of its importance to human survival it has gotten associated with religions and Gods, but there is far more to it than that and it has very Earthly importance. Faith is what we call survival instinct in other animals. It is the basic survival instinct of humans. Faith is an interesting topic because of the different meanings available to it. It is defined as belief in something without proof. To most people it means a belief in God without proof. Yet its meaning in terms of biology is and must be completely different. Faith is a genetically based. It is the foundation of a number of instinctive behaviors including the most basic of human survival instincts. It is also what drives humans to seek out and use learned survival strategies, including religions. More than anything, Faith seems to be an emotion. Faith is like love. It is a natural human behavior. Different things bring it out. It can develop for different reasons. It can grow slowly or all at once. It has many meanings. It can bring happiness and fulfillment. We can desire it without understanding the desire. It can be learned and can grow over time. Both love and faith are essential elements of human survival and have a genetic basis that make them natural to learn. It is how we are designed. Data from twin studies suggest that faith is inheritable. That is even mentioned in the Bible. Some people have faith. Some do not. That begs just how common it is. Faith is a fundamental part of human drive. One can have faith in country, self, a god, a religion, a leader or many other things. Faith is to assign an importance to something. Until a person places an importance on something, it is really not part of their world. It is a matter of awareness or consciousness. Other words might be used, such as belief or respect, but faith is the behavior being described and it is a powerful behavior. Part of faith is belief without understanding. That is important to humans because there is so much we do not understand, especially about our drives and our survival. Too much understanding can interfere with feeling and it is feeling that makes us live. Religions often claim to be the source of faith, but they know better. Truly, faith is the source and religion is the product. In that case, religion is an expression of people's faith that there is more than we know or can directly experience. On of the greatest roles of religion though is to teach and foster faith. Humans require a balanced world concept for psychological reasons. We require explanations. They do not have to be accurate, only useful to the needs of the balance of psychology. Does it matter if you know that an earthquake is a tectonic event or Poseidon's sneeze? Knowing an explanation is what matters. The human brain is a pattern recognition device. Anything that we experience must be fit into the pattern somehow. Human intelligence is primarily designed for understanding of other humans. This is why we anthropomorphize or give human attributes to things and events that are not human. It seems normal and comfortable to give human attributes to the sea, the slopes, an institution, a car, computer or pet. It is our method of understanding. Often, it is projection. So what is the source of faith? Humans require certain forms of understanding around which to base their operating view of the world. We use a concept of our self image when considering how to deal with others. Our existence makes us presuppose a creator associated with our creation. A balanced psychology produces a respect for ones life and a corresponding reverence for its source. Faith is a part of a balanced psychology and is necessary to full health. Basically, faith represents ones feelings about existence. The way we express this is to give these as human attributes of god. So gods are given the personification of what we believe, value and desire. They are a personification of faith. One appreciates the strength and understanding available to a person who can use some human concept to acknowledge their creation and existence. It helps orient their world and develop a clear knowledge of their beliefs and values. Realize that an atheist can have powerful faith. It may even be their faith that forces them to reject religion, as not adequate to their faith. Faith can be seen in a person’s nature. Do they believe in values? Do they believe in right and wrong? Do they believe they should build? Do they believe that it should be done right? Look at a person's life. Did they strive? Did they value? If they did, it shows their faith. A description of faith is all fine and dandy, but there is more to the description, or perhaps consequences. To describe faith, especially as an emotion is to tell a person how to sensitize themselves to it so that they can sense it in people they encounter. It is not to hard to sense anger or gentleness in a person. If you are aware of what faith is in a person, it is not hard to sense. So how does faith relate to survival? It is of fundamental importance. It is the difference between feeling something and being able to express it. It is part of the difference between what makes most primates fragile and humans almost impossible to kill. It also drives the filter of our values. It is what makes one chose if something is moral or if it is incorrect. One thing I learned long ago about looking at the topics of the influence of genes on behaviors is that while reductionism is nice and a valid tool of analysis, there is a lot of cases where genetically directed behavior is very complex. Trying to reduce the complexity of what the genes must do to direct behavior, seems natural, but it is an illusion. The genes can produce very complicated behaviors especially in the right external environment. So I will indulge in a bit of reductionism with no illusions. According to this definition of Faith, it must explain a number of issues in terms of genes, memes and function. These are: 1. It has a strong genetically inheritable component. 2. It has a strong memetic component. 3. It promotes the use of learned survival strategies called moralities. 4. It involves belief without proof. 5. It uses reason and logic, with a bias towards survival. This is talking about a special type of survival instinct and a number of interesting extensions. The question is how much of this is linked to older survival instincts and how much is new. My belief is that Faith has been a primary focus of evolution since the start of the cities. We know about logic and reason. Human minds can use mathematically based analysis methods. Science likes this view because it is very predictable, testable and relates to both simple mathematics and the real world. It is one of the most useful of human psychological abilities, but there is a problem with logic and reason as far as survival is concerned. It offers no reason to live. Quite the contrary, it repeatedly asks the question of why one would want to labor and struggle to survive. It inherently offers no reason to live. It's just a mathematical function. One innovative function of Faith is to make a behavioral link between a humans logical and reasoning abilities and a survival instinct. The survival instinct validly biases the logic to a purpose, survival. I think this is a relatively new feature in humans. Of course this is where the reductionism collapses. You are not going to easily reduce that function to simplicity. 19. Love - How We Can survive and Grow Love is many things. It is best known as an emotion. That is a superficial description. It must also be considered as a reproductive behavior, a meme, a behavior, a strategy and other things. There are even specialized hormones related to it. Love is considered here in three contexts. First is family love that relates more directly to reproductive behavior. The second is love in a general sense as the basis of cooperative strategies that are the morality of a society. The third is just a state of mind. Love is a behavior. It isn't necessarily related to a person. A person can be angry without being angry about anything or angry at anyone. Love is the same way. Love is best known as it functions as a reproductive behavior. It is a bonding behavior especially useful to the extended families that are basic to human survival. Ultimately it is the basis of the most cooperative current survival strategy in existence. Passionate love is another thing and quite interesting to all concerned. It does not necessarily have to even be sexual, though it usually is. It can also be based on emotional compatibility of different types. It is largely hormonally based and is more than a just a strategy or a meme. How do you explain water to a goldfish? Love is that way. We certainly know when it is missing. It is hard to pin down love historically, but since many animals seem to exhibit it, I will assume that it existed well before human history. It probably has been a focus of evolution since human social systems started to become more complex. Some historian say that romantic love has a history that only goes back to the 14th century. That has to refer to a meme or a behavior, because hormones are older than that. They were probably referring to traditional courtship rituals. Looking at something like that, it must be remembered that the habits of the different classes were recorded differently in history. In history, marriage is commonly refereed to as an economic relationship to retain property. Unfortunately, many people of history had marriage and children, but very little property. Property was a consequential strategy of reproductive survival. Love is psychologically satisfying and consequently physiologically good for a person. This may be a love directed at another person or not. It may just be a state of mind. Love is not only a motivation, it can also be an inspiration. A primary importance of God to humans comes in the context of the Christian God and his teachings about love. This is cross referenced elsewhere. This whole book is based on human survival strategies based on cooperation. The most cooperative morality currently available is Christian philosophy. That philosophy is based on the teachings of a religion who says it is the primary commandment of their God. This commandment was to love God and to love one another. It seems unlikely that a less cooperative survival strategy can take us to the next ecology. The Meaning of Love There is a meaning to our thoughts that isn't readily apparent. This is part of my interest in memes. My description of Faith showed something interesting. The dictionary definition of Faith is an unsupported belief. It is best known as a belief in a God. It is more complicated than that though because faith is an inheritable trait. Even the Bible mentions that and genetic studies show it as well. So how can genes lead to a belief in God? In its original form and purpose, faith had little to do with God. Faith is our basic survival instinct. A critical part of Faith is the instinctive drive to seek out survival strategies, the basis of how humans live. In history, these are complex moral systems that have been taught and husbanded by religions that are personified by their Gods. The instinct to seek out survival strategies leads to Gods. So the meaning of faith in genetic terms is different from the definition found in books. The book definition is a corollary of the genetic meaning. So what is the meaning of love in these terms? I have already talked about Love as a philosophical concept, especially taught by the Christians, that is a great facilitator of cooperation in a society. The trouble with Love is that there are hormones involved too. I guess I wouldn't have it any other way. Still, leaving out sexual and family love, there is a great deal of love in the society, for the society. This is based on an instinct to cooperate. That is how we have survived. Not only do we have a moral system teaching love, but we also have the genetic programming to love. It is perhaps closest in a team of any kind where the group is practiced at working together. Still, it is part of the general society as well. Like faith, some people don't have as much love, but it would probably be more common than faith. Cooperation was most developed by the Neolithic hunters because they had to cooperate and communicate well for the hunt, but faith seems to be something that has been a more recent focus of selection and evolution. #end 19 # # # 20. Intelligence In terms of biology, intelligence is the ability to understand, remember and effect the social dynamics of the society one lives in. With the increasing importance of technology it has also come to relate to the occupational skills of the castes as well as the capabilities for the arcane skills of mathematics that has created and maintains much of our advanced technologies. In terms of technology there seems to be more to it than that. Think of Nicola Tesla, Albert Einstein or Steven Hawkins, as well as many of the other great thinkers of science. Their creativity seems to have been based on more than just calculation. They had vision as well. Their abilities may have been related to memes or even genetic chance, but in any case, it seems that there is no simple description of creative intellect. That is something that will take time to develop. # # # 21. Gene Husbandry This is not something new. Socially, it is called status, that is reproductive access to those that are considered superior. This isn't difficult. It is how we are designed. It is practiced by every society. Since the military castes were normally descended from herders, they were quite aware of animal breeding and very often practiced it upon themselves quite consciously. For humans in the future, this is going to mean what it has in the past, but also it will include new knowledge and artificial selection Sanitation Why mention sanitation so prominently? Because it is the first survival lesson taught to children. Also, it is one of the most important. According to Desmond Morris, the change from living in trees where sanitation was not very important to living in shelters where sanitation was important. It has been very critical to human evolution. His argument was that humans lost most of their hairiness as a response to the problem of fleas in long term homes. In any case, good sanitary practices are important to human survival and likely to become more so as population density increases. While a major point of this book is that we will need better genetic based immune systems, we will have to fight disease in every way we can including immunization and improved sanitary practices. My guess is that at times when the population is high, people in urban social settings are sometimes going to have to utilize extreme sanitary practices. Already there are some fairly strict common rules for food handlers to prevent the very real dangers of spreading hepatitis, tuberculosis, E coli, staph, a plethora of other common diseases that are going to increase as problems. The human and financial cost of disease is going to be incalculable. If some theories are correct, we may not survive it. That is the challenge and was where this book started. It doesn't look like a great problem right now because antibiotics are still fairly new and effective. That is changing rapidly and the writing is clear on the wall. The historic diseases are already reappearing and they are already stronger than they have historically been. Luckily humans have lived in cities long enough that they have already developed improved immune systems, but we will need better. This is one of the two overwhelming reasons to use artificial selection. Parents and social institutions will need to carefully teach children and adults to use what sanitary practices are available and necessary. It is likely, though I hope not, that this is something that is going to greatly shape the society. Even AIDS has not done that yet. Eventually, the most dangerous diseases may be the ones we are already very familiar with. There may come a time when social physical contact becomes a rarity. # # # 22. Running There was an amusing point made about artificial selection. Would a committee of Chimpanzees or Gorillas, when contemplating potential evolutionary paths for their species, choose something like a human? Would they select for the loss of strength, loss of hair and smaller teeth? Recently there was a discussion of what the improvements could be made in humans. Mostly, the decisions were based on what wore out quickest on humans, such as the hips, back, knees, hearts and eyes as well as some other features. Accordingly, their design was for improvements in these areas. A picture of this supposed improved person looked a bit odd with larger heavier hips and legs than are common now. In many cases, this book talks about possible genetics based improvements for humans. We will find the genetic potentials for improvements in the heart, eyes, joints, hearing and such, but when it comes to modifications in structure, I would be careful and keep certain things in mind. Evolutionarily, humans are designed not only for bipedalism, but also for running. Since that is what we are primarily designed for, I would suggest that we work to retain and enhance that ability. We should work to enhance what abilities we already have and are designed for. Besides running, we have a special talent for climbing and exceptional vision. Selecting for modifications that change our basic strategies are to be considered most carefully and hesitantly. Sometimes survival is just a matter of running away from danger. Touching #end 22 # # # 23. Touching Touching is the name of an amazing book by Ashly Montegue that describes in great length and detail the importance of touching to humans, especially for the young. Humans have great dexterity. Partly it is because of our use of tools, but a large part of our skills come from mutual grooming as is common to social primates. I have a pretty good touch. It is one of the things I learned along the way. I took up massage as a hobby, because it fascinated me that it was one of the few activities that took my full attention to do correctly. I have been known to get bored at family get togethers and start walking around giving neck rubs. It never gets anyone bothered. The pets like it too. I can touch soft enough to drive almost any dog into glassy eyed bliss. Now I have children. I wondered what putting theory into practice might mean. One thing I noticed about Mr. Montague's discussion about the importance of touching, is that he didn't define what constituted the best touching. Is it hugs and kisses or perhaps a gentle tickle for a child? No, he didn't say near as much about quality as quantity. So I decided long ago to put that into practice. My kids get hugs certainly, but they also get poked, pinched, their hair ruffled and pulled, cold wet fingers on the neck, and more tickling than I think I would ever have enjoyed. When I go shopping with them, my son may well put his head under my arm so that it looks like I am dragging him through the store by the head. Some of what I do is not going to feel real good, but at the base of every touch is the gentleness and sensitivity of touch I learned that is what would make a pet go glassy eyed and half asleep. The point it, they seem to eat up physical contact just like Mr. Montegu said they would. It is a method of communication. This essay is to mention the importance of touching to humans especially during development. No one describes this better than Mr. Montague. More than just from my studies of humans, I have found from my experience that he is quite correct. #end 23 # # # 24. Dancing Dancing is an extremely common and popular social activity. Like other social activities it contributes to the cohesiveness of the society and can be an important part of reproductive behavior. As far as entertainment or distraction from the stresses of the realities of survival, it has to be one of the cheapest and most positive forms of recreation there is. I do not qualify as much of a dancer, but I recognize that it is immensely popular and has almost none of the drawbacks of many other forms of recreation. # # # 25. Speech Speech is our commonest form of communication. It uses language to rapidly communicate a good deal of information. Speech can be made to convey far more meaning than just what is in the words. Speech is our commonest and most versatile method of communication when working together, though teams can transcend the commonest meaning of speech with communication learned by and specialized for the team. It is still a form of speech though anyway. Speech definitely says something about a person. Speaking exposes a person. The question is, how much can any person understand and perceive in that message. The words are almost certainly the most important part for humans. The emotional content is extremely important as well and is expected to get more important as humans evolve more emotionally. A human must develop their skills at speech both in terms of words and emotion. # # # -26. Reason and Rational How do we think? We think rationally and irrationally. We use logic and we use superstition. Humans are inherently quite capable at the mathematics that is logic. The capability of reason seems almost universal. The first example of the methods or patterns humans use when thinking should be about a rational belief set; simple, direct, logical and based on a rational model of reality. Not to be. Humans most naturally think in terms of non-causal effects or superstition. Sometimes, even the most skeptical and educated person, when something goes wrong, cannot help but to irrationally wonder if there is some non-physical link between their previous actions and their present situation. We may reject it for a more rationally based belief set that is learned, but that belief set does pass through our mind. All non-rational, or non-causal, belief systems are based on the effect of unseen forces, especially the will of individuals and various unseen spirits. If bad fortune befell an individual or group, the reason was assumed to be the bad will of an individual or spirit. If a dog or a wife died with no obvious explanation, it was assumed that the reason was the result of the will of an individual or spirit and their “power”. Wishful thinking seems so real. Also there were very few rational explanations for many natural occurrences from the seasons to earthquakes to birth or death. Simple, symbolic non-causal descriptions are easy to understand and are usually quite functional. Does it matter if you know why the ground is shaking? An earthquake is the same whether Poseidon sent it or the tectonic plates shrugged. An advanced form of non-causal interaction is called Karma. For anything you do, there is a later and non-physically related, but still related, consequence. All belief systems are balanced. It is a feature of the logical basis of all belief systems. The reason that the concept of Karma is called a more advanced system is because it describes an extremely complex balance to the system that extends over lifetimes. The corresponding belief set to irrational, is rational. That is information that is based on causal relationships. It is part of a belief system and we judge rationality in a number of ways that are parts of philosophy. The commonest way that we judge rationality is whether something seems logical. Logic is based on mathematics and so is independent of genetics or environment. We all have the genetic potential to use logic and it is a highly learnable skill. The use of logic is definitely a learned habit. We can judge if an idea seems logical or that is, causal and logically related. The other way that we judge rationality is on the basis of the knowledge or predictable repeatability, where the logic and the connection may or may not be understood, but the result is. The discipline of this is called science. It is a systematically compiled collection of beliefs and knowledge of physical causality as judged by repeatability, predictability and observation. Anyone can act rationally to the degree of their potential and education, but it is not presently the most natural state. Humans do not always base their behaviors and beliefs on logic and rationality. Yet it is part of the basis of what is called human. #end 26 # # # 27. Goals The first thing that must be examined is goals. Many times, life is going to just be about unexamined survival, but it will help if we have goals to work with. In the long run, goals will be important, if not completely necessary. The goals we will need will be survival, growth, happiness and perhaps even an understanding of what God is to humans. Every generation is a step in evolution. That is change. In the future, as it is now, just surviving generation to generation is a step in the right direction. Still, that is no easy thing and we will have to do more. Humans are going to have to develop some degree of awareness that is very distinct from what is common. Humans tend to be responsive to their environment without questioning it any. They are easily seduced by distractions. They often ignore what they don't want to think about. Can we see human goals from history and culture? What aspirations do humans commonly have? Most people want a peaceful life where they can raise their children. In history, that has been asking for a lot. Still, it seems that war is becoming uneconomical. Many of the ethnic reasons for war will vanish with a new understanding of genetics. Perhaps peace will break out. Many humans in history have aspired to the needs of survival. Now, many humans have a material wealth that would have amazed Solomon. The use of technology can provide a material plenty that is beyond most aspiration. There is so much material wealth available that it is very easy for people to forget which of it is important. We have the aspirations represented by Gods. Immortality is a common one and probably of limited use to humans, though a longer life span does seem like a good idea. The Gods were free of hunger. That seems achievable. They were also free of disease. I think that will be more of a challenge. Gods have beauty. I think humans can achieve that. A few Gods were said to possess wisdom. I think humans had better achieve that if we are to survive. Gods have great power over the nature. Only time will tell the relation between humans and nature, but I am optimistic. So if we can fulfill all our human aspirations and the aspirations we place so distant that they are in the realm of the Gods, then what else can we discover to aspire to? That is called the future. Truth Truth, valued or not, seems to be poorly understood. Humans will not survive without placing a high value on Truth. Unfortunately, like so many human things, it is not something simple. We also rely on deception to function. That includes deception of self and others. The most obvious case that I usually mention is egocentricity and ethnocentricity. Both are important to survival, yet both are rarely made of truth. We are not as special as we believe, but if we do not believe we are special, it would endanger our survival. Still, our society is based on agreements and without truth, a habit of truth and a great value upon truth, the most important agreements cannot be made. Neither the business contracts with which we control our resources, nor the social contracts that organize and bind our society, can exist without truth. At the same time, our society cannot work with only truth. Our society depends on courtesy. We call that manners and politeness. Our sanity depends on assumptions that are not always truth. I like to give the example of Ayn Rand. She spoke of truth with a capital 'T'. She spoke of simply telling the truth with no deception. Try it some time. It doesn't work. I made it about a month and I doubt I was completely honest, regardless of how much I held my tongue. She didn't even mention not allowing a person to deceive themselves. So when is truth important and when is it not wrong to violate truth? Again, like so many other human things, there is no law or rule sufficiently wise enough to answer that. It must be based on human judgment. We survive by helping each other, yet we must help ourselves as well. The two do not always go together. Mistakes are inevitable. It is like the 'atta boy' rule. One harmful act, nullifies a number of helpful acts, so one must avoid doing harm. The society can only survive a small amount of harm before it is damaged. #end 27 # # # 28. Leadership Perfection The importance of leadership to survival cannot be over estimated or overstated. It is important in terms of morality from two points of view; both the importance of leadership and the importance of providing leadership. A society thrives under good leadership. Under bad leadership, it becomes a topic of history. Without leadership, a society is like a person that is brain damaged or insane. Good things are not going to come from it. This is especially true in modern societies with well established, highly hierarchal lines of authority representing leadership. This is extremely well described in history and should be common moral knowledge based on survival. At all levels of society and organizations, leadership is fantastically important. Laws and charters are made to try to assist or replace leadership, but so far we don’t know any perfect system of rules that can work with out human judgment. It is highly moral for a person to provide leadership in state, society, organization, family and in day to day activities. It is an essential element to the workings of society. Leadership is often the essence of cooperation. Cooperation allows us to accomplish far more than an individual can. A leader, like a brain, is to make different parts work together. The importance of leadership may be why inclusive fitness could be extremely important in human survival. It has already been mentioned that humans have a genetic predisposition to seek and create moral systems. The same seems true of leaders. Memes Of The World ### David Brin made a great statement about memes in his book 'Otherness'. He said that there seemed to be five memes that reflected world political and social character. They were Feudalism, Conformity, Machismo, Paranoia and Otherness. Memes were a somewhat new topic to me when I read this and I thought it was an excellent. You could really understand the meanings of this. Some societies seem to strive most for conformity. Some seem to reflect paranoia or machismo. You can easily understand his meaning. He said that feudalism seemed to be a nuisance that regularly cropped up. Otherness was his real main topic though. He said it was the habit of curiosity about others and what they might have to offer that was new or valuable. Recent neurobiological research suggests that the beliefs one follows effects the development of the brain. How you solve problems and view the world is effected by your beliefs as is your brain development in many ways. In itself I really liked what he said. It seemed quite reasonable and fit into the idea of memes. It seemed to offer an explanation or a way of encapsulating recognizable understandings of archetypes of the characters of different peoples. I tried to see if these principles applied to individuals. To some extent they did, but it still seemed more interesting in terms of how it applied to peoples of the world. It seems obvious that his reference to Otherness was a description of how he saw many of the people of the West. One aspect of it that is importance here is as a description of a post tribal culture. Any consideration of artificial selection must refer to a highly hybridized population. This is a new niche that is not likely to include the tribe as much more than a relic. What is the primary meme of the Western Culture? This culture has been incredibly dynamic and is basically responsible for the advent of what we call modern science and technology. The culture does encompass a great openness and curiosity, but I still think Otherness as a description is not complete. Examination suggests there is also an important meme based on love and centered around Christian Philosophy. It is a little hard to observe from the inside of the culture, but analysis shows it to be the case. I'm not sure what it looks like from outside of the culture, but in ways it is probably easier to observe. It is the hypothesis of this book that that meme of love has created a very cooperative culture by supporting a moral system that strongly promotes cooperation. Much of recent social, intellectual and technical progress and has been based on the cooperative potential of that meme and subsequent moral system. There is another interesting point about love that I keep wondering about. That is love in terms of conflict. It is basically true that the warrior groups that were able to organize and cooperate internally were usually the ones that won in the conflicts of history. Conflict seems part of nature. As far as I can see, love does not preclude competition or even conflict. Many people have fought wars for love. This may change, just as selective effects have and will fundamentally change, but I just don't know. The destructiveness of conflict is easy to see and may just not fit into the future of humans or it may just get reduced. Even aside from the drawbacks, it may not be necessary in the future. Recent neurological studies of problem solving show that different cultural memes could lead to brain development that will favor different methods of problem solving. # # # # # # 30. Power Another one of those loaded words. Power is a fundamental aspect of human ecology. It is extremely hard to describe though and its importance to survival over time is quite variable. I suspect that humans are just too new and civilization and civil organization to be able to understand the real implications of power. Realize, even the American Constitution which is considered one of the most advanced political documents in existence, will probably look very primitive and uninformed after what is a very short period of time in terms of survival. Certainly many things basic to it will continue to be considered basic in the future, but human knowledge of political governing systems, that is organizational systems, is likely to vastly improve over time. It has been said that power is the power to kill. I would be more inclined to look at it as the power to build. Realistically though, in human terms the power to build is the power to compete. Ultimately, competition is about survival. Power may be the power to kill, but it is more important here in terms of it offering the power to survive. Power is also associated with organization, because it is organization that has always created power in human societies. If there is an organization in a society, it defines that there is power. Human civil society has always had power concentrated in small groups, whether military or religious authorities. Social and political development has created systems where the power is disbursed more. These systems, such as various forms of democracy, seem to work quite well. What they lose in simplicity of organization, they seem to more than make up for in the self-interest of the common individuals who have been empowered. The success of all political systems though is based upon organization and cooperation. Power tends to be nullified by lack of cooperation or organization. There is nothing that says an advanced society must be democratic. It is just always turned out that there are very few examples of a benevolent despotcies and they always suffer with the problem of the transferal of power. In any case, with the assumption that an advanced society can only be created based upon a great deal of cooperation and looking at the success of ' free' systems, it seems reasonable to assume the future human ecology's will include extensive distribution of power. A corollary of this and the idea that power simply does exist in any organized society, is that an individual should consciously exercise their power or else the power will not remain distributed. Humans are political animal. Any person who is not exercising the political power, is leaving the power wasted or else used by someone else. An important aspect of survival, that is an important aspect of morality, is that the individual should husband of their individual power. # # # 31. Religion - individual... society …. Some duplication It is quite unfashionable for the Western theologians to speculate much on the nature of God, because this got overdone in the middle ages and they don't want to go down that road again. By nature, religions are extremely conservative. Any Western religious view of God is going to be quite ancient and include that there are many things about God that are simply mysteries not meant to be known by mortal humans. Is our concept of God changing over time or is it our understanding and development? The Western religious view of God is so nebulous, vast and contradictory as to represent a mystery to humans. His nature is not understood. He is completely spiritual, omnipresent and eternal. These are concepts that are not currently understood. At the same time, the God of the Old and New Testaments have attributes of very distinct human appearance. These have been called the Demanding and Vengeful God of the Old Testament and the God of Peace and Love of the New Testament. Science By its own definition, science currently does not include God as part of the existing body of knowledge that is science. Speculative Science Science is a descriptive and organizational form as well as an existing body of knowledge. A good deal of speculation about God has been put in that form. The science and speculative fiction writers usually don't say much about God. They are mostly interested in describing human problems and solutions. Fictional Gods tend to transcend physical laws and limitations, but the story is more about the physical law or human potential than spiritual laws. Some have described humans creating mechanical Gods, but that probably does not apply here. The main difference between Gods of the past and present are in the nature of psychology. Earlier Gods have always been described as individualists. Some current models have speculated about pluralities of consciousness. If you look at the philosophy that is speculative fiction, there are at least two classic stories of interest. Childhood's End by Isaac Isamov and the Gaia concept of 90's science fiction (I especially like David Brin's version). The first was a story about a super consciousness of all humans on earth and perhaps beyond. The second concept has been used in a number of books and is a description of a super consciousness that is composed of the entire planetary biosphere and minerals. The issue of plurality of consciousness is usually left open by different versions of this model. Please note here that this is not intended to be about Michael Polanyi's description that human evolution will lead to humans becoming Gods. That always seemed odd to me and those are human images of God. Humans do not presently even have a very deep understanding of physical reality let alone some other topics that I would expect a God to understand. My descriptions of human genetic and psychological potentials may be pretty fantastic, but they are still extremely limited compared to Gods. Not that that matters that much anyway. There are many humans that already believe they are Gods. 31. Religion - individual... society R1eligion is so many things and have been so many things. Worse yet, it is thought to be so many different things. Religion will probably never again serve one of its earliest, most important practical function. That of keeping track of the season so that early farmers with know when to plant their crops. Still, in the context of a long-term stable ecology, religion will retain many of its traditional functions and almost certainly acquire important new functions. Religion is meant to be conservative. It is an institution whose functions include the most basic human needs. It manages births, deaths, marriages, families, communities and so many other methods for parts of morality, the ways by which humans live. When the world seems consumed by materialism and kinetic values that are of no importance to real human survival, it is religions that must retain and husband the universal values that lead to human survival. When demagogues seek to fool us, it must be religion that sees their fraud clearly. When humans forget, it is religion that must remember. A person who commits themselves to religion is committing themselves to serving humanity. Religion is not primarily to serve God other than how religion fulfills God's purpose by serving humans. Religion serves humans in the name of God by teaching morality that was given to humans as a gift of God. That is one of the greatest responsibilities a person or institution can take upon themselves. Religion and people of religion must hold themselves to the highest standards, because religion is about the survival of people. At the start of this discussion of morality it was stated that moralities are the learned survival strategies that are essential to human survival. This discussion of morality was going to be based strictly on a view of survival rooted in biology. Yet at the same time it was said that the moralities taught and husbanded by religion were the most advanced survival strategies currently available to humans. At different times, religions have done better or worse jobs of teaching morality. In the context of a stable ecology, moralities will become better understood in terms of reason and functionality upon which they are based instead of the authority and precedents that they have relied on in the past. As such religion should have an easier time successfully teaching morality because we will have a much better understanding of the requirements of survival that are the basis of morality. Other ways that religion may serve God are discussed elsewhere in a further discussion of God. Religion will naturally take on new functions as new factors arise in human survival, notably artificial selection. There are some extraordinary challenges to human survival that we will have to deal with. Hopefully, religions can take on some more new important roles in their traditional function of aiding human survival. Besides their important traditional role of teaching morality and faith, they may be able to take on roles that cannot be left to the short sighted or the easily corrupted. That may include the genetic information critical to families, communities and humanity at large that will be used for artificial selection. There are some extraordinary challenges to human survival that we will have to deal with. Hopefully, religions can take on some more new important roles in their traditional function of aiding human survival. Besides their important traditional role of teaching morality and faith, they may be able to take on roles that cannot be left to the short sighted or the easily corrupted. That may include the genetic information critical to families, communities and humanity at large that will be used for artificial selection. Religion is so many things and has been so many things. Worse yet, it is thought to be so many different things. In a technical world, religion will probably never again serve one of its earliest, most important practical functions. That of keeping track of the season so that early farmers with know when to plant their crops. Still, in the context of a long-term stable ecology, religion will retain many of its traditional functions and almost certainly acquire important new functions. Religion is meant to be conservative. It is an institution whose functions include the most basic human needs. It manages births, deaths, marriages, families, communities and so many other methods for parts of morality, the ways by which humans live. When the world seems consumed by materialism and kinetic values that are of no importance to real human survival, it is religions that must retain and husband the universal values that lead to human survival. When demagogues seek to fool us, it must be religion that sees their fraud clearly. When humans forget, it is religion that must remember. A person who commits themselves to religion is committing themselves to serving humanity. Religion is not primarily to serve God other than how religion fulfills God's purpose by serving humans. Religion serves humans in the name of God by teaching morality that was given to humans as a gift of God. That is one of the greatest responsibilities a person or institution can take upon themselves. Religion and people of religion must hold themselves to the highest standards, because religion is about the survival of people. At the start of this discussion of morality it was stated that moralities are the learned survival strategies that are essential to human survival. This discussion of morality was going to be based strictly on a view of survival rooted in biology. Yet at the same time it was said that the moralities taught and husbanded by religion were the most advanced survival strategies currently available to humans. At different times, religions have done better or worse jobs of teaching morality. In the context of a stable ecology, moralities will become better understood in terms of reason and functionality upon which they are based instead of the authority and precedents that they have relied on in the past. As such religion should have an easier time successfully teaching morality because we will have a much better understanding of the requirements of survival that are the basis of morality. Other ways that religion may serve God are discussed elsewhere in a further discussion of God. Religion will naturally take on new functions as new factors arise in human survival, notably artificial selection. There are some extraordinary challenges to human survival that we will have to deal with. Hopefully, religions can take on some more new important roles in their traditional function of aiding human survival. Besides their important traditional role of teaching morality and faith, they may be able to take on roles that cannot be left to the short sighted or the easily corrupted. That may include the genetic information critical to families, communities and humanity at large that will be used for artificial selection or media communications. #end 31. Religion v # # # 32. Risk. I have repeatedly talked about the importance and danger that is involved in some aspects of artificial selection in terms of the need for balance. Too much or too little of some traits will certainly lead to disaster. Often I have used the example of aggressiveness to illustrate this. Too little or too much and there are problems. Perhaps a better example would be Risk. Human nature includes risk taking behavior, whether it is a teenager on a motorcycle or a businessman making a calculated judgment. How we decide what to do has a strong genetic component. It should be easy to see that this presents a great potential hazard. If this behavior loses its natural balance, it will not serve survival and may actually endanger it. If you could quantify the level of natural risk taking of the human race and call that the baseline of zero, it seems unlikely that that level would change by any large percentage without it being a huge risk to survival. Carelessly changing this level using artificial selection could be extremely dangerous. This applies to a number of other traits in humans that exist in an ongoing balance. #end 32. Risk # # # 33. Active Sometimes a story must be told in a certain order. This is one of those cases. It relates to something that is important, but not so complicated. Part of it's interest is the preconceptions related to it, no matter how correct. What it is is Active. Active seems a strange name for a behavior, but it is important in many ways and there is an interesting issue about it that I will mention. Think of a specie and how different the demands of survival are for that specie at the different extremes of its range. Consider a brown bear in central California or a brown bear in Alaska. In Alaska, the major factor in the bear's survival is the weather and other non-living challenges. In California, the bear is going to have to compete with other bears more than vagaries of the environment. A bear in Alaska is going to work harder for its food and have to be much more active to survive. In humans this difference in requirements for activity can be huge. A classic example of this is the herder verses the dirt farmer. Herding is a fairly relaxed low energy activity compared to the dirt farmer that is doing hard labor while they can work. There is no end to what they need to get done. Since for any specie, the requirements for activity can vary greatly with variations in the environment, it is not surprising that there is a strong genetic control on this behavior. That should be enough to scare even the most ardent advocate of social engineering. Using artificial selection, we could select for how much of a workaholic a person would tend to be. Even if you ignore some of the scary potentials of this in the hands of the 'State' this raises some tough questions. If it is a parent that must make decisions about the genetic nature of their children, how can that be determined? This is a case where either extreme is not likely to be good for survival. I'm what most people would call a workaholic. I follow what is commonly called the "Protestant Work ethic". Which in my case, means if I want something I should work for it. I work hard and don't waste time getting a task completed. That illustrates a value judgment of mine. Now it does not mean that this is best for everyone or even my children. I abhor the idea of lazy, but I realize that lazy people have their place and function. I would not want the mind numbingly dull jobs that many people have to do. Twenty years ago, my beliefs were probably far more popular than they are now, but occupations change and will continue to do so. One day we may all spend most of our time supervising machines because that is more productive than doing the job oneself. Could you imagine a society making a decision that they want to do some monumental project that will take generations to accomplish so for those generations the society would push parents to select for increased genetic tendency towards workaholism until the project was completed. This topic of Active behavior is interesting and important because of its genetic basis and its sociological implications. It is a classic example where humans will have to be careful to maintain a genetic balance of a behavior. There is another important point about it though. It's association with Aggressive behavior. I've placed this essay before any essay about aggressive behavior, because the word active is commonly considered an attribute of aggressive. The meaning of aggressive includes active. There is a common conception, correct or not, that active is dependant on aggressive. Aggressive has some other connotations that active do not, but it is commonly believed that a reduction in aggression would result in a reduction in active behavior, another potential hazard to intentionally reducing aggression for social reasons. Now this may be true, but this is not a given. Active is different from aggressive. What the relation is between the behaviors, genetically and in expression is another question, but the two should be considered separately because they are distinct behaviors, maybe. #end 33. Active # # # 34. Violence Some groups of humans are naturally violent. Some are quite the opposite. There was variation around the globe just as there was variation of the niches humans occupy. Evidence is that agriculturists started out as rather peaceful and timid peoples. They developed with and opened niches for groups that were fantastically warlike and aggressive. Over time, hybridization has increased the aggressiveness of the general population, war is still something that must be taught to most people and many can never learn it. Violence is one of those things that serves little purpose to most people. Violence is just not productive. In terms of war, it is one of the most destructive activities there is. With weapons being what they are, it is rare that war is cost effective. On a personal level the question is how can a creative person (a farmer) protect themselves and what they create from aggressive exploitive people. It seems that the creative person needs to be aggressive enough to defend themselves. Artificial selection must be used to provide controls for aggressiveness, not to remove it. If it is removed, it will just open a niche for someone that remained aggressive. # # # 35. Drugs Humans like drugs. Humans want distractions from the stresses, boredom and normalcy of daily survival. These distractions may include arts, sports, hobbies, reading and other entertainment, but there is no doubt that people enjoy altered mental states. Any of these distractions can interfere with survival or enhance it. The problem is that what are called drugs are more likely to interfere with health and mental balance. The most dangerous drugs seem to be the stimulants as they definitely tend to put a kilter on sanity. A question that comes up about drugs is should people be protected from themselves and their self destructive tendencies. I tend to be biased that they should be. The alternative is that it is their choice regardless of the consequences. The result will be natural selection to provide immunity to drugs, probably through an enhancement of the natural basic survival instinct embodied in the behavior called faith. Considering the idea that advanced virtual realities will become incredibly seductive and possibly more dangerous than most chemical drugs in terms of evolutionary survival, the selective effect of drugs will help prepare us to resist the dangers of virtual reality. Already people are getting lost in their game realities. Already people are talking about artificial Stepford Wives. This will become far more of a reality in the future. We are going to have to adapt. # # # 36. Social Aggression Look at 38 Warrior The word aggressive is interesting for a number of reasons including that it has two primary important and different meanings, active and with threat of violence. You have to wonder how the same word came to be used to describe two seemingly different methods. Perhaps from looking at the personalities most visible in history, it has often been asked if they are inextricably associated. Is the perhaps negitive potential for violence necessary for the positive active part to function? It doesn't really seem so if you were to ask that, but that is not the point. The problem is how does a creative person resist an aggressive person who wants to take what he has created. After that little English and philosophy lesson, it is time for some biology. In terms of biology, aggressive is a strategy and behavior used to maximize reproductive success by using threat of violence or actual violence to dominate reproductive resources. It is most pronounced in mammals where due to internal fertilization, males can potentially dominate large numbers of females. It is seen in most mammals, but is perhaps at its extreme in elephant seals where a male can potentially reproductively dominate all the females on a breeding beach that he is defending from other males. In this sense, aggressive is more specifically considered a reproductive display more than a reproductive behavior. Mammals tend to be sexually dimorphic, males larger than females, for the purpose of these reproductive displays. The display is designed to absolutely minimize the likelihood of real damage to either party. In the first 20 years of the Ano Neuvo Elephant Seal studies, only one seal died of battle wounds and that was a broken tooth. Note that humans are relatively dimorphic. Also, some mammal species that are normally polygamous in most of their environmental range, become monogamous when raising the young in environmental extremes that require two parents. As the earliest societies developed, they were largely organized by occupational caste. At the time of Sumerian there was a priestly ruling caste, scribes, peasants and craftsmen. Later a military case and an international ruling caste was added. Religion and custom kept the castes segregated, war and slavery brought them together. The other civil cultures followed a similar pattern. (Note that real military success was most often ultimately attributable to the organizational ability of the ruling caste than a particular skill of the warrior caste.) The military caste was almost always descended from herding tribes. In the Middle East, the first ruling castes of the West were descended from sheep and goat herders. The later Greeks, Romans and Eutustrians were descended from the horse herders of the Steppes of Russia. Herders tend to be more inclined to warfare because the potentials raised by raiding other people's flocks. It was good business and they did it all the time. It's a good deal harder to raid the wild and domestic crops of the agricultural tribes. This meant that the warrior tribes tended to originate in mountain regions where dirt farming was not as practical. Herders are also good at organized cooperation because they must also carefully share when a single large animal is slaughtered or much of it will go to waste. Agriculturists just didn't have the same needs. In a niche sort of way, they were like mice. That is the most traditional description of, well, a lot of things having to do with aggressive. This is my take on it. Aggressive in real terms is the first question asked. How does one deal with it? It is like a trump card. No matter how brilliant or productive you may be, violence can take or destroy what you can create. I have studied this for decades and for various reasons I have an unusual view of what aggressive means to both the individual and the society. Few other genetically based behaviors are so noticeable in terms of individual survival as well as between groups. There seems to be two possible responses that apply both between and within societies, accommodation and resistance. Accommodation can only be done when it does not endanger survival and is best done in a way that is beneficial to both parties. Resistance can be done when the risk to the aggressor is to great. The reason aggression is described in these terms is to allow a description of where and how aggression fits into society both in terms of philosophy and genetics. We examine humans and wonder about the development process that has led here to what we are. (This points to a general evolutionary principle.) Aggression has always been a good strategy and became more so as societies and nations grew. The aggressive have had great reproductive advantage as has the smaller ruling class. They have had enough advantage through history that just about everyone is descended in part from warriors. The strategy of the warrior was losing its effectiveness because all the castes have the potential for war. The invention of technologies like the gun that have changed the equations of risk in response to threats as well. I have often wondered about the winnowing effect of immigration to the New World. They were likely to be far more aggressive than the ones that stayed behind and also more likely to be descended from warriors or the ruling class, regardless of their caste or class at the time. Aggressive behavior manifests itself in may ways and places. It becomes most noticeable in history when it is between societies and nations, but it is really an interaction between individuals in everything from how they greet each other to how they organize. A casual greeting may be respectful, passive, joyful, aggressive, etc. In any society, the tone of greetings will tend to be consistent. Is the greeting a respectful downward nod or a challenging upward tilt of the head? According to, the author of Self Made Man, the aggressive overtures between males are constant. This is my experience. I nod down, most other people tilt their heads up in greeting. Very very often, males avoid eye contact so as to avoid the need for considering this social response. I have repeatedly made the mistake of not responding to aggressive overtures. It screws up the social organization and leads to what can be actual violence rather than a display as the members of the social group try to figure out just where I fit in the social hierarchy. # # # 36b. Archetypes The next view is of archetypes, starting with Greek Gods and then progressing to current archetypes. Realize, a lot is skipped here. Gods are often a pre-occupation of humans and many must be skipped for brevity, but the important issues will be considered. Archetypes are a great tool of communication, organization and systemization of knowledge. Greek Gods are notable for their humanness. They embody the power to control that which humans could not, life, death, seasons, stars, earthquakes and other things. They had power, but acted just like humans might if given those powers. That is, quite like juveniles. They were immortal gods of power, but no smarter than humans. The Zoroastans had Gods that were more philosophical and interested in humans. They had more wisdom and knowledge than humans, but there philosophy was quite immature. From there I will jump past many gods of many humans. Their natures and diversity mean nothing but lessons. In passing I will mention the mechanical god in the book Neutronium Alchemist by Peter Hamilton who had almost limitless power and knowledge, but knew it had very limited wisdom. In these same books was a comment about 'affinity', a psychic based communication ability. This is important in the context of this book here, because it allowed for a great deal of cooperation, something fundamental to this book. If I am going to refer to gods of history and literature, I should mention Olaf Stapelton, but only as another brilliant student trying to understand human potential. From there, I will jump to my first destination, Doc E. E. Smith. While the genre of speculative fiction that he wrote is called "space opera" or perhaps comic book science fiction, he made some important points and wrote stories that still have not been surpassed in their scope. The recent television series, Babalon 5 was taken from his stories. If one wants to examine human concepts of gods, his work is a good place to start. Remember, this is used as an archetype, nothing more. Arisians were beings that had evolved in this universe over billions of years. They had developed to the point where they had no physical bodies. (I read these many years ago and really should check back to see if the author said that they had controlled their evolution consciously, but they were written before there was any real knowledge of genes, mostly before 1940). In any case, they were effectively immortal and lived as long as they desired. They were incredibly able intellectually ("from a glass of water, a truly competent mind should be able to deduce the existence of Niagara Falls". It’s probably a violation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but not an issue with this author). They had great wisdom, but that description is always tough for a human author. They also had great power of various sorts. They did not have a knowledge of the spiritual, which they assumed was something they would encounter after death. While they were what we would call telepathic, the basic model of their existence was still that of individuals. The next point I would like to touch on is Gaia, a theory originally developed by James Lovelock, a NASA scientist. This is a more recent concept and is that all the biota of a planet work together as a super organism to regulate the ecology of a planet. This concept has been expanded to be a super-consciousness composed of some variation of everything in a planet. On earth, that would be the animals, plants and minerals all linked together, presumably telepathically, into a single super-consciousness. The problem here is not so much the communication method, but the organizational method of that communication to make a single consciousness. How would a decision be made or a conclusion be reached? It would be quite a networking problem. At the same time, this same problem exists in the plurality that is the human mind. The real and important difference to note here from the Arisian archetype is the change from individuality to the aggregate. Arisians worked together, but never lost individual identity... maybe. Still, the point is not to get hung up on the individual identity or singularity of a god. # # # 37. Individuality # # # 38. Aggressiveness and Social Organization A Night Out With Otto. This is a discussion of aggressiveness in humans. Realize that aggressive is a word with two primary meanings. One meaning is that aggressive is synonymous with active. That meaning is quite important, but this essay is about another meaning. That is the association of aggression with violence or threat of violence. This is a social behavior and only has meaning in a social context. Violence has meant different things to different cultures. In some cultures it has been celebrated. In some cultures it has been considered evil. Very often aggressiveness has been mistaken for violence, but they are quite different. The aggressiveness may be the source of violence, but violence is not the source of aggressiveness. Also there may be a misunderstanding about violence. Violence can be physical or mental. That is something that many people seem to have trouble understanding. Aggressiveness is fundamentally a reproductive behavior. In animals other than humans, it is usually just used by males to compete with other males for access to females or some other reproductive resource. Reproductive resources may be feeding grounds, breeding areas or some other resource that the male can use to dominate access to females. Aggressiveness is fundamentally a display behavior. In nature it is almost never intended to lead to the death of the opponent or even a severe injury. Very often it is indirect in that it is done to impress the females. The corresponding behavior in females is coyness. Females promote conflicts between the males so that they can judge the fittest. In this sense, colorful reproductive displays by males are aggressive yet have no connotations of violence. Another aspect of aggressiveness is not directly related to reproduction, but is a method of organizing the social group. It may be about who gets to take the first turn at the watering hole. This aspect of aggressiveness is what this essay is about. In humans, it is about who takes the first action. In humans there are at least two kinds of aggressive hierarchies. One is the Alpha dominance hierarchy and the other is the pecking order. Humans use both kinds of systems. In the basic alpha dominance hierarchy there is a single male who dominates the rest of the social group. In the pecking order each individual has a position that is above and below everyone else. Particularly for humans, because it is an organizational system, the alpha dominance hierarchy is more efficient because it keeps conflict to a minimum. In humans, ideally the alpha may go unchallenged for a long time to, even when the new member is added to the social group. When a new member enters the social group of the pecking order, they may literally get beat up by whoever is at the top of the order and everyone below him until they find their spot in the order where no one below them can beat them up. In that for humans to dominance hierarchy is primarily about an organizational system, the function of the alpha may be almost only that. They may get almost no prerogatives and it may have no reproductive advantage. Though as part of this organizational pattern they actually do have the function of first contact with encounters from outside the social group. Primarily though, it is about organization. Who walks through the door first. There can be co-alphas and there can be retired alphas. And woe be to him that messes up the organizational system. This is largely a theoretical description up to this point and may sound like it is only theoretical in practice, but it is extremely real and important as this description is meant to convey. This is hard to describe, so let me tell you a story. You might think this a bit juvenile, but so are humans quite often. I have been many places and seen many things. Hopefully I learned from them all. I'm a big guy. I have always been a big guy and it is something I have always had to deal with. usually, I wasn't smart enough to deal with it in any reasonable fashion and so from my many mistakes I learned a lot. This is natural human behavior. My mother had a neurotic fear of violence. She knew I was going to be big and so she worked to make sure that I would be incapable of violence. I was always big and strong, but quite inhibited. Note what her lessons were. It takes two to make a fight and if you are in a fight you are being bad. Those are simple and profound. Also, they are both wrong, though there is no way I could know that at the time. To put this in context, I was always bigger than my peers, my classmates. At age 13 I weighed 238 pounds. At age 14 I had a physical education teacher that decided that though I was a typical 14 year old blob, he was going to whip me into shape. A couple years of weight training and circuit training, and I was a monster who could bench press over 300 pounds. My hobby was handball, so I was also very fast. Be aware, that didn't mean I had a clue. Move back a bit. I had two older brothers that were bigger and physically stronger than I was. My self image was not that I was big or strong. Quite the contrary. My oldest brother was so strong that he didn't have to want to hurt me to beat me in a physical contest. My other brother was not so nice and so as a rule, I lost to him. Even in grammar school, I did not understand that "fights" were just display behaviors were something where no one was supposed to get hurt and winning was a social thing. Fighting with my brothers, I got hurt and I always lost quite personally. I did not understand the social contests and competitions with my classmates that were called "fights". I understood what happened with my brothers. Move forward again to adolescence where behaviors are still so simple but developing some resemblance to real social behaviors. There was a dominance hierarchy. It was organizational. Realize, I grew up in the suburbs. There were no real competitive forces effecting us. It was simply social forces in play. Psychologically, I was completely clueless and incapable of competition. Physically, I was bigger and far more powerful than most adults. I was trained to fight for my life. Not only that, I just naturally move at about twice the speed of other people. I react before most people could think of reacting. A prerogative of the hierarchy and where its organization serves is who moves aside when two people walk towards each other or who goes through a door first. I would think about it and make a decision before the other person could even start to react. This is a good place to start chuckling. Think about it in terms of sociobiology. There are what are called behavioral releases. The fight or flight mechanism. When a person is physically threatened, there are generally only two possible responses, fight or flight. Fight is an aggressive response. Flight is a type of submissive response. There are varieties of both, because these are actually somewhat complex behaviors in oh so social humans. Well, if you are as big and strong as I was, there is an alternative. Do nothing. Threats didn't work. I was immune to that kind of physical violence. I couldn't understand it either. You want to fight me? Uh, people get hurt that way. I had no concept of natural displays where no one gets hurt. When fighting my brothers, someone got hurt. I couldn't believe that someone would start a fight without a good reason. I was pretty oblivious at the time and had many inhibitions to work against. The problem is that we are all learning social behavior as is instinctive and natural. They are all trying to create a natural social organizational system, naturally based on a dominance hierarchy. I'm totally disrupting the system. I don't fit in. I don't act dominant or submissive, which might be OK, except that anything but dominant is interpreted as submissive. Unfortunately, I didn't act submissive. Even as big as I was, I could have been fit in this very adaptive system, but I didn't follow any of the rules. I just couldn't be ignored. That just caused "displays". No one wanted it and I have to give them points for trying to fit me in, but I disrupted the organizational system. Now step out of this narrative again. It is all well and good to tell my story here, but what is the meaning? This was at a special time and place. This was a time when one could look at behaviors like they were pure chemical compounds. A display behavior that was a "fight" had no appreciable real violence to it. This was during the early 1970's. Ten years later, the violence was real and very dangerous. This was when pre-marital sex was still a taboo and pornography was rare. Ten years later, the media was saturated with sex. When I was in school, aggressiveness was a fast car. Seeing the "dominance" hierarchy at that time, it was clear that it was an organizational system. It was based on aggressiveness in some way, but it was a cooperative system for allowing humans in a social group to organize themselves. A night out with Otto you ask. That was when I was older and dealing with real social systems. The dominance hierarchy was a common system many social settings. In the masculine world of the blue collar worker at that time, the dominance hierarchy was a real phenomena. It was before weapons might be common and was based on the reality of hard fists, but not only on that. It showed why the system was based on aggressiveness. It was that that allowed an individual to dominate resources and mates. I worked many years as an electrician. That meant that I might be in a social group of other electricians that I regularly worked with or I might be working in a factory as a transient within a factory where there was an existing social group. I was older and a little bit wiser. I had learned not to confuse the social system. The members of any social system want a stable system where everyone knows their place and how to act. Disruption of this is a bad thing. Look at wild animals where an alpha male dominates a breeding resource. Confusion leads to greater fighting and lower reproductive success in the social group. There were consequences to this. I learned that the alpha was not necessarily the one who wanted to be the most dominant. Humans are too sophisticated for something that simple. An excessively violent person is no good for anyone, but an alpha had to have the capability to be violent to suppress any other violent individuals that might tend to disrupt things. I learned that because of my physical presence, I was almost always offered the position. Growl a bit and remember to protect my prerogatives some and all went well. I had the choice of protecting others in the social group and usually did. It was very unnatural to me though and I made mistakes. Only one was of consequence and shows the importance of the system. I was working on a team and a new electrician came on. He was young and of average size. He challenged me with minor insults and I ignored him. I was supposed to have put him in his place. The rest of the social group was waiting for me to put him in his place. It would have been easy, but I paid no attention. This made everyone else uncomfortable. The upshot was that I let it go on too long before I noticed it and the disruption was done. It could have and would have led to a real fight. I was physically his superior enough that no one would have gotten hurt and I would have won the fight, but I had already failed at the behavior and my function. I ended up getting fired as a direct result of not maintaining the social organization. They didn't know why, but after my failure, I could not be tolerated by the social group that was the employees of that company. It would have caused ongoing disruption like it had in school earlier. Realize, no one is that conscious of this stuff. They are just responding naturally, but it is oh so real. I became conscious of it because I was so exposed to it and made so many costly mistakes. It gets really weird at times. I will mention one time before returning to Otto. At least by the time I went to college I was fully immersed in an academically based social group that did not use the aggressive based dominance hierarchy. As a matter of fact, using aggressive behavior would probably have gotten me widely ostracized, especially by the people that I considered my social group. Still, they were able to adjust to my physical presence and as far as I know, rarely felt physically intimidated. That was partly because of careful avoidance on my part of allowing any misunderstanding. I was at UC Santa Cruz. Social competition, physically, economically or academically was not the norm and was generally not socially acceptable. I can only think that competition based on style was acceptable. That was then. I spent a quarter at the Bodega Marine Lab. That was an even more academically oriented group and again, non-competitive to the point of being anti-competitive. We had the Spring Ball. It was a party for the students and staff at the lab. The Pirate showed up. He was a local and certainly not an academian. He got fairly drunk and annoyed a number of people. What was interesting and I experienced this repeatedly over time, was that the same people that would have socially ostracized me for any aggressive display within the social group for any reason, wanted me to basically beat him up and eject him from the party. Not just eject him, but thrash him a bit for good measure. Very interesting. In the more aggressive based groups, the alpha was expected to be in front when dealing with outsiders from the social group. Now back to Otto. I worked as an electrician for some time in a printing factory. There were about 50 employees on the floor with a well developed long term social organization. I was obviously a temporary person, but was accepted into the social group as a member. Now according to theory, I can act as an alpha or not and will be given more latitude because I will not be there for more than a couple months. Otto was a large guy. Not as big as me, but definitely a big guy. He did have a very large head though and I assure you that a great deal of it was bone. Hitting him with your hand would be a mistake. I heard that once he was in a fight with a trucker and was basically beating him up when one of his co-workers drove by. Later when asked why he was beating him up, he replied that he thought that the trucker was going to start a fight with him. Now there's some logic. Interestingly, it was not as simple as Otto. Otto was in his late 20's. His two brothers worked there as well. The older brother was a bruiser, but was at least 40. The younger brother was just a bit older than Otto, but was of much more average build. The older brother was a retired alpha. You would not want to fight him or he you. He would have probably won, but he would hurt for days afterwards and any injuries would heal more slowly. Overall though, the dynamics were interesting because they showed that the alpha was really not just one person. There was more than one person involved potentially. The alpha was a group. This is not that rare. It's not as important to this description to say, but I went out drinking with Otto and Jim one night. It was amusing so I'll tell some of it, but not all. Jim was a big African American guy and was not in the hierarchy the same way as Otto, probably because there were only two African Americans working at the factory. They were not as directly in the social group. At the first place we stopped, we were drinking mugs of beer. Now Otto wanted to fight me. It was nothing personal. He was just a fighter that liked to fight and naturally wanted to try me. I avoid fights where someone is likely to get hurt. Now there are rules to this. He can't just say he wants to fight me. It does have to be by mutual consent (to some degree or another) or it is not a social behavior. His strategy was to be loud and obnoxious enough to get me to object and then it was fair to challenge me then. He's just following instinct and learned rules. The waitress asked me to do something about him and I said, sorry, but he's just looking for a fight. At one point, I had just sat down on the bar stool after getting something. I happened to be laughing at the time. As I sat down, Otto backhanded me in the chest with his beer mug in hand. I flew off the stool backwards and landed sitting on the floor still holding my beer and still laughing. Actually, I did think it was funny, but the point is that I did not give either a dominant or submissive response. Otto could still not follow a normal behavioral sequence without more clues. Plus he now has to wonder just how tough I might be. I don't remember the whole evening. I think he sort of gave up some trying to figure things out after that. There were a lot of other weird events of the night and he did punch out the windshield of my van at some point when Jim was threatening me. He said he didn't want us arguing. Still, the entire night was not an extremely closely examined event of youth. It was not a time to be in academic mode. A lesson is where it is learned. Aggressiveness is a fascinating human behavior with many aspects. Perhaps the most interesting is the important constructive organization it can offer to a social group. It may come at a cost, but it is still critically important. Then there is the Pecking Order of aggressive social organization. I’m told it is much more the norm in the mid-west, but I’m not as familiar with it. I was told that a new kid in school could be expected to be beat up (threatened or intimidated into giving a submissive response) by the biggest guy in the school. Then by the next biggest, Then the next until they stopped it and that was where they were in the pecking order. What is important is that it was an organizational form. A very comparable situation is the human habit of creating heroes and celebrities. It’s just that celebrities do not have the aggressive connotations. Social Aggressiveness #end 38. Aggressiveness and Social Organization # # # 39. Reproductive Regulation Human laws are so annoying. Biological laws are so much simpler and reasonable, if sometimes complex. Rule one is going to be that humans must regulate their population. Could you imagine the horrors of social collapse with a population like the Earth presently holds? Someone pointed out the survivors would be the paranoid and the ruthless. It would be a moral disaster for humanity. One we might never well recover from. Consider that if some major pandemic wiped out half of humanity. It would be a personal and economic tragedy, but it would spare us from the moral horrors that population wars would entail. Different societies have faced this before. Some have solved it by ritualistic warfare. It has been used worldwide, but Mezo-America has a good example of that with the Incas of the Yucatan Peninsula. The soil there is poor and does not hold water. Still, the Incas were able to create sophisticated civilizations. Yet they had a crushing population problem. Their solution was to have perpetual warfare. It was better than everyone starving or having to kill their own. At the same time, it did push genetic selection. Some societies have resorted to homosexuality like the Greeks. Objectively speaking this is a solution, but it has serious drawbacks for the society. It also didn’t promote natural selection. Don’t think that this problem was rare or isolated. Think of what it must have taken to lead to the Children’s Crusades of Europe. Too many children, sell them into slavery. If the problem is that humans must become more than animals, conscious population control is going to be one of the defining indicators. I rarely discuss politics, but the world is shrinking. In a relatively short time frame Maybe in the poor countries where life is so endangered, a couple could be persuaded to have only one child if artificial selection were paid for for that one child. Their overall genetic survival potential might be increased. Their values might be satisfied. Still, that is a short term solution. The long term solution will almost certainly have to be based on civil law. If it is not, then there will be selection for those that are the most fecund and the disaster of that is quite predictable. Perhaps in the long run, human genetics could be directed such that humans reproductively matured later. There would be a lot of benefits to the survival from that, though it goes against some basic biological principles. #end 39. Reproductive Regulation # # # 40. Investment - Infrastructure & Education, Emergencies #end 40. Investment # # # 41. Law #end 41. Law # # # 42. Ownership Ownership is a fundamental aspect of human survival strategies that relates back to when choice territories were aggressively defended. Now it relates to economics and incentive. Business Current human wisdom knows the importance limited population. The reality of human thought and even most moral systems do not include that. For many reasons, the most common moral beliefs are still trying to grapple with the concept of voluntarily limiting population. It is difficult because almost all religions owe some or most of their success to promoting population growth. Voluntarily limiting population is contradicts natural evolutionary principles and as such is a bit counterintuitive. It is another place like artificial selection where humans must transcend nature. It will not be easy. That is not the point here though. This is about business. The thing is though that the same principles apply. The natural process of business is growth to consume all available markets. There tend to be laws that try to restrict business competition to innovation, production and marketing so as to select for the survival of the most efficient businesses. The trouble is that is not always how it works out. Still, more important though is a most fundamental foundation of the economy. Does business suffer from "over population"? Planned obsolescence is a strategy to prevent that, as is fashion, impulse buying and many other common business strategies. Even before that problem, it seems that the greed that productively fuels much of economic activity is as bound to get dangerously out of control as over population. It's just an insatiable drive. In a new ecology that has a consciously limited population, there will have to be an economic foundation that designed not to need unlimited population and market growth. Strategies will change. The danger of stagnation and anti-competitive practices will be great. #end 42. Ownership # # # 42.5. Greed In biological terms, greed is the excessive hoarding of resources. What is the significance of greed? I think that would be most correctly answered by asking how it would effect cooperation than in terms of an individuals resources. Greed tends to be a problem because it generally goes against social behaviors. It is about me and mine. Any description of a stable human ecology says that resources are not going to be the primary limiting factor that they have been in the past. What is the source and result of greed, past and present? There are a few aspects to greed that should be considered. These include resources, status and self. Resources are the term we put on the energetics part of all ecologies. Many animals hoard food when food is plentiful for seasons when it is scarcer. Humans though take it to a different level because their resources are more extensive and can be more than food hoarded from one season to another. Also human resource hoarding can be facilitated by economic instruments representing resources that have no time limit. Humans can actually accumulate and hoard far more reseurces than they can ever use. When examining most any specie and especially humans, most behaviors shoulf be examined in terms of status and reproduction. In many ways, greed just looks like reproductive resource behavior common to mammals. They aggressively compete to dominate whatever the most limited reproductive resource there is whether it is a territory, a harem, a reproductive beach or any other resource that gives a reproductive edge. In humans that includes whatever give social status, notably wealth. In humans that are polygamous, greed is more useful as a survival trait than when humans are monogamous. In moral terms, this is significant, because it suggest morality and greed are morally/strategically related. Generally monogamy is a quality strategy and polygamy is a quantity strategy. It appears that humans are developing to a more quality oriented strategy of reproduction based on a greater investment in fewer children. The trouble with greed is that a person usually gets wealthy because they love wealth. That can conflict with the values needed for survival of the family. Greed is another one of the behaviors with a characteristic of self to it and so has some basis in the Parietal Lobe where one's concept of self is managed. That this trait is at least partly hardwired from the genes shows it to be one of the most difficult moral/survival/ethical/philodophical problems that humans will have to resolve. For survival of the individual and society there will have to be a pretty fine balance between a person's concept of self and others. In terms of artificial selection, it will take a lot of wisdom to know what represents a balance for survival. If humans become more cooperative to survive, we will want to select for less focus on self and more on others. Too much reduction in sense of self may also be quite dangerous to survival as ecology and evolution have generally demonstrated that they operate on the individual. Inclusive fitness, fitness of the group, seems less important in nature than the fitness of the individuals of the group. In future human ecologies though, that could change drastically in that our primary survival strategy includes cooperation. Individual greed is not likely to be a good strategy and it would be hard for groups to manage inevitable rivalries that wealth of a group would lead to, verses the potential advantages greed would provide. Greed would most likely be a godd survival strategy in an ecology where resources are a primary limiting factor for the species. Human planning will have to be the main limiting factor in human ecology or we will not be in a new ecology. AS I see it though the greatest problem with greed is that it blinds a person. I saw it in the Pyamid schemes, another name for Ponzi schemes. I see it in the disasterous economic crash of 2009. A person must avoid being fooled. Greed is the best way to blind a person that you want to swindle. #end 42.5. Greed # # # 43. Governance and Democracy Democracy is a well used word. It is generally translated to mean rule by the people. There are many forms of democracy, including American, European, Russian, Chinese and others. Other terms used to classify democracy are republic, representative, direct and others. Those designations refer to how the people are represented. The one thing that is consistent about democracy and even more important than how is carried out, is that a democratic government is one is designed to be a benefit to the governed. That is stated very clearly at the beginning of the American Constitution. This is another one of the topics where I would prefer to have more expertise in order to write about it. Unfortunately though, that expertise would have to include the American Constitution, Napoleonic law, constitutional monarchies and a number of other extremely sophisticated topics. Still, I have some adequate knowledge of those and that is not the point. The point is about changes in human ecology and genetics. In those terms, governments are organizational systems that humans use. This is to compare governments to biological systems, something I am quite familiar with. Democracy is like other human systems. The biggest problem with the system is the humans in the system. Apathy, ignorance and self-interest are all problems of the system. This is why it has been said that a benevolent despot is the best form of government, if it were not for the problem of transfer of power and potential for abuse of power. Democracy is based on another premise. It's not that democracy is the best system. It's that all the rest are worse. As with all institutions, governments eventually come to where their primary purpose is their own self-perpetuation rather than the purpose that they were originally created for. Even democracy doesn't seem to be immune to this. Since winning the vote is a contest, the politicians constantly come up with different ways to manipulate the vote. Still, democracy seems currently to be the best system for the most people. What does this look like in a system based on a stable ecology and artificial genetic selection? Well, people should be smarter. That should help, but what will probably help more would be a better moral system underpinning the governing system. If the problem biggest problem is corruption and self-interest, then a moral system that promotes cooperation by the individual is likely to vastly improve any governmental system, including democracy. Up to this point, this essay has been about the representative aspects of government. All modern government is based upon law. The most recent major body of law of this sort would be the American Constitution. The most widely used body of law would be the Napoleonic Code. Humans are actually very new at the art and science of creating law. It probably fair to say that we will get better at it. That is to say that we will get better at developing formal organizational systems for our society. Another thing that should help in developing better laws and better organizational systems is improved understandings of what humans are. A genetic based view of humans, such as this, should help in that regard as well. #end # # # 43. Governance and Democracy In moral terms, the importance of political leadership cannot be overstated. Unfortunately, it is so fraught with difficulties. It’s not that Democracy is such a good system, it is that all the rest are so much worse. This clearly illustrates the problem with government, it is by people who seem to be so flawed. One person with a will can seemingly dominate even a sophisticated governmental system designed specifically to prevent one person or group from amassing too much power. A benevolent despotsy is supposed to be the best form of government because it is easier to reach consensus and get things done efficiently. The greatest problem of that form of government is that it is hard for there to be an orderly transfer of power. Again, the weakness is shown to be people, both in terms of getting a leader that is benevolent in the first place and after they are gone. Desire for power seems to be like greed, a dangerous and destructive weakness that damages the greater society for the desires of a few. American democracy was created with exactly that recognition in mind. The weakness seems not to be in the system, but in the people. One thing that helps a democracy function is an educated electorate. Perhaps a more intelligent electorate would help as well. An improved philosophy might be a great help as well. What we need is leaders with a little less ego and self esteem so that they think of others instead of only themselves and their desires. Humans generally tend to be passive. They are broadly descended from farmers that had no use for warfare. The wealth the farmers created opened the niche for the militarists. Even though the military ruling classes dominated society for thousands of years and exercised great reproductive advantage during that time, humans did not widely develop an instinct to kill. This can be seen in studies of modern wars where it was found that the great majority soldiers were usually not really trying to kill their enemies. It goes against our basic instincts. There are those though that do not have this inhibition. They are referred to as psychopaths. They exhibit less social behaviors. This can be a great advantage in areas of power as Machiavelli pointed out. A psychopath is a superior liar and quite willing to lie, threaten or kill to get the power they desire. Think of Joseph Stalin. One of the original purposes of the development of the American form of democracy was to prevent such people from attaining power. They could be hard to get rid of once in power. This is going to be an ongoing political problem, but points to a broader problem. If as a specie humans develop a significant percentage of people without inhibitions against using immoral means to get their way, it can be a self perpetuating situation. This is very dangerous to the cooperative foundation of the society. What we refer to as psychopathic becomes the norm. In a way, this is expected because they have an advantage in the modern world. Luckily there are institutions that naturally resist this on moral grounds. For human society to grow, this behavior must be recognized and resisted. #end # # # 44. Socialism #end # # # 45. Warriors and Society The first of the Western Civilizations, Sumaria, had a priestly leadership. That was the last time that happened for a long time. The Semites, led by Sargon The Great conquered them and Western society was ruled by warriors for thousands of years. It makes sense. A question I have frequently posed in this book is how does a creative person deal with an aggressive person. Aggressive is synonymous with active. Military castes can easily create a philosophy of their superiority and support it militarily. It works. The only way to deal with aggression in the long term is deterrence. The crop farmers of Sumaria would have been very timid. They could not have fought back against the aggressive tribes of nomadic herders. Societies went on with militarist rulers. The peoples descended from the horse herders of western Russia, the Greeks, Romans and Eutustrians, replaced the Semites as the ruling class of Western civilization. War was just how things were done. Things like that are self correcting in the long run. The militarist had an advantage for a long time. That included a reproductive advantage. They were able to spread their genes. The other non-military castes became widely hybridized with the military castes. They became able to fight back. War became less economical when more people could fight back, especially with the rise of more developed technology of warfare that enables a non-warrior to fight wars. In terms of the warrior caste, we currently have a very hybridized society both genetically and morally. Morally you say? Yes. Looking at how we react in our society shows the values and rules impressed upon the society by the militarists. We see Christian philosophy when someone says forget it or it's not worth fighting over. We see the militarist when we see natural territoriality. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. It is the lesson of John Wayne. It is a recognition that even if you don't want to fight, there may come a time when you must or the militarist will destroy what you have built and kill you. An interesting corollary to this is we often, especially within the society, even follow the rules of the militarist. Fighting rules are stylized like reproductive battles, which they basically are when the fight is within the society. It's considered wrong to hit from behind. If there were no common rules, there would be nothing considered unfair. Even in war, there are usually some rules. In modern society, we compete, but competition by violence is largely outlawed or frowned upon. It is counterproductive for the society. At the same time, we currently dare not lose the ability to fight. In the stable ecology, it would be assumed that military warfare likely wouldn't exist or it is not a stable ecology. If there is warfare, by definition it would not be for the traditional reason of resources. It's hard to say about ideologies. Actually, this part of the discussion has been covered in examinations of history (the Chinese empire) and repeatedly in speculative fiction. It seems that a society can exist for a long time with very little potential for violence if there is no outside threat. A powerful empire may crumble easily to a small external threat. I will note here the view that Robert Heinlein offered in the book This New Horizon. It is interesting in that many years ago when he wrote it, he talked about artificial selection (though without hybridization) and postulated in the book that the society should be based on a fairly high degree of potential for personal violence. I don't see it that way, but it is a view. This was not part of his view, but if we do achieve a star flight capability such as is projected in the show Star Trek (or the stories by Larry Niven) and if we meet a lot of intelligent aliens, the equation could change that a high degree of aggressiveness could be required. Still, that's extremely speculative and they may well be naturally predisposed to non-violent philosophy for the same reason that I suggest humans will be, including its destructiveness. This is all way beyond anything worth speculating about here. #end 45. Warriors and Society # # # 46. God In Human Ecology And Survival The question that usually comes up about Gods is about their existence, not their relationship to human survival. Still, whether gods exists or not, gods are important to human survival and humans are adapted to Gods. So before approaching the questions of God's existence or nature, this discusses some effects of God on human survival without making any assumptions about God's existence. To understand humans, one must understand the relationship of humans to gods. Gods are an important part of human survival strategies. Gods inspire and sustain. Gods define how cultures compete. They give authority to our leaders. Gods provide many forms of balance. By the way our minds work, we are adapted to gods even in our genes and these adaptations are important. One must understand both the secular and spiritual meaning of Gods, to understand humans and how they can survive. Remember, the human mind is not all that naturally rational. Cause and effect are things that are learned. We are designed to believe in a human or some consciousness force controlling events and our lives, not natural scientific laws. The human mind is a pattern recognition device and will even create patterns where it cannot find one. This is in the genes. One of the patterns humans create are supernatural forces to explain what is not understood and cannot be controlled. A lot of religion is about keeping those forces happy and not making them angry. They say that there are no atheists in foxholes. In times of fear and doubt, all but the most skeptical human always reaches out for a comforting thought that has no basis in science. A belief in God brings a lot of benefits to the believer. It can give them a hope, strength and inspiration. It can minimize fear and stress. It can give a rightousness necessary to win in competition with other people and cultures. It allows them to find more value in things than the world has to offer and to set goals that rise above the common. It can give authority to the moral laws of a religion. It explains things and allows a completeness of memes. Without a God, what does one aspire to. It is a good survival strategy. Gods can mitigate the dangers of natural human behaviors such as ego. Not only can they set standards of behavior, but there are more subtle things. Consider the description of the advantages of the alpha social system verses the pecking order social system for humans. The Alpha system reduces conflict because it is centered around one person instead of distributed through the society. In many cases, especially if the alpha is smart, there are almost no challenges and consequently almost no conflict. Having God as an alpha works very well. There can be no challenge and conflict is kept minimal. A leader is important in society and an all powerful leader is very good for a society. It is based on not just aggressiveness, but natural patterns of human organization and balance as well. In many ways, God is an expression of our relatedness. The followers of a God tend to practice a family type of cooperation. Historically, religious leaders have caused societies to combine by announcing that the Gods of the different society are actually the same or are related. This was a function of the Oracle at Delphi. A primary importance of God to humans comes in the context of the Christian God. This is cross referenced elsewhere. It is love. This whole book is based on human survival strategies based on cooperation. The most cooperative morality currently available is Christian philosophy. That philosophy is based on the teachings of a religion who says it is the primary commandment of their God. This commandment was to love one another. It seems unlikely that a less cooperative survival strategy can take us to the next ecology. Religion is another thing. It is associated with gods, but is not the same. Religion serves both humans and gods. It has had and has many functions. Very likely, current changes in human ecology will cause religions to lose some functions and add others. Some functions may be entirely new. God has tended to have such an importance that there is an entire large institution (multi-generational behavior pattern) based around him. This is religion. It has often encompassed the society and the individual. At times, various religious teachings have encompassed every different aspect of an individuals life. Religion has often assumed all the functionality of the government, business and academia. It encompasses family law, food laws, family law, sex habits, etc., provides an ongoing moral education to its followers and teaches faith. A primary function of religion has been to track the seasons so as to be able to tell the farmers when to plant crops. Religions have pioneered the development of many human institutions. Religion has often been the last refuge in the face of life’s uncertainties and trials. Faith is a genetically based aspect of human behavior related to our most basic survival instinct. It interacts quite powerfully with the meme of God. This has had an overwhelming effect on human existence. A Bishop, of all people, said that the problem with religion was that it was based on precedence and authority instead of reason and understanding. Examination suggests that the reason and understanding behind religion can fairly easily be seen, though it seems that the religions miss it or do not value it. Religion is designed primarily to serve people, not a God. Considering the current multi-mind model used by psychology that is described elsewhere. It is an interesting concept. We can believe more than one thing at a time. Even things that contradict. We believe some things stronger than others, but we believe a lot of different things. Sometimes even too many. Well, take any human and they are most likely going to believe in God in some part of their mind. This can be an inspiration or an annoyance. Many battles have been fought in the mind over that and many different peaces have been achieved. The neurological basis of our relationship with God is an important part of our genes. Realize that in these terms, God's existence is shown by God's effect on survival. The belief in God is a philosophy usually called religion. It is a way of knowing that is practiced by a lot of people. # end # # # 47. Emotional Energy - What Comes Around, Goes Around This essay is just to describe something that happens in our interactions. This is an odd topic, but it can be important in a number of different ways especially in terms of how the parts of a society get along. Emotions are used for communication. We can communicate happiness, despair or excitement. It is said that emotions are contagious. It can be hard to resist the communication of emotions. A person is excited and those around them will almost certainly get stimulated as well. In terms of how our society gets along, there is another importance. In an analogy to physics, emotional energy is conserved. Anger can be passed from one person to another and then on to another and then on. The same is true of more positive emotions, though unfortunately they seem to dissipate more. This book is about how humans can survive based upon existence in a society. This survival will be based on cooperation. Still, it is about more than just survival, it is also about how we can be happy, though survival and happiness are linked. In this sense, there is moral law on the matter. This is also about making the world a better place. It may seem like a simple platitude, but it is extremely important in the real world. Avoid creating or passing on negative emotional energy. Do create and pass on positive emotional energy. This becomes something real in a number of situations and it can scale up through the whole society. Your boss wretches at you. You bring home the bad energy and give it to your wife and kids. Your wife gives it back to you. It is bad for everyone. Back when I used to experiment with emotional communication, I learned that if I smiled at a person just right at just the right time, I could make their whole day. In the bigger scale, many people believe that if a favor is done for them, that they are obligated to do a favor for someone else. Behavior like this can make a society work, especially when there are other factors hurting the society such as an economic downturn. At times of crisis in a society, the solution is usually how the individuals respond to each other that solves the wider problem. A good example of this would be FDR's statement that "All we have to fear is fear itself". It was true. Recovery from that economic disaster could only be accomplished by the society working together and overcoming beliefs within the society. At the same time, a few years back, there was a politician who decided that winning at all costs was more important than anything else. He wasn't the first to do this or the last, but his hate, anger and conscious choice to avoid any compromise spread to friend and enemy alike. He developed methods and policies to avoid compromise and the political system that had to be based on compromise, lost its effectiveness that came from compromise. It became more and more polarized to where it did not represent the people who tend to be fairly moderate instead of fanatic. Only the future will show where this leads to, but it has already caused a lot of political disaster for the people of the United States. It all has occurred because of an institutionalized anger and hate that was created mostly by one man who chose to spread it. #end 47. # # # 48. Psychological Balance … dup? Mania is often considered a psychological illness, but it is a highly stimulated mental state that may be perfectly normal. People love to quote the statement that humans only use perhaps 15 percent of their brain. In general, that is a meaningless statement, but it is true that most of the time, we do not need the full capability of our brains. When we do have a problem to solve, we can bring most of our useful mental capacity to bare on the problem. Remember, the human brain is optimized to solve human social problems, though it can solve many other kinds of problems as well. Most of the time, we are relaxed and just cruising along. That is to be expected, since we work to remove crisis in our life. Sometimes, we encounter a problem though. It may be a problem of how to get some technology to work, but more often it is a social problem. It may be how to impress someone we are attracted to or it may be that someone's actions are angering us. We try to understand the situation so that we can effect it in some way we desire. It's called problem solving. Well, humans can naturally go into a highly stimulated mental state that is naturally good for problem solving. There are a number of implications to this, including that judgment may be reduced when in this state and that people tend to enjoy this state. The first of these issues to consider are that while being in a manic state a person may be very intuitive and able to easily solve problems that would normally be difficult, the judgment that a person must always use, may not be working that well. A good example of this might be a social problem where a person gets angry at someone they associate with for a particular reason, maybe they feel insulted by something the person did. The person noticing this then gets in a naturally stimulated mental state, mildly manic perhaps stimulated by anger, and then realize that that person has actually insulted them frequently in the past, but it was ignored up to now. Well, the upside to this is that in the normal course of events, the person uses this understanding to change the social dynamics so that the other person does not insult them. The downside is that when the person is in the manic state and has just realized this truth, they are also likely to have bad judgment and make an immediate scene by not just accusing the person of insulting them, but of a pattern and history of insults. Well, there is a lot that can be made from this, but it shows both why the manic state is natural for problem solving and why it can be a hazard. The degree of mania in people is one of the most important psychological balancing acts there is in individuals and in nature. In an individual, it is largely genetically determined. It is something that can be consciously controlled to some degree, if the individual is aware of it. A person that is considered to have a pathologic mania is considered sick because they make bad decisions. They may binge shop or spout wild ideas. the balance has gone to too much stimulation. On the other hand, not enough stimulation has been called depressive and the person simply is not stimulated enough to deal with the world. It is a miserable state, that is a bad situation and is often treated medicinally and non-medicinally. A person may take a vacation or any of many forms of stimulating entertainment or recreation to lift their mood. Many recreational intoxicants do the same thing. Interestingly, a huge number of people today are prescribed regular doses of psychoactive drugs to elevate their mood. I have to wonder if they have the natural non-manic periods during which they more carefully judge their experiences in the manic state. While this is all extremely interesting in many ways, especially in light the common use of intoxicants and all those implications, in evolutionary terms this balance between stimulated and non-heightened mental states is very important both because it is genetically controlled and because it is critical to how we deal with the world. One interesting question is whether manic states are necessary for problem solving at all or would these solutions "emerge" (in Michael Polanyi's terms) after some more time anyway. There is strong reason to suspect not. It takes a stimulated state to make broad associations, not just time or the entire pattern of a problem may not be recognized. In terms of artificial selection, the manic state would be part of intellect. The manic state can contribute to intellect and even genius. At the same time, the manic state must be tempered by judgment and the judgmental abilities of a person are limited by intellectual ability. Manic states are just a part of a person's intellectual tools. You could artificially select for mania in a person, but without psychological balances to offset that, the person would be dysfunctionally manic. More important than intellect in terms of artificial selection though, would be the individuals general mood. To survive, there must be a balance between the psychological highs and lows. It also seems that drug dependency may be more common in people without a psychological balance leaning to an adequately naturally stimulated or high mood. Besides that, in terms of the changing human ecology, a more stimulated psychology may be more advantageous. The modern world is far more stimulating, perhaps excessively so, than the world typically has been in the past. This may not just require a somewhat more stimulated psychological balance, but also a more resiliently balanced psychology to deal with the stimulus of the modern world. Features related to psychological balance will be the most problematic, potentially hazardous and potentially beneficial aspects of artificial selection that humans will have to come to understand. We will have to come to understand it though and effect it. In terms of discussion of this, there is an interesting discussion of this issue under the heading of "Hedonism". The term is used to describe a speculative situation where through the use of psychoactive chemistry (and nano-technology) so that humans (and perhaps all other animals) are permanently in a state of ecstatic mental stimulation. It is an interesting discussion in some ways, but it illustrates that other psychological features that humans do not have to deal with a highly stimulated state. How would one rest? how would one have the judgment to control ones actions in such a stimulated state? It also described such a high energy system, that the idea seemed problematic for natural reasons. #end 48. # # # 49. Human Cloning It seems likely that Reproductive cloning of an individual human is a very thorny moral issue, but how does it relate to human survival? There are a number of moral issues to cloning a human. Who are its parents? Who is responsible for the clone as a child? What are those responsibilities? What consent was there by the clone and cloned? Are there developmental risks to cloning? By all standards, a clone skips a step in evolution that is represented by each generation. It would seem that if developmental problems are just a result of cloning adults, then cloning is by most standards a very bad thing. It would produce nothing good and creating developmentally handicapped individuals would almost have to be regarded as very undesirable. Since it will be almost impossible to currently prevent the cloning of individuals, it would seem practical to try to universally require that any researcher attempting to do so, provide an insurance policy adequate to cover the needs of the individual to be cloned in the event that they have developmental or health problems as they grow and mature. If cloning can be accomplished that creates a normal human without developmental problems, a big if, the moral issues will be more complicated. Who would be cloned? Sports stars, great scientists, great politicians or perhaps even great beauties? How does that effect the non-cloned in the ongoing competition that is life? If cloning became fashionable, the problem of skipping each generations step of re-combining genetics, might become significant. It would seem that artificial development of an individuals organs for medical reasons is not likely to bring up much more in the way of moral issues than do other medical procedures, which actually bring up a lot of moral issues. What though if it becomes possible for an individual to replace their own organs with a much 'superior' organ? Potentially, that to could thwart evolution. # end 49. # # # 51. Moral Hazards #end 50 Moral Hazards . # # # 52a. Artificial Selection #end 502a. Artificial Selection . # # # 52a. Artificial Selection - Silliness, Deadly Silliness Morality is about survival. Morality refers to the behaviors that keep us alive. Behavior has genetic and learned components to it. The basis of this discussion of morality is to examine how humans survive and can survive in a changing world. Change is very dangerous for any specie. The specie would not exist if there was not an ecology that it was adapted to. If the specie changes, it is because its environment has changed and it is never sure that the specie will successfully adapt to those changes. Human ecology is undergoing massive changes. Our only chance to survive is to adapt both behaviorally and genetically. The unique part of this though, is that humans will have to do much of this adaptation consciously, We will have to make choices. It's hard to say if that makes the changes more or less dangerous. In any case, there are some things that will present far more risks than others. Any changes that relate to reproduction will offer the greatest hazard. Consider that this thesis is based on a hypothesis that increased population density, such as humans are currently experiencing, along with advancing medical techniques, will fantastically increase the hazard of disease to humanity as a whole. As such, it is suggested that disease is the most important place to use artificial selection to help humans adapt to changes that are coming. This is almost certainly going to be needed for humans to survive and is less of a change than an enhancement. There is likely to be little hazard to that change. On the other hand, consider changes effecting reproductive behavior. On the other hand, consider that later. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This essay started as an early discussion of the need for balance in certain human traits, particularly aggressiveness. That is continued below, but a more general case of this situation has shown itself, with perhaps the greatest potential for danger that humans will face from the use of artificial selection. In the case of aggressiveness (as discussed below), if artificial selection were used to increase or decrease the distribution and degree of aggressiveness, it could present an incredible hazard. Well, it seems like that is also true for a number of other traits. Hopefully I am not stepping on toes printing this excerpt from a news service. Aug. 11, 2004 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Procrastinating monkeys were turned into workaholics using a gene treatment to block a key brain compound, U.S. researchers reported. Blocking cells from receiving dopamine made the monkeys work harder at a task -- and they were better at it, too, the U.S. government researchers found. Dr. Barry Richmond and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health used a new genetic technique to block the D2 gene. ... This is not the first report of important behaviors that show a large degree of genetic control, but it is one of the scariest. Happiness, fear, belligerence and many other important traits seem to be largely controlled by genes. This is nothing new. It has been the premise of this book for near 30 years, but to see it not just proven, but so simply and clearly described, shows that the danger is very real. If it was harder to manipulate, we would be less at risk. Instead, it looks like it would be simple to manipulate. If humans mess up those balances for any reason, there will be incredible danger. Now back to our regularly programmed discussion of the balance and importance of aggression. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ah. Here it is. I knew there was some aspect of artificial selection that deserved a warning. The first part of this essay is an internal conversation analyzing potential hazards of artificial selection. It is interesting in that a systematic evaluation doesn't spot many. There are some though and they are not hard to find. Human experience reveals them. The hazard is in good intentions. This is about aggressiveness. The word aggression tends to have one meaning. The word aggressive, tends to have two. Word games can deceive, but words can also reveal. The word aggressive can relate to dominance by various means and is associated with violence, but it is also synonymous with active. In humans, they are often truly related. Careless artificial selection against aggressive traits, could have the effect of removing active traits or traits that could be important for other reasons. My learning has shown that the most damaging things are often done with the best of intentions and reasons. I could easily envision fashion or good intention causing artificial selection to be used to reduce human aggressiveness. I expect that this could damage the human race enormously, perhaps to the point of risking extinction. If you think I say this casually or without due thought, consider that this entire discussion of morality is about a system described as based on the cooperative system derived from the teachings of Christianity. Uncontrolled aggressiveness would destroy that system, but it seems clear that the moral system can teach humans to control their aggressiveness adequately. If humans were to lose their aggressiveness though, the moral system would fail. The moral system is also based on features of aggressiveness as well as cooperation. This includes organization. There is an interesting balance there that deserves an extensive explanation which I don't currently have time to write, but trust me, it is there. As a minor, simpler, point and requiring a shorter description, if aggressiveness is reduced, the people that do that will be subject to militarists. That is not the primary reason alluded to above though. It is important though and easily described. If we become by nature timid, like the early Sumarians, inevitably warrior groups will come along to conquer. Then we will repeat the history of the Iron Age. Topic Update - Important This discussion of aggression was to look at the hazard of tinkering with a trait, in this case, a behavioral trait, for fashionable or not strictly rational reasons. Recent work in biology includes a rapidly growing list of personality traits and drives that are strongly genetically based. This is where this hazard lies. Besides other dangers, you could end up creating overwhelming obsessions and compulsions in people. The key to survival is almost always going to be for a balance. This is going to be difficult. Extremes are strategies that often genetically naturally occur, but for humans to artificially select for most extremes is unlikely to be successful in terms of survival. That is another degree of artificial selection. This same need for balance in genetic traits is mentioned elsewhere for physical traits, specifically height. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is one further thought on this topic and it seems important as a general principle. Much of genetics seems to be an additive process. I love the term ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It describes that the embryonic development of a creature goes through stages that seem to repeat the evolutionary sequence leading to that specie. We do not lose our past, we build upon it. This seems to be a general genetic principle. I suspect that this is also a psychological and meme principle. Aggression is such an important aspect of human existence that I spent a great deal of time trying to understand it. To me, the fundamental question is how can a creative person deal with an aggressive person who wants to take what they create. This seems to be a few principles here to consider, deterrence, passivity, understanding and control. The first issue is control. The question is whether aggressiveness is just a bad thing that would be best removed as a risk with no benefit. The answer seems to be no. As said before, genetic and memetic evolution tends to be additive. If there's a trait with a potential liability to it, then there must be a control added to it. In genetic terms, there are very complicated controls because aggressiveness can become a liability to survival. This is true in memetic terms as well and is easier to see than genetic adaptations. There are many philosophies from history that show how societies regulate aggression so that it does not harm the society, yet its benefits are not lost. In historic terms, it is said that Alexander was the first to make warfare pay by creating the Satraps. War has generally not been about complete destruction (though not always). It has usually been about competition and profits. Obviously warfare cannot be allowed within the society. Also, aggressiveness within the society must be highly regulated. Another issue is deterrence. It is extremely difficult for a creative person to find a way to deal with an aggressive person. One of the best ways is deterrence. If aggression is costly, the aggressor will be deterred. Aggressiveness is a strategy. It is not a onetime thing. It must be successfully repeated over and over again. If it is done with high risk, onetime it will eventually fail and the result is likely to be catastrophic. As has already been mentioned, in current civilizations, the warriors have had a reproductive advantage for so long, that they are very highly hybridized into most peoples. A large percentage of the creative people are capable of fighting back. Not only that, but philosophically it has become a common understanding that the warriors must be resisted. This is not universal. It is a historical trend. It is reflected in the replacement of the monarchy, something that has vary widely happened recently. Corresponding to the capability of deterrence are the strategies of understanding and passivity. So how does a creative person deal with an aggressive person? The first thing is that they do not use the strategy of the aggressor. The the aggressor will always be better at it. Not that the creative entity cannot be fighters, they can be great fighters, but even in war strategy of the creative fighter will be different from that of the aggressive fighter. One of the primary strategies that the creative fighter can use is passivity. This is true that many levels within the society all the way up to warfare. Try to take advantage of being able to force the aggressor into taking the first action. This is more likely to work within the society where aggression is regulated than between societies in warfare. Even in warfare it is the best strategy to use (if possible) because having the moral high ground is a very powerful (if not essential) weapon for a creative society. The other powerful tool for creative person to use in conflict is understanding. A deep understanding or empathy for one's opponent gives one a great ability to deal with the opponent. Understanding is a natural tool of the creative person. It has been said at times that the best way to defeat one's opponent is to love them. #end 52a. # # # 53. Personal Information and Privacy This is a difficult topic. It is a problem that comes from technology and it is not clear what the implications, solutions or context in a stable ecology is. It is Personal Information. The problem comes in many forms, but is basically that unlike in the past, personal information that could never before be kept track of can now be permanently retained and accessed. It represents a loss of privacy and many potential hazards as well as benefits. In the context of artificial selection, it allows a person to retain family and personal genetic information to allow for effective artificial selection. it also allows the easy retention of family and personal history. There are a number of potential downsides to this as well. Along with the good, comes the bad. Humans are not perfect. As a matter of fact, they are far from it. This ability to retain information could mean that mistakes are never forgotten. That seems another reason for a morality that forgives. There are other potentials for abuse of this information. If humans create a society based on love and forgiveness as seems one of our better moral potentials, it may not become a problem. Looking at the human past though, one must fear the potential for discrimination based on access to knowledge of mistakes made, health conditions, family or ethnic affiliations, political affiliations, religious affiliations, etc. We have seen discrimination based on family association as well. Members of a family may be punished for a crime by another family member. This could potentially relate to any association or affiliation. Overall, perhaps in the long run, I do not expect this to be a problem, especially if as I believe, humans use a morality based on cooperation facilitated by love and forgiveness that is beyond traditional patterns of resource competition. Still, considering where I am now and what I know of history, I think my concern is natural. Samuel Clemens pointed out that if we woke up one morning all the same, we would have out prejudices in place by noon. I'm more optimistic than him, but this book is called Transition, not Destination. Currently, before the information management potentials of computers has barely started, we are trying to craft laws to manage this information problem. Long before this time, the science fiction writers considered the problem. They tend to be pessimistic, so they more often pointed out the problem, than offered solutions. From a technical point of view, the problem is XML. It is something of a universal computer language. The solution may be to use variations of XML so that the data cannot be universally analyzed. What one technology can make, another can usually break. There are a few other possible solutions I can think of, but the most important thing is that the problem is recognized. A problem of this is that if a 'State' got dictatorial control as many science fiction scenarios have proposed and communism tried, the potentials of information control could make it almost impossible to escape the power of the 'State'. This has been discussed enough elsewhere, that it is not important to examine it here, but the potential must be recognized and like all risks to freedom, it must be guarded against. In that context, it seems likely that people may want to work to insure the privacy of their family and personal records of genetics, history, medical and other information. It may be that we will keep our family genetic records on memory objects that are not connected to any but the most secured networks and only when the data is required. Data collecting is just an expected habit of many private, commercial and public entities. An interesting aspect of this, is that the secure storage of private personal data could eventually become a natural function of religions. #end 53. # # # 54. Tattling The term tattling is so loaded with negative connotations. The person who tells on another is commonly referred to as a rat. A rat is not just considered an archetype of filth, it is also an archetype of a disease carrier. Yet this name is applied to one who tells on another for doing something that gets them in trouble with authority, that may or may not be something that is "wrong". Just consider Judas in the Bible. He was bribed to tattle on or betray someone that the authorities considered criminal. Judas eventually hanged himself for what he did. That is quite a statement regardless of who he betrayed. There is a lot of variation to this and certainly judgments about when it is proper to tattle on another person, but the interesting point is that there is any stigma attached at all. There is a stigma attached to committing civil or moral crimes, but if anything, there can be more of a stigma attached to reporting them. At the same time, there is no stigma attached to a policeman or detective thoroughly investigating and prosecuting a crime, quite the opposite in fact. So why the stigma to someone tattling on another? Partly it is because authority has not always been universally been recognized. As they say, one man's criminal is another man's patriot, but that is not the basic reason. The basic reason the teller is stigmatized is because it inhibits the trust and subsequent cooperation of the group and community. This is amazing. The stigma attached to tattling on another shows just how overwhelmingly important the cooperative underpinnings of a community are. Note that the American Constitution bars a wife from testifying against her husband in a court of law. That should be the most important lesson learned from this discussion, just as it is commonly judged that the trust within the family and community is more important than minor and commonly major, crimes. At the same time, like all moral issues, it's not that simple. This is especially true in the ecology that is developing. A parent is likely to teach their children not to tell on one another. It is just one of those ways that children find to fight so as to drive their parents too distraction. But, there tends to be exceptions. It may be taught that it is OK to tattle on your sibling if they are doing something that endangers them self or someone else. There are categories that are OK to tell on someone about, such as writing on walls or playing with fire. Actions with a major enough consequence to the community or family, that they must be prevented. In that case, the exception may be clearly described ahead of time as a rule and so, like the policeman, they person doing the tattling gets no stigma for it. The person told upon may try to attach a social stigma, but it may not work, especially if the person that did the telling defends them self. That is because there is so much moral judgment involved. In any case, this is meant as a discussion of existing moral situations as well as of what moral systems and practices we may need to survive in the future. There are going to be a number of factors that come into the judgment of tattling. The formal moral system of the community. The degree of family or community relatedness of the two parties. The severity of the improper conduct. The negative consequence to the community of the two parties. The stress that the larger society is under. Currently, there are institutions that demand the reporting of internal improper conduct by those who may witness it. These tend to be the institutions referred to as the Authorities. These groups include military officers, police agencies, clergy, the judiciary and various groups or communities that need or desire to have a high moral standard or who's functions include the teaching or enforcement of moral standards. <\p> There is the institution of the news media that has often held its responsibility to be that of finding and reporting violations of the public trust as well as private injustices and crimes. They tend to accumulate no stigma for tattling, but they can if they are to zealous and are judged to have harmed the community by telling about crimes that are not perceived as harmful or if they did it to fulfill their own agenda. On the other hand, they may be judged immoral if they knowingly fail to report crimes for some reason. Not only may they be considered culpable for the crime in some way, but they may be judged to have violated the public trust. They are trying to use public censure to forward their goals, rather than protect the community. The media is supposed to take a neutral position in their reporting, otherwise they are just another tool in someone's employ. Privacy may come into play here. If someone violates another person's privacy to expose their mis-deed, they may well be judged as having acted worse than the person they are exposing. An important factor to consider in this examination is a change in ecology that is the size of the communities that an individual lives in. In some ways, we still live in families and the small community that is our immediate social group, but crimes are often committed in the context of a very broad and impersonal society. This is a change. There is far more anonymity now than there has been in the past. Consider that as part of the cooperative habits that human society requires, trust must be very widespread, so the determination of when to tattle on a person is not always determined by their degree of separation of the people in the community. Trust must be pretty broad and every time a person is betrayed to the authorities, it reduces that general level of trust. So the frequency of betrayal must be kept to a minimum, no matter how unrelated the person is. Still, the more close is the community that two people exist in, the more the need for trust and the more they need to refrain from tattling. The consequence of being told on, tends to harm the family and community that the person is part of. That is another inhibition against tattling on a member of ones family or community. Also factored into this is the effect on the individual being told on. It may cause minor censure or destroy their life. It may be judged that perhaps a parent is guilty of a crime, but reporting it would badly harm their family. If the crime will not be repeated, perhaps it was an accident, there is no benefit to the society to report it and inevitably damage. If a crime is ongoing, the threat of exposure may be enough to stop it. Still, sometimes a crime must be exposed to discourage its re-occurrence else where in the society. More than the degree of separation, the moral decision of whether to "tattle" on another person must be determined by the consequence of their improper actions. If a family member litters, it may be considered proper that they be reprimanded, but only in private so that collateral harm is minimized. On the other hand if they are doing something that will cause physical harm to someone, it is usually considered morally proper to report them before they can do significant harm. Unfortunately, this modern world is so an impersonal and corruptive that it seems that it is frequently morally appropriate to report a person who is breaking the rules. It is quite possible that what is at stake is the society. Over and over again, we see societies destroyed or co-opted by criminal behavior. Regardless of the reason, that is a common fact. Perhaps it will change due to individual moral behavior or more effective police methods, but likely it is largely a result of living in a larger society and so it will continue to be a problem. Morality and moral judgment must be adaptive in the complex relationship between the benefits and costs of tattling, but the decision must be based on the consequence to the larger society. Tattling is about law and so there is no perfect law to describe when it should occur. Like all laws, it requires a judge to make it work properly. #end 54. Tattling # # # 55. Pre-Implantation Selection Today I tend to talk about pre-implantation and artificial selection as something in the future. It mostly is, especially in terms of hybridization, but not entirely. It is already starting to occur. The first goal of artificial selection is the removal of "bad" genes. Bad genes are genes that do not work properly due to changes in their structure caused by mutation or recombination. Sometimes bad genes are natural genes that just cause problems for a variety of reasons. Sickle cell anemia is an example of a gene that is advantageous in some cases, but there is a very bad trade off in others. It can protect the carrier from malaria, but it can also kill the carrier. There are other traits that don't cause problems when a person is younger, but they can fail or may be prone to cancer as the person gets older. In a sense, selection against bad genes is an example of the second case of eugenics, selection for "good" genes, simply because selection against a known bad gene is selection for an unknown good gene. In general, evolution does not create bad genes. It does create genes that are better though and genes that are compromises. In any case, though much of the potential of artificial selection is in the future, some of the knowledge and much of the basic techniques required for it already exists and is already being used. In one case, it was used to prevent the inheritance of a form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. In another slightly different case, it was used to insure that one child would be a compatible donor for an older child. In both cases, there are other moral issues raised. In the first, it was assumed that the mother would not be capable of raising the children to maturity, because her "bad' gene was going to leave her mentally incapacitated. In the second case, ************************* Caution Artificial Selection In Use Realize that humans have been breeding themselves since before they were human. That is the nature of life and it becomes a pretty conscious objective during much of human history. Look at all ruling classes. It is just that now we have new tools and new needs. Now, humans can start to do pre-natal artificial selection to replace the often times haphazard, painful and devastating effects of natural selection, that we have worked so long and successfully to remove. This is phrased in terms of a minimal basic family unit. Consider a couple deciding to have a family. The idea is to take perhaps 100 eggs from the woman and fertilize them with sperm from her husband. At gastrula stage when they start to slough of cells, the embryos could be genetically analyzed. Note that 100 zygotes is an arbitrary number, but that is a far higher selective rate than would occur in natural circumstances. This number might be adjusted up if the parents had more genetic liabilities or were trying to achieve some special result. It might adjust down for cost considerations or if the parents were particularly genetically healthy (perhaps due to previous generations of artificial selection). Here is a list of (4) hypothetical cases where parents have decided to use artificial selection to improve the genetic potentials of their children. It is written as a report prepared for the parents describing the potentials and results of artificial selection for their family. This is written almost humorously, but it reveals many things. It describes something of why we would do this and what we would attempt to accomplish with artificial selection. A close examination will suggest uncertainties and judgments. Such is life. Again, I will point out that if humans are to survive, we will have to re-introduce selective effects to compensate for all we have removed as parts of human progress, especially including medicine. Something to keep in mind. While developing these concepts, I was often asked why would anyone want to do this. I always respond "you are a healthy intelligent person". "What would you think if you had diabetes, heart defects, arthritis or schizophrenia". They then reply "oh". Note that these reports are to illustrate selection related to: a. Reduction of undesirable, defective or broken traits. b. Increase and retention of desirable and selectively advantageous traits. c. Increase in stable hybridization of traits. These reports are meant to describe different cases of these situations, especially as they relate to hybridization. The first case, is about (genetically) closely related individuals and describes western Europeans, simply because that is the group that I have the best knowledge of. That same knowledge will have to be developed for all ethnic groups. The other cases will describe other ethnic groups, with less genetic relatedness. Pre-Implantation Selection Procedure Report 1 Pre-Implantation Selection Procedure Report 2 Pre-Implantation Selection Procedure Report 3 Pre-Implantation Selection Procedure Report 4 (These are on my web site and describe scenarios that parents might encounter when receiving genetic counseling for possibilities of artificial selection.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some follow up notes A significant issue here is related to the root of this thesis. I have said that the most important challenge to humans and the most important reason for artificial selection, relates to disease. We will need an improved immune system to survive the changes in ecology. At the same time, immune responses can cause all kinds of problems including allergies, arthritis and a variety of other problems including death. It may turn out that we could end up initially with an immune system that strong enough to protect us, but shortens our life by a bit. Trade offs will be a common, though not universal feature of artificial selection. Luckily, that will most likely be problem largely solvable by knowledge Really though, this little report was written for another purpose. It was to help illustrate what wrong or dangerous decisions a person could make in terms of artificial selection. It is probably fairly easy to understand that just blindly selecting for maximum height would be a bad idea. It would eventually lead to health problems with no obvious benefit. For a trait like skin or eye color, there seems like no obvious advantages or disadvantages, but selecting for extremes of physical development or even intellect are likely to create health problems or throw off the balances that are part of human survival. There are a few traits that warrant particular mention. These are traits that might be selected due to fashion or prejudice. Height is a good example. It might become fashionable to select for extreme height, yet it could have bad health consequences for the children. More importantly, would be characteristics relating to aggressiveness. That is quite controversial and also is likely to be quite manipulable by artificial selection. I assure you that we do not have the wisdom to make decisions about something like that yet. This is also true of the trait called faith. Faith existed long before religion and created religion. Religion can teach faith, but not create it. Faith is not inherently about religions or Gods. Faith is a behavior that is presently a powerful survival characteristic, but only when it is adequately balanced. Like aggressiveness, until we are far wiser, it is likely that most of that balancing should be left to nature. On the other hand, another important and precariously balanced trait that might be manipulated by artificial selection relates to basic controls of mood, including natural dopamine levels in a persons brain. It is another case where manipulating this trait without great wisdom and caution, could in the short or long term, be very risky to survival. At the same time though, like immune systems, this could be trait that needs to change in response to current changes in human ecology. Enhancing the immune system may produce hazards, especially as one ages, but these will be more physical and easier to quantify. As such, given its overwhelming importance to surviving current ecological changes, it is likely worth taking the risk. Another common change in human ecology is the availability of drugs and other things that can be environmental components of an individuals obsessive compulsive behaviors. As hazardous as these behaviors have shown themselves to potentially be to individuals and their society, it seems like an important place to use artificial selection. One thing that reduces the risk of this is that the goal of artificial selection would be to achieve a balance, not an extreme. This is a summary of something that must be a major consideration. Artificial selection may be the only way that humans can survive and adapt to the huge ongoing changes in human ecology, but it is not without its risks. Using wisdom and individual self interest will have to be enough to offset these problems. Because use of artificial selection will be very wide spread, laws as a solution, is going to be problematic. If someone makes bad decisions for whatever reason, they very well may not survive. Luckily, my research has shown that humans show great wisdom and interest in matters related to their family. More than one might think. #end 55. P I Today # # # 56. Pre-implantation Selection Tomorrow Through this book, I have always said that survival is the essence of conservatism. Biology is conservative. Change is never for the sake of change. In ways, the use of artificial selection is about the most radical change in human ecology imaginable. Still, humans have always done conscious breeding. Sometimes it was more conscious as was practiced at times by the aristocracy. Still, all social reproductive behavior is basically about getting the fittest mate who can provide the best genes and resources for survival. Artificial selection is such a radical change though, with so many potential abuses and mistakes, that it is scary. Genetic engineering is just a bit more scary. That is why it must be enclosed in a complex discussion of morality. Unfortunately, for the reasons already stated, we have no choice. If the principles shown by the past in biology are a guide to the future, artificial selection will accelerate, just as evolution and natural selection naturally have in the past. The population of the Earth represents a huge momentum, but artificial selection will be a great lever. Especially with all the technological and environmental change that is currently happening. Really, speculation about the future of artificial selection would be futile due to lack of knowledge, but my conclusions about human physical, mental and emotional evolution have already been laid out. Our destination is predicted. What we will be like when we get there is unimaginable. There are some patterns to be considered in terms of morality though that may one day become reality. It has already been shown that genetics can make a person a compulsive worker or workaholic. There is the terrifying thought of manipulation such that there was a worker caste created by an unscrupulous ruling caste. At the same time parents could decide it that it was a good strategy for their children’s future. Say that humans were going to make an interstellar starship. The builders and crew might be limited to people that had been selected to be workaholics. Consider the possibility that humans could use artificial selection to cause humans to become sexually mature at a later age. Because of the overwhelming importance of avoiding overpopulation and the greater knowledge that humans need to learn, it seems like a good idea in terms of the society. The problem is that it at the individual level it would very likely make those people at a disadvantage to people that reproduced earlier. That is the point, you have to be careful about selecting for things that might be good for the society, but bad for the individual because an element of fairness must be introduced or it is not going to work. This is described to lead to the next point. There is a far more profound situation. There are strong genetic foundations to many moral characteristics. Below, it is considered under the topic of truth that you almost certainly would not want to select to decrease the level of truthfulness based on genetics. It would endanger the society and community. It would also be unlikely to have any real reproductive advantage for the individual either. Selecting to increase a person’s natural disposition towards truthfulness would likely be good for both the society and the individual (though social lies may always be necessary). More importantly it raises the question of if artificial selection should be used to raise the moral inclination of humanity. My first reaction would be no because there does not seem to be a compelling reason and it seems like a very dangerous area to meddle in until we are far wiser. Further consideration led to another view. The goal is to adapt to a new ecology. A major difference of the new ecology will be the need for an improved morality and moral nature. If we need to adapt genetically to new patterns of behavior, it simply may be unavoidable to direct the genetic development related to out moral nature in order to adapt to the new ecology, #end 56. Pre-implantation Selection Tomorrow # # # 57. Natural Selection A large part of this book, the part about artificial selection, is about the need to replace natural selection. This does not mean that natural selection will cease or go away. Evolutionary theory states that natural selection will always occur. It occurs at many different levels from gametic selection where sperm compete and eggs select different sperm all the way up to grand parental assistance with raising children. With wide use of artificial selection, natural selection will tend to focus on different things. Humans will most likely always be in an arms race with diseases. If most people are born with good health, brains and beauty, natural selection is going to focus on more on subtle things or things that are harder to promote with artificial selection. These will certainly include psychological balances that are going to be hard to understand let alone recognize or manipulate. #end 57. Natural selection ### 58. ### 59. Superiority I figured I would have to write this some time. Talk about human races and questions of prejudice, racism, jingoism all can come up and it all goes down hill from there. The truth is pretty interesting though and shows a great potential for all the peoples of the world. Still, if the races are different, someone is sure to ask which is superior, is there a master race? There are actually quite a few superior races and master races, but be clear on the differences between them and the meanings of the terms. Historically, most wealth has come from agriculture, but also sometimes by trade. In Western Culture, the agriculturists of Sumeria were ruled by the priestly caste that would have directed planting and organized the harvest. From the time of Sargon The Great's conquest of Sumeria, Western Culture has traditionally and until quite recently been ruled by hereditary military castes. These groups provided critical organization to the society. They are often thought of as parasitic on the society other than that they protect the society from other ruling castes elsewhere. Sometimes the rule is benevolent, sometimes not, but success of these groups was always dependant on their ability to organize. These were the Master Races. Very often they were part of an international caste such of the Ptolemys of Rome and Egypt. They were Greeks, Eutustrians, Romans, Scandinavians, The Monarchy of Europe and lastly was the desire of Hitler to actually resurrect the Roman Empire with technological war. It seems though that the militarists lost their role as master races because of the great equalizer, the gun. No longer was survival in war dependant on a life time of training. Myself, I say that if you want a master race, find one that is mild mannered and good at their job, but for now I think their day is past. Now Superior Races are far more interesting. I'm limited to looking at the races of Western Culture but this can be applied to all races. Superior is generally a value judgment and might be here, but biology and ecology have some definitions of superior. As an example, to be a successful migrant to a new niche is considered to be superior. Having successfully reproduced is considered to be superior. Still, that is not directly what I am talking about here. This is about the tribes that have successfully transitioned to the civil society with greater disease resistance, greater tolerance of higher density living, greater technical skills and greater intelligence as judged by their social skills. In Western culture, this would be the Sumerians (or the three tribes that became the Sumerians), the Semites (who conquered and then hybridized with them), the Indo-Europeans (Greeks and Romans that defeated them in turn) and the Celts who hybridized with them and made a great contribution to Western Culture. Just the fact that these groups successfully hybridized and survived in the cities defines them as superior. Probably other tribes were selectively absorbed as well, for beauty or some more subtle but valuable trait. There are other groups that this evaluation applies to. The tribes that made up the civil peoples of the Indus Valley, the Yellow River of China and the peoples of Meso America. All of those races are defined as superior by their survival, their hybridization and their move into the new niche of agriculture and civil life. That does not mention the tribes of Africa and Australia that were not in a situation to create cities and where agriculture is more of a problem due to the insects. They developed other strategies and potentials. There are going to be traits found in all kinds of different races that by themselves may not seem advanced by obvious standards, but their individual traits are special and valuable. Their potential from hybridization are currently unpredictable. This thesis says that some off the most valuable traits for humans will include superior immune systems, a better birth canal design and a stability of psychology. These traits will have to be considered in the context of hybridization as well, which makes the situation more complex. The civil peoples have many superior traits, but as humans gain a knowledge of genetics, there will be a lot of surprises about what is available, what is valuable and who has it. One thing about it. If you are alive, it means your ancestors never lost at the evolutionary game and humans have been playing a tough game for the last few million years as they have rapidly evolved into the new niche of social intelligence and tool use. I put this elsewhere, but it is appropriate here. Consider two people of basically the same race or modern tribe. They are genetically, quite closely related. Call one of them superior to the other. Name them Bester and Fester respectively. There is very little difference between them when examined statistically at the genetic level, but there must be critical differences if you examine the differences between the two individuals. Bester is stronger, faster, healthier, more intelligent and better looking... superior. Bester has all of the traits and potentials of Fester, many in better forms and even some traits that Fester does not have. Fester is completely genetically related to Bester, but Bester is not completely related to Fester. Bester is not so much different from Fester, but is Fester plus. This is the additive nature of evolution. So if the game is played as genetic survival, sometimes Fester could best insure his genetic survival by promoting Besters success. Is it an issue of genetic continuity or genetic survival and is related to family and inclusive fitness. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is now supposed to include my observations as well as a theoretical background. Unfortunately I have little familiarity with short term hybrids and little to make comparisons to long term Western hybrids. I have seen that almost any Saxon hybrid is usually quite intelligent though. Eurasian women tend to be beautiful. I am familiar with one long term Saxon / Asian hybrid that probably went back to the time of the Mongols. The person was incredibly intelligent. Academically, they basically had no competition or devotion either. For all their intellect, as expected, they were most recognizable emotionally. Just speaking in terms of health, beauty and brains, a race in the future descended with the best traits of the tribes of the West, Asia, India and Africa is going to be very different from anything we are familiar with at present. The potentials from just what is available now, are amazing. I don't generally mention it, but I am very good at recognizing individual characteristics of different tribes. In this case I am referring to integral traits. These are traits that are fully functional, usually in a homozygous situation, but sometimes hybrids. They are so special that they are easily recognizable if you learn how. #end 59. # # # 60. Sins in Human Terms With no recourse to religion or any formal morality, evil comes in many forms. Humans have well explored that realm. I think I was going to consider the subtlety of exploitation, but when I consider how common murder is, subtle points are pointless….. # end 60. Sins in Human Terms # # # 61. Animals and Plants # end 61. Animals and Plants # # # 62. Impulsiveness Impulsiveness is a very human trait that taken past a reasonable balance is one of the most harmful habits a human can have. For survival, impulsiveness must be controlled. It is an aspect of maturity. # end 62. Impulsiveness ************************* ************************* ************************* ************************* Part 2 - God's Nature In Human Terms Science, Speculation and Reason So what does God look like in human terms? What can we comprehend about a super being or immortality? It is a question of what do we understand about humans and more. What do humans know or can reason about God? What does science, speculation and reason tell us of God? This is a description of God in human terms. Be aware. You are not looking at a meme about God. You are looking at a meme about humans that necessarily reveals something about God, because there is a relationship between them. That's OK, but it also means that you have to buy into what the meme say about humans. That is my other work and is not so speculative. In that book, it says that based on biological science, humans will have to control their own evolution for reasons of basic survival. It does discuss the amazing potentials that genetic control would offer beyond avoiding some predictable fatal disasters that humans face, but it says that there is little to use to make value judgments about different available paths to take with genetic potentials. It says how to manage the dangers from the past and then develop enough wisdom to make some smart decisions about the future of humans. This view here is completely different. What I wrote before is simply a process, while in this view that includes God, it clearly says that the amazing genetic potential of humans is there because God wants us to do far more than survive. He wants some serious development; genetic, physical, philosophical, intellectual, psychological and spiritual. Only faith can temper intelligence. Only God can temper ego. An eminent, elderly English Biologist was asked "from your many years of studying life, what is does this tell you about it's creator"? His thoughtful reply was that "He has an amazing liking for Beetles". (This is poorly paraphrased.) This was in response to the 40,000 species of Beetles, identified at the time. (It turned out that there were even more species of worms.) Really, what does all this knowledge that humanity has gained over the years, tell us of God? From our past come many things, but what does science and the other bodies of human knowledge, tell us about God? It is obviously a presumptuous question and certainly has been asked before, but it should be a valid question. People read their Bible that tells them about their God. A great deal can be learned about God by looking at His works as well. Look at a tree. Look at the stars. This has been referred to as the Scripture of Nature. If God created the universe, on could get the impression that he writes his signature quite large. When thinking about this in terms of artificial selection, I compared it to technical development. Technology has developed amazingly in a very short time. This is largely because it was such a huge open potential. I suspect that artificial selection is going to have a similar effect. The question is will our potential comprehension be that of an animal comprehending modern human technology or that of a Neolithic human understanding modern technology. In the first case, there is a qualitative difference, the second is quantitative. I strongly suspect it will be the first. The products of artificial selection will be far beyond our comprehension. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part 3 - God From God's Point Of View Science is used daily to kill God, but it really illustrates a weakness of science that goes with its strength. The strength of science is that science is the body of knowledge that the institution of science has examined by its tough standards for proof and judged to be truth. Up to now at least, those strict standards of proof have never been met. Science has nothing to say about God. Nothing that is science describes God, except perhaps human perceptions of God discussed in Anthropology. When someone says that they can use science to prove God doesn't exist, they are really saying that scientific methods including logic, cannot be used to prove that God exists. It is easy to prove God doesn't exist, in many different ways, but that doesn't mean that you can't still feel God. This is a study of humanity, written in a form to convey an idea. It talks all about science, evolution, technology, language, beliefs, institutions and whatnot to describe human survival. This book is not science, but it uses the methodologies and knowledge of science to organize the description, though its content is as much reason as science. Well, most of a human is amenable to a scientific description. What about describing God though? The anthropologists can give you a lot of meanings through history and cultures. What would God look like? A lot of people figure that the first problem is to prove the existence of God. That is what people used to say about ancient tales like the Iliad and the Odyssey. They were assumed to be false instead of examined for truth. What if you take the Holy Books of the world and look at them literally. Most of the Bible is considered by historians to be the historically accurate story of some of the history of the middle east. These ancient stories have staying power not just because of the sacred things in them, but also because they are a history of a people. Unfortunately, very little about God is known. By any standards, a God would qualify as a super being. That is something that science does not usually discuss except in human terms. There is a fair amount of reasoning in this book, mostly based on good scientific work done by smart people. It explains most of what is needed for human survival in terms of science. This foundation looks complete, but there appears to be another subtle part that has not been described. That is God. There is a lot about the how of humans, how humans can survive, but little about the why. Why are we here? Why do we do what we do? In human psychological terms, the why is God. God has always been defined in terms of people. God may or may not have an interest in people. We might be completely a by product of God's actions. It doesn't seem likely for a number of reasons. So what do we know about God? You have to take into account a lot of things to describe God. Perhaps too many things. I am more comfortable with science as a philosophy to use, but to describe this, it seems I will have to use other methods, primarily personal experience, reason, history and perhaps something else. I'm afraid that the only way to explain this is by describing it in order. If you asked me where I got the ideas in this book, I'd have to say that I think they came from God. I don't end up particularly religious, but I do remember what created this book. I would have still been 13 and I got quite annoyed at an event that I couldn't understand. I said to myself that I would give anything to understand. It was like somebody said "ok" and that was the start of this book. I've understood all of this since then. The problem was putting it into words. It was the core of a meme that needed flesh. This book is its flesh. Well, this has always left me in a quandary. How could I have come to know this? I have always studied science and relied on reason. Those are easy ways of knowing. I have learned other ways as well that offer things that science does not include. For me there is a fair reason to believe based on personal experience and logic that God gave me the core of this meme when I was 13. That raises a lot of questions and tends to leave the body of science behind, if not all the tools. So leaving science behind I must use new methods to describe what I learned. I should say that what happened when I was 13 happened under memorable circumstances, but didn't impress me all that much. It had no portent, but I have unusual abilities and they were being turned and fed by the thought I had at that moment. That thought was complete. There was just no way to express or understand it at the time. That was the goal. What other people were doing made no sense to me. I was starting to focus inward. I was working on the project of answering the question I had asked. It was the time too. This was the 70's. A special period of great hopes and philosophical turbulence. A time of science and Apollo. It was an uninhibited time, at its freshest point. It was a time that created much great thought, music and art. There was nothing to inhibit me and everything to push my thinking along. My large size made my distraction physically harmless. A couple of my teachers in High School, especially Lynn Ikoma, inspired me with fundamental knowledge, including genetics and astrophysics, that was just coming on line. I was looking for the parts that would fill in the basic meme I was working on. I had said to myself that I wanted to understand humans. This becomes circular as these things do. I have always been skeptical. In adolescence I once asked a priest why I should believe in God. He did not answer well. Some of my friends were fundamentalist Christians and their views didn't make much sense to me, but I liked one of their ideas. There is this powerful, wise, personal God that is aware of you and cares for you. He also embodies a higher purpose for humans. What a great thing. They were not enough to convince me of their beliefs though. I come from a family where talking to God is just considered an occasional bad habit some of the the guys mentioned. I was busy pursuing knowledge that mostly came from science. There are two ideas of how problems get solved. Some are solved by figuring and calculating. The hard problems are solved heuristically. That is when one falls in love with the question or you can just call it fanaticism. I'm afraid I was there. I baffled people and drove them crazy with the energy of the fanatic. I had a great independent understanding of humans and could predict what genetic patterns would be before the quickly advancing field of genetics could, but I did it by reason based on evolutionary principles instead of experimentation. I learned a lot, but no one could quite figure what it was about. After about 25 years I was satisfied with the physical and genetic aspects of human ecology. It was time to tackle the psychological aspects of survival called morality. Then God becomes more of an issue. I am an honest observer and as such I see things and am told things. I knew a lot about the physical aspects of humans, but knew that there were a lot of things that science had not questioned, let alone described. I had a long way to go to get an understanding of the significance and nature of morality. In this time, I repeatedly wondered about God as people do. There is a whole large spiritual issue that science has no information about. Instead of trying to prove that God doesn't exist, as science superficially suggests, I tried to see if I could prove God exists some way. I didn't find that proof in religion. Religion has never bothered with proof for a number of reasons including that any proof they offered would be a lightning rod. Still, it is in the scriptures of Holy Books that there are some comments about God's and human nature. I talked to a lot of people and was told a lot of things. While many things I was told had spiritual connotations, I could make little out of it that I could make sense of. My background is Catholic. When I think about it, the age boggles me. I understand religion. I understand why it is so overwhelmingly conservative. It doesn't make me any happier. The One God of the Christians, Muslims and Jews. Hinduism with it's variety of Gods. Paganism where many or all things animate and inanimate have conscious spiritual nature. Buddhism, which I still have trouble understanding. I really like some of the teachings of the Philosopher Michael Polanyi. He had brilliant discussions about Tacit Knowing and Heuristic Knowledge. Another point of his was that he was convinced that humans were evolving to become gods. Well, that point got me to scratching my head. I am very oriented towards biological evolution and didn't think that biological evolution led to a god of any kind. It was an interesting hypothesis, I guess, but it is not surprising that I saw no overlap between biology and religion. There are others that hypothesized that we were evolving towards something, rather from something, but that is not what biological evolution as a science suggests. So with that thought, why could humans not work to learn something about spirituality that could allow humans to create a super consciousness? I don't mean now or something that you or I could conceive of, but something that our descendants can find. Is it something hidden in love? Is that part of an ecology that humans can develop? More importantly, is it a survival method, perhaps in some ecology of consciousness? It would allow for extreme cooperation. This almost becomes ideology, but there is reason to think it is more than that. It is also more than current knowledge suggests we will need for survival. So why pursue this line of reasoning that goes beyond energetic, reproductive and moral strategies? Because careful examination suggests that this entire idea about genetics, morality, etc. that I have written about was based on a meme I was given by someone else back when I was about 15. I think that was God, but that really complicates things. There is ample reason to pursue that thought though. Then you can ask some really interesting questions and find some fascinating thoughts in ancient texts and elsewhere. There is a relationship between God and Humans. Is it Utilitarianism, but for God's purposes? But that gets complicated and is not part of this essay. That discussion is in the outer layers. # end . # # # 63. God Speak Have you ever wondered what language God speaks? I wasn't doing that, but long ago I was fascinated with how thoughts seemed to come in natural groupings. A person learns different parts of something and it leads them to a core understanding of what the person is learning about. The parts they learn have made a framework that encompasses what they are learning. Once that core framework is achieved, most of the person's development is just plugging parts into that frame work. That entire framework becomes a single thought. The event of that understanding is usually fairly sudden. Michael Polanyi referred to it as Emergence in his book Tacit Knowing. The person can then explore their understanding of the complete concept in near the same amount of time it used to take to intellectually examine any of the parts that the person initially learned. It seems as though many small thoughts had been configured and assembled not only in logical order, but in a physical order that is used by the brain for processing information. I called these thought groupings "mindsets". They may be accurate representations of reality or they may be how people perceive the world. If they are accurate, they indicate that there might be an interesting and revealing underlying logic to existence and the human physical and psychological worlds. They also seem analogous to Objects in software programming where methods are associated with the data they work on. It might even be more than an analog . A day late and a dollar short. Richard Dawkins coined the term "memes" in contrast to genes. He described that memes had many characteristics of life including heredity. They follow the rules of evolution, not just biological evolution either. I'm not sure how much Dr. Dawkins thought beyond the evolutionary nature of memes. For that matter, it matters little what he or anyone else currently thinks. Our understanding of memes 20 years after they were hypothesized is not going to be much better than the best understandings of the Theory of Evolution 20 years after Charles Darwin published the Origin of the Species. Still, if you are a true life scientist, you recognize that this may be a very powerful key to understanding many things about humanity and the world. This is the concept that humans are "meme machines", evolved to interact symbiotically with memes. It implies that an understanding of something is independent of humans. I follow my path through that land and understand many things along the way. I found a strong understanding that one of the languages of God is memes. It would explain a lot. A meme has to be logically consistent. Important memes are closely examined for logical consistency. Lack of logical consistency condemns a meme. Being based so strongly on logic shows that there is an underlying mathematics to memes. When I was in school in Santa Cruz, there was a major offered called History of Consciousness. Even for Santa Cruz, that one sounded odd. It was the history of when ideas began, spread, were used and their consequences. Well, examining memes or mindsets and their importance, over the years I came to understand that the History of Consciousness could just have well been called the History of Memes. It's not just about the creation of an idea, it is also about their spread and consequence. It shows an interesting potential for a very subtle manipulation of the development of the human race. Just inject a meme into the system in such a way as to get its desired spread rate. If you can. It also explains something about prophesy. Some are about objects and events. Some are clearly representations of complex concepts. God gives individuals message memes of concepts and the prophet must find a way to put it into words. It explains some imprecision, while God's message is still faithfully retained. A meme is a logical structure and you cannot change the message without violating the logical structure of the meme. It's how people consciously and unconsciously use reason to judge truth. What creates the logical structure can be many things, but they all convey the same message and understanding, even coming from a person and time where the meme is almost impossible to express. If he wants a prophesy, God may put the same meme in different minds at the same time. The message will get out. It will both get reinforced by other prophets and at the same time it will suppress other prophets. The downside is that memes may be almost completely artificial in action and concept. They could be a logical chimera. I don't believe so. My experience suggests that memes are the real McCoy. Biblically this brings up two points. This relates to the issue of the relationship of God and humans. This would fit that we are created in his image psychologically. It makes no clear point about physical similarity, but might be suggestive of some part of a spiritual similarity. The Bible is a complex social and ecological meme as are the teachings of Jesus. Prophesies in dreams are common enough, but that implies little about memes. I never have looked at the Bible or other books that much for mention of memes. I wasn't thinking of it at the time. Theory points that there are memes humans have that were created by God. Just another way of saying that God taught us lessons. The difference though is that these may have a different structure from more natural memes. They may be internally or externally recognizable by their cohesion and integral nature. Remember, you never know when a meme emerged. Were any of them from God? Obviously love is one possibility, but it's nature goes way beyond a thought or a meme. It is also a strategy. Faith is another interesting possibility. It is certainly a meme, though there is a strong genetic base to faith as well. * Maybe this relates to Kant’s description with the problem of knowing things being restricted to what we perceive. Perhaps some meme based language is far more accurate in representing things as they are, not just as we perceive them. *********************** God This essay goes from gods to humans to Gods. This essay is based on the assumption that there is a God. What is a god? In ways, a god is like science. It is self defining. If a people call something a god, that's what it is. Since that can and has included rocks, that basic definition will be skipped. Still, this is a description for humans, so it will be in human terms. Humans usually have considered gods to be basically super-humans, such as the descriptions of Greek Gods. So this description of Gods is a being with greater life, power, consciousness and wisdom than humans have. All of these attributes need to be examined. The term life has usually been a comparison to the extremely mortal state of humans. The immortality of gods has been everything from a few human life spans all the way up to a life longer than that of universes and independent of time. The term power refers to the ability to control all the things that humanity is unable to control such as weather, earthquakes, plants, animals, the stars, disease, life and death. Consciousness might be called awareness or even what is referred to as clairvoyance. That is essentially an awareness or perception using senses other than sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste. It also implies that it is awareness at a distance. In terms of gods, this would probably refer to the ability to be aware of what they desire to know at a distance. Wisdom and knowledge are more problematic. People who are aware of the value of them tend to also to be aware of the difficulty of putting them to constructive use. All too often it is seen that wisdom and knowledge are overruled by desire, but what then is the use of wisdom and knowledge without a desire our goal. Also, wisdom and knowledge tend to be very limited in human and so only so much about them can be surmised by humans. Wisdom and knowledge are major part of what makes a god. Human Potentials While we know almost nothing about what has been generally referred to as psychic abilities, they do seem to exist. (I've always thought it was a problem of complexity and information overload.) Evolutionary theory says that if something is useful to survival, it will be selected for. Still, that all mostly leaves questions rather than answers. I am assuming that something that is effectively telepathy exists, because I have demonstrated it. Surprisingly, I think I have experienced clairvoyance. That is not just perception over distance, but over time as well. Maybe that fits in with Einstein’s point that space and time are not exactly what we think they are and is why I think that psychic phenomena may be a problem of complexity. I have not seen any convincing or even good evidence of telekinesis, that is control of physical objects with the mind, but that would bring up some really interesting issues and it seems there is no reason it couldn't exist. It would relate to the biological issues called Energetics and Resources. Telepathy is an interesting issue that has often been part of speculative fiction, but consider if telepathy suddenly existed in humans. It would totally disrupt all social systems. As humans are, we could not deal with telepathy. This book is based on the premise that humans must consciously control and direct their evolutionary genetic development. I think it reasonable, at least on this page, that we should eventually be able to develop the genetic traits needed for telepathy and perhaps clairvoyance. It also seems reasonable that we could select for intellectual capabilities that we presently cannot comprehend. That would go hand in hand with a wisdom that we also certainly do not presently possess and probably couldn't presently comprehend. Ultimately, and do not fall victim to short sightedness, there seems no reason that humans could not evolve into something like the Arisians. A key question will always arise in any examination like this. Why? Why would anyone do anything like this? This becomes overwhelmingly important at a point. The first answer to this though is to free humanity from the fears, ignorance and frailties we are so subject to. It is well within sight that using artificial selection, we could totally remove disease, frailty and ignorance. All people could have health, beauty and brains (and I do mean that there is a potential for intellectual ability that would be amazing). These seem quite reasonable goals that are easy enough to understand and are little different from many common goals of humanity through history and before. I have often said that loneliness is the commonest ill of humanity. Perhaps that is reason enough to develop telepathy, though I doubt it is really pertinent. Still if you follow this path, it is not hard to see why humanity would choose to develop telepathy and even clairvoyance. If there is a way to develop telekinesis, humans could potentially be freed of the earthly limits that have always defined biological survival, energetics and resources. It seems perhaps we could even put off death greatly (talk about something to adjust to). There is still something missing here. Besides a major chunk of the pesky Why question, this makes no mention of the spiritual. If the spiritual exists, which I suspect, perhaps it can be found with science, intellect or psychic ability. We would certainly want to explore that and it seems reasonable that, in time, that could be a realm that the descendants of humans could be comfortable in. Still with or without that, humans could achieve many of the attributes of gods. It is best to touch this subject lightly to get fleeting glimpses of what it means, because if you try to grasp an understanding of this, your human limitations will surely slip. Still, there is more to go. It seems that current knowledge of the universe suggests that this is a rather subjective place where reality is somewhat dependant on the consciousness of the observer. It also seems quite amazing how friendly to life the universe coincidently seems to be. My conclusion is that a species has already done all these things I have hypothesized. They were like humans. They controlled their genetics. They developed the ability to control matter and energy directly. They developed psychic abilities. Very importantly, they developed and solved the problems of the aggregate consciousness of Gaia, at least for one specie. They did this before this time and before this universe existed. Their universe developed randomly in the fullness of time, but they directed the development of this universe. We're still missing that Why thingy. So assuming that there is a God... oh, you forgot that this was a logical construction, well whatever. Assuming that there is a God and that It (that is the last time I'll use that pronoun because the identity then would be both very feminine and very masculine and probably not it) created the system leading to humans as well as keeps track of humans and manipulates their destiny to His designs and goals, how does this fit with what we have observed in the previous examination of humans in this book? It fits in quite interesting ways. Following the order of the book, the first is just the world and universe that we live in. It's relatively friendly to life. The next thing to look at is genetics. Studying human genetics as I have, seeing the needs and especially the potentials, I am amazed. It's almost as if it was done intentionally. What we are now as tribalists, is nothing compared to what we can become with hybridization of the tribal genetic potentials. To survive to the next ecology, we must make an incredible jump, and the genetic potentials are there to do it. Philosophically and morally we will have huge requirements to survive. Luckily, it seems we have the basis of a morality that is cooperative enough that it could take us to the next ecology and funny thing, the guy that taught it claims that the message came from God. The basic teachings of Jesus, Love God and Love One Another, have almost limitless potential to create a philosophical basis that can solve almost any problem be it social, economic, genetic, psychic and probably spiritual. Then this leads to another issue, physical death. If there is this being that has been described here, it doesn't seem at all far fetched that we have some spiritual device that is part of or linked to our individual identity. Call it a soul. It might be natural, but it seems more likely to be something artificial created by methods that God learned long ago when exploring the spiritual. When you die, that soul can be connected or re-connected to the aggregate consciousness that is God. Judgment would be on whether you can fit in and cooperate, something that requires learning lessons of love and cooperation. It may imply that God can be diminished or increased. His goal may be to grow. Think of the potential for consciousness and awareness this aggregate would have as well as a bunch of other things attributed to God over the ages. The intellectual and conscious potentials would be incredible for a being that is an aggregate of billions or potentially trillions of sentient beings. Something interesting comes from this. If psychic phenomena are related to the spiritual, God may carefully regulate exploration of that. It might explain why it appears that psychic phenomena exist, but study of the psychic seems to not be able to show repeatability (the basis of empirical science). God may be much more interested in humans developing life in terms of biology, genetics, morality and faith, than in terms of spirituality. That is his domain. That is not to say humans cannot learn about psychic phenomena, but that God regulates it. A giant aggregate consciousness with a well developed knowledge of spirituality/faith could well do that. Hey, I forgot to mention one other thing. There is this interesting question of Why? Why do this. Why do it at all? Why live at all? Oh, and I forgot to mention one other important thing though. Apparently love is all important to making this system cooperative enough to work, but there is another factor that I forgot about. That is Faith. It is more than faith in God or just belief in something that cannot be proven. Faith is the basis of the human survival instinct. It is the conscious choice to live, in good times and in bad, with reason and without. It is the Why. Even God has and needs Faith. It is why it is so important. It is not just faith in God that God wants of us. It is faith, the survival instinct. It is the belief, with no proof, that one should survive. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, that's it. Even I know what an ending is. That's more than 33 years of work. There's an interesting point to that. Why would I say it's 33 years of work? This study started with an examination of disease in a changing ecology and progressed by research and reason to this point. I was already focused on it well before I left high school and even then there was a completeness to the concept. That is very hard to explain how that was possible. Many parts of the concept just didn't exist anywhere but in my head then. Many of them certainly exist now. Well, it didn't strike me at the time because how could I have known when I started or what I was starting, but I do remember one time being more baffled than usual by some events. I said to myself that I would pay any price to understand how or why people acted the way they did. It was almost as if I heard someone say "ok". If this description of God is correct, it could explain the events. This whole concept is one large integrated meme. I have no more reasonable explanation for where I got this whole idea than to guess that God gave me the meme because he wanted me to put it into word. I figure that it doesn't really matter one way or another. The genetic and moral information will be necessary for human survival whether I or someone else comes up with them. The parts are continually being described by mainstream researchers. It is their time. I'm not extremely religious anyway, but I am moral enough to work intensely for human survival. It's just my way. If this meme is from God, he will be able to make sure that it finds where it is to be used. Another way for it to be judged, is whether it is integral or not. There will be missing parts and probably even errors, but if it is a meme the meaning will transcend my words. This is a translation of a meme I was given. Do not be fooled by its simplicity. That is my own. This is what I say and is limited. Combined with the previous chapter, a human perspective of God, it can make sense. ***** God and humanity are intertwined at many levels and for many reasons. The human brain is a pattern recognition device that will either find patterns or will impose them artificially and a pattern that the human brain often recognizes is God, the cause of the unknown. This is healthy and allows for a balanced personal psychology. It also appears that one of the major focuses of evolutionary selection in humans during the last few thousand years at least, is faith. This especially seems true as time has gone on. We are very poorly adapted to the present ecologies and that has made for an extreme challenge to human survival. Since a primary survival instinct in humans is faith, it is not surprising that it has become more important as humans have had to adapt to changes in the ecology. Faith is both an inheritable behavior and the memes that release and facilitate the behavior. God and religion are very closely bound to faith. Christianity In this book, I have always tried to make my biases and assumptions clear. I have also said that a basis of this book is that human survival has been based on cooperation. I come from a western, Christian tradition, but I have tried to look broadly for cooperative social systems. Dharma is an interesting case as is some forms of Buddhism. They require cooperation and service to the community. Christianity goes farther and is probably the most cooperative moral system there is. It pervades the Western world and has not only caused a massive change in how humans interact, but also we are usually not even aware of its lessons that make our civilization possible. This occurs at a number of levels. Many of the things that Jesus said have little application on earth to solving human problems, but one message was of overwhelming importance. It was basically to "love one another" or "love others as you love your God" This is not the Golden Rule of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". This says do good to your neighbor regardless. They may not help you, but you should help them. They may not like you, but like them. This goes way beyond the Golden Rule and has led to an extremely cooperative nature. This is what has built our modern civilization. This is Christian philosophy as opposed to Christian religion and is a strategy embraced by far more people than embrace the Christian religion. When I want to make this point, I try to express it in a way that is original so as to make a person think about this in a new way. I tend to say "Jesus created high technology". That is guaranteed to get a blank look for a response. I then explain that the complicated, extremely cooperative team efforts that have created much of our modern technology are based on the cooperative methods that are descended straight from the teachings of Jesus. They rely on potentials that came from the cooperative abilities necessary to the groups that had to cooperate and communicate to successfully hunt, but they are far more than that now. Amazingly, this was taught by a man that said these lessons were a gift from God. That was some gift. It may be that this cooperative morality, learned behavior, is a software analog to the genetic (hardware) programming of social insects. ****** A point of view about God There is a bias here that should be mentioned. It turns out that in the end, this does not effect the conclusions of this book much. That is just the world view I have being raised to as a Western Christian. This will bias how I say and describe things, but not the conclusions because reason is mostly independent in this case. So what about God? Does God exist and what is God's nature? I don't mean humans. God is certainly a part of human history, but is God more? I'm well trained to be a skeptical person, but I am also well trained to be an observer and analyst. What can be figured out about God from the data we have? You have to assume that God exists to be able to organize the data. You further have to assume that God is pretty smart. In human terms, a God is a superior being, not bound by physical reality quite like humans. This being is physically, psychologically and spiritually superior to humans. A God has greater psychological awareness, intellect, memory, stability etc. as well as greater knowledge and wisdom. God has been called a super-consciousness with a super-awareness. That would be as God compares to human consciousness. It makes sense that God is probably better looking as well. So what else do we know about God? Most people consistently believe a few things about this and they are stated in the Holy Books. As has been repeatedly shown, never underestimate the accuracy and literal meanings husbanded in the most ancient of texts. A simple examination of the ancient parts of the Bible is sufficient to suggest a number of things about God. The trick is clearing up the ambiguity that has come from many places. We are told that God created the world and created humans in 'his' image. That leads to some specific questions, the answers to which would suggest a lot. Are we created in his physical, psychological or spiritual image. Are humans related to God in some sort of biological sense? There is no logical reason to suggest otherwise and many reasons that these make sense. Another point is that God created everything. It raises the point of why. If God has a purpose, does that increase God? The more the physicists study the universe, the more they see a place in it for consciousness. The universe is an unlikely place in that it seems designed for life. If the universe were much different, life would likely not exist. Time and space seem related to consciousness. Who knows what rules dominate the astrophysics of the universe and keep the stars aligned as they should be. It is said that God created the universe and life. These days it would not seem unlikely that the event that is called the Big Bang that created the universe, would be effected by the will of a consciousness. That humans are created in 'his' image says that there is a relationship between Gods and humans. Up to this point, this has only looked at God and humans as a one way street, but it seems reasonable (reason is respected by most religions, including Christianity) that humans fulfill some intent of God. That is why God created everything. The question again is why. So if humans were created in the image of God, Does God look like us? This question has been asked before, but not usually in a useful way. It usually goes like this. Does God look like John Wayne or Indira Ghandi? Humans have an incredible variation in physical appearance, so who does God look like? It's really a silly view of the question. What the question should really be is do humans resemble God physically, psychologically or spiritually? Humans are a product of evolution. If God is anything like humans in a physical sense, then God is a product of evolution. Perhaps evolution long before this universe existed, but still evolution. That would be a fair amount of information. Are humans psychologically related to God? Of what we know about human and non-human psychology, what characteristics might God have? Most importantly, is God a plurality of consciousness, like humans and are memes a language of God? Are humans spiritually related to God? What is this spiritual for that matter? This is something humans have little useful knowledge of, but considering the limitations on human experience and knowledge, that might not be a big surprise. The spiritual is described as a non-physical aspect of consciousness and identity. In terms of human limitations, a knowledge of the spiritual and possibly a way to manipulate it would define someone as a super-being. Another thing to consider in thinking about God is the small amount of modern conjecture that is available. Some writers have talked about machines that might as well be called Gods, but again, they are reflections of human Gods with great physical power as well as artificial wisdom. Compare those to the concept of Gaia, a planetary consciousness discussed in some speculative writing and we see thoughts about a psychologically advanced being. That is where a discussion of a super-being or super-consciousness seems to focus. Not surprisingly, it's mostly beyond current human knowledge and perhaps current understanding, but it is something. What is currently known about human psychology and neuroscience that reflects on this topic? We know that the human brain is a bit like a computer and multitasks as well as multi-processes. Looking at the human mind in comparison to a computer is interesting. We have echoic hearing and icoic vision. Basically this means that a lot of the data that comes into the eyes and ears are processed by nerves located there. The processed information is then passed on to the 'brain' for integration. This is why a person may hear something well after (perhaps 5 seconds) the sound reaches the ear. This is a great example of multi-processing. Humans can multi-task, but are limited at it. You cannot focus on your hearing at the same time you are focusing on what you are seeing. You have to switch back and forth, but echoic (and icoic memory acts like buffers, so you can go back and look at what was heard while you were focusing on looking at something. The more interesting part would be about the plurality of human consciousness. Researchers have found that the human personality and consciousness does not act like a singularity. We have opposing opinions. Humans may act with multiple goals and the goals may even be contradictory or conflictive. That can lead even to pathology if there is too much conflict, but that is unusual and apparently is the price of the diversity and adaptability required. Note that with these characteristics, the human mind is more like a computer network with multiple processors than it is like a single computer. The interesting question is how is it organized and how are the different consciousnesses resolved? So how does this reflect on God, is she is related to humans in these ways? A reasonable assumption made here is that God has a great knowledge of memes and an ability to manipulate them. What would it look like if God were added as part of the meme that is this book about morality? God fits more than perfectly. God fills large holes in the morality that has been presented so far in this book. That tells something. We are not as an ant to God. We are as a child to an adult. In a child is much of the parent. Michael Polanyi said that we were evolving to become God. Knowing what I know of biological evolution, I didn't think much of the idea at the time, but what if we are evolving spiritually to God? We don't know any of the rules of spirituality let alone memes... let alone if spirituality exists. Biological evolution is the most elegant solution to a large problem. How to make a self maintaining system that also develops. Love What is this love thing anyway? We call it an emotion, but we can also call it a learned behavior, a genetically based behavior, a meme, a strategy and a number of other terms referring to very different and important things. Isn't it amazing that love has largely replaced the, to all appearances, efficient practice of arranged marriages. That is notable. Love seems to provide something important. I have heard platitudes such as "God is Love" for a long time. It seems that every time I examine platitudes like that, I find a deep truth revealed. Is God partly the meme of love and what is it then and what is so special about it? Love has an amazing number of different, powerful meanings. Human Nature Fundamentally, humans are a biological machine created by evolution. This has two important meanings here. The first is that we retain adaptations to previous ecologies that may not be beneficial to survival in our current ecology. The second is that we operate our neuro-biological system can get unbalanced for many normal, abnormal and external chemical reasons. Anger, satisfaction, jealousy, ego, libido and other human drives can be normal, unbalanced or effected by drugs. Each behavior relates to survival. Too little, too much, the wrong time or addiction makes the behavior a threat to survival. What is inappropriate or even dangerous at one time, may be an essential survival behavior at another time. For humans, balance is everything. What is imbalanced in one person, is functional in another. Luckily, many times balance can be achieved by choice, training and knowledge. Sometimes imbalance can be a temporary mistake or a lack of knowledge in a new situation. Sometimes though, biological imbalances can make for the personal hell of madness. The human body is a generalist design. The mind is what makes us human. All behaviors are effected by genetics and knowledge. This is human nature. This is what we must deal with. To be human is to be subject to human failings and human triumph. There seems to be more than one side to both. This is where the difficulty arises. These are all natural behaviors with genetic foundations and they illustrate the need for balance. Too little and the person cannot cope or compete in the world. Too much and they are destructive. There are many mechanisms that make behaviors, including neurotransmitters, hormones, neurophysiology, experience and training, but all can be modified by thought, knowledge and training. Humans must develop both their genetics and their knowledge to manage both their strengths and weaknesses just as they must use their knowledge to manage their genetics. It is all about balance. 1. Irrational & Rational 2. Personal Power 3. Egocentricity and Ethnocentricity 4. Thought checking and dualities 5. Intelligence and communication .... This is a collection of descriptions of different ways that individual people think and factors that effect understanding in the context of survival. In ways, these are extentions of instinctive behaviors 1a. Rational How do we think? We think rationally and irrationally. We use logic and we use superstition. Humans are inherently quite capable at the mathematics that is logic. The capability of reason seems almost universal. The first example of the methods or patterns humans use when thinking should be about a rational belief set. Simple, direct, logical and based on a rational model of reality. Not to be. Humans usually think in terms of non-causal effects or superstition. Sometimes, even the most skeptical and educated person, when something goes wrong, cannot help but to irrationally wonder if there is some non-physical link between their previous actions and their present situation. We may reject it for a more rationally based belief set, but that belief set does pass through our mind. All non-rational, or non-causal, belief systems are based on the effect of unseen forces, especially the will of individuals and various unseen spirits. If bad fortune befell an individual or group, the reason was assumed to be the bad will of an individual or spirit. If a dog or a wife died with no obvious explanation, it was assumed that the reason was the result of the will of an individual or spirit and their "power". Wishful thinking seems so real. Also there were very few rational explanations for many natural occurrences from the seasons to earthquakes to birth or death. Simple, symbolic non-causal descriptions are easy to understand and are usually quite functional. Does it matter if you know why the ground is shaking. An earthquake is the same whether Poseidon sent it or the tectonic plates shrugged. An advanced form of non-causal interaction is called Karma. For anything you do, their is a later and non-physically related, but still related, consequence. All belief systems are balanced. It is a feature of the logical basis of all belief systems. The reason that the concept of Karma is called a more advanced system, is because it describes all an extremely complex balance to the system, that extends over lifetimes. 1b. Rational - Reason The corresponding belief set to irrational, is rational. That is information that is based on causal relationships. It is part of a belief system and we judge rationality in a number of ways that are parts of philosophy. The commonest way that we judge rationality is whether something seems logical. Logic is based on mathematics and so is independent of genetics or environment. We all have the genetic potential to use logic and it is a highly educatable skill. The use of logic is definitely a learned habit. We can judge if an idea seems logical or that is, causal and logically related. The other way that we judge rationality is on the basis of the of knowledge or predictable repeatability, where the logic and the connection may or may not be understood, but the result is. The discipline of this is called science. It is a systematically compiled collection of beliefs and knowledge of physical causality as judged by repeatability, predictability and observation. Anyone can act rationally to the degree of their potential and education, but it is not presently the most natural state. Humans do not always base their behaviors and beliefs on logic and rationality. Yet it is part of the basis of what is called human. It is always most effective to look at anything from multiple points of view. It enhances both understanding and memory. 2. Personal Power A peculiar, but characteristic type of human thought may as well be called personal power. It is largely a form of wishful thinking and an extension of irrational thought. It is an instinctive type of thought and as such is most easily seen in children, though it is certainly not limited to them. Aboriginal groups, when they first acquire firearms, tend to think that aiming a rifle, is done by willing the bullet to go where the shooter wants it to go. In popular culture it is the hero who is righteous and so will conquer their enemy, if their anger grows enough that their personal power cannot be overcome by any foe. A popular archetype in martial dramas is the hero who is peaceful and chooses not respond to the insults and attacks of the antagonist. Then the antagonist attacks their family, school or something else that cannot be ignored. Then the hero is filled with a righteous wrath (personal power) that cannot be ignored or defeated. This way of thinking extends far beyond martial dramas though. It is part of how people think in many cases. "I am right and that righteousness will win the day". This can show up in many places and a variety of forms. A child may get carried away with their imagination and decide that they can fly. 3. Egocentricity and Ethnocentricity Humans will go to amazing lengths to convince themselves that they are special. It is easy to see why this could sometimes be of benefit to survival. In competition, it is much easier compete effectively if you believe that you are superior to your opponent. At the same time, it leads to incredible mistakes. The human mind is far from perfect. It even has built in mechanisms to modify memory. A good habit is to remember things from more than one perspective. That way a person is far less likely to modify memories to where they simply become inaccurate. ________________________________________ Organization This is meant to be a brief discussion of various human organization systems. Organization is critical to complicated social systems. Caste - Is a term that refers both to a groups tribal nature and their occupational nature. The basic castes are ruler, priest, warrior, scribe, craftsman and peasant. They are so basic to the organization of a society, that a description of castes was how Plato described his idealistic utopia. In terms of occupation, these castes were the functions necessary to the existence of a society. Since they come from a tribal origin, they also have the added natural cooperative characteristics of a family and community. Caste also indicated occupational intelligence. Class - Class is an economic term. The commonest basic description of classes is that of a farmer that brings grain to a miller. The miller just naturally has more economic wealth than the farmer that brings their grain to the miller. Much of the economic organization of a society is based on features of the class system and its attendant economic features. Circumstances also promote cooperation within the class. There is also a natural symbiosis between the classes. While there has often been contention between the classes, over all it has contributed to the organization and cooperative potentials of the society. Institution - Institutions are considered to be multi-generational behavioral patterns. Things change and families mature, but each generation has the same immediate needs, many of which are based on the requirements of families. Really, most organizational devices can be called institutions, but it is a useful way of categorizing different needs and methods of filling those needs, in a society. Industries - Industries fulfill the material needs of a society. They provide the food, clothing, shelter and other devices we use to survive. In itself, that is not so remarkable, but the cooperative systems that make industry work, are remarkable. Industry brings together entrepreneurs, designers, labor and financial specialists to create a product. The organizational system of an industry can rival that of a military organization. General Morality Morality is a slippery subject. In general it is how we decide what is right and wrong, but even what that means can be called into question. I talk about this book describing a morality based on survival which is in turn based on cooperation. There is layer and level and some moralities seem to be based on a collection of rules instead of an underlying principle such as survival. I have to admit that that I have no huge insight into this topic, but I did do a great deal of analysis both in general terms of morality and in particular morality based on survival. At one point I wrote what I called the Morality Monographs where I wrote down every topic I could consider related to morality or ethics and tried to analyze them in terms of survival. Some seemed more important than others. I then looked at the Ten Commandments, the Five Benedictions, The Seven Deadly Sins a well as some very long lists of virtues, to see how they all related to survival. More than anything, the lesson learned was the importance of balance in all things. Without balance, sins and virtues both become fatal. With the balance of thought and temperance, all can be survived. Finally, and I do mean after an awful lot of work, I decided what needed to be referenced in this book. There are a few topics like the morality of artificial selection that relate to new factors in human survival and are discussed at the same time that the new factors are discussed. The following is the briefest description I could make of morality in these terms. Note that almost all topics refer to reproduction or family dynamics. This is as it should be, because raising children is simply the foundation of survival and morality. The commonest problem with our existing moral systems is that coming from religions, their lessons are based on authority and precedence. In this world of increasing complexity, skepticism and increasing critical thinking, morality will have to be based on reason and understanding or the morality will not be used. Luckily, it can be shown that there is great reason and logic behind the common teachings we consider morality. Due to the overall long term success of religion, it would seem that a critical, logical examination of morality in the context of biology and survival would likely lead to principles similar to those taught by religion. Both would have to promote survival within the promptings of human instinct and values. A morality is the lessons that we start learning as children, that tell us how we can live our lives. That is known as the difference between right and wrong and so suggests that inherently the basis of morality is survival. A moral system must tell us how to live, grow, be happy, raise families and survive generation after generation. To a large extent, moral systems are based on instinctive values. Moral systems are so basic, not only do we not notice them, we are designed not to question them. They are like water to a fish. Survival is the essence of conservatism. This has contributed to morality tending to be very conservative and only tending to change when it has to. Changes in morality are risky. One particular place where morality has changed and must change again is size. The world we are in tends to shrink and the group we live in grows. This has many moral implications from disease to world ecology. The moralities of the tribes were the survival strategies needed for small isolated groups of families that were part of larger tribes that inhabited regions. Mostly the strategies they used were fairly simple. Life was simpler, children matured young and people had children while very young. Agriculture developed in response to a need related to environmental change. Moral systems developed for a long time after the start of agriculture and villages. Life became more complicated and families were started at an older age. This is repeating itself as we move into an ecology based on non-agricultural technology. we need to continue to develop new understandings of morality. ________________________________________ Human Genetics There is another interesting point about the morality of artificial selection. It is often compared to jingoistic or racist eugenics. It is very different, in fact, quite the opposite. At this point, some other problems in human ecology show themselves. Even if humans had limitless resources, other problems would predictably arise. One is disease, another is excessive population growth and another is in the genes themselves. Much of this book is about solving those problems. The problem with disease in humans is that it used to be the most important limiting factor (called a selective effect). Before modern medicine and antibiotics, it used to often be that three out of five people died of diseases before they ever had children. That is a huge and important natural selective effect. It also acted as a uniquely general selective effect on those with weaknesses. Also, the more humans there are, the easier the disease can be transmitted through the population. Today, there are an awful lot more people on earth than there ever were before. That is a huge change. The other problems are with humans themselves. We are very far from perfect. We have been undergoing rapid evolution in the past many thousands of years and while we have adapted a lot, there is still a long way to go. There are many people born that really are sickly, weak or have other genetic based problems. It used to be that disease and other selective effects removed these people from the population so that generally, only the strongest and healthiest from any family survived. Now it is far from that way. Not only that, but as things are now, people are having much smaller families. In ecology, there are simple descriptions of this. The equation of a human is determined by the long and costly requirements of raising children. With the rise of technology, this cost has become higher and longer. Parents tend to have less children and use medicine to keep them alive and healthy. Humans have sort of gone from a quantity strategy of many children, where only a few survived, to a quality strategy of having less children, more of whom survive. The problem is that the human genome has a number of problems. Genes naturally deteriorate from generation to generation. In natural circumstances, the weak die and the strong survive so that the children from each generation that reproduce are as healthy and adapted as the parents, or perhaps even more so as natural selection drives evolution. Humans have removed disease and many other natural selective effects. That is going to lead to a huge disaster as something effectively the opposite of normal evolution occurs. So the middle part of this book describing how humans can survive is based on how we can survive this problem with our genes. Solving that problem will solve a lot of other problems humans already face and will encounter in the future. Realize that theoretically we could reintroduce natural selective effects like disease and let them run their course to solve this problem, but there are at least two reasons not to. The first is the issue of the basis of ecology, energetics. It takes a lot of resources to raise and educate children. Too much to waste by allowing disease to kill them off almost randomly. The second reason is that who wants to see their children get sick and die. If the selective effects that drive evolution are removed, something the opposite of evolution will occur and the best genes that humans have developed over millions of years will break down and disappear. In ecology this is referred to as Genetic Load. It is caused by a number of factors. One factor that acts slowly is mutation. A more important factor that will act much more quickly is natural genetic damage that occurs during recombination in the cell during reproduction. The only way to solve this problem is to introduce a selective effect. A selective effect must be introduced naturally or artificially, or humans will not survive. This book is based on the potentials and consequences of using what is commonly called pre-implantation selection. That is artificial selection before implantation in the womb. Artificial selection has basically three overlapping potentials. The first is reduction of broken or ineffective traits. The second is to increase the frequency of good traits. The third potential is hybridization and is a bit more complicated. It is the main way that humans have progressed since the start of the cities. It is the mixing of the tribes so that their descendants have the genetic potentials of both their parental tribes. It is where the greatest potentials for humans have and will come from. Consider Western culture. Three tribes came together to create the first city dwellers in the Fertile Crescent, the Sumerians. Over time the three tribes genetically hybridized to become one people. Thousands of years later, they were conquered by the Semites led by Sargon The Great. Over time, these people became one and spread in their cities. Their descendants included the Phoenicians and other city dwellers. Then, another peoples arrived, Indo-Europeans descended from horse herders in Southern Russia. These were known as the Greeks, the Eutustrians and the Romans. They replaced the Semites as the military rulers of the society, but by then, through natural selection, the Sumerians and Semites were hybridized into one people. In all societies, social class and caste structures worked to prevent the mixing of the tribes. At the same time various factors, especially war and slavery, caused genetic hybridization. This also happened with the Indo-Europeans. While these were well known historical events and peoples leading to modern Western culture, there were many other tribes that were absorbed, most notably the Celts. Some tribes thrived. Some did not. The Celts were conquered politically and socially by the Romans, but they still existed as a people and over time, hybridized with the peoples of the ancient city societies. They contributed an incredible dynamic that has led to our current modern society. Individually, these tribes did not have the potentials they had when combined. As already said, human ecology is rapidly changing and we do not exist yet in a relatively stable ecology. No current single tribe or race is going to have the genetic potentials to adapt to the changes that are creating the human future. When parents from different tribes have children, the children tend to be “stronger” than the parents. They have the best traits of both parents. This is well known in domestic plants and animals, but is true for all species including humans. There is a downside to natural hybridization though. The next generations are generally not as strong as the first generation or even the parental generation. In human history, natural selection has selected for the strong hybrid at the cost of the weaker hybrids and the old tribal groups. It all gets pretty complicated and is explained in a later chapter, but suffice to say that artificial selection could allow humans to take great advantage of the potentials of the hybridization of the tribes, without the drawbacks of natural hybridization. It should give us the potentials to adapt to the ecology that we create. That raises the question of what this ecology will look like and what the people of that ecology will look like as well. A related issue is racism. Racism is a more localized issue than most of the general survival issues that this book usually focuses on, but it is an important issue. Racism exists for a lot of reasons and is a real problem, but so much of the problem is how it is looked at. One reason is the real issue that hybridization can cause problems, but that problem can be removed by artificial selection. Another problem is about superiority and inferiority. Races tend to perceive each other that way. It is a win-lose situation. It looks like evolution would select one superior race to survive and the other races to go extinct. Even in a natural situation, that is not how it works. The genes of each race are very similar to the genes of other races and there is gene flow between the races as well. But in a situation of artificial selection, most of the more important the genes, such as many of the ones that effect behavior and immunity, can be additive. The potentials of the races can be additively combined into one race. Each race will look too different races for genetic potentials that it does not have. Racism becomes a very different issue and the racial issues become win-win. This point offers long term hope for humans, a great variety of genetic potentials held by the different races, as well as a short term hope in the current problems that the races have of getting along now. It’s sort of like an automobile. They were most developed in the United States and Europe. Then the Japanese started adding their expertise to producing cars and revolutionized the automobile and how they were produced. Different strengths added together. Not everything will go together. That will represent a new selective pressure. Desirable traits that hybridize well, may be more successful than perhaps a better form of the same trait that does not hybridize well. Still, at present, it would be far wiser for humans to try to preserve what traits they can until we have a bit more wisdom about how to use the sum of human genetic wealth. So many tribes and so much human variability has already been lost. Another interesting moral point in this is that artificial selection will actually offer more to the genetically weaker members of the society than to the genetically stronger members of the society. Note that according to C.D. Darlington, this description of "Western" civil society developing based upon ongoing hybridization of different tribes has also occurred in the Red River Valley of China, the Indus River Valley of India and in Meso-America where agricultural based civilizations have independently arisen. There are a lot of known "superior" tribes and room for a lot more hybridization based human development. Who knows what the long term potentials of obscure tribes will be. ________________________________________ Religious Connotations of the Morality of Artificial Selection Whether you believe in God or not, pre-implantation artificial selection is moral. Humans cannot survive as more than animals without it. There are two views one can take on this controversial subject. If you believe in God or if you don't. In any case, a fertilized egg in a petri dish is not a child. If you don't believe in God, then it is a simple question of survival and quality of life. Humans have a fantastic potential that will only be realized by artificial selection. If we developed technology to provide every resource required. If we solved the problems of pollution, destruction of natural resources and over population. If we discovered revolutionarily advanced social, political and economic systems. None of these would change the problems we would face. We would still have to deal with the problem of the imperfection of humans and human genes. There is only one solution and that is artificial selection. If you believe God determines morality, there is more to the problem. Is artificial selection God's will? You can answer that by asking if science, knowledge and technology are part of God's will. More to the point, is human progress according to God's will? A life of primitive barbarism, ignorance, warfare and the struggle for every day existence is our past. It is not a life of love, forgiveness and peace. Progress has led to what we are told God taught. Progress will reverse without artificial selection. Progress continues with it. On occasion, I have stated that Jesus is responsible for modern technology. I did it to make a point. It is the cooperative potentials of western philosophy, largely based on Christian teachings, that have led to the cooperative efforts that have led to modern technology as well as democracy. There is another point, whether you believe in God or not. We are entering a radically new and different ecology. To survive, humans must make a great jump in adaptation to this new ecology in order to survive. Well, either by design or serendipity, there is an amazing genetic potential available to humans that can probably provide the requirements to make this jump. If one believes in God or not, one would have to be amazed at the potentials available. Besides, there are other, better reasons why I believe that artificial selection is quite moral in terms of God and religion. They are described elsewhere. ________________________________________ Morality Summary This is a summary of the first part of what I found by looking at human ecology. It is meant to look at how massively human ecology has changed and what humans might be able to do to adapt to these changes. There is far more to the situation than is described here, but this does cover the most important change, the effect of medicine and other factors that remove natural selective effects. As mentioned, there is far more written about this elsewhere. Still, there is a second part to what I found that is more subtle, but perhaps just as important or perhaps more so. Here it is called morality. Morality is the term for the strategies we use to survive. Often it is mistaken for religion and it is often the message of a religion that they created morality. In truth, morality is independent of religion and the religions are a part of morality. To many people this may seem incorrect. They believe that moralities are the rules laid down by God for humans to follow. A question could be asked, what is God's purpose in laying down these laws? Most of this essay is to describe morality as methods of biological survival and to describe what is necessary for survival. At a point the laws that come from religion that are called morality are examined for their effectiveness in promoting survival. It turns out that the teachings of religions are actually fantastically effective survival strategies. In that human survival is based both on cooperation and competition, this description actually leans more towards religious morality and its emphasis on cooperation than perhaps stricter biology and its emphasis on competition. This seems appropriate in light of the genetic model used. There are many different ways that people survive. People that live in the same city, may survive by completely different methods. Indeed, all civil societies are composed of different occupational castes and they each have a different morality that is appropriate to the niche that they occupy in the city. Also there are moralities that one would not naturally think of as moral. There are criminal organizations such as the Mafia, that are a strategy that a people use to survive over long periods of time. They violate the tenants of most moralities, but they have allowed those people to survive and so are a morality. This part of my study was started because I recognized that humans are undergoing such massive changes in how we survive that it seemed likely that we would need new moral tools and strategies to survive. It was tough, because moralities and beliefs are far more slippery subjects than are genes, which are slippery enough. I started the examination by trying to figure out what moral tools we have used in the past and what we have at present. Early on, I used one premise, that is also a bias of the entire examination. It is an ecological premise though and probably correct. It is that humans have gotten where we have primarily through cooperation and organization. Sometimes, looking at the present world, a person can feel just a little bit cynical and that statement is good for a laugh. Still it's true. This is not to put down individual accomplishment. The truth lies somewhere between Ayn Rand and Karl Marx, but really in the simple process of living, cooperation is our most important strategy. My conclusion was that there is an existing moral system that has so much potential for promoting and allowing cooperation, that we are not going to soon require much in the way of new systems. More than that we are going to require more understanding of the reasons for using moral systems. It is unfortunate that our main vehicle for moralities, religions, have generally been based on precedence and authority instead of reason and understanding. Perhaps it was inevitable and necessary, but in the future, the reasons behind moral rules and techniques will have to be understood instead of just learned or they will not be effectively practiced and passed on. The rest of this essay is a summary of the path I followed to try to find out what humans needed to know and believe in order to survive, as well as some of what I learned on the way. So this part is a summary of how humans have learned to cooperate. To cooperate, there must be communication. Topics that must be examined to describe communication are: Intelligence Language Memes (This is above, but is here a morality, not a trait.) a. Intelligence - The biological definition of intelligence is a social behavior that allows the individual to remember, understand and influence the other members of the society. In humans, there are also occupational and technical aspects to intelligence, but they are discussed elsewhere. A major aspect of the social ability intelligence gives to humans is communication. Communication includes language skills as well as non-verbal communication and the ability to manipulate memes. Intelligence can be considered the natural basis of the ability to understand and create. b. Language - The ability of language to enhance communication is illustrated by the limitations on communication when there is not language. Humans communicate in many ways, but none compare to language for speed, precision and versatility. In ways language seems like such a technical thing, but the mechanisms of language are extremely broad as is shown by languages made for the deaf and blind. c. Memes - Memes are what we communicate. They are natural groupings of information and as such facilitate communication greatly. Like language, you can see how useful memes are to communication by considering what they allow and what would not be possible if information did not naturally group. It was only about 20 years ago that Richard Dawkins described his concept of memes. Any student of humans must realize the incredible importance and power of that concept as a tool to describe and understand humans, but an understanding of memetics has only just begun. The problem of describing memes is that they follow rules similar to genes and yet critically different rules as well. The importance of memes cannot be overstated, but currently the concept is still too new to be more than basically understood. Still, it is clear that the importance of memes cannot be over stated. The long ongoing dichotomous discussion of nature verses nurture could easily become a three way discussion of nature, nurture and memes Cooperation requires some kind of agreement. It can be very formal or it can very tacit and understood. Here, these agreements are all called contracts. They include: Marriage - Marriage has always had at least two components. An economic aspect and a reproductive aspect. Marriage is very important in biological terms because it is so important to the family, which is a basis of human survival. It is a very strong agreement of mutual responsibility and mutual goals. As society has developed, so has the institution and scope of marriage. Money - Money is an odd thing, but here it is used, as it is in human society, to represent the physical resources necessary to survival. The mutability of money represents the variability of resources in the human economy represented in a very basic contract of great versatility. In biological terms, all economic activity and business contract could be categorized as money. All contracts are just another name for a formal cooperative agreement. Law - Law encompasses many aspects of cooperation including regulation of competition. Many, times law is the field upon which cooperative ventures are built and law is what is used to resolve disputes that arise in cooperative ventures. Social stability of the society is basically the purpose of law. Religion - A religion defines a community. A community is defined by its social and cooperative nature. Religions define a morality which is both a method and an agreement about how a community should live. Historically, religions have been the most important vehicle of morality. Social Compact - There are many social compacts. These are the informal agreements between classes and groups that all contribute to a society. if human survival is based on agreements and contracts, it is the informal agreements that are the most important to the most people. These can be agreements within families and communities all the way up to informal agreements between the classes and political bodies of a society. Examination of social contracts and the symbiosis they allow, show how truly important and basic cooperation is to human survival. Also, the social compact may regulate what competition there is in society. These are the understandings of acceptable standards of behavior. Part of the cooperative methods we use to survive are organizational systems including: Religion Politics Industry-- War a. Religion - Religion is about morality and survival. Humans survival is based on families and communities. Morality cannot be regulated by simple law so regulation of the family and community is one of the primary functions of religion. By setting standards of behavior, religion facilitates much of the basis of social organization and allows for the agreements of social compacts. It creates communities that cooperate as families. It also sanctifies marriages, one of the most important contracts of the entire society. b. Politics - In order to create the power structure that politics is all about, politics always creates cooperative groups. Then the function of these groups is to compete for power. Political laws are to regulate this competition so that it is not destructive to the society. c. War - In many ways, war is an extension of politics. In any case, C.D. Darlington discussed the importance of organization to both. Historically, the success of the international ruling caste was based on the ability to organize, especially in terms of warfare. d. Law - Law is how we formalize our agreements. It is essential tot he workings of a complex society. The problem is that there are no perfect laws, so we need judges. Unfortunately there are no perfect judges so we try to make perfect laws. Maybe one day law can be handed over to machines that are impartial, but that can not be until we can create machines that are wise enough to be fair. Another point of laws is that they must be formed to offset the commonest of the human instincts that can be destructive such as greed, violence, exploitive lust and crime as a business. The greedy and covetous will always work against those laws so they will have to contain both the law and the reason for the law. Perhaps all laws should be written as memes that include both the law and the reason for it. ** Then there are philosophies to be considered, since it is philosophy that describes if cooperation is to be used as a tool of survival. It should be recognized that much about cooperation, methods of cooperation and reasons for cooperation, are learned. This is embodied in philosophy. This is examined by looking at philosophies of: Dharma Buddhism Christianity a. Dharma - Dharma (liberally described) is the idea of dividing life into three parts. The first part, from birth to 25 years, is a time to grow and learn, preparing for adulthood. The second part, between 25 and 50 years is a time to rise a family. The third part (and part that is important here) is from 50 years on when the person is supposed to devote their energies to their society. This is important as a very basic model of effort and apparent altruism that is part of what is needed to maintain a healthy functioning society. b. Buddhism - Buddhism is many things, but there is a form of Buddhism that teaches that an individual should love all others. It's actually hard to see what this means in practice, but it is a philosophy that shows great potential for promoting social cooperation, as is mentioned in the next topic. c. Christianity - To a certain extent, Christianity is what this discussion leads to. The original question was, if we are entering a new ecology and undergoing major changes in our genetic nature, what do we need in the way of a morality for this new ecology. Will any existing moralities be adequate or will we need a completely new one. Well, an examination (a long examination) shows Christianity to be the most cooperative of existing philosophies in the western world and probably the whole world. It is natural and so easy to lose sight of the philosophy under any religion. Religions are about Gods. If you ask who Jesus was, you are likely to get an answer that he is God (or God's prophet, in much of the world). People focus on the sacred, mystical or eternal aspects of Jesus and often miss the incredible earthly philosophical impact his teachings have on all aspects of every day life. The lessons of Christianity give western society a basic cooperative nature that is the foundation of the entire society. The cooperation that allows democratic politics to work, modern technology to create and current mega-civil bodies to exist, are all based on teachings descended and husbanded since the time of Jesus. Many cooperative philosophies exist and many did before Jesus, but it is his legacy that we use. The message taught by Jesus was one of love one another and forgive one another. This is remarkable both in that it is somewhat counter intuitive and that it works very well. Following natural instincts, humans seem to be very quarrel some and revenge is the natural response to insult or attack. Generally, those habits work against the development of a civilization. Christianity works to inhibit that quarrelling and benefits everyone. One question here is do Christian philosophies of cooperation make humans work analogously to insect communities where genetics promote cooperation. I think there are fundamental differences, but it is an important question ask to understand human cooperation in a society. It is also quite (potentially) possible. Another important question is whether Christianity is enough to fulfill human requirements in the next ecology. A lot more is going to have to be known about the next ecology, cooperation and Christianity, to answer that question. Obviously this kind of statement about a religion is a controversial position, but this book is to describe a method of viewing even more than any one view. At such, saying that Christianity is such an effective cooperative method is observational and not any more empirical than the description of the cooperation that Christianity has fostered. There are other cooperative systems in use and there are others that have been described, but were never or are not currently implemented. It would be expected and memetics suggests, that just as the development of the civil races was a matter of hybridization, moralities can and will absorb other practices that work well. Also, just as the genetic development of the other civilizations parallel each other, so too will the cultural and moral development. Remember that here this is not immediately about religion, Christians or Gods, it is about human survival based on cooperation. This analysis can be applied to all human systems and will have to be if we are to survive. Also, this is not to ignore the importance of the philosophies of history. The philosophies of from the Greeks, particularly science, will have to be examined for how they will relate to survival, but those can be considered within the framework that has already been described and also they will present rather advanced topics in terms of an ecological analysis. Actually, Christianity inherently incorporates Greek science and Hellenistic thought. The New Testement was written in Greek. Eventually, the philosophies from the time of ancient Egypt to Robert Heinlein will have to be categorized and, more difficultly, evaluated as to their effect and utility in terms of human survival. There is going to be a lot of judgment involved as well. Then it will be time to look at non-cooperation and individuality in morality and survival. Cooperation is the basis of human survival, but not the only method and even in a cooperative situation, there are times for non-cooperation. Also, in biological terms, cooperation always is an attribute of a group. Very often, these cooperative groups compete quite sharply. ________________________________________ Conclusion Humans are currently experiencing a huge change in just about everything related to their ecology and survival. In order to survive, humans will have to create and adapt to a new 'stable' ecology. Adaptation will be both genetic and strategic. Technology is presenting incredible potentials and dangers. It is and will be, the basis of many important strategies of all human ecologies. That is part of what being human is. Genetic technology is offering unprecedented potential for understanding and manipulating human genetic nature. Humans will have to use this knowledge to solve many problems that we have created as well as problems that have always existed, but only now can we do something about. C. D. Darlington's work describes a way of looking at and categorizing the genetic potentials that any person, family or peoples have. Technology can already allow humans to take advantage of artificial selection to preserve and spread those potentials. It is the potentials of human hybridization that will offer much to allow us to adapt to the new ecology and it is also the potentials of hybridization that will allow us to survive the genetic disasters already coming due to ecological changes that are already here or soon will be. The future for humanity is either disaster or development into something that is far more than we are now. Corresponding to human genetic adaptation, human survival strategies will also have to adapt. What makes us human is our minds. Human survival has always been based on families and communities, using various survival strategies that are called moralities. Since human survival is based on what we know more than on instincts, what we know will have to develop to suit survival in the new ecology. If, as it seems, cooperative methods are the best survival strategies for humans, there is a long history of cooperative systems that we can draw on for ideas, including various contracts. This book describes some of the situation of humans during a huge transition in our ecology. It describes some of the problems we face and some specific adaptations we have little choice about accepting. It discusses the hazards of change, how to adapt to them gracefully and the great potentials in front of humanity. Still, more than anything, its purpose is to describe how an individual or society can look at their survival with the conscious eye of a human using a tool. Hopefully, it can describe a science of morality that will allow humans to develop into something special. Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed it and found reading it near as interesting as I have writing it. Really though, I see that this is only an end in that it is a beginning. This is a very basic frame work of what it would take for humans to survive. The description of Christianity, like the description law, contracts and economics, is of the most basic system that might work, described in the context of what we have available. We will certainly need far more development of the cooperative, organizational and contractual methods that will make up the moralities of the future. Just consider the source and method of development of those systems. Still, this is a careful ecological analysis and reveals a fair amount of important points. Many of the underlying principles are still be discovered. Up to now, judgments have been kept to a minimum, but that is not the case in the future, because this is all meant as a tool for making judgments. This is not a science in a vacuum. It is meant to lead to methods and plans to consciously guide human destiny, not for the fun of it or perhaps not even for some vision of greatness, but because we must if we are to find a new way to survive. Before we can do much in the way of making any plans though, we will have to accumulate a lot of information and do a lot of hard thinking. So a major part of this book, should be the equivalent of ecological monographs. Single topic essays about single problems or issues. These are the raw materials used both to describe any species survival characteristics as well as to create, validate or invalidate any hypothesis presented about human survival. Science is such a powerful tool for humans. Hopefully, applied to human survival strategies, it will be enough to get us to the future. # # # # # # # # # |