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Table of Contents: 0. Preface The overwhelming fact of our time is the changing world and how we respond to it. The Conservatives want to stay the way we have been, tolerating degrees of adaptation to the changes. The Progressives want to embrace the change. The advantage of Conservatism is that it uses systems that have been proven to work in the past. The problem is that the world really is changing. The problem the Progressives have is that we don't know where we are going and we have to discover how we can live in this new world. It just simply isn't known and the experiments are often dangerous or fail. Still the changes come upon us and most people have learned to question their beliefs enough to have room for the beliefs of others. We seek a path to survival in the future. That path does not include much room for intolerance based on anything that is not very important. Survival is the ultimate form of conservatism. Survival of a people is the business of religions. So often it is religions that are trying to use conservative responses to the changing world. That is as it should be. Religions are not about risk taking. This is why changes that science and technical progress bring us are often looked at with skepticism by religions. All progress and science must be evaluated in moral terms before religions can accept these changes in terms of their function, protecting their people. This suggests that the split between the ideologies of conservatives (very often representing religion) and progressives that we see played out so strongly in the world today, is likely to get stronger as the world changes more. This ideological dispute is one of the great challenges humanity currently faces, to find ways to go forward or try to go back. Since the world is truly changing and the old ways will not serve much longer, we must go forward to survive. The only thing that can reduce that ideological conflict is if the progressive forces can come up with a technical and moral vision of the future that satisfies the conservatives. It must be explained in terms of science, religion, reason and emotion to describe the morality and values. It must appeal to heart and mind. It must show a path to survival in a future that satisfies both our conservative instincts and progressive desires. This book is meant to describe that path. The foundation, organization and tools of this are science, but this uses other parts including reason, morality, philosophy, religion and other sources of information to describe humanity and the human condition. -The progressives must understand the importance of religion. What does religion have to offer the progressives? Religion embodies the most basic aspects of survival and the greatest aspirations of humanity. What science has to offer both is a path to that future. Science is to explain things. Sometimes it explains mysteries. Science takes away some mysteries, but it then it replaces them with even more puzzling ones of greater importance. Though science has explained much, the most important mysteries persist. This is to explain things that humans must understand in order to survive. It is to replace mystery with understanding, but have no doubt that there will be plenty of mysteries left, including the most confounding and important ones. This is written to address current questions about life and morality that just haven’t been answered. The tools of science bring knowledge rushing at us like a freight train barreling through a wind. We don’t need more facts or even new techniques; we need a new way of looking at things. Without new understandings, we will not become more than we are. Without a moral understanding the new genetic technologies being developed, we will not be able to use them, but we must. We will not survive without them. We must make a change to a new way. We must change to a new ecology. This book is not as complicated as it is vast. With something of a background in biology and logic, all the parts are easy enough to understand. It’s just that there are a lot of new parts, all of which have to be internalized to see what this shows. Perhaps the hardest part is adjusting to the time frame. In this book, a short time is a couple generations. A very long time is geologic. Originally, it was to look at a time period of perhaps 10,000 years when humans would be fairly well adapted into a new ecology. At the end, I see potentials that will take far longer than that to realize. I meant to describe human survival, but I also found the highest human aspirations. I have no idea how any book ever gets completed. You write it then write it then you do it again. Then you figure out something new and important and write it again. Hopefully, this form will communicate a beautiful and important, but complicated idea. It is about how humans can survive into the uncertain future. It also says a good deal about why we should. Though it is based on a great deal of accumulated knowledge and science, it is meant to be very accessible, because it is about issues that are very common, important parts of everyone’s daily life. The conclusions are amazing and very positive. Most of what humanity has dreamed of is achievable. Indeed, to survive, humans will have to achieve their dreams. This book is necessarily a schematic view to allow communication. Otherwise it would simply be too long and verbose. In many parts, to understand it well will require a fair amount of thought by the reader, because a few of the separate threads must be brought together. There is far more detail on my website. I know this is not perfectly written and there may be flaws, but it should do the job. There is some redundancy, but that happens in communicating complicated ideas that have to be linked together. Some of the parts develop in a line by themselves before a group comes together to make something whole and important. Hopefully this does not get me too many comments about tortured English. In any case, it should communicate what are some pretty novel ideas. It is the work of many years and some things that were just possibilities at the beginning are now common knowledge and technology, especially in the field of genetics. In that time, the main point of the genetics in the book has gone from being a theory to being fairly established. The ultimate conclusions are still certainly a ways off, but the potentials described are amazing. Note that the parts (even the sentences) of this book are written mostly backwards from how it was developed. It just seems how I write my thoughts. Intuition creates conclusions before the conscious train of thought is developed into words. It makes for a lot of work. 1. Introduction This book includes an analysis of: Human Ecology Human Genetics Human Survival Strategies, known as Moralities Humans and Religion The sections of this book are: 1. The Summary of Human Ecology is about human ecology and genetics as they are and how they came to be that way through “Pre-history” and “History”. It is the basic foundation of the book. 2. An Examination of the problems of genetics and disease. The solutions include genetic and behavioral adaptation including artificial selection and a conscious adjustment to the problem. This talks about the reasons, methods and morality of survival including reason and faith. It also covers the important issue of racism, what Darlington called the Third Forbidden Question of Science. 3. An examination of various survival strategies and moral issues such as genetics, contracts, philosophies, family, cooperation, status, war, etc. 4. An examination of short and long term ecological potentials that are some of the possible futures of humanity. There was something quite remarkable I stumbled upon. Darlington would have called it the Fourth Forbidden Subject of Science if he had described it and is extremely intriguing let alone controversial. It discusses what some human potentials may ultimately be. We might have improved technology, genetics and philosophies in 10,000 years, but that is not necessarily a stable ecology. Those develop over a long time and can last a long time. In school I once argued that evolution is always away from something, not towards something, but that may not be entirely so. It may be that we evolve away from selective effects, but towards niches. * * * There are two kinds of truth, the truth of the heart and the truth of the head. If a truth satisfies both the intellect and emotion, you will believe it is Truth. This is written to convince both. Everyone knows that the world is changing. We are heading into the unknown and anyone aware of it must know some hope and some fear. We know a little bit about where we have come from. We certainly don’t know where we are going let alone the path to get there. This book is to describe one view of humans surviving into the future based on a biological analysis of the problem. It is based on the question of how can humans again achieve a stable ecology. We will not survive if we do not. Putting it in the context of ecology allows one to use many of the tools of science to analyze and describe the problem. The perspective it offers is a new view of humans and is very illuminating. Humans will have to adapt by learning new survival methods and habits. Humans will also have to adapt genetically. The amazing thing is that the potentials are far greater than you might expect. Humans can easily become far more than most people would imagine. They will have to. Unfortunately, balanced against that great potential will be the need to adapt a great deal, rapidly. There are some great dangers coming, including disease, that humans are going to be very vulnerable to. If humans want to live as and be more than animals, they are going to have to think and act as more than animals. They will enter a new ecological niche.
2. This Book Is Many Things – A Moral Philosophy This book is based on science, but it must be far more. Science is about what is known. This is about the unknown and possibly about some of the unknowable. This asks what is good, what is bad and what is important. This must address the questions of Who Am I, Why Am I Here and What Can I Become. It is about survival, so it is about morality, the methods of survival. Still, ultimately it must be more. Not only the process of survival, but a theoretical description of survival such that questions of survival fit into the framework of understanding that this is to convey. This must consider why to survive and what will survival lead to. So more than any moral system of survival, this is a Moral Philosophy. Originally, I asked “why is that person different from me”? But then I was trained as a biologist and I put the question in another form. I then asked “how could humans again achieve a relatively stable ecology that we can survive in”? I asked that first question over three decades ago. What I found since then might amaze you. Shortly after I started this examination, I did a survey with the hypothesis that people would have deep survival instincts. To a biologist, this makes sense. In a way it seems obvious, but the examination was revealing. Since then I have repeatedly delved into people’s values to examine this. Regardless of age or training, it seems that this is a correct. It even supersedes religion, including that of fundamentalists. That is not to suggest that religion does not promote survival, but independent of that, when you get people to articulate their deepest values, they lead very simply and directly to evolutionary survival. Not surprisingly, this gets more developed as they become parents. While this might seem obvious, it is important to this book, because it is the foundation premise of this book. While most of the foundation of this book is science, science does not explain why one should survive and have families with the entire attendant struggle it requires. That is partly an instinct and becomes important later in the book as it progresses past science to reason and logic, where this premise is needed. Part of this book includes a description of the development of an ongoing Moral Philosophy based on Survival. Moral is defined as that which is good. So here, survival of humans in a long term sense is defined as good. There are a number of well-known moral philosophies based on a number of different premises and ideas, but if you research them you will not find any that include a foundation of science. Science was just not well enough developed yet. This description of a Moral Philosophy is based on human survival and biology. It is written as a description of human genetics and beliefs in the context of major challenges to human existence. Most moral philosophies are based on rather limited foundations. That does not mean that they are wrong, it means that they are based on limited supports from history or with limited supports of reason and detail. They all have to promote survival or they would not exist. The problem is that moral teachings have always been based on authority and precedence, but in this skeptical time, must be based on reason and understanding. The pieces of that have just not been available until recently. This philosophy is based on a broad foundation of biological sciences, humanities, reason and an understanding of existing moralities. This book is also based on examination many aspects of traditional, historical and sometimes obscure survival strategies. Existing moralities are considered in terms of how they promote survival. It is not about any one Moral System. Humans are diverse and it must allow for many different ways to live and an ongoing discovery of how to live. The purpose is to categorize and describe methods of survival and their consequences. Some might object that morality must be based on religious teachings. A surprising conclusion, surprising to me anyway, is that an analytic view of survival has a great deal to say about religion. They do have the same purpose, human survival and aspiration. The study shows a great deal of coincidence or perhaps more than coincidence, but that is for the end of the book. An interesting and very significant problem about morality showed up very early in this examination. Morality is often about making difficult decisions. Doing right is not always easy. We not only have a promiscuous genetic environment because of medical science, our wealth often allows humans to avoid making difficult moral decisions. About the time in the 70’s when I was studying the idea of Self Actualization by Abraham Maslow and Behavioral Releases as discussed by Conrad Lorenz, I wondered how this could be achieved by humans. I met many intelligent people, but I met far fewer who had had the experiences that released the behavior. Education is part of it, but there is far more. Maslow talked about the great potential for of psychological development that he called Self Actualization. I tended to simply summarize all these potentials by calling them Self Awareness. It is when a person has developed their psychological potentials. Early on I saw it as a problem. Challenges are what release it. I asked “how could you develop a person’s self awareness without endangering their lives”. More than 30 years later, I see that there is a potential answer, virtual reality. The potentials of virtual reality for teaching morality and bringing out human psychological potentials is just amazing. Like all science, this is to explain something. As a philosophy, I’ll call it Anthropedia, a collection of knowledge about humans. It is about heredity and genetics, morality and philosophy, but most of all it is about survival. It is meant to be a living and growing body of knowledge. While it is true that the skeleton of this book is biology, its source is inspiration, just like so much of what is human. Its muscle is intellect, but its strength is based on humanity’s faith in itself. At its heart is love, which is so important to human survival. The problem is that humans are already in the crisis that threatens our survival, so this must be more than a collection of information. It must be an analysis of what we face and what we can do about it. As said before, though the dangers are great, the potentials are far greater. First though, a word about heredity 3. Sometimes, context is everything. Heredity. Heredity has been called the Third Forbidden Subject in science. All to often science has been used as a reason for racism. Notions of race has led to wars and in particular, Social Darwinism was much of the cause of WWII. As such, the study of heredity and race are special fields in science and often seem to be discouraged to avoid racism and instead provide for accomodation. This varnishing of the truth has been bad for science and people, though the alternative may have been worse. The view of this book completely avoids that and quite the contrary is based on the belief that human variation is the wealth of humanity. All this variation will be necessary to be able to adapt to the future. It's not that Social Darwinism was so wrong, it just isn't how history usually played out and it will be far different in the future. I’ve worked on this book for so many years and have always been amazed that no one else had already written it. Sure it’s a bit complicated, but it is obvious in so many ways. Well, I found out the explanation of why that is so. It was written by C. D. Darlington, the great British Geneticist whom I borrow a lot from in this book. It explains a lot and puts this book in context. It also defines a critical requirement I have to fulfill in this book. It has to do with what he referred to as the Three Great Lies of Science or perhaps more appropriate here, the Three Forbidden Questions of Science. Darlington said that there were three great lies in science. These three topics were taboo and would get you driven from science if you discussed them. He said that perpetuating these lies distorted all of science and the human beliefs that come from them. Since these lies are about humans, this has placed a limit on what humans can understand and distorts our values, including values critical to survival. The consequences and dangers of this distortion cannot be underestimated. The first lie was about humans being animals, something that Darwin and Huxley finally challenged. The second lie was about human sexuality. This held sway until at least the 1930’s before it could be examined in academia without punishment (Such as The Kinsey Report). The third lie is about human heredity. For many reasons, but mostly accommodation, the peoples and nations have decided to ignore the differences between races, tribes, peoples, even men and women. This distorts the views of humanity that we are able to make. It is a huge limitation upon us, but in hindsight, perhaps this is good. Racial interactions appear to be a rather rough sort of win-lose proposition referred to as Social Darwinism. The gain of one comes from the loss of another’s. So we are locked in this struggle of denial, even as the genetic researchers find, one after another, genes that influence every aspect of human existence, especially behavior. As this book is to explain, there are circumstances that can remove the problem of racial conflict implicit in this kind of racial recognition. Not only can we admit to the differences, but we must to survive. Understanding the main concept of this book makes chauvinistic racism mostly meaningless. The message of this book must be understood, because it includes an understanding of heredity and race that we will need for survival as well as some astonishing potentials beyond survival. I did not know about those taboos, so I studied human nature and genetic differences. I learned how the genes fit in to what we are and what that means. I studied this in the context of trying to figure out how humans could create a stable ecology. This is not about saving the environment, though that will likely be an important part of it. This is about creating a stable human ecology that humans can survive and grow in. We mostly have not had one in thousands of years and by definition, that is a dangerous place for any specie to be. We have to find a new way we can survive. We have to make the transition to a new ecology. This is the basis of this book from beginning to end. To offer a useful description of human heredity, it must be described in three ways. First it must be described in terms of genetics, science and reason. Second, it is about basic survival so it must be communicated in terms of emotion and morality. Finally, it must offer a different result than what has been offered by ‘Social Darwinism’. This cannot be a science in a moral vacuum. The issue of races must be clearly addressed in a way that leads to something of benefit for all, not conflict. Realize that this issue of Social Darwinism was recognized and considered within a few decades of Darwin's publication of Origin of the Species. The version that was popular in northern Europe was about competition between races and led to Nazism and Fascism. Another version was Marxism that talked about it in terms of competition between economic systems. Another version was about competition at market level which ended up describing humans as replaceable widgets in a company. None of these reflect the aspirations or moral instincts of humans. Note that the arguments for Social Darwinism and chauvinistic racism are not illogical, inherently false or even unnatural. It is new factors that are a bit more complicated, that change the situation. Those old arguments get superseded and their results would waste incredible opportunities, let alone perhaps preclude long term human survival. These new factors have to do with issues of disease and genetics, but are described in terms of morality and survival. As a later note, the recent around the world studies of the genetic makeup of individuals such as by National Geographic are showing that appearances of race may be quite deceiving. Racial genetics are distributed far and wide and show up in unexpected places. This is another factor that argues against racial conflict. There are consequences to this. This extreme distortion of truth has caused extreme distortions in society. There are many places that this is important, but consider just two. The first relates to children and the second relates to religion. In both cases, the denial of the importance and uniqueness of individual human genetics and the inherent value of heredity has lowered the value of the individual. I think this has also lowered the perceived value of children and has contributed to the decline in child raising and its value in Western culture that has been educated with these incomplete premises. The second result of the reduction in individual worth has been the relative increase in the perceived magical worth of religion, which represents a different value. Religion is a road, not a destination. It’s about human survival, not magic. We have not ascribed individuality and individual worth in terms of genetics, so we seem only aware of a sort of mystical nature and worth. This has all contributed to a very short-term point of view in everything we do. That is besides all other the mis-formed ideologically based social, educational, political, etc. policies and philosophical views created based on this faulty information. Then again, the alternative may have been racial wars. Of course you might not think that there are still forbidden questions in science. How could it even be done? How could there be such a conspiracy and how could it work? How could this important knowledge be expunged from academia? It’s very simple. If someone wants to examine heredity, they are simply called a racist or perhaps a Nazi. These days that will cause academic and social ostracism. I suspect that in Darwin’s day, someone studying life as separate from God’s creation was simply called an atheist. Today, it doesn’t matter if one honestly and for the benefit of humans, studies heredity and race; they are simply labeled a racist and rejected. There is no distinction made between a student of heredity and a chauvinistic or jingoistic racist. Realize that though this study finds that what is thought of as racism is becoming meaningless and will become more dangerous to survival as time goes on, a common reaction to it may be a knee jerk reaction that this is just a racist document and so by definition is evil. Heredity is still a forbidden topic, but it must be examined. We are lucky that not only is there an alternative to Social Darwinism, but that the alternative shows how and why each race should be glad the others exist and can contribute to all humanity’s survival. If someone tells you that the study of heredity is racism, understand that it is just a thoughtless reaction that they were trained to give. The reason that heredity must be understood and examined is that much of the key to human survival is in our genes. Technology gives us new knowledge of our genes daily, but if we do cannot put that knowledge in a moral context, we will not be able to use it. Then once this issue of heredity is understood, when we have a more realistic understanding of humans, perhaps we can approach the ‘Fourth Forbidden Topic In Science’. That is considered further along. 4. The Start of the Transition This describes humans and previous human ecologies. It describes that hunter/gather/scavenger neo-lithics developed agriculture and herding that allowed more complex societies, including cities and nations, to develop. In these city societies, the ancient caste systems of these peoples reveal human nature as farmers, craftsmen, scribes, warriors, priests and ruling caste. This discusses how culture and peoples were perpetuated and organized by religion and political bodies. These organizations allowed the development of philosophies, science and art. We had left our previous ecology behind. We must find a new ecology. Since humans created agriculture, animal husbandry and cities, we have lived in a fundamentally changing ecology that is not stable and that we are not adapted to. So this book is formed about how we can again achieve a stable ecology that we are adapted to. Some of that is about what we will require in an ecology and part of it is about what humans will have to do to adapt genetically and behaviorally to survive the Transition to this new ecology. A good question to start with is what is meant by the terms ecology and niche. A niche is a particular ecology that a specie survives in. The term climax herbivore can be applied to a number of species, but it describes their resource strategy and much of their niche. Ecology is a science that describes an organism in its environment, particularly its resource utilization and what it does with its resources, reproduction. A stable ecology is one where the resources used by the specie don’t change much over time and the reproductive rate stays stable too. If the species’ resource strategy changes greatly, they have left their previous niche. They must find a new niche that they can survive in. Humans have left their old long term niche and as they have developed their resource strategies, they have traveled through transient ecologies from one temporary niche to another. Humans must find a stable, long term niche and ecology to survive in or they will not survive long. What is called a moral system is a biological survival strategy. Fortunately, an analysis of human ecology and technology suggests that we have most of the components we will require to create a long term stable ecology. We are mostly missing an adequate energy source and some technical skills. Unfortunately, the same analysis shows that we are in extreme danger and that we have a great deal of both genetic and behavioral adaptation we must accomplish regardless of the material resources we have available. Luckily, all the pieces are in place for not just survival, but also great development. Currently, humans are very like they have been for all their history. We are very limited and basically tribalists. Still, we have developed new philosophies and understandings. Also, the changing ecology has created new selective pressures and new potentials that have already caused extremely rapid genetic adaptation and evolution. The first problem is that much of what we call human progress, especially medicine, have come to act to negate natural selection. This will naturally lead to a genetic disaster and it is not as far off as you might think. In that, humans face their most basic challenge to surviving as more than animals. This is what the first part of the book is about. Humans are not only their genes and instincts. The mark of a human is that we survive by what we know and believe. We survive by the use of learned survival strategies that are Moralities. This is the second problem we must solve and the second part of the book. The question is do we have or can we develop a survival strategy and method, or morality, that will allow us to survive into the future ecologies. It seems that we do have at least one existing morality that has the foundation of what we need. The problem is that most existing moralities, most of which are known as religions, are based on precedence and authority. For many reasons, in the future, moralities will also have to be based on logic and reason or they will not be used. Describing the reason and logic of morality has required a lot of analysis and work. Just as humans use logic and reason to verify truth, humans have ways to verify moralities. I try to tell people what they already know, but have never been able to put into words. Here are the words. Many people, especially when young, feel that there is a better way for humanity to act and survive. Many people have looked for these same answers in many places, especially religion. Religions can provide many answers about how a person can live, but no explanations about why and what the goal is. If you are a person who needs explanations, you will need to look further. Science is a great tool for developing an understanding of the unknown. Unfortunately, the question of how humans can survive, is incredibly complicated and little science about it has been developed that can apply to principles of survival or goals. Many people have devoted their lives to trying to figure it out though and we can stand on their shoulders. The basic concepts behind how genetics work are quite recent and have not been integrated with the rest of human knowledge. What would it look like if religion was compared to our scientific knowledge of life and survival? What would it look like if our scientific knowledge of life and survival was compared to our religion? Understand, this exploration took the path of science rather than the path of religion, but because it is a view of morality, where it ended up would look very familiar to any person of faith. How familiar is for you to decide, but I did the same thing that so many people have done when they wanted to understand more than what they were taught as children. I expect that all of this is supposed to sound familiar, because it is something that you have thought of before, but have not been able to put into words or make complete. I’ll tell you up front that much of what we need to know about human survival relates to what makes us human, morality and genetics. Most of the rest of the required information has already been well explored. Remember that when all is said and done about genetics and morality, this started as a question of how humans could survive the problem of disease. Trying to solve that, led to recognition of the problems and amazing potentials of human genetics. Numerically, the population density of civil populations is the biggest change in human ecology. The next biggest is antibiotics. Both of those change the effect of disease, one of the main selective factors effecting humans and present out biggest immediate challenge. The equation is simple. The increased population density and increased population numbers of the city ecology, equals massively increased vectors for the spread of disease. Human memory may not be long enough to remember, but civil humans have always been ruled by disease. That has not changed, but must. We will adapt behaviorally and genetically. The equation of humans is dominated by the high investment of raising children. This has increased with our technology. We cannot afford to pay the price of disease, because it is our very lives and the lives of our children. 5. Ecology Changes This chapter looks at various aspects of human existence to illustrate how radically human ecology has changed. It frames these changes in terms of ecology so that they can be analyzed using the tools of science. It frames the issues in terms of the foundations of ecology, energetics and reproduction. It takes a general view of what a species will require in any ecology it enters. It particularly looks at problems that huamns will face such as the results of what we call "human progress" that includes the human habit of removing selective effect, particularly disease. This book is written to examine changes in human ecology that will present basic challenges to human survival. Two items are primarily considered. These are the specific effect of medicine and the general effect of the massive changes in human ecology. There are important and fascinating implications illuminated by examination of these two effects. Much of recent human progress has sometimes been defined as lengthening the average human life expectancy. The biggest cause of this has been advances in medicine, especially antibiotics. The importance of this change is illustrated by the fact that it used to be that as many as 3 out of 5 people died of disease before maturity. Disease is a general selective effect that will select on any weak link in an individual’s health. At the same time, there has been an ongoing problem of overpopulation, even with the effect of disease. While disease has come and gone, wasting human resource, overpopulation has still occurred leading to harsh moral and social results. While disease seems to be the most important single change in human ecology, it is certainly not the only change. For that matter, almost everything about human ecology has changed from the last ecology that humans were truly well adapted to. We don’t eat what we used to eat. We don’t get our food the same way we used to. We don’t live where or how we used to. Our social structure and habits have changed. Our requirements for education are very different. There is probably only one good way to deal with the dangerous long term results of removing the selective effects of disease. That is artificial selection. That method could probably solve most of the other physical problems that arise from the rest of the massive changes in human ecology, though disease will be difficult. Another problem will arise from the changes in human ecology and from using artificial selection to solve them, but it is more of a philosophical issue. We will need new and better moral systems. Luckily, humans have already developed many moral systems and methods. Using some of what is already currently available should provide most of what we will need to survive and thrive in a post tribal ecology. The solutions must be understood, but they should be quite workable and will be very natural to us. Just about every aspect of human ecology has changed and is continuing to change. If this is primarily to examine how humans can develop a relatively long term stable ecology to survive in, features of transitional ecologies that we have passed or will pass through on the way must be examined, such as terrace farming (an interesting non-soil depleting, potentially stable ecology). Ecology is defined as how a specie conducts its energetic and reproductive strategies. For various reasons, this paper includes beliefs as a basic element of human ecology. They are tools of survival as much as a flint knife. Currently, the only ecology that humans could be said to be well adapted to is the so called tribal hunter-gatherer ecology that we lived in and adapted to over the past six million years. In that ecology we developed survival strategies based on bipedalism, tool making and social abilities including cooperation, communication and intelligence, many of which were adaptations to cooperative hunting and warfare. These are topics that the Anthropologists debate endlessly and so are not closely examined here, but they are basic to this study and have been carefully considered. The most obvious thing that propelled humans into a new ecology was the domestication of various animals and plants. A thorough examination of these changes would take a great deal of space and so are expanded upon in later sections. In our present ecology, many new selective effects and pressures have appeared and few selective effects have lessened or disappeared. Demands on social skills have increased. Our tool using potentials have greatly expanded. Only our needs for hunting skills have reduced, and they are now often being used for different purposes. It is the communication and cooperative skills developed for hunting that allow humans to act together so powerfully as a team. Those skills have also served in warfare. Here then is the first point of this chapter. Humans have existed in agriculture based societies for something near 10,000 years. All through that time, there have been two primary factors that dominate the challenge of survival. The first is social behaviors, described as cooperation, communication and intelligence. The second is disease. The importance of disease is that it becomes more of a problem as population goes up. There are just more people to spread it and there are just more people to catch something from. High density populations need better resistance to disease to survive. The ecology that we are heading towards, disease allowing, is a civil or city ecology. This ecology will further demand greater social skills, including cooperation, communication and intelligence, as well as increased resistance to disease. It already demands a greater basic survival instinct as well. 6. C. D. Darlington - The Evolution of Man and Society This chapter discusses the work of the British geneticist C. D. Darlington who described much about human genetics, but particularly about the history and results of tribes coming together through hybridization. This is what humans are looking at. This is what hummns are doing and going to do in the future. It offers great advantages, but there is a problem, there is a cost. At this point, certain features of human nature and civil history must be examined. This part comes from the work of the British geneticist C.D. Darlington, who did a fantastic examination of human nature in the context of history. He described how tribes came together to create cities and how the tribes genetically came together to produce vibrant hybridized offspring that have propelled the development of human society. His discussion of Western Culture tells how the tribes came together to create the first cities of Sumaria. The tribes lived together, but because of religion, they mostly stayed reproductively separate, as different tribally based occupational castes such as peasants, craftsmen, priests and scribes. That was the social structure of the first cities. Then the Sumarians were conquered by the Semites, Sargon the Great, and a warrior ruling caste was added to the civil social structure, something that has basically remained until the present. Later this civilization was conquered by a new Indo-European ruling class usually known as the Greeks, Eutustrians and Romans. This occupationally specialized caste based civilization expanded across the western world. It is important note that they encountered, conquered and absorbed the Celtic culture on the way. Darlington describes how the Celts added an important dynamic to the western civilization. His book is a description of the ethnic and political development of the cities. The other thing that Darlington described was the effects of these tribes mixing. Normally, there were social institutions such as religion that kept the tribes from mixing, but there was a constant natural rate of mixing as well as the wholesale effects of slavery and war. Sometimes the political or priestly classes would actually purposely merge their different tribes. This mixing or hybridization of the tribes was of overwhelming importance to the development of western civilization and all world civilizations for that matter. Loosely speaking, it gave the abilities of both parents to their children. This is extremely important, because it is how people adapted to a hunter-gatherer ecology could adapt to this new agricultural and civil ecology. Evolution is defined as a change in gene frequency. Usually it is described as a change resulting from a mutation appearing and becoming widespread. This then links the rate of evolution to the rate of mutation. It isn’t so. If there was never another mutation in humans, there is so much diversity that there could be incredible changes in the overall frequency of the genes making up the human gene pool. In the time period since the domestication of plants and animals, there have been only a relatively few mutations, but in that same time period, there has been a terrific change in the distribution of human genetics. Small tribes have become huge and spread out all over the world. Many other tribes have vanished and many tribes have merged into one. Humans have changed and evolved greatly in recent history. 7. Human Genetics This chapter lists the main problems face in the future having to do with disease and genetic deterioration. Disease used to be the biggest selective effect, but has been temporarily defeated by medicine. It is coming back though and is likely to be worse than ever because of increased populations and travel. At the same time, disease works as something of a general selective effect, selecting against any weak links in a person's health, such as those introduced by mutations, particularly mutations that occur during mieosis. Unfortuantely the cost equation of this genetic deterioration and the traditional cost of disease are too high to sustain in a technological society. As such we will have to introduce some form of artificial selection, primarily pre-implantation diagnosis (PNG), that will not cause a moral crisis, but will replace natural selection. 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. During the time of the cities and very often before the cities, the biggest selective effect on humans was disease. Sometimes disease killed 60 percent of the population before they had children. That is a huge effect. Now with antibiotics and other modern medical practices, that effect is lowered such that it is no longer the primary selective effect on humans. There are other things that have changed what have always been important selective effects on humans, though not quite as much as medicine. Really, these are all parts of what was earlier referred to as the massive changes in human ecology, but still, recent medical developments are the single biggest factor that has changed, in terms of human selection and evolution. Also, disease is a unique selective effect in that works as a general selective effect, removing weaknesses in the overall genome. Disease could cause death by breaking the genetic weak links that otherwise might never show. 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. Unfortunately it will make disease less functional as a targeting selective effect. Mortality will be less related to the genetic nature of the individual and more based on luck of encountering the disease. Human progress has often been measured in terms of the removal of things that cause death or natural selection, as it is called in biology. Unfortunately, it is natural selection that causes evolution and the lack of natural selection will cause a natural deterioration of human genes that is relatively the opposite of recent evolution. This deterioration will first effect the genes that have most recently been selected for, including those traits that have allowed humans to create civilization. There are a few factors that promote natural genetic deterioration. Mutations are random events and so almost none of them are improvements. A mutation is when any part of a gene (the amino acids that make up the gene) changes randomly due to radiation, chemicals, age or any other natural or unnatural cause. Actually, being random events, most mutations are a bad thing that makes the genes they occur in, either fail to function or function poorly. These are normally removed by natural selection. Some rare mutations are good and so are not selected against. They are actually selected for because of their beneficial effects. These are what allow species to evolve and survive. When the genes in any individual have mutated such that they do not function properly, it is called genetic load. In humans, because we are such a diverse specie, there is another factor, besides mutations, that causes genetic load. This is when the genes undergo “recombination” before eggs or sperm are created in the parents. It is a problem that is increased by natural hybridization. When two species or in the case of humans, when two tribes intermingle or hybridize, the first generation of offspring, called the F1 generation in biology, tends to be healthier and stronger than the parents (called the P1 generation in biology). The first generation of children (F1) often seems to have the best traits of both parents and so is stronger than either parent. Unfortunately, the following generations (F2, F3 ...), are not as healthy as the first generation of children (F1). Not only that, they are often not as strong or as healthy as the Parents (P1) generation. This is because when recombination occurs, the genes don’t fit together again perfectly. Also at recombination, another event can happen. A sequence of amino acids that make up a gene or genome can have a major breakage and make the gene completely fail to function right. That can happen even without hybridization and can really cause problems. Current human practices are causing a great deal of genetic load while at the same time human progress is the process of removing the natural selective effects that would prevent individuals with broken genes from having children and passing on their genes. If the problem was just genetic load from random mutation, the problem would develop slowly. With genetic load also being created at recombination, it will become a problem sooner, much sooner, as in the space of a few generations. I propose a solution that turns out to be very optimistic and elegant. Work these together 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 fewer 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 fewer children, more of whom survive. The problem is that the human genome has a number of problems. Genes naturally deteriorate from generation to generation. As we age, we accumulate mutations in our gametes. 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 first part of this book describing how humans can survive is based on how we can deal with the problems related to 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. That model is used because it presents the fewest moral hazards. 7a. This describes the three levels of artificial selection. Selection against broken or "bad" genes, selection for good "integral" traites and selection for the stable hybrid that has the potentials of "both" parents. This also covers Darlington's discussion of the history of racial hybridization in the West. It explains why in terms of artificial selection, racism is such a bad idea. In terms of artificial seelction, instead of looking at another tribe as a competitor, you are looking at them as a source of genetic traits. * * * 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. According to Darlington, 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. All Western civil peoples inherited abilities necessary for civil living from the Sumerians. 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. While the first hybrid generation tends to be stronger, 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 “parental” tribal groups. It all gets pretty complicated and is explained more 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. 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 to different races for genetic potentials that it does not have. Racism becomes a very different issue and the racial issues become win-win. Individuals would look at other races as having genes that they want while being able to retain their own. This point offers long term hope for humans, the great variety from the 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. * * * * * * * * * In “The Evolution of Man and Society”, C.D.Darlington describes human genetics through history and explains the significance of hybridization. It is the primary way that humans have evolved since the beginnings of the cities and maybe before. His work makes the obvious point that race is more a political or even cultural term than a biological one. The more accurate description of how humans genetically vary is “tribe”, but eventually it always comes down to the individual. The first part this book is mostly a technical discussion of human ecology and genetics derived from his work. It discusses a lot of history of natural hybridization and its consequences. According to Darlington, historically racism was a caste system. There were different tribes/societies living together, but occupationally specialized and separate. Religion prevented intermarriage and perpetuated each society. I have to say that though this is accurate, it is rather of context. Racial issues are an implication of my work, but are not the main point. Here are some points that relate to how this work relates to racism in the context of hybridization. The downside of hybridization is that the first generation (F1) of hybrids is “superior” to the parent generation (P). After that, the next generations (F2...) are likely to be “inferior” to the parental generation. In history, natural selection has taken care of this and selected for the superior, stable hybrids. That has been human progress. Realize, humans instinctively know this and so know why, under present conditions of natural selection conditions, the races/tribes cannot be easily merged. This study says that it can be done using artificial selection. All races will develop a genetic load. It was already described how we can introduce pre-implantation selection so that the hybrids are consistently equal or “superior” to the previous generations. It also says why we must. It also includes a description of how and why people can come together and why they have not in the past. There are good and simple reasons why the tribes have stayed apart in the past, but don’t have to in the future. It says that present concepts of inferiority or superiority take on entirely different meanings, such that differences between races and tribes can be discussed rationally and without animosity. There are lots of implications to this. Not only could the races mix, but there would now be advantages to it. Humans could no longer think in terms of “inferior” or “superior” and the natural problems of hybridization, they would think in terms of “what genes do you have that I don’t and could use”. While it is a statement about genetics, it will effect beliefs all through society. Not only that, but as far as I have been able to test, the idea is a natural one that does not conflict with instinct. If you use artificial selection, other potentials open up. The disaster of genetic load can be prevented, but it is best to look at this in these terms. a. The first potential is that we could remove most genetic diseases and genetic based weaknesses... genetic load. b. The second potential is that we could increase the frequency of “superior” traits. Everyone could have health, beauty and brains. c. The third potential is that the human race could become “post tribal”. Racism would be meaningless. Individuals would have the best genetic potentials of the different present races. These statements are both simple and complex. Still, it really starts as a needed solution to an ongoing problem. Secondarily is how it could effect humans so as to change a number of other problems and make them go away, racism included. As far as racism, this view gives short term hope and a long term solution. It’s not about good intentions. It’s about survival. Much of the basis of this study relates to a look at what would be called Western Culture, but the conclusions apply to all races. What we call Western civilization is descended primarily from four tribal groups, Sumerians, Semites, Indo Europeans and Celts. What happened to them and how they came together, says much about how modern racial issues can ultimately be resolved. This does not depend on wishful thinking or better human nature; instead it relies on human self-interest. C.D. Darlington described how the tribes and races came together that created what is called the Western Peoples. This study will have to be repeated for all the peoples of the world. If you compare human genetics to the genetics of a specie like cheetahs, it can point to different levels to of selection. Cheetahs are a very non-diverse species as opposed to humans, which are about the most diverse animal specie of all. There are great limitations to what artificial selection could easily do for cheetahs. With human diversity the potentials are enormous. Earlier is a complete discussion why that is important and how it relates to what is happening to human genetics. What we don’t know or is different, we tend to fear. What we fear, we tend to hate. In natural conditions, it is hard for the races to intermingle. Races differ. Some are stronger and some are weaker. Instinctively, humans know the consequences of this and they are dire enough that they can never be admitted. The consequence is the eventual demise of the “inferior” race(s). This is referred to as Social Darwinism and under present circumstances this is truth, for that reason, that fact often cannot be admitted. I can say it though, because I know a way out. My work says how to change this equation through hybridization using artificial selection. This will be a win win situation for everybody. All races have superior components that can be of benefit to other races. This paper rarely touches on any topic that sounds like “inferior” or “superior”, but a person must understand their strengths and admit their weaknesses before they can do anything with them. Before, nothing could be done. This tells how individuals, families, tribes and races can now improve themselves by husbanding their existing genetic strengths as well as gaining new potentials. If they don’t want to, they will not survive and others will. I can talk race to people because I know the truth, tell it and know what optimistic potentials there are. Think of what the racial issue would look like if a person were looking at other races and thinking about what genes they might have to offer. Then again I think it was Mark Twain that said that if one morning, we all woke up the same; we would have our new prejudices in place by the afternoon. That may not be entirely true. With a bit more intelligence and some new understandings, we may become a single, great people. * * * * * * * * * David Brin made a great statement about memes in his book ‘Otherness’. He said that there seemed to be five memes that reflected 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 excellent. His description of the first four seemed so familiar. 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. This would be a common meme to people looking at what genes other peoples had to offer them. He was thinking more along the lines of memes, but it would also apply to genes. It’s sort of like an automobile. They were first highly 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. It will be hard to do a lot initially to improve the health of an already healthy person, but it will be far easier to improve the health of a person who is not healthy. ... A massage feels best when you hurt. 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. It seems it was ocurring in North America as well. 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? 9. Artificial Selection and Morality Introduction to artificial selection methods and its morality in terms of the family. a. Selection against broken, defective, innefective or "bad" genes. b. Selection for "good" genes. Increasing health, beauty and brains. c. The hybrid problems and potentials. d. Other genetic engineering potentials. Artificial selection is judged as moral because it is about healthy children, healthy families, healthy communities, healthy people and survival. It is discussed in terms of religious morality towards the end of the book. It is moral in those terms as well. Basically, the problem is that humans work to remove selective effects and somehow a selective effect must be replaced. The only way to introduce a selective effect that can work and that will not be tragic or risk destroying the moral basis of the society, is to do pre-implantation artificial selection. The idea is along the line of when parents decide to have children; they take number of eggs (perhaps 100) from the mother which are then fertilized by the father. From these, the best, healthiest, strongest or whatever you want to call it, are selected to be brought to term. Survival is the ultimate conservatism. Changes in how we have survived to the present are inherently dangerous and should never be done without good reason, but recent changes in human ecology require some careful changes in our methods of survival. In most people, the term Artificial Selection tends to bring to mind Nazis, eugenics and racism. In this case, I will describe it in terms of healthy children, healthy families, equality and a complete end to racism. I will further describe it as the only good chance for humans to survive into a bright future. The alternative is horrifyingly stark. This is when the issue becomes a question of morality. Of course then, one might want to ask what morality is. Morality is what is right. This describes a morality where right is based on human survival. Most animals use instincts to form the behaviors that allow them to survive. Humans on the other hand, learn strategies and techniques that allow them to survive. These strategies and techniques are called moralities. The mark of a human is that they use moralities instead of just instincts to survive. Humans still use instincts and they are quite important, but without moralities, we are just animals and also wouldn’t know how to survive in the present world. Because it is difficult and takes a long time for human children to learn moralities, one of the basic strategies of human survival has been the institution of the family to teach children the moralities that worked for the parents. It is sort of a circular logic. If it didn’t work for the parents, they don’t teach it to the children, but then, that is how evolution works. It is about survival of the survivors. This essay is meant to be a summary of a very long complicated analysis of a lot of things related to how humans can survive the recent and ongoing changes in human ecology. As a summary, almost all discussion and argument have been skipped over here so as to present the important ideas and concepts. Longer analysis and discussion are available in the verbose notes elsewhere (on the web site). In the case of artificial selection, some of the reasoning and argument must be presented here. It turns out that there are far more implications than might be initially expected. The first issue that must be addressed is how does the selection get made about which of the fertilized embryos gets to grow. The best embryos are generally the ones that have the most and best traits of both parents. It can be more complicated than that for a lot of reasons, including that not all traits will go together best or the parents might be looking at a multi-generation strategy, but in most simple cases, the best (you can even call it superior) embryos are the ones that have the most traits that the parents value in themselves and their mates, without observable breakages. In view of present technology, the genes of an embryo can not be examined before the embryo is at the gastrula stage of a number cells, when some cells are sloughed off. Before this, it is likely that the embryo could be harmed. Artificial wombs present an important issue mentioned elsewhere. The second issue to address is always a question of why use artificial selection at all? Even aside from the reasons caused by the changes in the ecology, I usually point out that that is a question asked by healthy intelligent people. A person with inheritable diabetes, heart disease, mental problems etc., knows the answer to that question. There are at least three views of the potentials of artificial selection that must be examined. These are: selection against broken or bad genes, selection for good genes and selection for the hybrid. In ways, views 2 and 3 are related. 9a. Reduction of Broken or Bad Genes There are two ways of looking at what the genes of an embryo indicate about the traits it has inherited from the parents. One way is too look at the individual amino acid sequences and figure out what they mean. Currently the technology for this is in its infant state, but is developing rapidly. There are other ways to look at genes that are much more feasible and are techniques that are already used, though they will certainly need to be refined. These methods are called banding patterns and fingerprinting. They look at the groups of amino acids as they fit together in genes. It is more a matter of looking at traits or genes, than it is looking at the sequences that make up the genes. This is good because this is the level of analysis needed to see the effects of recombination, if not individual mutations. Examining the genes (of the parents and the embryo) at that level would give information about what traits the embryo had inherited from both parents and if there were any noticeable breakages of the genes as they were inherited from the parents. It will take far more than we know now, but before long we could know what genes lead to what developments in the child. Then if a parent carried a hereditary weakness, if that parent’s gene was recognizable at that place in the embryo, it would indicate that the child would inherit that weakness. Contra wise, if the gene from the healthy parent appeared at that particular location, it would mean that a child would inherit the parent’s strengths. 9b. Increase of Health, Beauty and Brains All three of these views of artificial selection actually overlap some. Do one and by default, to some degree, you are doing the rest. I once read a book that spoke of a religious leader that went anonymously among the common people and asked, “what do you want”. The answer was that “I want my son to be taller than myself”. While that is a very limited thought, its simplicity reflects a profound truth that reaches to our instincts. The first case examined in looking at artificial selection was about removing broken traits, in-effective traits or traits that had a known bad effect. This second view is about increasing the frequency of genes that are known to make for beneficial (or superior) traits. Loosely speaking, these are referred to as health, beauty and brains. The meanings of these are not necessarily obvious. There are many forms of beauty. There is facial beauty, skin tone, a good figure and other forms of physical beauty. There are other forms such as a beautiful singing voice or gracefulness. Some interesting recent research suggests that facial beauty is related to a wide mix of genes. If so, it is an additive effect that would be enhanced by hybridization. The meaning of health can be many things. It can be strength, endurance, resistance to disease, healing ability, resistance to cold or heat, digestion, resistance to cancers, hearing, visual acuity and many other things. The meaning of brains is open to even more meanings. It includes many kinds of intelligence, memory, spatial analysis, patience, technical skills and many forms of mental stability. It also surely includes many things that we don’t understand presently, especially things related to emotions. In many cases, there will be more than one form of a trait that would be considered superior. Other times, there will be trade offs. The situation will be as variable as there are individuals, but it should be possible for children to be consistently more than their parents. It becomes a question of what do you respect the most about yourself or your mate? Wouldn’t you want to insure that your children inherited it? In natural situations, there is no guarantee that they will, but with artificial selection you might be able to. 9c. Hybridization The work of the great British geneticist C. D. Darlington shows that the progress of civilization has mirrored the progress of human genetic potentials. Further, those potentials mostly have arisen as a result of hybridization between the tribes. There are social structures like religion, caste and class that have inhibited hybridization, but it occurs naturally anyway and has been promoted by war and slavery. Hybridization leads to other problems though, but these have always been removed by natural selection, leaving the hybrids that were stronger and whose genetics were stable. Another potential of artificial selection would be to allow for selection for stable hybridization. This would allow further improvement of what humans are and allow us to be better adapted to the coming ecologies that we are creating. Really, humans are adapted most to an ecology that existed before cities, when we lived by hunting, gathering and scavenging. We are still far from adapted to even the present ecology, let alone what is coming. Another issue related to this is that humans are very tribal and act like it. One facet of this is racism. There are reasons that the tribes haven’t mixed. In a natural situation, mixing between tribes meant losing some of the traits of both. It is well known in biology that in cases of hybridization, the hybrid tends to be stronger than the parent, but the next generation is weaker. This is part of the reason tribes tend not to mix. To be able to artificially select for stable hybrids would remove most of the reasons for this. More than that, it would sort of reverse the situation. Instead if artificial selection was used, the traits of both tribes of the parents could be combined in the children. It would make people look at other races or tribes in a different way. The question would be “what traits do you have that I could add to mine”. Racism would become meaningless to most people for good reason. While this is certainly a form of eugenics, it is not based on the racism and jingoism that has all too often been the basis of some previous concepts of eugenics. There is no person that has no superior genes. Genes that work are the result of billions of years of evolution and if you exist, it means your ancestors never lost at the biological game. Artificial selection used this way would make for healthy families and healthy children. Some people are not going to want to do it. They may be healthy enough not to need to, but their children may decide otherwise. There are other considerations such as if almost everyone is extremely healthy, it might be that the handicapped are far less common and so might be more discriminated against. I think we can deal with problems like that. Also, unlike classical eugenics, this could benefit everyone, not just the “superior”. Actually, it would naturally offer the quickest and most benefit to those that have been called “inferior”. It would be easier to raise the quality of the most genetically limited than the most genetically gifted. Sure, there are ways to abuse it, but they are old ideas. There are also going to be stupid things done by people with strange ideas of what is superior, primarily militarists, but silly ideas are not likely to last much more than a generation and the society will have to be vigilant about families and groups that have schemes of domination. Various forms of gene therapy and genetic manipulation will also be developed as well that will be able to effect human genetics for the better, but that effect will be at a completely different level. Just as selective breeding is at a different level than artificial selection at the chromosomal level, gene therapy too operates at a different level. Most likely, laws will have to be very carefully crafted to prevent misuse of the technologies. Used wrong by governments, the results could be terrifying. It may not be a perfect solution, but it will probably be far safer to trust families and parents to make decisions about artificial selection than any government or disinterested agency. Like many new technologies, this is definitely has a potential for horrible misuse. That is the just the way the power of technology goes. Still, there is just about no way around it. Humans are entering such a completely new niche that it is not possible that we could be adapted to it. No race or tribe has what it will take to survive in the future. It will take all the potentials currently available to humanity and more. Racial issues were not the main focus of this study. This paper is really based around a particular consequence of medicine and other modern forces on natural selection. To do this though, required that a great deal of diverse information about humans must be collected and understood. Some of the issues covered, relate to racial issues. Humanity faces a larger problem, but the solution to that problem will ultimately solve current problems of racial relations. It can also offer some short term hope, something that has sometimes been missing from these issues. I had to accumulate a great deal of information to figure this all out. I will summarize a few of the important points. * * * Since this is the section on genetics, there is another very important topic that can be considered here, though it is important enough that it also touches on morality and other topics. It’s most basic part exists in genetics though. That is “status”. If you examine anthropology, you find that one of the most important factors to consider when studying human dynamics is status. Any consideration of humans must take that into account. It relates to how the society is organized as well as how individuals act and interact. Its importance is that your status determines who you have reproductive access to. You don’t get to marry the chief’s daughter if you are the low man in the village. For that matter, you weren’t going to get to even talk to her unless you are a great hunter and your family had high status and wealth. Then you might get to marry the chief’s daughter whether she wants to or not. This never changed with the rise of agriculture. In fact it increased and got formalized. Some groups even did conscious breeding which is not surprising considering their roots as herders. Status is a broad important subject that like others must be touched upon briefly with the assumption that some understanding of it is natural to most people that might be reading this. I have to depend on your understanding of the topic for reference rather, than get bogged down in lengthy explanations. As said elsewhere I just try to put into words what most people already know, but cannot well express. Status may come from many things including individual, family or tribe as well as skill. The other parts are various forms of material wealth. With a heightened awareness and knowledge of heredity, genetics would become a heightened aspect of class. You can be sure that this would have all kinds of strange results and manifestations. Still, genetics is the most fundamental of all forms of wealth, yet at the same time it is one of the most easily husbanded and replenished. * * * Note that there are many other possibilities besides artificial selection for solving various genetic problems, but that is the only method considered here for a number of reasons. 1. The other methods are not necessary for laying out this hypothesis. This hypothesis applies to all forms of genetic engineering. It is to solve a problem and to offer potentials, but it is not about genetic engineering, it is about survival. 2. It is the safest form of genetic engineering there is and this is inherently written to follow the conservative principles of biology. All existing genes are highly vetted by evolution. New techniques inherently carry risks. It will be a long time before we exploit all the potentials humans already possess. 3. Artificial Selection inherently should solve racial issues. Other forms of genetic engineering don’t necessarily do that. 4. Many forms of genetic engineering do not create inheritable results. That is what evolution has been all about and what genes are all about, passing on traits that are inherited. Now there are potentials that will never be offered by the genes that exist, but it will take people far wiser than we to safely utilize those potentials. There are potentials for data processing that would require relatively simple structures and it seems reasonable to think we could make biologically based short range radios. There are potentials I can’t imagine, but I don’t think they are really needed to create a stable ecology. I think we have most of those potentials already. We have the potentials already for everyone to have superior health, beauty, brains and emotions. 10. Religious Connotations of the Morality of Artificial Selection Initial moral and religious connotations 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. Whether we would be playing God with artificial selection is considered further on. 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 genetic 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 mostly 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 further on again. 11. Summary of Changes in the Ecology Summary of Changes in the Ecology This book is based on a discussion of changes in human ecology. This is mostly talked about in general terms, but at the end of the analysis there appear to be critical particular events that have significance when viewed in terms of their effect on morality and survival strategies. They are all parts of ongoing changes during a period of ecological changes. In terms of ecology, they need to be examined in terms of energetics. In terms of morality they need to be examined in terms of their effect on reproduction. Unfortunately, some of the most important elements are ideas or beliefs, categorized here as memes, that are difficult to pin down in history or by their effect, but they are still critically important to human survival. The examination of the effect of memes is part of the study called History of Consciousness. I really should explain how I use the word “meme”, because it is a fairly new word with a number of meanings and connotations. The meaning I use is a contagious idea. It is of interest because it describes natural groupings of ideas, such as was described by Michael Polanyi in his book Tacit Knowing. Knowledge and ideas have been so important to human history. The term meme allows ideas to be describe as objects so that their consequence can be described. Really, many of these topics were covered already in historical context. This is mostly to summarize them in terms of morality and a changing ecology. Also it is to lead to topics that were not covered because they are not yet understood or have not yet happened. Farming - Before there were any villages even, there were Neolithic farmers. Their crops would have been limited and they would still have relied on hunting, gathering and scavenging as they always had. Early farming techniques would not have reliably produced food season to season. Early on, crops may even have been used more as trade goods, but it would have been a significant change that would have provided more food. Herding seems to be about as old as farming, but is a very different lifestyle that included raiding and led to the military castes. Villages represented an increase in social organization and population density. They and their associated farming practices were a response to environmental degradation. Boats were how the world was colonized. Their importance through history cannot be underestimated regarding their effect on the movement and mingling of both peoples and cultures. Cities first developed where there were rivers that could be impounded for large scale irrigation. The surplus food produced was the foundation of large scale trade and economics. Cities also represented a change to higher population densities and increased disease vectors. Military Rule transferred increased resources for pastoralist tribal groups that traditionally practiced intertribal raiding. Military rule led to larger and larger organizations and then ultimately to nations. Various highly cooperative and social organization philosophies, including numerous religions, were developed and experimented with. Philosophies and sciences were born in various cultures. Muscle power was replaced by mechanical power led to practical large scale farming and transport. At the same time it started the closing a significant niches based on unskilled physical labor, some of it equine. Most developments have lead to new niches opening. In this case, a niche was closing as well. Antibiotics have reduced general mortality and natural selection. They have contributed to over population. They have also saved a great deal of human investment Women entering the workplace in industrial societies was largely initiated as a response to mechanized warfare. It both produced more resources and reduced reproduction. It continues because of individual aspirations and practicality. Still it must be balanced with the family. Women have a special place in child raising, which must be the most basic industry of any society. Birth control may be the most important development in terms of long term effects of the ecology. In the short term, it has already changed reproductive habits in most societies. Currently, over population is one of the worst disasters in the world. Theoretically, disease may well change that. In a way, use of computers is like replacing muscle with mechanical energy. It both provides efficiency of resource production as well as closing off some occupational niches. They can provide for increases in efficiency of most human systems. Computers are also going to be associated with the development of Virtual Realities. Their educational potentials are just staring to be realized. Artificial selection will be a massive effect that may be able to offset the effects of medicine and higher population density. It will be a critical component to humans adapting to any new physical ecologies we can develop. Ultimately it will make humans transition to what would be by many standards, a new specie. It must be considered in a moral context. The effect of Artificial intelligence and Virtual reality are fairly unpredictable, but they will be discussed towards the end of the book. Some potentials are rather surprising and amazing. Global Warming is certainly a change in the ecology by any definition. Just how it will effect humans is unpredictable just now, but like many things, depending on how humans respond, it could be catastrophic or it could force us to develop into more than we presently are. Looking at the normally rather variable nature of the Earth’s environment, it seems likely that there will likely be an ongoing value to the ability to influence the macro environment of the Earth whether it goes hot or cold. In general humans are going to have to come to the understanding that the environment of the Earth is their basic life support system and treat it as such. These topics will be touched upon in more detail as they appear in the book, but are mentioned together here as important basic parts that are elements of ongoing changes in human ecology. This may be a description of a change from the last stable ecology to the next, but the last stable ecology was a while ago and the next one is currently unknown. Any useful description of human ecologies, including potential future ones, is going to have to describe important points in between without getting bogged down mistaking any transient ecologies for long term stable ones. 12. Artificial Genetic Selection In Humans Discussion of artificial selection in terms of health, brains and beauty. What those mean and what some of the protentials are. This uses these examples to illustrate some basic points about risks, rewards, considerations, hazards and foiolishness related to artificial selection. It trys to lay down some of the rules to follow to avoid mistakes with artificial selection. It mentions genetics and morality such as faith. Artificial selection must refer to a number of things. There is gene therapy, pre-implantation selection, enhanced traits, created genes and other things. All have their own effects, but similar moral consequences. This essay mostly refers to pre-implantation selection (preimplantation selection). This is when eggs are fertilized, genetically analyzed and then implanted in the womb. It is commonly referred to as Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). Overall, it is probably safer than created genes. This is a list to examine what humans should most focus on when practicing artificial selection. It is obviously an incomplete list and is not meant to be in order of importance. A simple way to describe it is about selecting for health, beauty and brains. The list will start with the physical attributes of health and beauty. This list is based on incomplete knowledge. Also, while it lists the traits that are considered here to be the most important for humans to artificially select for, there is no consideration about which traits may be harder or easier to artificially select for. That and so many other things are just not known. Still, this is a start and is basically correct. More importantly, it is meant to illustrate some of the issues that will be involved in artificial selection. Health: The first things that humans are going to have to artificially select for have to do with the immune system. It is a fundamental assumption of this book that due to medical advancements, increased population density and other factors, humans are going to have more problems with disease than we have in the past. We are going to require a better immune system. Some groups and individuals are going to naturally have superior immune systems. Some hybrids of these individuals and groups are going to have very superior immune systems. If the genetics responsible for this can be identified, they could be husbanded. Some variations of traits will be identified as more functional, but harder to preserve in the genetics. Some forms of the traits will be more or less functional, but will become superior when in concert with other genes provided by hybridization. This illustrates an extremely interesting and important issue. Artificial selection is frequently going to involve trade-offs. It well may be that increasing the efficiency of the human immune system could cause an increase in immune system related diseases such as arthritis, allergies and others. It can be pretty well predicted that some improvements can be made to the immune system without causing potential problems. It can also be pretty well predicted that other improvements or potential improvements may be problematic because they have drawbacks. At the same time, these may be required. It could end up that for humans to develop an adequate immune system to survive the diseases in high-density populations, the average humans life span might initially decrease. That is called a moral decision. A second thing that humans might want to artificially select for has to do with the structure of the women’s pelvis and the birth canal. It is also related to the phenomenally high mortality rate associated with birth in a natural human environment. Often times in the past, one in four women died during childbirth. This has to do with the large head size of a human child at birth. The human brain has grown in size greatly in recent evolution. The size of the woman’s birth canal has lagged behind that and is a fundamental limitation on human development. It is not correspondingly developed to the development of larger brain size in humans. This illustrates a few points. The first is issue of trade-offs again. A larger pelvis means less efficient walking and running for the women, but it could allow for safer easier childbirth. That may be an acceptable trade-off if necessary. The second point is more interesting and important. It illustrates that it may not be so obvious what is important to select for. One might think that it would be more important to select for intelligence or physical stamina, but many things that will be important to artificially select for are going to be subtle limitations that come from our recent rapid developments. Humans have changed a great deal in recent past. We must try to adapt ourselves to those changes that have already occurred. This is one of them. A third point that this illustrates very interestingly is the process of actual artificial selection in this case. It was stated earlier that a larger pelvis might be a solution to this problem. There might be a drawback to this, but it might be an acceptable trade-off. Another possibility though has to do with a more subtle solution. Rather than to simply select for a larger pelvis, examination of women’s physiology would almost certainly show that in some tribes the women didn’t necessarily need a larger pelvis. Instead, the mechanical and structural design of their pelvis allows for easier childbirth. In mechanical terms, that would be a more efficient design and than just increasing the size of the pelvis. That is the beauty of human variation. Efficient solutions are very often superior to brute force solutions. In all human traits, there will be different forms related to individual and tribal variation. All these different forms will have different advantages and disadvantages. Some forms of traits will be more stable, some will have limitations, some will not hybridize as well, some will be easier to select for. It will make for a complicated problem that extends well beyond the technical difficulties of artificial selection. Again, these issues will have to be solved in a moral context and hopefully with a lot more knowledge than we presently have. While this should be obvious, it may not be. Consider height. Many people would consider greater height to be superior and might want to artificially select for greater stature in their children. This asks the question of how much is too much. There are mechanical and other disadvantages to height, especially extreme height. Medical technology should be able to describe what ideal heights for different human skeleton. Most parents would not choose to have their children much taller than that. There is no compelling reason for humans to blindly select for height, but there are reasons that humans make stupid decisions such as fashion. As a general rule you could figure that artificially selecting for any extreme is likely to be a bad idea. Humans are generalists, but often operate as specialists. At the same time, there is no compelling reason to select against extremes. These extremes may be what give humans some variability at a time when it is needed. In the long run, human destiny will almost certainly move into space. Then who knows what physical, let alone mental potentials we will need there. Beauty: Beauty is an odd one. Mr. Darwin might have called it secondary sexual characteristics. It gets more complicated than that and can illustrate some interesting points. In terms of artificial selection, beauty represents a form of genetic wealth, it just is so dramatically visible compared to most human traits that make up an individuals genetic wealth. It makes sense to select for physical beauty so people will. There is no guarantee that your child will inherit your best features. Why not insure it? In a relatively short span of generations, every man and woman would be beautiful. A few more generations and it would be fixed in the genes. It could get very interesting one day if everyone were physically beautiful. So what happens then if everyone is physically beautiful? There are many kinds of beauty and in a time when physical beauty becomes common, other kinds of beauty will become the focus of artificial selection. It can be grace, agility, singing ability, the ability to make music, you name it. This is the genetic wealth of the family and of humanity. This illustrates one reason why traits must be husbanded. What is important is going to change over time and so human genetic diversity must not be destroyed by carelessness. Brains: In biology, intelligence is defined as the ability to remember, understand and manipulate the behaviors of others. This is a useful definition, but in so many ways, intelligence is really not understood. There is going to be more than one correct meaning to intelligence, but the primary meaning must start with social intelligence. Sometimes social intelligence has been referred to as Machiavellian Intelligence which describes the problem that intelligence presents. There is a lot to be said for the survival benefits of manipulation of ones social group. There is a lot to be said about the problems of one using this potential for ones self benefit. Then again, stupid, misguided or a lack of leadership is probably more dangerous. That same social intelligence is what allows humans to work as a team. It is the essence of what allows the understandings that is the basis of cooperation. It allows people to understand one another and anticipate the other person’s actions so that they can efficiently work with them towards an objective as a single unit. It was largely the cooperation required for the hunt that caused selection for this. Social intelligence is the most important aspect of intelligence, but presently, the available understanding of it is not adequate. The general rule though is to increase potentials. If there is a problem from a potential, select for another potential or belief to manage it. This suggests that humans should select for increased intelligence even in its most important and risky facet. Communication is a complicated dance. Remember that many parts of social interaction relate to communication including deception of the deceiver and deceived (who may be the same person). Changing that and related issues will be risky, but almost certainly manageable. There are other aspects of intelligence, even if social intelligence is probably the basis of the rest of human intelligence. There is occupational or technical intelligence. This is partly an artificial distinction as categories often are, but it serves here as categories do. Occupational intelligence corresponds to technical abilities. It is about understanding artifacts rather than people. Occupational intelligence is extremely important and can probably be selected for with no negative consequence. Currently we see it in traditional occupational castes. There is the intelligence of aggression. Aggression is based on threat of violence even more than on violence itself. People using that strategy are very attuned to the signs that show the results of their threats and possible strategies they can use aggression for. Many other aspects of intellect that are basically not understood at all yet. The speech center of the brain is almost miraculous in its function. There are other traits like it. Intelligence has an interesting blind spot that also relates it to emotion. A more intelligent person cannot always spot a less intelligent person, but a less intelligent person can always quickly spot a more intelligent person. Most of the time we go through life in a relatively non-stimulated state. We don’t need our best intellectual potentials most of the time. We rarely see another person’s top speed. Sometimes though, our mind accelerates and a person of lesser intelligence instantly can spot a person that has gone past their speed. Really, it is far more than speed though. It relates to emotion as well. It is other things that the person perceives. The more intelligent person rarely sees this and cannot tell what another person’s top potential may be. There are going to be other forms of intelligence like occupational intelligence such as mathematical or artistic ability, that do not relate to social interaction. These should be selected for as a general principle. Occupation refers mostly to caste specialization which is a fairly recent thing, but long before the societies that had castes there were skills like those required to make tools, shelter, clothing and food as well as other skills that do not directly relate to social interaction. It should be mentioned here, that contrary to popular belief, you can’t teach any person to do just any skill. Most technical skills have a strong genetic basis, while coping with changing circumstances is a more general skill. Then again, some manual dexterity probably developed due to habits of social grooming. Newness is another problematic balance that makes us what we are and is essential to survival. It is just something that is part of human behavior. We seek what will work, but we may then reject that in search of something new. If we reject what works, there is a potential huge cost. If we do not, there is a halt to progress. This is probably an example of something that should be left to natural selection, at least until we are much wiser. In natural circumstances, the evolution of a new gene turns out to be very energetically costly. Learning ability is an aspect of intelligence that illustrates an overwhelmingly important factor, cost of human life. While learning ability is an aspect of intelligence and will certainly be important in an ecology with far more information to learn, this touches on a basic part of the human equation. The basic equation of current human survival is dominated by the high cost of raising children, especially educating them. If you change that cost, you make a change to the basis of the equation that describes humans. If you do this with an “education pill”, there would be a huge risk to survival. It could cheapen human life. Done genetically, the risk would be much less because there would be a natural buffering effect. Competition would focus elsewhere. As a minor note here, to a lesser extent, artificial wombs might have a similar effect to an education pill and cheapen life. Of course the cost of human life may increase enough for those to make sense. Another topic that must be considered that is currently not well understood is the multi-mind model of human psychology. Humans have a mind that is not singular. It contains multiple, sometimes contradictory, beliefs and viewpoints. A human can believe in more than one thing at the same time. Not only is this an illustration of the complexity of human psychology that we do not currently understand, but also it is of extreme importance for other reasons. It is almost certainly a requirement of intelligence, partly because without it judgment and modeling would be near impossible. If there is any intrinsic aspect of adaptation that humans could achieve, it might be for a longer foresight. Animals tend to use very limited foresight, humans not excluded. It seems likely that no other species than humans plan ahead any more than one year in advance. E. O. Wilson had an excellent discussion of this in terms of humans. Our adaptation to the Neolithic ecology gave us various degrees of foresight and more foresight than any other animal, but it was still very limited. The time period of our foresight can be very short or as long as perhaps a generation, depending on the issue. Humans live longer now and may well live longer in the future. This is a significant change. Also, some human strategies, in terms of institutions and group strategies can be multi-generational. On the surface, it would seem beneficial if humans were capable of responding to longer term issues, though this may be another one of those issues that relate to human nature. As with many other traits, humans can adapt their genetic nature by learning and we certainly will have to, but it may well be a good idea to try to promote selection of a longer point of view than is common to most, if not all, current human races. At the same time, there could be a hazard to doing this in any crude way. It may be that we already have an instinct that can help us with this. It will be discussed further on. There are numerous other features of psychology already recognized that are based on specialized, genetically based neural structures that are either critical to survival or basic potentials of human evolution. The speech center is a good example, but there are many others and it will take a lot of work and time to understand what they are and their importance, but these are the raw materials from which humans must make their future. This section on artificial selection, especially factors effecting psychological factors is meant to be as brief as possible. There are more factors that describe and determine what a human is than is going to ever be put in a paper book. It is a description of the present potentials of human variation and that is a lot. I will end this section with another unknown, but an important unknown. This is meme interpretation. Memes are not yet understood, but they seem fundamental to how we handle information. They represent natural groupings of knowledge and information. Part of intelligence relates to what memes we can use. They represent a limit and potential to what we can understand. Michael Polanyi referred to the creation of ideas as emergence. When an understanding emerges it is a meme. They are aggregates that have been joined. Much of our ability to understand and use memes relate to structures in the brain that are determined by genetics. In ways, structurally, there may be an analogy here to smell. Smell is not specific, it is made of component parts to make aggregates, but its structures are genetically determined. This is likely to be the same for memes. Just as we are limited in what we can smell, we are probably limited in what memes humans can understand. It is hard presently to say what variation in humans is regarding the ability to process memes. It is also currently impossible to say what the potentials are, but you can be sure that they are great, especially with genetic hybridization. Another extremely important issue that humans are going to have to address is mental stability. We are not mentally adapted to the results of the massive changes which we have undergone recently. In many regards, the human brain has only recently evolved to this existence and is still a design plagued by mental health problems. Our society is extremely stressful and demanding. This may reduce some, but there’s a lot of reason to believe it won’t. We will be able to improve general mental health to some degree, with improvements in our knowledge of what is important to mental health, but we also certainly need to improve innate human mental health and stability. Mental health is composed of many things, most of which we currently only have a rudimentary understanding of. Human knowledge of the subtleties of human psychology, especially in terms of evolution and genetics, is extremely limited. Yet at the same time, it appears that much common mental pathology such as schizophrenia and bi-polar, are based on minor and identifiable genetic traits. It would seem that this is the natural focus of artificial selection. As we gain knowledge, we will be able to do more. By now, you should have all kinds of alarms going off in your head. Those are controversial, highly corruptible and important issues, not to be carelessly talked about. Those topics relate to important ethical questions you can’t convincingly show you have answers to. Do you know the potential for the abuse of what you are talking about? I do, but this has to start somewhere and an open discussion based on morality and caution is the best chance of avoiding mistakes. This issue again illustrates incredible limitations on our knowledge that extend far beyond the technical aspects of artificial selection. Human knowledge is going to require advances in philosophy, wisdom and even perhaps into sciences that don’t exist yet, such as memetics. Memes is a concept that is currently not well understood. That understanding is going to take many years if not centuries. Yet it seems clear that memes (if they exist at all and it seems that they do) are fundamental to human survival. I do not get involved in most of the discussions of what memes are. I only look at them in relation to bio-organisms. The question is what of our genetics make us adapted to be able to use memes? It seems likely that will be an important focus for artificial selection. I think that makes my point. We can probably fix some things, like schizophrenia or other gross mental health problems, but what human mental health and balance really are, is still not well known. We are going to have to learn a lot more about just what sanity and mental health are. A corollary of this would be related to aggressive behavior. It well illustrates another hazard that we will have to avoid. This I would refer to as the disaster of good intentions. There are going to the traits in humans, like aggressiveness, territoriality, insecurity, wanderlust, desire for newness and other characteristics that one might think are not desirable in the ecologies that are developing. Don’t do it. To not try to select to remove traits that make up human nature. That can be an incredibly dangerous path to follow. The word aggressive has a number of connotations, including the individual’s active nature. One might think that it would be a good idea to reduce the violent aggressiveness of human nature. The problem is that if you were to reduce aggressiveness at all you might be reducing innovation, natural motivation and other subtle drives that are all bundled together. Perhaps this can be done. Perhaps reducing human genetic potential for violence would be a good thing. Looking at human history one must wonder. Still, changing human drives without a great deal of reason and a great deal more knowledge than we currently have could be suicidal. Also, a general rule is that one should never select against a functioning trait that nature created. Sometimes it will happen. There will be documented cases where a gene is more of a problem than another version of the trait that works better, but all natural traits should be retained until their disadvantage is described and understood. Can that trait be modified by training or another gene to regulate it? This is an issue of trade-offs, but the trade-off may relate to survival. Sickle cell anemia is a textbook example of this. * * * If a lot of what this is about is morality and genetics, the question arises whether there is a genetic basis to the use of morality? Is there a genetic based behavior in humans that provides an inclination to use moralities or even particular moral systems? Considering that humans seem willing to fight to the death over moral systems, it appears so. Though a primary purpose of religion is to teach faith, faith is an inheritable behavior that makes humans look for and use moral systems. An interesting comment made in the Bible is that faith is a gift from God that not all people have. That makes for an interesting comment on genetic variation. Its real meaning and ultimate implications are actually pretty incredible. In terms of recent changes and how humans must adjust, faith has been a primary focus of evolution during much of the time of the cities. It is a basic and powerful survival instinct that develops like other behaviors, but originates on a firm genetic base. The word faith is likely to bring up all kinds of connotations to the reader. It is a term very widely used by religion. Some religion’s claim that they created faith, but it was faith that created religion. Forget those connotations. Faith is like other behaviors. It can flower suddenly or it can grow slowly. You can sense faith in another person just as you can sense anger or love. One of the meanings of the word faith is a belief in something without proof. That is a very powerful and important ability. Faith is likely to become even more important to survival in the future. Faith is something else. It is a linkage between basic survival instinct and intellect. It is why reason doesn’t always seem like truth. Logic and reason don’t give reasons to struggle and survive. That must come from ancient instinct. The mark of a human is that they need more than instinct to survive. The combination of instinct and reason is faith. It is how we judge truth and right and wrong. Another interesting point about faith is that it may solve the problem of time sense in humans. We are evolved to have a rather short point of view, but humans really need a much longer perspective to suit survival requirements of the ecologies that we are entering. There is a conflict between these two time views. Ultimately, it may be faith that bridges these two views. Faith is an instinct and like all instincts, its purpose is related to long term survival strategies. Realistically, it is surprising how much human behavior is hardwired in. In many ways, biologically we have little free will which makes sense. Survival is simple in a lot of ways and is not to be fundamentally changed. Faith is associated with and responds to moralities that are powerful memes. One must not become intoxicated or overwhelmed by any meme. Actually, faith shows another exceptional example of the requirement for balance and the folly of being too selfish when thinking about artificial selection. We already know that to some degree, religious faith (as an expression of faith) is genetically based. This is our basic identity, but the most familiar was we see this is to call it faith. It would seem reasonable that a person of faith would want their children to have a strong religious faith. The same would be true of a person whose faith did not take a religious form. They would perhaps select against that trait. Both would be dangerous and would serve neither humans nor God. Religious faith that is too strong works against survival. As had happened in history, the individual would not focus on their own survival. If you tried to select against the religious aspect of faith, you would risk selecting against faith, which is the basis of human survival instinct. Also, on the level of a society, going too strongly one way or the other would open the society to being manipulated as well as to losing important variability. Faith needs to be balanced genetically, individually and socially. Then even occasional natural extremes would not be dangerous. [An updated way to look at this] Another characteristic that is certainly linked to faith, perhaps related, perhaps the same, but harder to fathom is “Me”, the sense of self. Indications are that it has to do with the parietal lobe. There isn’t going to be a more basic yet subtle trait that defines a person and their strategies. While it is finely balanced, luckily it is also generally susceptible to fine tuning by the forces in the surrounding society. What this most illustrates is the problem of some aspects of artificial selection and so is deferred to the morality section that tries to show a more integrated view. 13. Artificial Selection and Morality Already started this above... Artificial Selection in the context of morality Independent of any religious connotations of morality, other questions must be asked about the morality of artificial selection. Morality is about survival. Artificial Selection is a powerful tool with the potential to be used for good or bad, but because of disease (and other things) it is a necessary strategy for survival. The human equation now that it is far more costly to raise and socialize a human to live in a technological society as opposed to the mostly farming societies of the past. It is too expensive to raise and educate children if a majority of them will die of disease. There is also the human issue of who wants to see their children die? That is another philosophy. Beyond surviving diseases, artificial selection offers great potentials for improving what a human is. A question is, will that lead to increased survival or be a danger to human survival? What would be an improvement? These answers need input from science and other philosophies. These answers must be viewed in terms of the family and society. Artificial selection not only offers some incredible potentials, it raises many important questions such as why, how, what it should be used for and what potential dangers are there. If someone asks me why we would do artificial selection, I ask them if they had heart disease or early onset Alzheimer’s disease, what they would do to insure that their children did not inherit the diseases. That usually clears up the question. That is the first level of artificial selection, selection against broken or ineffective genes. There are more reasons why. What is it that you respect the most about yourself or your mate? There is no guarantee that your children will inherit that trait. The second level of artificial selection is to make sure that the children inherit the best potentials of the parents brains, health and beauty. The third level of artificial selection is going to partly be a consequence of the second. Just selecting for the best traits of the parents will cause mixing of the tribes. Still, the potentials for intentional hybridization, planned over generations, is to make the human specie something different. Something more. Some potentials and considerations of this are discussed elsewhere. There are many other features of artificial selection that might increase or risk survival potential, but they too are discussed in detail elsewhere. Suffice to say, that the answer to the initial moral question asked here, is artificial selection moral, will it help human survival beyond the issue of disease, is that it can. It will help if we have adequate moralities to use it correctly. That point is a bit of scientific philosophy. Another point is that artificial selection can lead to healthy individuals, families and societies. That is moral in very basic terms. There are other moral questions about selecting for hybridization and human potentials, but they are considered in other chapters. Really though, there is no alternative but to use artificial selection. This should all lead to happiness of some sort, very like happiness has always been in humans. Still, happy isn’t everything and happy people aren’t always the best survivors. 23. Emotional Evolution This chapter discusses emotional evolution. It is important to cover to support the conclusions of the book. It is far more common to discuss evolution of health, beauty and brains because we understand those things a bit better or at least we are aware that our understanding of emotions is far more limited. This applies to what we all instincts and drives. We know of them, but not much about them. We will slowly develop that knowledge and we will effect them with artificial selection. The implications are profound and are important no matter how you look at it, but there are some really interesting issues mentioned further on. Writing the end of this book has been very difficult. Even though this part is described as philosophy rather than science to avoid some of the traditional constraints expected in a scientific document, it is still pretty tough. This current topic is about emotions and instincts that are particularly difficult subjects to pin down by anybody’s standard. It turns out that I suspect it is extremely important though, so I must present it. I much prefer things I understand better. Too make things worse, after many tries I have concluded that this and the topic that follows can only be described using my personal experience. Worse yet perhaps, my consideration of it is very different and in ways actually contradictory to some common definitions of emotion. Well, the objective is to communicate an idea. Lets see if I can do it. Emotions are called feelings and are often considered antithical to reason. They are the basis of motivation and fundamental to what makes life worth living. One thing is clear is that emotion can communicate powerfully. I have very strong emotions. Often, annoyingly strong. They don’t particularly annoy me, but they do annoy other people exposed to them because their strength make them very contagious. They effect the people around me. If I am in a bad mood, it can really bother people around me. If I unleash my anger, it can hurt. Also, my emotions are able to shift extremely quickly, which can grate on peoples nerves. It is hard to hide emotions or ones emotional state. I learned very long ago, the only safe thing for me to do was to just pick a safe emotional state and stick with it. Anyone that knows me will tell you that I permanently smile and radiate humor. It’s about the only thing I can get away with without distressing people. Even then if a person is exposed to me for any period of time, they will usually sense the rapid emotional shifting and may get uncomfortable. If I want to use it, I have a great potential to effect people with my emotions. Even if I don’t want to use it, I effect people. We are naturally very perceptive of emotions around us, so emotions can be like a person constantly talking. There is another side. Is it manipulative that timed and done properly I have learned (I used to experiment with it) that I can smile and make a persons whole day? While I do generally try to shield people from my emotions, in a conversation I may release some excitement and get a person quite emotionally high, but the rule then is to bring them down softly. We see the same thing in oration by politicians, preachers and even in a good teacher. We see it demonstrated by great artisans, musicians and actors. Their emotions communicate and touch us. This is not unique to me. There are many people that exist towards the end of the curve. It is not unusual to encounter. Also, it is not unusual to run into people that will try to use emotional manipulation to their own benefit. At the same time, emotional strength is an important part of compatibility and emotionally strong people may not be as easily emotionally manipulated. Emotions can be hard to judge because we rarely know if a person is in a heightened state. It seems that intelligence is related to emotion. If I am trying to understand a person’s intelligence, I usually ask if they have ever tended to unintentionally emotionally overwhelm people. That usually gets their attention, because if you have done it, you probably still remember it quite uncomfortably. If a person has had a problem with accidentally emotionally overwhelming people, they are probably very intelligent. Anyone can change emotional state. If a person is excited, scared or otherwise emotionally stimulated, their emotional “power” rises and it effects people more strongly. A person that yells “fire” communicates their emotional state to others. It’s just annoying when this happens when a person with naturally powerful emotions unintentionally has a strong effect on a person with less powerful emotions. Not only do emotions communicate, but also they do so by effecting other peoples emotional state. Perhaps some people have more empathy and are more greatly effected by this, but I think it is a general thing that effects everyone and perhaps empathic people are just more aware to it or more sensitive to it, because empathy does not imply emotional weakness. In extreme cases and perhaps in not so extreme cases, I have seen where emotions are very manipulative. It’s more obvious when a person projects love or anger to manipulate a person, but it is also a daily occurrence when any person tries to persuade another or browbeat them. Generally, emotions are an aspect of communication and just a normal social behavior. Dampening the perceptions of other peoples emotions is nearly impossible and requires defenses a person should not need to use. Compounding the mystery of emotions is how hormones effect them. It is not as simple as neurophysiology. Chemicals have profound effects on emotions. Emotions are very stimulating and getting addicted to emotions is almost always a bad thing. A person may create scenes just to bring out emotional reactions. It can become quite exploitive. Then if that is not complicated enough just seems that intelligence appears to follow the same rules as emotion as if intelligence is an emotion. This is a different description of emotions, partly because it is not much of an explanation. This is just observations on something to bring it into perspective. A better understanding needs to be developed over time. The point is that in saying how I expect artificial selection to enhance health, beauty and brains, I am also considering emotions to be part of this. If I and many others have an unusual power of emotional, I expect that artificial selection will lead to that power level being common. My considerations of emotion make me think that it is not only one of the greatest evolutionary potentials we have, but that it also carries an important intellectual component. Emotional development includes an intellectual development. Overall, I am pretty sure that there are amazing potentials available from emotions that we have no comprehension of. This is very important in terms of artificial genetic selection and the future of humanity. This is also a necessary consideration in terms of some of the following discussion. 25. Multi-Mind This chapter discusses a psychological feature of humans called the Multi-Mind Model. It is just a characteristic of human consciousness that we often seem to have multiple personalities, each of which we use in response to a particular environment we are in at any time. This isn't schizophrenia because we are the same person adapting to a different situation. We also have more than one opinion on a single topic and we take sides in internal arguments. It is how humans think. It is how humans solve problems. It is important to the conclusion of the book. We believe far more than we know. An interesting and critical part of human nature is in how we think. It is referred to as the Multi-Mind model of psychology. We are designed to believe more than one thing at a time. Sometimes very conflicting beliefs coexist in our minds. Wars and accommodations are made and that is sanity. It is also human nature and it gives us great ability. At the same time the multi-mind model brings up interesting questions about consciousness and parts of consciousness that work together. Interestingly one of the more difficult concepts in the Christian religion and some others is the plurality of attributes and personalities ascribed to God. My impression is that God represents a plurality of consciousness, but that is discussion and speculation for elsewhere. Here the human ability of the multi-mind must be used as part of and to develop an understanding. It is a critical part of the human future I look to. Here I must use my reason and faith together to describe what I think is the truth, but that’s OK, the human mind is made for that. 24. Other Ecological Possibilities Discussion of some possible human futures based on human aspirations including religions and futures based on speculative fiction called SciFi. This whole book was written to try to describe how humans could achieve another relatively stable ecology. We haven’t had one since the time of the hunter gather ecology. All modern agricultural practices that have supported cities (except perhaps terrace farming) are depletive of the soil and so cannot be considered stable ecologies. Since humans started using agriculture, in biological terms, they have not had a stable ecology. This is a dangerous place for any specie. This analysis was based on looking for the minimum requirements for achieving a new ecology. Science fiction authors have covered thousands of possibilities of what humanity might be able to do in the future. This is to consider what humans might do in the context of what they are likely to want to do and have the potential to do. I have considered thousands of possibilities. Some were concepts that others had written about as science of wildly speculatively based potentials. Some were prophetic. Some were very fanciful and seemingly quite unlikely, but they all illustrated humans desires and drives. Some of the concepts were models. I created based on genetic, psychological drives or historical trends and that seem likely to continue. Religion, philosophy and culture have been examined for human drives and desires. Religion is an expression of the ultimate in human values. Like most things in biology, there are many potentials, but most will come to little in the long run. While the biggest factor in human evolution seems to be other humans, especially in a social context, another human factor seems to be coming to the fore as something to be considered. This is the first factor to be considered here, because it will likely raise the bar on what is the “minimum” that humans will have to adapt to achieve a stable ecology. That is Global Warming. Our current living arrangement will most likely change to higher density, as it has before already. We moved from small dispersed tribal groups to larger agricultural villages. That was an adaptation to environmental change as well. The recent move to cities was more of an economic response as agriculture has become more concentrated and less labor intensive. Also it is a response to technology. With the harsh environment we may come to face, we may again have to come together even tighter to use cooperation for survival. We may very well make cities with their own environment, unexposed to the natural environment at all. They have been called archologies. It will not be easy and require great cooperation. Still, this is only a change in degree on the human path, not in kind. It will also exasperate the problem of disease that I have said will drive artificial selection. Really it could be a problem of global cooling as much as global warming. In the short view or technical view, human ecology is fundamentally subject to the environment. Eventually, we may have to develop technology to control the macro environment of the Earth, probably something involving mirrors in space to control the sunlight. The Earth environment is not inherently stable. There have been a lot of ice ages. In the human view, it is a matter of adaptation to changes in more than human developments. I have worked for a long time to get to this point, let alone the end of this part. This is a work of science, reason, emotion, philosophy and faith. I hope it works. The next topics are laid out carefully to follow a path. 26. Immortality There are many definitions of immortality. Most would interfere with the process that is evolution so here are generally considered immoral. The topic is considered for a couple of reasons, but mostly because of the pyramids. The discussion though also is pertinent to the conclusion of the book. Then again there is perhaps something that the human mind is not made for, but it is a topic that must be considered. Aren’t children wonderful! Everything dulls over time, but even when annoying, children make things new. Obviously they are our future. In my studies of survival strategies, I have often wondered what age might be best for having children. Natural selection pushes towards the onset of maturity. The current multi-generational potentials of human life span show that it is not the only strategy, though from my current point of view child raising does seem like a young persons sport. Years ago I thought the ideal might be if humans were like elves who were said to have a long youth until maturity and then to have their children. In biological terms it is risky putting off child bearing very much. What of immortality then? There are people already that talk of physical immortality by various methods including preventing aging or using technology for rejuvenation. When talking about immortality, this does not really refer to never dying. Even twice a present long lifetime would qualify as immortal in some circles. Certainly eight times would be adequate for this consideration. In any current terms, that would present some huge moral problems. There are innumerable potentials and possibilities, but they are not important to the current consideration. Most results I can see would be immoral, because of the inevitable competition of the old with the young. There are some possibilities to immortality, but that is not the point here and will have to be left for others to consider. By everything I can understand, biological immortality would generally not be a feature of sanity. I can only see it being a product of a fear of death. It generally contradicts the methods and purpose of biological survival. Every generation represents a step in evolution. Life is about growth, not stasis. Greater immortality would just present great danger. There is another way to look at it though. This will be considered more a bit further on. 26. Technology Energy, Space, Nano-Technology, Automation, Virtual Reality and a Small Device This book intentionally focuses on biology and biological solutions, but there are some aspects of mechanical technology that need examination in terms of ecology. It is particularly relevant to the conclusions of the book. Technology is examined as to how it can be used for making a new niche for humans. Where does space fit into human ecology. What does energy production matter? Will virtual reality be an extension of human ecology? Can we achieve immortality in virtual reality? What might be some of the implications? Ah SciFi, I knew thee well. The foundation of all biology, evolution and ecology is energy. Life is a thermodynamic process where the organization of life is maintained by increasing the disorganization of the system. In other words, we eat food to survive. This book is mostly phrased in terms of genetics and society, but I cannot call this an ecological analysis without addressing the energetics. It is the increased energetic demands of technology and raising children in a niche dependant on technology that is most of the energetic equation describing the change in human ecology. Energetics may be the most important foundation of ecology, but it is not likely to be the primary limiting factor on humans as much as it has been in the past. Technology shows the potential to provide enormous amounts of energy. With adaquate energy, even present technology can produce almost all other resources humans require to survive. There will be other social consequences of the power sources we develop. Large centralized power plants like a current fission plants will foster a more politically centralized society. A power plant represents not just concentrated electrical power, but the political power associated with it. A distributed system such as a photovoltaic cell based system would be less centralized and have different social results. Really, in the next stable ecology, resource availability will not be a limiting factor as it has been in the past because humans will not be in a new ecology if they do not consciously limit their population to a level appropriate to what resources are most limited and it is not likely to be physical resources. Space is such a fascinating futuristic subject to consider, but it is unlikely to be important to the equation of human ecology. Earth is where our niche is. If we don't solve our problems here, we are unlikely to in space. An exception to this would be if we were able to create a practical space drive that could cheaply and easily transport us to other habitable planets. In that case, we would fall under speciation rules and there could be so many available ecologies that it's hard to make any accurate assumptions based on the inevitable resulting in many different human species. Eventually, inevitably, the rules of ecology and population would apply, but that kind of speculation is not going to be fruitful. The question was how could humans find a new ecology, but for practical reasons, it only needs to be answered in the system that is Earth. Disease has been historically the greatest selective effect. This whole book is biased towards biology and is based on using artificial genetic seelction to allow survival of disease in a more crowded connected world. It uses an assumption that humans will require an improved immune system. It is possible that that may not be the case. We may find a technology such as nanite antibodies or something else that can protect humans from disease better than our natural immune systems can. I don't like these solutions because it then makes us dependant on our technology, but they are part of the equation adn may become completely necessary. There are two technological driven factors that must be considered here, automation and virtual reality. It’s hard to say what the potentials of automation are, especially if that includes artificial intelligence. Obviously our society already relies on high degrees of automation for the majority of the resources it uses. It’s a question of how more effective will automation be at production than humans. Isaac Asimov explored this question in his stories of the robots. He and other authors pointed out the dangers this might pose to humans by making them lazy and divorced from the needs of life. Or perhaps machines may offer the resources and abilities for humans to make some of the greatest things that are parts of the human future. If we expand to the stars, machines are likely to be an important component of that. Still, machines are machines and my study is of humanity. I don’t spend a lot of time studying machines, because automation is not a major component of the thread of the human future I follow. On the other hand, it seems that virtual reality is going to be supported by machines and that is important to humans. Of all the trends in humanity, one of the most noticeable is the desire for virtual reality. Call it what you want, but entertainment, sports, books, movies, music, dance, gambling and all the other distractions from struggle, monotony or normalcy of life are an overwhelming factor to be considered. The movie Total Recall made this point. He experienced a great adventure where he was the hero that saved the day against all odds and got the girl at the end. There was no way to know if it was real experiences or if he had taken a virtual vacation. It was probably a virtual experience because it was unlikely that reality could ever be that much of an adventure. Virtual reality will end up becoming a major extension of our ecology, especially if the Earth does become a harsher place. There is another reason as old as the pyramids that virtual reality will become of great importance to humanity. Virtual reality is going to offer a kind of immortality to people. It has been proven to be impossible, but things like that change. Before that long we will be able to project our senses into virtual reality. After that, it will only be a matter of time before the technology will exist for humans to move their minds into the machines that make virtual reality. The computing power available may let a scientist or artist do their best work after they are dead. The dead will be the ones that make VR most lifelike. They will make it better than life. Only human’s most basic and highly developed survival instincts will be able to protect them from the seductiveness of virtual reality. Only great faith will allow real life to compete with virtual life. Only great advances in the science of longevity will offset the attraction of virtual immortality. Still, biological immortality will be hard pressed to compete with virtual immortality, especially when biological mortality approaches. The implications are boggling and are considered more extensively elsewhere. Note that the description of immortality offered previously would not necessarily apply to immortality in virtual reality. Undoubtedly there would still be internal limits to survival even if the physical dangers and physical weaknesses were removed. Humans are not designed to live forever. Still, the richness of virtual reality could keep one involved for a long time. Also resource utilization would be small enough that the footprint on the natural ecology would be small enough to be negligible. There is a point that remains the same regardless of whether immortality is physical or virtual. Those living in virtual reality (or any long lifer) must not endanger those struggling and reproducing in physical reality. If there is not the renewal of reproduction, extinction will follow soon. I strongly feel that this would apply to survival in a virtual community as well. There is another technical issue I see. Call it the “memory bag” for now. I called it a “life stone” in another essay. It is a device that records your experiences. Mostly it is an artificial memory. The technology is being worked on currently at a number of computer labs. It turns out to be an important consideration. * * * Up to now, most of my analysis describes an ecology where the genetic factors of artificial selection removes fear, want and ignorance as well as providing a basis for population control that with a bit of technology and philosophical wisdom, can offer a very pleasant, ecologically balanced world we can survive in indefinitely. Star Trek showed a very optimistic world of advanced technology that offered people fulfilling lives and a healthy world ecology. Their depiction of continued ethnic identities seemed very unlikely, but the rest of their view of our world looked very like the stable ecology I am looking for. Star Trek never discussed much about artificial selection though, so there would be some differences. Still, a friend persuaded me to look beyond that, beyond my goal of the next stable ecology. What I saw was beyond amazing. It is true that evolution is always from something, never too something, but once started down a path, the destination may be predictable. There are niches in nature. Some are occupied, some are not, but they exist as potentials whether a species exists to occupy them or not. Whether dinosaur, mammal, marine, marsupial or other, there are always climax herbivores to graze the plants and there are always predators to prey on them. The question is what natural niches are available to humans. If humans don’t go extinct, they at some point they will almost certainly occupy a niche that looks like what was shown in Star Trek or perhaps it would be more correct to say the Jetsons, because the Jetsons did not describe alien species and forays into space. Perhaps we will expand into space beyond our solar system. If we cannot physically travel at the speed of light or faster, then it will not greatly effect our current environment. If we do learn to physically travel faster than light, then it’s effect on the future will not be predictable, but it will still be unlikely to effect the local population or ecology much. Still, according to the conclusions of this work, we are very unlikely to meet any alien life forms anything like we have generally envisioned up to now. They too will be under the same evolutionary constraints as humans are and so are not going to occupy a niche that we currently know about. If religion is about human aspirations, considering artificial selection and virtual reality, religion may be the earliest and currently most accurate form of speculative fiction ever written. It turns out it could also be true. My description of a stable ecology may be just a description limited by science (quite intentionally) of another transient ecology. The potentials of Artificial Selection cannot be guessed at, but they fit in very well especially in the idea of Virtual Reality. I tend to ignore AI because it is so speculative and besides, I assume that humans can potentially achieve biologically anything possible with machines. The failings and weakness of humans do make consideration of AI for exploration or perhaps even leadership very interesting. I am a true fan of the brilliant authors of speculative fiction that have show us their visions of the future of humanity and technology. This is a list of the ideas I thought were worth considering. 1. The Uplift by David Brin. Artificial selection on other intelligent species like chimpanzees and porpoises such that they had language and tool using capability. 28. Love and Faith As Strategies This discusses the moral significance, that is survival significance of love and faith in terms of moral strategies. Love is an amazing foundation for cooperation and Faith seems to be an expression of our most basic survival instincts. Faith is a foundation of how we descide between what is right and wrong. Early on in the study of morality, I recognized that human survival strategy is fundamentally based on cooperation. The primary human survival strategy is cooperation. Whatever helps humans cooperate helps them survive. The best basis for cooperation is a moral system based on love. An exploration of human survival instinct showed that it is what we call faith. It is different in humans in that it is highly connected to our recently developed intellectual abilities. Faith has many connotations, but it is how we judge right and wrong, and that judgment is always based on reason and instinct trying to achieve survival. At the time I considered this; I was finishing my genetic study and starting my summary of moral issues. This importance of love and faith, commonly mentioned by religions, struck me as very curious at the time, but little more. I was raised with religion, but like many people I didn’t examine it much. It is a great concept that this superior being cares about us, but the evidence is scanty and it doesn’t fit well with science. It didn’t seem important to study. A friend of mine, Brent challenged me though. He was annoyed that religion had been politically manipulated. He had a point. What he did do though was get me to examine religion and God. What I found literally shocked me. It seems that some science and reason can be applied to the subject. The first thing to ask though is what are we talking about here. It is human aspiration. While science fiction has talked about potentials of social and technical developments, the most optimistic ideals usually describe possible utopias of various types for humans as they are. This book tends to focus on what humans may be. Religion describes aspirations and visions of humanity that actually go far beyond what science fiction usually considers. Religions speak of Gods and heavens that actually represent even higher aspirations for humans than science fiction or the “next stable ecology” that I have tried to describe. These aspirations must be considered. So religion must be considered. Since I examined that in terms of the religion I am most familiar with, I will describe it in those terms. At the same time Hinduism has stories that fit this very well and seem to have more color to them. 14. The Future Human Ecology The next stable ecology will differ from the “hunter/gatherer” ecology in many ways. Instead of our energy resources coming from wild plant and animal crops, our resources will be supplied from whatever replaces the fossil fuels that we currently use. Resources will be completely dependant on our energy supply. Reproduction will change from a quantity strategy to a quality strategy (barring the effect of medicine). At the same time, while the basis of our ecology changes, some things will most likely stay the same such as our social system of family and community that is how we raise children. Where the social system will change is that tribalism will most likely disappear. This will be part of the biggest ecological change of all, conscious control of human genetics and controlled, intentional hybridization. In ways, disease will remain a qualitatively similar problem for a long time, but that will be overcome as well. That is part of the Transition. 21. A Human Future Put this together with the previous chapter The future of human ecology Future human ecology in terms of energetics and reproduction. This touches on future goals and problems including war and population control. Freedon from ignorance & ... So what do humans need to survive into the future? What kind of future can humans create for themselves and their descendants? It’s difficult to answer for many reasons, including that the basis of human ecology, a safe, long term energy supply, is not in use yet. Still, much of humanities future already lies within humanity. Still, if everything described so far is a transitional ecology, where are humans likely to end up? Maybe this should list what we might accomplish and what we probably won’t accomplish. We will make progress, but what progress? How about will it free us from fear, want and ignorance or perhaps provide life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Those sound like good goals that I have heard of somewhere previously. Note that this is intended to be the expansion of a meme. This entire book is the parts of a single related, “integral” idea. If it is created properly, you can learn from it and you are most likely not going to know when you learned it, because it will just fit into what you already know. Conscious development of genetics will free us from fear of disease and other physical problems. Maybe we can do the same thing with some nanotechnology, super drugs along with quarantine procedures. Maybe it will take genetic improvement, drugs and technology just to survive. In any case, if current events surrounding emerging diseases are any example, people are going to live in a well founded fear of diseases. Will we be free of want? Could you imagine how much more productive we could be if people were all healthy, if they were more skilled, better learners and they had more advanced methods of cooperation. We need to change to more of a quality strategy than the quantity strategy we have had to use to adapt to the recent huge changes. It could be argued that much crime would not exist if people were more intelligent and if we had better philosophies. I would still rely on law and vigilance as well, but much crime is due to people that cannot function productively in the society. Besides, this is not just about using artificial selection or developing moralities; it is about humans doing those things to find a new niche to survive in. That means that the goal is to create and adapt to an ecology that we can survive in. That will not happen unless humans get very good solutions to their resource needs. Freedom from ignorance, what a concept. Would we still be human then? I say we would, because humans have a potential for greatness. One of the biggest problems on the entire earth is tribalism. It is a survival method, but at the same time it is the source of so much warfare and destruction it is almost unimaginable. It has already been described how artificial selection could make tribalism a thing of the past. In a more general sense, artificial selection could be used to raise the average intelligence of humans. Some of the implications of this are discussed elsewhere, but here I refer to it as freedom from ignorance. 22. Another Human Future Another Human Future in philosophical terms Inherently this is about the future. It is to answer the question of how can humans again create a stable ecology that they can survive in. Historically, saying much about the future is a pretty chancy endeavor. This is not to create a description of some possible technological or even agragarian vision of utopia. So far, this is a description of the minimum adaptations that humans will have to achieve to survive in any context. To a large extent, it is about compensating for things that humans have already changed. As said at the start of this, the biggest change relates to the removal of natural selective effect and the increase in population, both of which increase the consequence of disease. Also as said early on, the most basic requirement for survival is going to use artificial selection and conscious philosophical development. Natural selection is how species have always adapted to change, but that is not an option for humans. The change is too fast, the energetic cost would be too steep; the price would be too high to survive. So after 35 years of trying to figure out what it would take for humans to find an ecology that they could survive in, what did I conclude? Just right now, global warming really sucks. That seems especially true because I have recently realized that there was even more potential from artificial selection than I had suspected. It appears that artificial selection could end racism and give everyone the best genetic potentials of humanity. It could remove sickness, want and ignorance. It could almost certainly lead to motivation for realistic population control. It could offer a philosophical value to the individual in terms of heredity that has been hidden because of the danger of racial conflict. It also offers a broad philosophical foundation for individual’s actions and values based on survival. In my original time frame, artificial selection and a philosophy based on survival could allow humans to create a new ecology and adapt both genetically and behaviorally to survive in it indefinitely. I realized though that there was even a greater potential and that that ecology I described might again be a transitory ecology on the path that starts with intelligent social behaviors and tools and then leads invariably to artificial selection, if the specie survives. While artificial selection would lead to an increase in health, beauty and brains, there is an aspect of humanity that is a bit harder to describe, but in a way, more critical. That is emotional evolution. Emotions are just not well understood, but they do provide for communication, motivation and even understanding. Generally our social environment is more important to our survival than any other part of our ecology. It has been the driving force of human development for some time. Emotions are an important tool in our social environment. They are a form of intelligence, perhaps even an instinctual form. The potentials of emotions are such that they will become far more important in the future. 28.4 Social Engineering Everybody considers it a bad idea, but everyone practices it. It must be considered morality as it is about behaviors, all of which relate to survival. It will be very important to our future survival. The problem is we usually can't know the result without some experimentation. Experimentation always carries hazards. Hopefully we can be smarter about it than the rather random processes that evolution relies on. When we thing of the term Social Engineering we tend to think of when governments practice it, but it is the business of religions, teaching their followers to behave in ways assumed to be good for them or as their God says they should behave. In a sense it is a good thing. So often in pracitce it is bad. Any social engineering endevours should be based on reason and understanding. If they are based on just good intentions, they will probably end up being a disaster. The problem with secular or religious attempts at social engineering is that no matter the intent, they almost always end up being self serving and so are a not good for the majority. In this book, social engineering is mostly considered in terms of the content, referred to as morality, rather than the methods. A problem with social engineerinhg is that we simply don't know what it is going to take to survive in the future. We do know a bit though and the future will partly be created by social engineering. The best bet is to keep it to a minimum and play it safe. That is a basic biological principle. "So what should we be thinking about" asked the chimpanzee trying to figure out what to elvolve to. Lose the hair and some of the strength? 28.5 Technology This book deeply delves into human genetics, but is basically an ecological analysis. It has a clearly biological bias and that is for good reasons. It is to force the focus on the issues that the ecological analysis bring up. I wanted to describe a new ecology based on biological characteristics like ecologies always have been. Tools are uncommon in biology. Aside from Artificial Selection I have very intentionally avoided looking at technolological solutions to making the human future. Really, I don't think we need much in the way of new technologies (other than resource production) to achieve a stable ecology again. Still, human technology progresses. In terms of ecology or biology, some technology seems predictable. That is such a simple statement with so many implications. This chapter trys to lay out where I think technology will impact the factors that are considered basic to ecology and survival. It is mostly different than the SciFi writers have proposed, which is to be expected. These topics includes Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality - artificial extensions to our ecology and Cyborg Technology - machine augmented humans. Space Flight is unpredictable. At the present cost, it will not be an important part of human survival Artificial Intelligence is the first topic and like advanced human intelligence is not often really discussed much because it is difficult to describe any entity with an intelligence much greater than the person discussing it. Even before you get to that point though, AI presents some problems. We see it in automation replacing occupational niches as machines always have, but AI has the potential to replace almost all occupational niches including doctors, lawyers, artists and others that we usually don't think of. This was the basis of Isaac Asimov's Robot books. He pointed out that it could cause huge problems. What if there is no reasion to work? Occupation is about getting resources, a basis of ecology. It is part of what a human is. How we balance that one out is going to be interesting. Virtual Reality can be considered as an extension of our physical ecology or perhaps it may come to be considered the most dangerous drug of all, reality, but far better. It also offers solutions to the ongoing problem of human education, particularly things like morality that are hard to illustrate. It offers something else that might be unexpected. Cyborg Technology has offered great possibilities for the SciFi writers. The Six Million Dollar Man has entered the lexicon of the language. Really, the physical aspects (aside possibly disease resistance) of it don't seem that important. Humans survive based on behavior. What can machines offer us there? The obvious thing is to implant a computer, though many things that a computer can do better than a human is because humans have had no reason to adapt those potentials. Many potentials of a computer such as enhanced memory and pattern recognition are probably available to humans genetically. I see no reason that a genetic based form of radio communication could not be programmed in genetically. None of these matter. The question is again about trying to describe an entity more intelligent than the one doing the describing. How much could you improve the intelligence of a human using machines? What is intelligence? Does a computer enhance my intelligence? This is an unknown and won't be examined extensively here because human intelligence is examined elsewhere. Really, the main reason to bring up this topic though is that there is one other potential of Cyborg Technology that will be discussed in the final chapter. Part 2. Morality Based on Reason and Biology Part 3. What a Virtual Reality Heaven Would Be Like If Humans Built It Part 4. What Heaven Might Be Like If A God Made It. Dante Revisited. |