When male hormone production during puberty reaches a maximum level the probability of dying jumps up. […] The accident hump, which also exists among male apes, occurs because young men participate in particularly risky behaviour when the release of the hormone testosterone reaches its maximum. Dangerous and reckless shows of strength, negligence, and a high propensity to violence lead to an increased number of fatal accidents. – Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, August 2011

Evolution versus Creationism: How to Win & Defeat Ignorance

22.07.11 Although the facts behind evolution through natural selection aren’t in doubt in any way, and the utility of evolutionary biology is phenomenal, it nonetheless seems to be a competition to convince portions of the public that evolution is the only legitimate answer and creationism is bunk.

This de facto competition is occurring despite the fact that all medical and biological science, of direct benefit to both the atheist and the believer alike, rely entirely upon the verifiable and consistent character of evolution. And even more peculiar is that so many religious believers have staked the validity of their faith on opposing evolution, when the two things aren’t even necessarily contradictory! Why can’t they just say God invoked natural selection and leave it at that? Some do, but for the rest, to pick a battle against evolution and then try and use physical evidence to support your claim, as creationists do, well that’s just about the dumbest battle you can pick.

Nevertheless, the conflict is already in place and something has to be done.

We have to make evolution cool, sexy, culturally appealing, because that’s how most people (i.e. the hoi polloi) ‘think’, that’s how they make decisions; it is, unfortunately, not usually through sound reason or strategic consideration.

In this effort I suggest,

1) Invoke cultural icons, leaders, and people that are viewed favorably and are popular to speak out in support of evolution.

2) Employ striking visual imagery to motivate the public.

One particularly shrewd manifestation of this plan in action, (although that probably wasn’t the consideration at the time by the people involved), is the Tree of Life tattoo.

All the factors are there, you’ve got a cool tattoo as part of the popularity of California culture, it's marked on a popular person (she is now!), and it all conveys the theme of evolution in order to popularize and promote it.

Female mice made without any genetic material from a male live about 30% longer than mice with a male parent.

Alien Communication

29.04.11 I think the long-running scientific and philosophical question of how to communicate with aliens has overlooked a very important factor that's right under our nose.

So concerned are many professional and amateur researchers with extra-terrestrials, aliens that we’ve never seen or been able to interact with (in any verifiable way), that they miss the aliens that are all around us: intelligent animals. Many animal species are smart enough to communicate with us, yet they don’t share our culture or perceptions and for the purposes of social interaction are essentially the same as an extra-terrestrial that beamed down from another planet. And in this regard the one consistent topic that we can communicate between species is food. Every animal has to consume other life in order to live, and every animal is mentally consumed with thoughts of food, to one degree or another, some to the point of obsession – humans included! Food is even more important than sex because the need for food is continual and necessary for the survival of the individual organism, while sex is only necessary for genetic continuity (as well as providing ephemeral pleasure and emotional bonding). Since food, meaning a source of energy, is a requirement dictated by universal physics, there’s no reason to assume that extra-terrestrials would be any different than life on Earth.

If you want a common topic of discussion for communicating with alien life, start with food.

All people alive today are the descendents of one woman who lived 200,000 years ago.

European and Chinese populations also went through a genetic ‘bottleneck’ between 10,000 and 60,000 years ago.

Universal Mouth

April, 2011

Book Review: The Artificial Ape, by Timothy Taylor, first edition, 2010

06.11.10 It’s generally thought that over the course of human evolution various factors conspired to increase the size and mental capacity of the human mind, and this development subsequently allowed for ever-more advanced tool use; in other words, the tools come after the brain development.

Scientist and author Timothy Taylor has reached a different conclusion; he thinks the tools came first, and that improved the health and capabilities of early humans, thereby allowing for the development of larger brains. This is certainly an unusual hypothesis, but still one with some surprisingly convincing arguments. In fact, the author goes even farther and contends that our technology has (and continues to) define who we are as humans.

This view of technology as integral to human history and culture is the main theme of the book The Artificial Ape. As a result, the frequent argument that technology will replace us human beings is rendered specious because our very human character is defined by the tools and technology that we use, and in fact that we simply can’t live without! The belief in a division between biology and technology is the mistake.

We can never escape the bio-technological nexus and get “back to nature,” because we have never lived in nature. But there is something potentially wrong with our technology: it is dangerously entailed. The distance between cause and effect has become so great that by the time we perceive our potential maladaptation to environment, it is too late.

Darwin was right to try to resist the terminology “survival of the fittest”; biological evolution is littered with the extinct fossils of apparently perfectly adapted creatures. And the same is true for the relics of culture history: the great civilizations of Egypt, the Indus Valley, and the Maya. [p. 199]

Timothy Taylor uses the term 'survival of the weakest' to get us to revaluate our conceptions of natural selection as it applies to human evolution. For instance, our use of tools and technology generates a process that puts less demand upon the physical attributes of the human body, explaining the ‘decay’ of our physical capabilities over thousands of years.

Even in the last 10,000 years (the blink of an eye in evolutionary time), our bodies have weakened dramatically. Over this timescale it can be shown that our stature has decreased by 7 percent: Christopher Ruff estimates that we have lost fully 10 percent of our overall bony ruggedness—our so-called skeletal robusticity—in that time. Over the past 100,000 years, we see a 30 percent overall decrease—not as great as in some of the cattle we have domesticated, but remarkable nonetheless. Even Özti [sic], living just 5,000 years ago, had significantly stronger bones than most of us.

There is an energetic logic to this. Because growing and maintaining a large, robust skeleton is costly in energy terms, allowing emergent technology to take the strain makes good sense. Of course, that was not a decision that archaic humans made, or would have been able to make, consciously, but it was an inevitable biological consequence of creating a wider range of tools to do jobs that previously relied solely on muscle power. A more gracile body will need less upkeep, and what it can no longer manage by brute force can be managed with specifically designed artifacts that amplify and concentrate strength: slingshots and spears, levers and bows. These technologies allowed our self-domestication just as they aided our domestication of wild animals. [p. 28]

But even though some of our physical capacities have diminished over millennia of evolution, that doesn’t mean we're less capable as humans, simply that we’ve advanced to the point where we can now share and externalize many things that we didn’t used to be able to. Writing, for instance, allows us to share and record ideas without keeping them memorized, just as computers magnify the same process many times over. And now you can see the rapidly accelerating progression between culture, human development and technological change that’s already thoroughly established.

Overall, technology produces the environments within which fitness is ultimately judged, regardless of nature. An insect-catching bird may have natural visual acuity hundreds of times finer than ours, but we can track it, catch it, tag it, trap it, or kill it at will. Then we can study its eye and use the lessons we learn to design new things. [p.186]

Moving back millions of years, the critical technological development that Taylor focuses on is the (assumed) first invention of a sling to carry a baby. This frees up the arms and allows for mobility, creating the ability to rapidly grow in technology and intelligence.

"[T]he solution for growing larger brains: you do it outside the womb.” [p. 124]

Taylor puts considerable focus of food because he thinks diet has a formidable impact on human development, with particular attention to the energy requirements of various regimens.

Because the energy equations of a short gut and a large brain simply do not work out, if you want to pretend to be adapted to salads, raw fish and meat, and uncooked vegetables, then you need to play a different technological trick. If you live with access to warm clothes, central heating, food-processors and liquidizers, and protection from the elements, and do not attempt anything too strenuous, you can just about manage. You might say it is living raw, but in reality you are adding a lot of additional, usually fossil-fuel-based, energy to your total system. It’s energy that could probably be more efficiently put directly into your food, by cooking it. [p. 91]

Timothy Taylor delivers some long-overdue criticism of Jared Diamond’s overblown and over-rated 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' explanation for human evolution:

The story of Guns, Germs, and Steel is rooted in a style of thought older than Victorian racism—the “geographical possibilism” of the eighteenth century. This tried to explain differences in cultural patterns, not in terms of differences in human racial capacities, but in terms of what particular environments will allow and what they rule out. Often now called ecological determinism, it is a sort of universal acid, creating “just-so” stories of why people live as they do in particular environments. [p. 42]

Geographic possibilism fails to explain groups of people with vastly different characters that exist in different places with the same environment!

Taylor describes the way we equalize our environments in order to make them habitable:

Despite our nutritional disadvantage, or in fact, because of it, and through it, we have developed a technology of cooking and hunting that allows us, uniquely among apes, to inhabit almost every environment on the planet. Or, put another way, we use technology to create homeostasis: to equalize all environments to one, and to maintain energy intake and body temperature whatever the outside conditions are. It may very well be that we have been so successful as a species because of our “phenotypic plasticity”—the so-called Baldwin effect. What this means is that we are able to develop according to our environmental conditions along a number of different pathways from birth to adulthood. [pgs. 91-92]

Culture and behavioral plasticity:

Whole books have been written that attempt to define what culture is, but a very useful account, especially when viewing humans in a really long-term perspective, is that by the anthropologist Ernest Gellner. Geilner pointed out that the human species displays “an unbelievable degree of behavioural plasticity or volatility” but that this genetic “under—determination is itself genetically determined. In short, our genes give us the potential to be all sorts of things but leave us incomplete.

Paradoxically, Gellner argued, this very behavioral plasticity deprives us of so much innate, instinctual know-how that, to survive, we have to learn how to be after we are born. This process of childhood enculturation physically molds the infant brain as it soaks in the human world from the safety of its sling. No surprise that, once established, what we have learned of our own culture is almost fascistically adhered to as “the way.” So humans, taken en masse, are incredibly diverse while, viewed within their cultures, they are incredibly conformist. The behavioral plasticity of childhood gives way to the normative values of adulthood, which by then have been internalized as “natural.” In some ways, humans, like hermit crabs, must find their niche; critically unlike hermit crabs, this niche is not limited by the size of the vacant mollusk shells. [pgs. 191-192]

Overall, The Artificial Ape is an interesting book with some valuable insights. Many of the author’s arguments are speculative, but none of them are made without consideration or a reasonable assessment of the known evidence. Timothy Taylor does tend to over-emphasize physical technology, when in reality our evolution was probably a very intricate relationship between adopting new tools through random efforts, and biological developments that occurred through random environmental factors, such as diet, weather, and so on. In other words, it’s unlikely that physical evidence, like fossils, will be discovered to substantiate a decisive explanation of very early human development millions of years ago.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the book is just the lack of focus, or rather that I think it could have been much more tightly written, less rambling and anecdotal in ways that add little to the overall argument, like a professor prattling on about all the wonderful things he knows about. More importantly, Taylor’s views can easily be distorted in ways that, through his enthusiasm, he doesn’t seem to realize. It’s dangerously easy to take his assessment and make technology into a god, or a panacea, but that misses the crux of the matter – who and for what purpose is the technology serving? And what do we do when our technology poisons us, or kills us? And what does survival of the fittest really mean for humans who can alter their environment to suit their needs?

These questions are particularly important because we can’t have one without the other, we can’t be just technology or just be an animal. We can’t neglect the organic side of what it means to be human, only to fixate on the artificial, technological side; we can’t be human without both elements. So, how should we as individuals and society deal with the consequences of our tools and technology?

These questions ask for a meaningful predictive assessment but that's, unfortunately, lacking.  The political and social implications of Taylor’s assessment are significant, but mostly left up the reader to consider.

None of this criticism should fundamentally tarnish the overall value of this book. Timothy Talyor’s The Artificial Ape is fascinating read that provides some unique and thought-provoking insights on human evolution and what it means to be tool-making (and using) apes.

Alien Intelligence

For decades researchers have looked for signs of alien intelligence in space, yet the ironic aspect of this effort is the fact that non-human intelligence is already right here on Earth, usually unrecognized and often misunderstood. This intelligence isn’t in the form of UFO spaceships or little men in helmets and flight suits; it’s in the form of the animal life all over our planet.

Numerous animal species have demonstrated remarkable intelligence, even within the limited range of conducted research, and the more we look the more surprising things we learn. Animal intelligence has been overlooked for so long that we even have the phrase 'bird brain' to reflect a lack of smarts, but in fact this phrase only reveals our own ignorance because many birds are startlingly intelligent. Parrots have demonstrated smarts in numerous studies, and now other bird species have too. Tool-use by birds in the corvid family rivals, or even surpasses, that of the primates like chimpanzees. Betty, an apparently average New Caledonian crow, blew away researchers when she intentionally constructed a tool out of a piece of wire to retrieve a small bucket of food from a well, the first time any animal had done so without an extended period of learning through trial-and-error. [1] Magpies have demonstrated self-awareness, and mockingbirds can recognize individuals of another species (people) and respond accordingly (friend or foe) from memory.

"We don't believe mockingbirds evolved an ability to distinguish between humans. Mockingbirds and humans haven't been living in close association long enough for that to occur." Levey said. "We think instead that our experiments reveal an underlying ability to be incredibly perceptive of everything around them, and to respond appropriately when the stakes are high." [2]

It’s been widely accepted that upon discovery and contact with alien intelligence, assumed to be from outer space, our own civilization would be radically transformed in the process. Yet it’s clear that one of the consequences of egotism and cultural isolation is a consistent failure to recognize the capacities and abilities of those that are different. As a result we’ve missed seeing what other forms of intelligence can teach us. Much of this arrogance stems from outdated religious beliefs, such as the Bible’s claim that the natural environment was created for man. In fact because of adaptive evolution it was the environment that created man!

Now we're finally beginning to realize that remarkable intelligence does in fact reside outside of the human species and it's not even on an inaccessible planet in another solar system. Understanding how other forms of intelligent life think and act directly challenges the assumed supremacy of human values and perceptions, but as a result we’ll learn new and better ways of living and responding to our surroundings. And as we develop methods of communicating with other species our own civilization may indeed be radically transformed in ways we can't yet imagine. 15.06.09

1. Meet the brains of the animal world, by Rebecca Morelle, BBC News, May 7, 2009.

2. Mockingbirds -- No Bird Brains -- Can Recognize A Face In A Crowd, ScienceDaily, May 19, 2009.

Human Biology and Race Issues in Quotes

Forty percent of New York City's black males are jobless. One in three black males born in 2001 will end up in prison. The life expectancy of black men in the U.S. ranks below that of men in Sri Lanka and Colombia. Hip-Hop Planet, by James McBride, NG, April 2007.

The majority of humans around the world lose the ability to digest lactose – a sugar in milk – before reaching adulthood. This is because their gene for the enzyme lactase, which breaks lactose down, is switched off during adolescence. Symptoms of this “lactose intolerance” include bloating and diarrhoea after drinking milk.
However, over 90% of northern Europeans have a version of the lactase gene that remains active throughout life, enabling them to continue drinking milk as adults. - New Scientist, 26.02.07

"Our textile factories can't compete with cheap Chinese imports subsidised by a foreign government. People are saying: 'We've had bad people before. The whites were bad, the Indians were worse but the Chinese are worst of all.'" - Thanks China, now go home: buy-up of Zambia revives old colonial fears, February 5, 2007.

Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego, said middle-class families began heading north in droves after the peso collapses in 1982 and 1994 wiped out many people's life savings.
Cornelius said Mexico's falling birth rate would eventually drive wages up in Mexico and help reduce migration but that it would be decades — if not generations — before any real impact is felt.
"The problem is getting worse," he said. "And that's not going to change for a long time."
Not All Mexican Migrants Are Poor Laborers, by Will Weissert, AP May 6, 2006.

"Sub-Saharan Africa is home to about 25 million of the world's nearly 40 million HIV-infected people." - AP September 20, 2005

Chimpanzees in the wilderness of Senegal have been observed doing something remarkable: making spears to hunt other primates.

"It's classic in primates that when there is a new innovation, particularly in terms of tool use, the younger generations pick it up very quickly. The last ones to pick up are adults, mainly the males", said Dr Pruetz, who led the National Geographic-funded project.

This is because young chimps pick the skill up from their mothers, with whom they spend a lot of their time. "It's a niche that males seem to ignore," Dr Pruetz told BBC News.

Many areas where chimpanzees live are also home to red colobus monkey, which the chimps hunt. However, the Senegal site is lacking in this species, so chimps may have needed to adopt a new hunting strategy to catch a different prey - bushbaby.

The authors conclude that their findings support a theory that females may have played a similarly important role in the evolution of tool technology among early humans.
From: Chimpanzees 'hunt using spears', BBC, 02.22.07

Review of the book Adam’s Curse by Bryan Sykes, paperback version, 2005.

09.12.05 Adam’s Curse is a fascinating book that lends some profound scientific evidence to many of the issues on human sex-based socio-biological events of the past, present and future that I’ve been writing about for years. Sykes began by studying matrilineal mitochondrial DNA (mDNA), culminating in the best-selling book The Seven Daughters of Eve. In Adam’s Curse Sykes describes how he became intrigued by the other side in the form of the Y-chromosome that is passed from father to son. One of the things he discovered is that the X and Y-chromosomes are in a state of competition. Sykes and other researchers have discovered that the Y-chromosome is not only unstable but is actually disintegrating at a very rapid pace, by biological standards anyway. An increasingly toxic synthetic environment is exacerbating this downward trend, an ironic outcome of the Y-chromosome's characteristic to recklessly abuse wealth and power in an attempt to spread itself as widely as possible.

The invention and adoption of agriculture was accompanied by new concepts with a far greater lasting consequence, concepts which were unknown before the first seed was planted or the first animal tethered to a tree. These concepts were property, wealth and power. They were entirely new and played straight into the hands of our old friend — the Y-chromosome — as a new and irresistible instrument for sexual selection. Now, at long last, there was an opportunity for Y-chromosomes that could get hold of these valuable assets to increase almost without limit; an opportunity to pursue their natural instinct for endless replication that had until then been contained. It was, in my view, men and through them the Y-chromosome that seized on this trio of property, wealth and power and pushed them to their present absolute prominence. It may even be that this seductive combination, coupled to the unstoppable force of sexual selection, was not the passive and innocent by-product of agriculture and husbandry but the driving force behind its spread around the world. Adam’s Curse, pg. 233

Many questions arise, and some have tentative answers. What will replace the Y-chromosome? How does homosexuality fit into this situation? And, do we need men at all, especially when considering the deleterious burden they place upon social cohesion as well as individual and group health? "The human Y-chromosome is crumbling before our very eyes. What can we expect to happen if things carry on like this? There is no reason to think they will improve — quite the reverse, in fact." ibid, pg. 290

Sykes describes the complex biological mechanics at work, as well as the research methods used to study them, in a clear and understandable way. Adam’s Curse is a very important book to read today because it explains so much about history and social-biology and because it puts these motive forces and world events into a quantifiable and substantive scientific context.

The Human Biological Future: A New Species

26.09.04 In any given environment certain traits will be selected for over others because they more closely match the needs of the given situation. In a natural setting, where pity never occurs, organisms that lack the requisite attributes to succeed in their environment die out to be replaced by those that do. Evolution is occurring all the time but when it comes to the human organism the process is not as simple or direct as with non-sentient animal life driven purely by ingrained impulses. This is because human life can actually alter its own environment even though it can’t escape biological evolution!

In the present era we are experiencing a process of human evolution as our increasingly automated and technologically altered environment develops and the needs for fitting in to it change. This is undoubtedly an evolution partly of our own creation but in a positive sense the traits that are needed to succeed within it are surprisingly universal in value.

So far the biological extinction component that characterizes the classic natural selection process is loosely invoked because today many that cannot succeed in society still reproduce and often in large numbers. However this may well change in the near future as social pressures increase in weight and the developing human environment forces reaction.

But regardless of our immediate opinion concerning this evolution we can’t turn back the clock nor can we ‘devolve’ anymore than we can go back to living a primitive way of life. Evolution is a one-way process because any group that rescinds knowledge, tools and technology is at an immediate disadvantage to the group that keeps it hence it will not go away. Similarly any group that cooperates has an advantage over a selfish lot that doesn’t, hence smart, cooperating individuals have greater chances of success in almost any environment and those that don’t sink into poverty, ill health and an expedited death.

The traits being selected for now are resistance to impulses, resistance to temptations, and especially strategic thinking. Obesity, for instance, is no longer a first world weakness but has spread to infect even the developing world too. From smoking, sloth and stress to drug abuse, as society has become increasingly complex so have the possibilities for self-harm increased. But even more interesting, just as obesity epidemic demonstrates, very few living individuals have the mental and physical traits needed to resist the pitfalls inherent within the modern environment. The more intense the environmental pressures the faster the speed with which evolutionary change occurs. And now we're witnessing the development of a new species that's occurring with astonishing rapidity, and I further conclude it may well be an asexual species at that. Think about this,

[A]sexual females are new in evolutionary terms, with most species arising within the past 100,000 years. [...] The ability of asexual females to escape dominance on copulation will be a function of the rate of mutation to less dependent reproductive physiology following their derivation from sexual populations. Once these alleles (genes) arise, they should be heavily favored, particularly if parthogen (asexual) access to males is limited. - Maurine Neiman, biologist; from: Polygamous Past, Asexual Future?, by Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News, September 20, 2004.

So in other words sex ends when females figure out they can still have fun without males, all the fun without the mating hassle. In this hypothesis sexual reproduction is simply perpetuated by female desire for male sex partners, and if that were to end? Now, there’s always a certain risk in extrapolating conclusions directly from the animal kingdom and interposing them into human events because different biological organisms do not always behave in a directly similar manner. Nevertheless the mechanical rules of reproduction apply the same regardless so it’s quite possible the analogy has even more validity than we may think.

But it’s not just the efficiency of asexual reproduction that favors females over males, it's their psychological characteristics as well. Look at almost any need in the modern environment and you’ll find that the most desirable characteristics are the ones that females have in surplus and males have in short supply, if at all.

Whether human males go extinct or not is probably irrelevant in the near-term, but what isn’t is the fact that female attitudes will definitely be favored in the selection process because those are the characteristics that fit best in the environment we’ve created – intelligence, cooperation, empathy, and effective communications skills, for instance. And let’s be clear here, this isn’t about superficial gender behaviors that are peculiar to a given culture, this isn’t that men can act like women and become more successful in the current environment, this is a biological issue. In other words the traits that best fit the current environment are intricately associated with the X-chromosome while the savage, glory days of the Y-chromosome have expired and Y is now obsolescent.

Examples of the selection process are all around us. The prisons fill up to overflowing with all the males that cannot adapt to modern environment. All of their attributes and the minimal skills they do possess are useless today - they can’t plan for the future, they have no empathic understanding of those around them, and they're prone to violence and reaction without regard for consequences. Indeed, the entire social underclass is largely composed of persons that society has outgrown the need for, automation and technological advances have rendered them not just redundant but a burden!

Natural selection is hardly a pretty process to see in action and extinction even less so, but this is the nature of the order we all exist within and like it or not we are compelled to obey those rules. All the best efforts of criminal justice, all the ‘miracle’ drugs from the pharmaceutical industry and the quick-fix solutions from the policy makers cannot change the inevitable course of our own evolution and the eventual emergence of a new species because our own biological future will inevitably emerge from the environment of the present.

Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system — with all these exalted powers — Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. - Charles Darwin

Eye of the Beholder

September 2003

Race: From Biology to Politics

18.01.04 & 14.08.09 & 09.06.11 Race is a subset classification below a species, but while different species cannot interbreed by definition, different races can. The main human races of today were probably created during the last Ice Age, where extremely harsh environmental pressures formed the disparate physical attributes we can see today. Still, the definitions and views of race can (and have) changed.

There's nothing mystical or strange about race, humans got where they are today through the same natural selection process as every other living organism. Some argue that race is an imagined difference, but every surgeon knows otherwise – ignorance of racial differences kills patients. Transplanted organs, diseases, cancers, all differentiate by race so the classification we employ is definitely rooted in unambiguous physical differences in human populations. Regardless, the race is real or not argument has no weight in practical life because human behavior often acts racist, or maintains it as a subconscious factor, regardless of any awareness for science or fact. The cultural constructs that emerge from the collection of genetically similar groups we call races are what really make things murky because it's possible for a member of one race to adopt the fashions, customs and mores of another culture and thus change cultural identity, even if not their biological being. So which one really matters? The mutability of character, and indeed of a fundamental identity outside of one's physical biological form, is a major factor that racists are forced to ignore in order to maintain their belief.

Why is racism so violently reviled today? Perhaps because it’s something a person can’t change? Beauty and intelligence are two other factors of notable comparison here, read: From Socialism to Capitalism - A Cycle This is the fundamental friction of racism – it instantly polarizes the participants and creates an adversarial relationship that cannot be abrogated because neither side can change what they are! This is even worse than a religious conflict because neither side can convert! Modern western societies go to great lengths to avoid this dilemma, but they can never escape it entirely. So, practically speaking, as living centers around the world become increasing racially diverse the less acceptable racism becomes, for the obvious reason that racism poisons relations and acts as an acid against social cohesion.

Yet the concern hasn't always been the same. One hundred, even fifty years ago, Western culture was openly racist, blatant expressed in war propaganda of World War II, for instance. Although racism is no longer considered socially acceptable, from a biological perspective racism still makes sense because it preserves genetic character. But the problem is that if racism is sound in argument and backed by scientific research (which in some ways it is) then an official order is being maintained through a flawed belief; and if overt conflict is inevitable, then it's only being postponed rather than rectified.

Especially in the increasingly crowded and barely cohesive urban societies of today it's very important to keep everyone getting along and business running as smoothly as possible. Two quick examples of this phenomenon are San Francisco and Toronto. Both are large cities, both are cosmopolitan in character, and both have to deal with a constant undercurrent of identity-based strife be it racial, ethnic, religious, gender, or lifestyle. Nonetheless, the diversity of character and vibrancy of a multitude of cultures placed together generates a dynamic and creative energy that directly leads to greater wealth and prosperity, in one form or another, for nearly everyone in the city -- as long as they can at least tentatively cooperate and tolerate each other's differences. These benefits can't be ignored from the equation, and it's also worth considering that some of the poorest and least-desirable locations are often the least racially and culturally diverse.

District Attorney Terence Hallinan during a 2002 San Francisco 'anti-hate' campaign proudly declared, "In this city, which has always been known for its tolerance, the only thing we will not tolerate is intolerance." Unfortunately, authorities too often rely on flimsy myths and not facts to compel tolerance and foster organized living in the modern cosmopolitan city, using attitudes like ‘hate is unnatural and wrong’ and ‘everyone is the same’. Toronto Canada is arguably the most racially and culturally diverse spot on the globe but it functions, perhaps ironically, because of the lack of a clear majority! Racism is an issue in Toronto everyday but since most everyone is there to make a (Canadian) dollar they generally set aside that instinct using their higher brain functions.

Interesting enough the most overtly racist groups in cities are the gangs - be they Black, White, Asian, and everything in between. Why? Their identity is not tied to the above-ground economy. In other words, they don’t have to set aside their feelings of racism in order to make a dollar because they’ve already been marginalized from society, they have no incentive to suppress racist instincts, and racism serves as a simple and tactically-effective tool for social division and identity-formation.

Human behavior is rooted in evolved instinct and simple biological motivations, but this basal force can nonetheless be overridden by higher thought processes of the mind. The only instinctive force comparable to racial identity is that of immediate selfishness – greed. The desire for money is a motivating force that competes quite well against racism, a fact that racists are not keen on admitting. 

The fact of the matter is that no race is inherently sacred and racial change is inevitable. The fundamental principle behind racism is that the greater the familiarity and similarity between individuals in a group the more likely they are to cooperate because it’s always easier to trust the other person when you understand how they think and how they act. Without empathy for others in the group, and an understanding of the needs of others, no sustainable cooperative society can be formed, read: Gorillas in the Midst. But modern urban associations are usually not based on social bonds but rather transient economic ones. Urban centers mix vast numbers of disparate persons together, typically for short-term profit gains, but with the threat of conflict in the future hanging overhead, because race will always form at least part of every individual’s identity.

What part of human identity is permanent and what part is variable?

Racial identity has the advantage of being rooted in permanence while economic identity is purely transient. Nether facet of identity is insignificant but sole reliance upon the variable aspect is asking for trouble.

So this is how it breaks down: money can make people ignore issues of identity by activating their internal greed but only temporarily. An affluent white-collar worker has the same instincts as their racial relatives in gangland but they act differently because of their financial attachments. When the money flees so does the façade of cooperation based on wealth.

It’s unfair to state that human nature is inherently racist because that's misleading and sounds worse than it really is. Human nature is inherently selfish because selfish genes drive it and a healthy individual likes and understands best the stuff they are composed of as opposed to the stuff of others.

What is Racism?

Racism in its root form is the attempt to preserve recessive genes, or more specifically the recessive genes that confer a special identity upon the members of one’s own race. This explains why racial mixing is deemed a mortal threat by racists. Yet in the short term these genes are not being eliminated just hidden from view, so the genotype still contains those recessive traits that typify the race but they may not show up in the phenotype of the individual. However, eventually the recessive genes would be eliminated, but again these recessive traits can really only perpetuate in a very small gene pool anyway. So instead of a few villages interbreeding in a remote valley, today the entire world is for all practical purposes a single gene pool! This is a profound event in human development.

Does the value of a race outweigh the value of an individual?

The technology that has built global economic bonds has created a very dynamic and in many ways unpredictable world. Nonetheless the fundamental rules of competition and biological evolution still apply; it's a teeming sea of individuals constantly seeking to optimize their status within the present environment in the unending search for fitness. The evolution of Homo sapiens is still driven by individual choices and interactions just as it always has, but the background changes.

The flaw in racism is rooted in the human ego, for the racist is seeing a value where nature does not. The natural order does not care whether a race perpetuates or goes extinct, nor does it care whether an individual lives, breeds or dies. The only rule and goal is survival and the onus of survival is always on the individual; a person does not need a race to survive! No individual can exist independently outside of a societal network, but the human species has developed a multitude of social systems and structures that serve to support the individual, and the other way around.

Racism is fundamentally rooted in an ego-attachment to home culture, the culture they are most familiar with, habit in other words. So, in order to intellectual justify racism, racists must imply that their own culture is superior to others, and therefore it must be protected and preserved. indeed, within this mentality culture is far more important than the individual. The individual must continually sacrifice to preserve their culture  against the competition of other races. Conflict, warfare, and the authority to enforce it quickly follow suit.

Racism may work for tactical political gains and simplified generalizations of ‘us versus them’, but to try and ensconce racism as a singular belief-set is not strategically tenable; it’s just manufacturing a doomed quasi-religion based on a 'sacred' idol of our race and our culture. After all, the limitations on travel and communication that held human populations in isolation, creating races in the first place no longer hold sway. Intermixing is inevitable and no one can turn back the clock now. The most promising outcome is ascension to a merit-based society where opportunities for personal advancement are open to everyone and where success depends not on class, race or connections, but on individual capabilities.

But anyone convinced that the elimination of racial differences will usher in a new world of peace and cooperating is wildly deluded. Just take a look at Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Balkans, and so on. These global hotspots will quickly disabuse you of the notion that the elimination of race necessarily eliminates conflict. It may instead just break a bond of social cohesion and create new divisions. What cities are really doing by importing and mixing the peoples of the world is ushering in a bold new era of density-based hyper-competition that serves to heighten the sense of racial as well as other identities, not lessen them. Indeed the urban world's future is likely to resemble something akin to the racial stratification characteristic of modern Brazilian society and the chronic internal conflicts associated with it. Politics will never be the same. Ironically race probably has a greater value in politics than it does in biological substance.

Race has not been a major issue until recently in world history – it’s always been the clan, the tribe, the religion, the nationality, and so on, but very rarely if ever the race, simply because the race was such a broad category it did not adequately define identity. But today with the gene pool inflated to include the entire world, race does indeed suffice as a symbol of identity. In the 21st century race is, in effect, replacing the nationalism that so characterized the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Economic development and global interconnections have acted to undermine the concept and even the viability of the nation-state. In this turbulent wake, race has emerged as the next over-arching identity connection that spans worldwide political boundaries, just as money and trade does. Further, race as an identity has such a marvelous superficial simplicity to it that, for politics especially, it's the perfect push-button.

Drugs and the Human Body

16.08.02 & 12.07.09 Chemical addiction seems to be related to rapidity of onset for the drug's effect. Drugs which have a lengthy delay before the effects are felt are rarely abused, while those with a rapid or instantaneous effect are very often abused. This is why heroin is usually used as an intravenous drug, it delivers a quicker high. Alcohol would be another example of a fast acting, commonly abused chemical.

It's the feeling people are chasing anyway. It's interesting to note the surprising number of drugs designed and marketed to be safe and non-addictive that later turn out to be exactly the opposite! For example heroin was sold as a safe and non-addictive alternative to morphine! Synthetic drug methaqualone is another example of misguided pharmacology. Glutethimide is one of the worst in this category, a "safe" depressant that turns out to be anything but safe - a suicide drug that accumulates in the body and stays long after the effects have worn off.

A healthy body is in a state of natural equilibrium, chemically, psychologically and physically. A person in this state of health has no normal craving for drugs. But since drugs distort the body’s chemical balance an unhealthy body desires the effects of drugs more than a healthy one, either as a desire to regain lost equilibrium or to escape from the inability to achieve it, often making the problem worse in the process.

26.09.01 It used to be thought only humans could make and use tools, then researchers checked into it and found that to be quite untrue. Then it was said only humans had language but a few careful studies later found many animals can use language too. The next unassailable division became the amorphous concept of culture. Well it turns out some animals have that too. Only humans were right side dominant, then it was discovered that crows are right 'handed' too. The final barrier to date is the ability to learn by imitation, said to be the sole domain of humans. I have a suspicion if researchers look close enough they'll find animals doing that as well. So why not add another codicil to this thinning book defining the species Homo sapien? Seeing as how in the animal kingdom rape is reproduction perhaps consensual sex is a quality reserved for humans? It would seem to me to be as least as good as the ones already listed but has the added twist of rejecting the carte-blanche membership of not just a a few.

It seems our primary problem is not an overly narrow definition of animal but an overly broad definition of human. Maybe those that refuse to act human shouldn't be treated as such?

Answering AIDS

10/13.07.02 The AIDS conference in Barcelona Spain has revealed some startling facts on the HIV/AIDS crisis that continues to confound simple resolution. For example, although HIV/AIDS can theoretically strike anyone this belies the fact that the vast majority are infected because of their own lifestyle decisions and their own dangerous actions.

"A federally funded 10-year study has found that high-risk sexual behavior, not sharing needles, is the biggest predictor of HIV infection in males and females who inject drugs." [4]

"Gay men account for the largest proportion of new H.I.V. infections, or 43 percent, followed by people infected by heterosexual sex, 27 percent, and intravenous drug users, 23 percent."

"Dr. Ron Stall reported a behavioral study involving 2,881 gay men in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. Dr. Stall said the study had found a striking correlation between high-risk behavior, H.I.V. infection and four psychosocial health problems: drug use, violence against a partner, history of childhood sexual abuse and depression." [2]

Furthermore, a preponderance of HIV occurs within racial minority groups, specifically African-American males. This is likely a confluence of a lack concern or awareness of personal impact, a general distance between minorities and the medical system, and a predilection for certain dangerous behaviors.

"The rates of unawareness among minority gay men ages 15 to 29 in the study were staggeringly high. Among those found to have H.I.V., the AIDS virus, 90 percent of blacks, 70 percent of Hispanics and 60 percent of whites said they did not know they were infected."

"Disease centers officials, who are responsible for tracking the AIDS epidemic in the United States, reported that 55 percent of new H.I.V. infections in 25 states from 1994 through 2000 were among blacks, who make up only 12 percent of the population in the United States."

Among those who acquired H.I.V. through heterosexual sex, black women accounted for nearly half from 1994 through 2000; black male heterosexuals accounted for an additional 25 percent, for a total of 75 percent, a hugely disproportionate share of infections in the United States, Dr. Valdiserri said." [2]

AIDS is very costly to treat, and not just in monetary measures.

"Caring for each patient suffering from the advanced stages of AIDS costs an average $34,000 a year in the United States, according to the first comprehensive analysis released on Wednesday. " [3]

Some cogent questions to ask are: why such an emphasis upon treating a disease that is primarily a product of behavior and lifestyle decisions? Especially with so many other pathogenic threats to human health that those with much more widespread infection patterns? And what of the counterintuitive phenomenon associated with HIV treatments? It has been shown that by making those infected healthier with a cornucopia of drugs not only does it create new, drug resistant strains of the disease but,

"About one in seven people who have recently been infected with the virus that causes AIDS have contracted a strain of the organism that is already resistant to drugs used to treat the disease, doctors said Saturday." [1]

... it also generates a wider spread of infections. Although these individuals are HIV positive they appear healthy and can continue dangerous sexual behavior. Whereas before, or without treatment, they would be too ill to do so.

Solutions, or at the very least adequate treatments to HIV and AIDS, will remain elusive as long as the most obvious questions remain taboo.

1. Drug-resistant AIDS virus increasing, by Ed Susman, UPI Science News

2. Many Gay Men in U.S. Unaware They Have H.I.V., by Lawrence K. Altman, NYT July 7, 2002.

3. US Spends $34,000 a Year on Each Sick AIDS Patient, Reuters, July 10 2002.

4. 'Risky sex strongest predictor of HIV', by Joyce Howard Price, The Washington Times, July 12, 2002.

Thoughts on Cryptozoology

Cryptozoology is a good term to impress your associates with; it means the search for unidentified animals. 'Bigfoot' or Sasquatch is one of the most well known to the public. This field of science is much more complex and serious than most think, and already has several remarkable success to its credit such as the 1938 discovery of a species of fish known as the coelacanth, previously thought extinct for 65 million years. And even if one maintains disbelief the public reactions alone are enough to generate not just a few sociological studies. A poorly educated public is always quick to discount phenomena they know nothing about, or embrace others they know everything about because it consists of rumors and fantasy.

What is Bigfoot?
The serious scientific investigators probing the topic view it as a fascinating, unsolved natural mystery. For some intellectuals the most interesting aspect is society's reaction to the topic, and the common logic for why it just could not be. That logic exposes Americans' fantastically skewed, English garden perception of the landscape. It also reveals a surprising amount of ignorance about how much uninhabited space there still is across the continent.

Some note how most Americans will profess a belief in things they have never seen, such as God and Jesus, but the same Americans will quickly ridicule honest eyewitnesses to these animals, even if those eyewitnesses are their most trusted family members. The topic so sternly dismissed by societal institutions that no one should be surprised that no physical remains have ever been delivered to scientists by the public. From: www.bfro.net

Cloning Immortality

28.01.01 The advent of genetic modifications technology will imperil the remaining myths of our era, and likely doom them to the dim dirty corners of sub-cultural denial akin to the Flat-Earth society today. Biological systems are so well honed that we assume them to be near-perfect, expecting every baby to enter the world whole and healthy. But in reality mistakes happen both by man and God. Cloning as one example will take years to achieve quick and clean results. Dolly the sheep took 277 attempts to make 29 valid embryos of which only one worked. Genetic engineering and cloning, gene therapy and every other tool used to manipulate genetic quality will invariably highlight the above fact. Mistakes, ugly ones at that are a natural product of the process aimed at eventual success.

No genetic entity is 'carved in stone', no DNA sequence is so holy as to be the apex of perfection, and in fact that false notion of acme so ingrained into the modern myth, especially via religious notions of soul and spirit, are the exact opposite of reality. We're meant to evolve, to adapt and improve to match our environment. And judging by the looks of people today it's a process desperately needed if the species is to survive at all! Outside of scientific quarters, the rarely stated genetic quandary of our era is that as the population boundaries of human reproduction have expanded the negative recessive traits that used to be washed out within the proscribed populations of history are no longer being removed. Instead a steady collection of faulty traits are cumulating within the collective gene pool. A long term problem, but one that can be solved with technical means. Artificial genetic modifications will ultimately become an imperative, not a luxury.

The self doesn't want to die, we also search for higher powers that never die, God and soul. Yet could these needs not be neatly paralleled, even satisfied or at least symbolically represented, by the genetic thread that connects us all, the need for procreation and the creation new life similar to ourselves? Reproduction is a very powerful thread binding us all, the entire conception of immortality and the curious pervasive affinity human nature has for everlasting life is really nothing more than the genetic imperative entailed within reproduction. Cloning is very nearly immortality in itself.

Soon the unavoidable realization will dawn concerning the beautifully fungible raw potential and magnificent might of biological organisms, and our world will never be the same. Anyone still naive and narrow-minded enough to think that bio-engineering is all just evil anyway - don't sweat it, it will all happen eventually regardless. Instead the wise realize banning things fails, instead you channel it in the proper directions with guidance and prudent oversight. The only real question for the day is: what path will our leadership take?

Here's something to think about. Hair is not unique to mammals, at least not historically speaking. So actually the definition of a mammal isn't the hair but presence of mammary glands used to nourish young, of course. Yet is it not curious that the crucial attribute of mammals is only developed in one sex? So what does that make the males, redundant even in mammalian classification?!

Say it isn't so!

Has my answer been heard to the question how one cures a woman - "redeems" her? One gives her a child. Woman needs children, a man is for her always only a means: thus spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

25.10.00 Yeah, but a more accurate statement would substitute 'genes' for 'woman'. The genetic material, the real owner of every human soul, can ultimately only be sated by reproduction.

Many if not all cultural constructs have very tangible but poorly studied connections with hidden biological motivations. Why are famous people and celebrities, especially men, such a popular issue among most women? Most likely because fame and popularity mean wealth and its corollary health, and both of those qualities are important for the success of offspring. In other words, women that are attracted to famous men are doing nothing more than pragmatically sizing up the ability of their potential (or wishful) mates to provide for the long-term needs of their genetic progeny.

The Traditional Order of Sexual Reproduction has been Overthrown

08.05.00 & 14.08.09 Sexual reproduction is a strange evolutionary development. It’s a hindrance to reproduction in that it takes the presence and cooperation of two parties. Asexual reproduction is more logical and more efficient. Indeed the sheer existence of sexual reproduction has puzzled scientists, but the reason seems to be the increased ability to resist diseases conferred by the constant mixing of genes inherent within the system of sexual reproduction. But this reactionary ability is also a disadvantage because positive traits may get weakened within the process of sexual reproduction. Essentially, only half of the traits in either party are being sent on their way down the line to posterity.

Medical science has already descended into some very murky waters in the reproductive realm. Allowing sterile or infertile people to have children, similar feats of medical God-play only serve to burden the gene pool. I mean, traditionally speaking if you can’t reproduce you're failing your fundamental task as a biological organism. That certainly doesn’t make you worthless in human society but it does have a very profound significance within the framework of a biologically healthy society of people. The ability to reproduce is important both on a superficial social level and also on a deep psychological scale. No wonder people will pay millions of dollars to get a baby. But this brings up another point in that capitalist ‘money-grubbing’ is once again driving science as well as creating long term biological problems.

But more importantly, think of where this is leading. If people that could not otherwise reproduce, due to genetic mutations or flaws,  are now able to use technological means to have children, and their children carry the same genetic flaws as the parents, then eventually we'll have a considerable portion of the human population that can only reproduce through artificial means. At this point we have to ask the fundamental question, why do we need sexual reproduction at all? Particularly when it no longer works at all for some people. Indeed, have we not already taken the first bold leaps towards overturning the entire classical sexual order?

Females have the unique ability amongst the disparate sexes to reproduce themselves. To build a female requires only one X chromosome, but to build a male requires two, an X and a Y. The Y chromosome is an appendage whose sole function is to facilitate the formation of a male, and it’s not needed to make a female baby. If reproduction can occur without a Y chromosome then the male becomes fundamentally superfluous to human reproduction. With the advent of modern technology that can create sperm from stem cells, or mix two egg cells, the male sex chromosome is effectively written out of the story, even raising serious questions about their necessity and future presence within human society. The necessity of this technology for the preservation of civilization is no more dangerous or precarious than our reliance on computer technology, weather satellites or modern agricultural techniques.

Balkanization or Brazillification?

The 2000 census is a good time to analyze the demographic revolution changing America. Although the size of this magnitude is unprecedented, the outcome is not. Two world regions provide illustrated clues to the 50 year near future of the U$: the Balkans and Brazil

The Balkanization of America has been discussed by a handful of academics already. This trend towards ethnic enclaves and violent separatism is not difficult to see with a little fast forwarding and imagination. More interesting I think is another possibility that of Brazil-ification.

Brazil is truly a demographic marvel displaying structural elitism and what would be called racism in today’s lexicon. Essentially whites and Jews make up the technocratic and moneyed leadership, while Mestizos, Indians (Natives) and Blacks (former slaves) make up the masses. The ratio of Jews and Whites to the underclass is significantly different from modern America, but the makeup of the underclass is remarkably similar. The United States has more Asians, particularly Chinese, but even Brazil imported Chinese laborers to build their railroads. Really, Chinese are everywhere - ask any world traveler. I think Brazil is a likely portent of the future given present population replacement statistics and immigration.

The thin technocratic class of Jews and rich Whites that rule Brazil, those people can only exist in a very structured social system, any chaos or severe turbulence and even they will be subsumed (the Whites anyway) into the mass, much like the ancient Aryans who had their caste system to protect them in India were eventually lost into the subterranean sea of black. The number of productive, educated and intelligent people is much larger in the US than either ancient India or Brazil in numbers and ratio. It would be foolishly naive to think that any ethnic or racial group will expire without any resistance or reaction. And I think that given the size and survival tenacity of certain factors like language (English first) a vestigial ruling elite seems less likely. Perhaps ruling coalitions but that leads to balkanization.

These factors tends to support the balkanization theory, but in order for balkanization to work individual groups and ethnicity’s need a very distinct and determined sense of identity and separateness despite geographical coexistence. Does this level of separation exist in the United States? Not really, not yet anyway. Mass media, financial prosperity and ease of transportation and communication make for a nascent mega-mass of one. Despite the illusion of ‘white-flight’ in the U$ no tangible escape actually exists. America is trying to become ethnically divided but too many other factors keep getting in the way, mostly economic ones of employment.

Either way, in the near term we are seeing the middle class continue to be dismembered along a very sharp demarcation line. Professional and highly trained specialists, including doctors, lawyers, some teachers, scientists and engineers are moving up to the sub-layer of the nascent ruling/upper caste. Meanwhile the trades and less specialized careers like manufacturing and services are moving down into the level of working poor and the structural poor that can't get jobs even  when they try. This is the ‘new’ lower class, the underclass. Today it is much larger and also more dissatisfied, many feel cheated to say the least. Keep in mind much of this is being masked by the temporary economic prosperity exhibited by the present debt & equity-bubble but once that fizzles and recession hits these trends will be manifest even stronger than 10 or 20 years ago. Consumer debt and the person’s ability to pay it off will also be a deciding factor in this demarcation process. The people with good jobs will make it the ones with ok jobs probably won’t.

This process of class definition is looking much like Brazilificiation, to me anyway. Obviously the ratios are different but the underlying economic trends are the same. The technocratic business/political elite rule in a pseudo-socialist-fascist regime where the poor, destitute and disorganized masses struggle to gain concessions from the elite-driven political structure. This ‘democracy’ strives to hand out as little as necessary to keep everyone barely sated for the time being meanwhile skimming profits and kickbacks off the top for their friends and family members in the technocratic establishment. The second layer of professionals make just enough money to afford a home in a gated community and rent-a-cop protection from the crime infested slums (Rio anyone?), but still live in constant fear of unemployment or financial disaster throwing them into the dog-pit of the mega-mass underclass.

Good investment opportunities for this future are consumer credit, lotteries, and low cost consumer manufacturing. Good jobs are government, law, finance and ‘white-collar’ crime. OK jobs are security, any professional skills and petty crime. ... assuming nothing comes along to stir things up.

The Genetic Imperative and Self-Worth

21.09.99 Our world is not an overly complicated system, it’s just that we examine too much at a time. Like describing how to ride a bicycle – physics equations included. All human actions boil down to one genetic imperative – the desperate need to make more genetically similar copies of oneself before death. Secondly at the superficial level this drive is manifested as the psychological principal of the Id and ego (self-interest) combined with a superior self-value. Actually the Id / ego / super-ego is much more detailed than the use I'm applying here, but for the sake of brevity and ease of comprehension I will use the term ego in its popular meaning of an individual's personal image of self-worth and not the Freudian meaning which would probably be closer to the Id, but anyway...

Religious and spiritual types try to make the universe mysterious and unknowable, thus creating a patent of defining what's good and evil. These people and their followers have shallow and unorganized thoughts; they think the universe must be as confusing as they are confused. The rest of the god believers just know that ‘something more’ must exist, that a ‘reason’ exists for it all. These are the ones in denial, the anti-nihilists. They wouldn't be so offensive if they didn't simultaneously work to negate the value of evolutionary biology and the ludicrously simple (so obvious its actually a tautology) concept of survival of the most fit. 

Humans are unique in the animal world because they can actually decide many issues that are purely reaction and impulse (instinct) in other species. But this doesn't change the ultimate goal of the genetic material within all living things - reproduction. So a new trick had to develop - that of the ego, a sense of self-worth which incidentally is completely free from any logical examination. As every nihilist knows It has to be or it wouldn't work! Each of us must have the idea inside us that we are not only better than everyone else in one or more ways but also that I am so valuable that my genetic material is more worthy of propagation than anyone else's. This is the same motivation as the genetic imperative italicized above; it's just recoded in a way best suited for the human species.

Not only that but the definition of me has advanced over the millennia to include the genetically similar clan and today even goes so far as to include our group of fellow believers. In religious lexicon this is the Church but to you it could even mean fellow card-club members. The ego in each of us has evolved to such an extent that me has taken on very abstract meanings and generated intense cultural turbulence in our modern world. Our technological advancement has shrunk the globe far, far faster than our ego evolution has expanded the definition of 'me' to meet it. One consequence of this is the increasing popularity of neo-luddites and green revolutionary ideologies even if their goals are impractical, to say the least. 

As long as this problem of ego-boundary definition is not addressed or rectified alienation and doubt of self-worth will not only continue to plague our society but also increase in frequency and severity. School shootings and mass suicides will soon be nostalgic reminders of the 'good old days'!

The criticality of the ego can never be underrated. It's what drives every human action and fuels every motivation, both the hidden and superficial. Wars are being fought with the ego; these often take the form of wars of words and propaganda i.e. my group is better than your group. But this isn't idle chatter or just pompous spewing. People live and die by their sense of self-worth. I'll say that again because it is extremely important: the human species lives and dies by the estimation of personal value each individual has within their culture and society. Some people are more sensitive to ego doubts than others but ultimately anyone who loses their sense of self worth will lose their will to live. Ego destruction is the most powerful weapon any military could control, but it takes decades and a concerted, well organized campaign to work effectively.

This doesn’t mean that human nature is easy to understand, always makes sense, or is totally predictable because random events, irrationalities, and imperfect information always creep in. It simply means that people do things for rational reasons even when they're completely unaware of why they're doing it. 

Minoan mother figure, ~4000 years old.

Isn't it odd how parents seem to have more children when they've divorced and remarried a few times? They get staggered sets of children and even if they only have one or two per marriage it will stack up to an impressive (for modern eras) 4, 6 or more kids. I wonder if divorce is not just a modern day proxy for polygamy. Doesn't it seem to have an almost counterintuitive usefulness in modern society by generating numerous offspring? Putting this under the microscope of empirical analysis it may be just a flattening of the gene pool as each person merely switches reproductive partners actually generating an equivalent number of offspring but with more variegated genetics.