32 replies to this topic

[Lazarus Long]

do you think western human evolution has been arrested by our tendency towards marrage?

No I think evolution is forcing a reorganization of our species ritual mating practices. Marriage and family are not defined by Western Culture and in the industrialized societies a different dynamic is at work with respect to procreative economics than we as a species evolved with.

I would suggest that if there is going to be an evolutionary leap, it would come from an area of humanity where it has the opportunity to spread.

This has already happened and the likely hood is that genes for the leap are already in place only latent still and require the memetic stimulus to activate them. Our species' use of technology is simply our genetic toolmaking ability combined with our communications ability as a form of synthetic genetic analog Dawkins calls a meme and we grow through learning the way some species only can evolve through genetic mutation. I call it Human Selection because we have been accelerating the process now for quite some time, not just since we figured it out.

Our memetic behaviors have been advancing far more rapidly than our genetics but now we get to redefine that and we also have been doing so for thousands of years as tribal/religious practice that is a form of memetic eugenics. We already have been applying selection methods on ourselves as a backdrop to social primate pack behaviors redefined as religious and ethnic tribal practice for tens of thousands of years.

Here in Australia, we are down to 1.7 children per couple. Any mutation is going to have to fight really hard, under these circumstances. Could our social constructs have in fact doomed us to decline and possible extinction?

The rules have already irrevocably altered for our species, you are applying the logic of traditional Darwinian Selection as if the process for change is beginning now, we are already reaching a convergent point on changes that were set in motion thousands of years ago and have already overruled Natural Selection. This is why I prefer to talk in terms of Human Selection. The demand for Natural Selection to be preeminent is just secular religion but it is simply too late.

Actually the problem with industrialized humanity is that we are on a convergent evolutionary path with Hive Minded creatures and are shifting our species based economic models to reflect this. Workers are sterile among hive insects. We are doing the same basically as an adaptation that is "Natural" as we create cities that are causing us to behavioral and genetically adapt to living in a "Hive Like" environment. Anyway most of our traditional social constructs are already doomed or didn't you notice?

I doubt we will go extinct due to excessively low birth numbers but as we balance our social structures for wealth, sustaining resources, and population we have a chance to create steady state growth model that can take us forward into the next age of social growth and expansion. Certainly even less so as we achieve viable significant longevity.

We need to try and go to the stars with a different ethos than that which has been traditionally the model for colonial expansion. This a major contributor driving the increasing global tension as a consequence of too much regional social pressure with no frontier to relieve the pressure as we have traditionally done for millennium.

Before we go forth to the stars it is necessary this time to overcome our past or we will be unable to socially assimilate the technological advantage the knowledge of such force would entail. We need to first put our own house in order and not attempt to rely on the model of conquest that has been the source of both bane and bounty in our past. I am more optimistic than pessimistic but first I am a realist and as a pragmatist I must say the risks we are facing on all fronts are quite real but the solutions do exist too as nothing is hopeless.

[Lazarus Long]

In the article above on early voices it asks this question.

But was the first communicated symbol a word or a gesture? Though language and speech are sometimes thought of as the same thing, language is a coding system and speech just its main channel.

The answer is in our hands, it was both. It was a number as a gesture that became an almost universal symbol of "one". It was a mark symbolizing a first in a quantity/sequence but as a number it was also a conceptual representation of a letter.

I suggest we already possessed both naming and numbers cognitively and behaviorally but then "named the number one." In the earliest alphabets the number one and the first letter are the same and the rest well, the rest as they say is history.

[David]

You raise some interesting points. I agree that our ability to think, use tools and technology are factors in natural selection. I’m not one of those people that believes we should return to ‘naked savage’ stage, because of some misguided theory of who and what we are. Our memic behaviours and artefacts are the result of our genes, genes made available through natural selection.

I do however disagree that our cultural confines have overruled natural selection. Nature has a way of overcoming barriers presented to it. I am the result of an affair between a church minister and his wife’s domestic help. He has four other children through his marriage, and according to my birth mother, two other illegitimate children through two other young women she knew of at the time. My birth mother first had me at age 16, and then had two children through her first marriage, and another to a truck driver with whom she has been living for the last 25 years. I myself have three illegitimate children. (And yes, I do support them, over and above what is expected of me by an Australian social construct called the Child Support Agency) In addition to the three I know about, I toured extensively through the 80’s and 90’s in glam metal rock bands, exposing me to literally hundreds of opportunities to spread my genes. I took advantage of virtually all of them. Many of them would have been married. I don’t know ‘cos it didn’t occur to me to ask. The reproductive rate of my genotype is currently far and above the mean for my environment (Australia). (Let’s not get into a value-laden argument here please, that would just get boring! I know I’m a naughty boy, and do my best to make up for it in other ways!)

Getting to the point (Yea, I know, it takes me some time sometimes). My father’s, my mother’s and my behaviour COULD have a genetic basis. Our procreational drives on the surface seem stronger than our desire to conform to societies norms, offering us an evolutionary advantage. Survival of the fittest be damned, survival of the most likely to bear reproductive fruit! My desire for and belief in immortality could perhaps be part and parcel of this expression of a gene. Think about it, the organism that survives the longest will have more opportunities to procreate. My desire for immortality isn’t consciously attributable to my desire to father more children. But it does make evolutionary sense. I’m surprised nobody here has yet made the connection! [huh] (Not that I have read yet, that is!)

It could be that evolution could be working in far subtle ways. Through my studies this week, I have learned about super tasters, tasters and the taste blind. Taste blind individuals have more difficulty tasting things than super tasters. It has been discovered that super tasters have a higher density of taste buds on their tongues than non-tasters. And yes, it has been discovered that being a super taster is a genetic phenomena. Unfortunately for us males, it’s also sex linked, occurring mainly in females.

It has also been ascertained that super tasters eat less than non-tasters, due to the function the tongue fills in a person’s perception of satiation. In other words, the tongue tells the super tasters that they are full sooner than the non-tasters. Link this up with what we believe we know about calorie restriction, and its reported effect on longevity, then link it up with longer lives allowing for more procreation. Go, the tongue!

In addition, super tasters can taste toxic substances (coffee, beer, saccharine) at less concentration than non-tasters. They also tend to avoid them! Also a good survival characteristic!