Transition

CopyRight @ 1997 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 book includes an analysis of: Human Ecology Human Genetics Human Survival Strategies, known as Moralities Humans and Religion 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 foundation is theoretical, but the application is very practical to pressing everyday questions. 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. This book is many things. Part of what this book is, is a description of a Moral Philosophy based on Survival. Moral is defined as that which is good. Here, survival in an evolutionary 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. It is a moral philosophy based on understanding human life and survival. This description is far more complicated than most Moral Philosophies. 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 also examines 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 describe many different ways 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 more to say about religion than would be expected and probably far more than would be suspected. The have the same purpose. The study shows a great deal of coincidence, but that is for the end of the book. 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. While it is true that the skeleton of this book is biology, it's source is inspiration, just like so much of what is human. It's muscle is intellect, but its strength is based on humanity's faith in itself. At it's 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 Sometimes, context is everything.     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.     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 brought out. 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 Darwinian win-lose proposition. 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. 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 worth of religion, which represents a different value. 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 social, educational, political, etc. policies and philosophical views created based on this faulty information. Then again, the other option 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, the commonest reaction to it will 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. 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 below. Transition 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. 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 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 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 we have called 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. 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. 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 33 years ago. What I found since then might amaze you. Many unexpected and very important answers arise about human potential and hazard. The section of this book are: 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. The problem, genetics and disease. The solution, genetic and behavioral adaptation including artificial selection and a conscious adjustment to the problem. This talks about the reasons, methods and morality of survival in terms of reason and faith. It also covers the important issue of racism, the Third Forbidden Question of Science. An examination of various survival strategies and moral issues such as marriage, cooperation, status, war, etc. Short and Long Term Ecological Potentials. The potential futures of humanity. It goes beyond belief. Conclusions and an examination of how we can survive. 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 biggest selective factor 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. The Last section of the book. Well, it's a different conversation altogether. It is the Fourth Forbidden Subject of Science. Ecology Summary 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 an any weak link in an individuals 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 ecologies that we have passed or will pass through on the way must be examined, such as terrace farming (an interesting, 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. 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. 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 is expanded upon in the 'history' section. 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 need 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. Here then is the first point of this chapter. Humans have inhabited cities 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. C. D. Darlington - The Evolution of Man and Society 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 describes 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 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. 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. Medicine and Genetic Load 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 described as 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. 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 or any other natural or unnatural cause. Actually, being random events, most mutations are a bad thing that make 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 of 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 seem to have the best traits of both parents and so are 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. Artificial Selection and Morality This 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. Allowing disease to run its natural course seems like a bad idea for two reasons. The first is that in the basic equation of human life in a technical society, is that children are so costly to raise in real and biological terms. The second reason is that no one wants to have their children die. 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. I will also show that the alternative is horrifyingly stark. This is when the issue becomes a question of morality. Of course then, one might want to ask what is morality. 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 discussed elsewhere. The second issue to address is always a question of why do 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, issues 2 and 3, are related. 1. 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 this is not technologically possible and may not be for a long time, if ever. 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 not inherit the weakness. 2. 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 me". 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 meaning 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 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. 3. Hybridization The work of 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 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 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. 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. Summary 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. 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. 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 - 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 - This 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 Christianity, were developed and experimented with. Muscle power 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. Most developments have lead to new niches opening. In this case, a niche was closing. 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. 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, computers are 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. 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. The 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. 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 terms stable ones. 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 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, but far fewer women will die in childbirth. Artificial Genetic Selection In Humans 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 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). 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. Since it is about selecting for health, beauty and brains, the list will start with the physical attributes of health and beauty. This list is also 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. The 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 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 have larger pelvis's. 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. 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. 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? Presently, there are many other forms of beauty. 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. 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. 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. Remember that many parts of social interaction relate to 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. There are 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. 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 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. 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. 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. As mentioned elsewhere, 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. Another topic that must be considered if not currently 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 it is of extreme importance for other reasons. 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 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 traites, 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 an awful 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. Part of intelligence relates to what memes we can use. They are a limit and potential to what we can potentially understand. 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. It is also currently impossible to say what the potentials are, but you can be sure that they are great. 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 this capability 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 natural 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 many common mental pathologies such as schizophrenia, are based on minor and identifiable genetic traits. It would seem that this is the natural focus of artificial selection. 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? 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 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. 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 is. 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. That 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 is an incredibly dangerous path to follow. The word aggressive has a number of connotations, including the individuals 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 traite be modified by training? This is an issue of trade-offs, but the trade-off may relate to survival. In terms of recent changes and how humans must adjust, there is a trait that 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. This is faith. 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. Reason doesn't give a reason 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 mush 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, it's 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. Artificial Selection and 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 is 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 watch 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. 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 would we do artificial selection, I ask them if they had heart disease of early onset Alzheimer’s disease, what would they 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 in other chapters. 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 philosophy 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, 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. 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 the provides an inclination to use moralities or even particular moral systems? It appears so and it has been a focus of human natural selection for at least the last 1000 years, probably far more. It is a basic survival strategy in humans. It is like other behaviors and can grow slowly or flower suddenly. Understand it like other emotions and you can recognize it in another person like you can sense anger or love in a person. It is faith... Now don't react to what you think of that word. It is a word commonly claimed by religion, but it is far more and created religion more than religion created faith, 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. Faith is associated with powerful memes. One must not become intoxicated or overwhelmed by any meme. Human Nature Fundamentally, humans are a biological machine created by evolution. This has two important meanings here. The first is that we retain adaptations to previous ecologies that may not be beneficial to survival in our current ecology. The second is that we operate our neuro-biological system can get unbalanced for many normal, abnormal and external chemical reasons. Anger, satisfaction, jealousy, ego, libido and other human drives can be normal, unbalanced or effected by drugs. Each behavior relates to survival. Too little, too much, the wrong time or addiction makes the behavior a threat to survival. What is inappropriate or even dangerous at one time, may be an essential survival behavior at another time. For humans, balance is everything. What is imbalanced in one person, is functional in another. Luckily, many times balance can be achieved by choice, training and knowledge. Sometimes imbalance can be a temporary mistake or a lack of knowledge in a new situation. Sometimes though, biological imbalances can make for the personal hell of madness. The human body is a generalist design. The mind is what makes us human. All behaviors are effected by genetics and knowledge. This is human nature. This is what we must deal with. To be human is to be subject to human failings and human triumph. There seems to be more than one side to both. This is where the difficulty arises. These are all natural behaviors with genetic foundations and they illustrate the need for balance. Too little and the person cannot cope or compete in the world. Too much and they are destructive. There are many mechanisms that make behaviors, including neurotransmitters, hormones, neurophysiology, experience and training, but all can be modified by thought, knowledge and training. Humans must develop both their genetics and their knowledge to manage both their strengths and weaknesses just as they must use their knowledge to manage their genetics. It is all about balance. 1. Irrational & Rational 2. Personal Power 3. Egocentricity and Ethnocentricity 4. Thought checking and dualities 5. Intelligence and communication .... This is a collection of descriptions of different ways that individual people think and factors that effect understanding in the context of survival. In ways, these are extentions of instinctive behaviors 1a. Rational How do we think? We think rationally and irrationally. We use logic and we use superstition. Humans are inherently quite capable at the mathematics that is logic. The capability of reason seems almost universal. The first example of the methods or patterns humans use when thinking should be about a rational belief set. Simple, direct, logical and based on a rational model of reality. Not to be. Humans usually think in terms of non-causal effects or superstition. Sometimes, even the most skeptical and educated person, when something goes wrong, cannot help but to irrationally wonder if there is some non-physical link between their previous actions and their present situation. We may reject it for a more rationally based belief set, but that belief set does pass through our mind. All non-rational, or non-causal, belief systems are based on the effect of unseen forces, especially the will of individuals and various unseen spirits. If bad fortune befell an individual or group, the reason was assumed to be the bad will of an individual or spirit. If a dog or a wife died with no obvious explanation, it was assumed that the reason was the result of the will of an individual or spirit and their "power". Wishful thinking seems so real. Also there were very few rational explanations for many natural occurrences from the seasons to earthquakes to birth or death. Simple, symbolic non-causal descriptions are easy to understand and are usually quite functional. Does it matter if you know why the ground is shaking. An earthquake is the same whether Poseidon sent it or the tectonic plates shrugged. An advanced form of non-causal interaction is called Karma. For anything you do, their is a later and non-physically related, but still related, consequence. All belief systems are balanced. It is a feature of the logical basis of all belief systems. The reason that the concept of Karma is called a more advanced system, is because it describes all an extremely complex balance to the system, that extends over lifetimes. 1b. Rational - Reason The corresponding belief set to irrational, is rational. That is information that is based on causal relationships. It is part of a belief system and we judge rationality in a number of ways that are parts of philosophy. The commonest way that we judge rationality is whether something seems logical. Logic is based on mathematics and so is independent of genetics or environment. We all have the genetic potential to use logic and it is a highly educatable skill. The use of logic is definitely a learned habit. We can judge if an idea seems logical or that is, causal and logically related. The other way that we judge rationality is on the basis of the of knowledge or predictable repeatability, where the logic and the connection may or may not be understood, but the result is. The discipline of this is called science. It is a systematically compiled collection of beliefs and knowledge of physical causality as judged by repeatability, predictability and observation. Anyone can act rationally to the degree of their potential and education, but it is not presently the most natural state. Humans do not always base their behaviors and beliefs on logic and rationality. Yet it is part of the basis of what is called human. It is always most effective to look at anything from multiple points of view. It enhances both understanding and memory. 2. Personal Power A peculiar, but characteristic type of human thought may as well be called personal power. It is largely a form of wishful thinking and an extension of irrational thought. It is an instinctive type of thought and as such is most easily seen in children, though it is certainly not limited to them. Aboriginal groups, when they first acquire firearms, tend to think that aiming a rifle, is done by willing the bullet to go where the shooter wants it to go. In popular culture it is the hero who is righteous and so will conquer their enemy, if their anger grows enough that their personal power cannot be overcome by any foe. A popular archetype in martial dramas is the hero who is peaceful and chooses not respond to the insults and attacks of the antagonist. Then the antagonist attacks their family, school or something else that cannot be ignored. Then the hero is filled with a righteous wrath (personal power) that cannot be ignored or defeated. This way of thinking extends far beyond martial dramas though. It is part of how people think in many cases. "I am right and that righteousness will win the day". This can show up in many places and a variety of forms. A child may get carried away with their imagination and decide that they can fly. 3. Egocentricity and Ethnocentricity Humans will go to amazing lengths to convince themselves that they are special. It is easy to see why this could sometimes be of benefit to survival. In competition, it is much easier compete effectively if you believe that you are superior to your opponent. At the same time, it leads to incredible mistakes. The human mind is far from perfect. It even has built in mechanisms to modify memory. A good habit is to remember things from more than one perspective. That way a person is far less likely to modify memories to where they simply become inaccurate. Organization This is meant to be a brief discussion of various human organization systems. Organization is critical to complicated social systems. Caste - Is a term that refers both to a groups tribal nature and their occupational nature. The basic castes are ruler, priest, warrior, scribe, craftsman and peasant. They are so basic to the organization of a society, that a description of castes was how Plato described his idealistic utopia. In terms of occupation, these castes were the functions necessary to the existence of a society. Since they come from a tribal origin, they also have the added natural cooperative characteristics of a family and community. Caste also indicated occupational intelligence. Class - Class is an economic term. The commonest basic description of classes is that of a farmer that brings grain to a miller. The miller just naturally has more economic wealth than the farmer that brings their grain to the miller. Much of the economic organization of a society is based on features of the class system and its attendant economic features. Circumstances also promote cooperation within the class. There is also a natural symbiosis between the classes. While there has often been contention between the classes, over all it has contributed to the organization and cooperative potentials of the society. Institution - Institutions are considered to be multi-generational behavioral patterns. Things change and families mature, but each generation has the same immediate needs, many of which are based on the requirements of families. Really, most organizational devices can be called institutions, but it is a useful way of categorizing different needs and methods of filling those needs, in a society. Industries - Industries fulfill the material needs of a society. They provide the food, clothing, shelter and other devices we use to survive. In itself, that is not so remarkable, but the cooperative systems that make industry work, are remarkable. Industry brings together entrepreneurs, designers, labor and financial specialists to create a product. The organizational system of an industry can rival that of a military organization. General Morality Morality is a slippery subject. In general it is how we decide what is right and wrong, but even what that means can be called into question. I talk about this book describing a morality based on survival which is in turn based on cooperation. There is layer and level and some moralities seem to be based on a collection of rules instead of an underlying principle such as survival. I have to admit that that I have no huge insight into this topic, but I did do a great deal of analysis both in general terms of morality and in particular morality based on survival. At one point I wrote what I called the Morality Monographs where I wrote down every topic I could consider related to morality or ethics and tried to analyze them in terms of survival. Some seemed more important than others. I then looked at the Ten Commandments, the Five Benedictions, The Seven Deadly Sins a well as some very long lists of virtues, to see how they all related to survival. More than anything, the lesson learned was the importance of balance in all things. Without balance, sins and virtues both become fatal. With the balance of thought and temperance, all can be survived. Finally, and I do mean after an awful lot of work, I decided what needed to be referenced in this book. There are a few topics like the morality of artificial selection that relate to new factors in human survival and are discussed at the same time that the new factors are discussed. The following is the briefest description I could make of morality in these terms. Note that almost all topics refer to reproduction or family dynamics. This is as it should be, because raising children is simply the foundation of survival and morality. The commonest problem with our existing moral systems is that coming from religions, their lessons are based on authority and precedence. In this world of increasing complexity, skepticism and increasing critical thinking, morality will have to be based on reason and understanding or the morality will not be used. Luckily, it can be shown that there is great reason and logic behind the common teachings we consider morality. Due to the overall long term success of religion, it would seem that a critical, logical examination of morality in the context of biology and survival would likely lead to principles similar to those taught by religion. Both would have to promote survival within the promptings of human instinct and values. A morality is the lessons that we start learning as children, that tell us how we can live our lives. That is known as the difference between right and wrong and so suggests that inherently the basis of morality is survival. A moral system must tell us how to live, grow, be happy, raise families and survive generation after generation. To a large extent, moral systems are based on instinctive values. Moral systems are so basic, not only do we not notice them, we are designed not to question them. They are like water to a fish. Survival is the essence of conservatism. This has contributed to morality tending to be very conservative and only tending to change when it has to. Changes in morality are risky. One particular place where morality has changed and must change again is size. The world we are in tends to shrink and the group we live in grows. This has many moral implications from disease to world ecology. The moralities of the tribes were the survival strategies needed for small isolated groups of families that were part of larger tribes that inhabited regions. Mostly the strategies they used were fairly simple. Life was simpler, children matured young and people had children while very young. Agriculture developed in response to a need related to environmental change. Moral systems developed for a long time after the start of agriculture and villages. Life became more complicated and families were started at an older age. This is repeating itself as we move into an ecology based on non-agricultural technology. we need to continue to develop new understandings of morality. Human Genetics There is another interesting point about the morality of artificial selection. It is often compared to jingoistic or racist eugenics. It is very different, in fact, quite the opposite. At this point, some other problems in human ecology show themselves. Even if humans had limitless resources, other problems would predictably arise. One is disease, another is excessive population growth and another is in the genes themselves. Much of this book is about solving those problems. The problem with disease in humans is that it used to be the most important limiting factor (called a selective effect). Before modern medicine and antibiotics, it used to often be that three out of five people died of diseases before they ever had children. That is a huge and important natural selective effect. It also acted as a uniquely general selective effect on those with weaknesses. Also, the more humans there are, the easier the disease can be transmitted through the population. Today, there are an awful lot more people on earth than there ever were before. That is a huge change. The other problems are with humans themselves. We are very far from perfect. We have been undergoing rapid evolution in the past many thousands of years and while we have adapted a lot, there is still a long way to go. There are many people born that really are sickly, weak or have other genetic based problems. It used to be that disease and other selective effects removed these people from the population so that generally, only the strongest and healthiest from any family survived. Now it is far from that way. Not only that, but as things are now, people are having much smaller families. In ecology, there are simple descriptions of this. The equation of a human is determined by the long and costly requirements of raising children. With the rise of technology, this cost has become higher and longer. Parents tend to have less children and use medicine to keep them alive and healthy. Humans have sort of gone from a quantity strategy of many children, where only a few survived, to a quality strategy of having less children, more of whom survive. The problem is that the human genome has a number of problems. Genes naturally deteriorate from generation to generation. In natural circumstances, the weak die and the strong survive so that the children from each generation that reproduce are as healthy and adapted as the parents, or perhaps even more so as natural selection drives evolution. Humans have removed disease and many other natural selective effects. That is going to lead to a huge disaster as something effectively the opposite of normal evolution occurs. So the middle part of this book describing how humans can survive is based on how we can survive this problem with our genes. Solving that problem will solve a lot of other problems humans already face and will encounter in the future. Realize that theoretically we could reintroduce natural selective effects like disease and let them run their course to solve this problem, but there are at least two reasons not to. The first is the issue of the basis of ecology, energetics. It takes a lot of resources to raise and educate children. Too much to waste by allowing disease to kill them off almost randomly. The second reason is that who wants to see their children get sick and die. If the selective effects that drive evolution are removed, something the opposite of evolution will occur and the best genes that humans have developed over millions of years will break down and disappear. In ecology this is referred to as Genetic Load. It is caused by a number of factors. One factor that acts slowly is mutation. A more important factor that will act much more quickly is natural genetic damage that occurs during recombination in the cell during reproduction. The only way to solve this problem is to introduce a selective effect. A selective effect must be introduced naturally or artificially, or humans will not survive. This book is based on the potentials and consequences of using what is commonly called pre-implantation selection. That is artificial selection before implantation in the womb. Artificial selection has basically three overlapping potentials. The first is reduction of broken or ineffective traits. The second is to increase the frequency of good traits. The third potential is hybridization and is a bit more complicated. It is the main way that humans have progressed since the start of the cities. It is the mixing of the tribes so that their descendants have the genetic potentials of both their parental tribes. It is where the greatest potentials for humans have and will come from. Consider Western culture. Three tribes came together to create the first city dwellers in the Fertile Crescent, the Sumerians. Over time the three tribes genetically hybridized to become one people. Thousands of years later, they were conquered by the Semites led by Sargon The Great. Over time, these people became one and spread in their cities. Their descendants included the Phoenicians and other city dwellers. Then, another peoples arrived, Indo-Europeans descended from horse herders in Southern Russia. These were known as the Greeks, the Eutustrians and the Romans. They replaced the Semites as the military rulers of the society, but by then, through natural selection, the Sumerians and Semites were hybridized into one people. In all societies, social class and caste structures worked to prevent the mixing of the tribes. At the same time various factors, especially war and slavery, caused genetic hybridization. This also happened with the Indo-Europeans. While these were well known historical events and peoples leading to modern Western culture, there were many other tribes that were absorbed, most notably the Celts. Some tribes thrived. Some did not. The Celts were conquered politically and socially by the Romans, but they still existed as a people and over time, hybridized with the peoples of the ancient city societies. They contributed an incredible dynamic that has led to our current modern society. Individually, these tribes did not have the potentials they had when combined. As already said, human ecology is rapidly changing and we do not exist yet in a relatively stable ecology. No current single tribe or race is going to have the genetic potentials to adapt to the changes that are creating the human future. When parents from different tribes have children, the children tend to be “stronger” than the parents. They have the best traits of both parents. This is well known in domestic plants and animals, but is true for all species including humans. There is a downside to natural hybridization though. The next generations are generally not as strong as the first generation or even the parental generation. In human history, natural selection has selected for the strong hybrid at the cost of the weaker hybrids and the old tribal groups. It all gets pretty complicated and is explained in a later chapter, but suffice to say that artificial selection could allow humans to take great advantage of the potentials of the hybridization of the tribes, without the drawbacks of natural hybridization. It should give us the potentials to adapt to the ecology that we create. That raises the question of what this ecology will look like and what the people of that ecology will look like as well. A related issue is racism. Racism is a more localized issue than most of the general survival issues that this book usually focuses on, but it is an important issue. Racism exists for a lot of reasons and is a real problem, but so much of the problem is how it is looked at. One reason is the real issue that hybridization can cause problems, but that problem can be removed by artificial selection. Another problem is about superiority and inferiority. Races tend to perceive each other that way. It is a win-lose situation. It looks like evolution would select one superior race to survive and the other races to go extinct. Even in a natural situation, that is not how it works. The genes of each race are very similar to the genes of other races and there is gene flow between the races as well. But in a situation of artificial selection, most of the more important the genes, such as many of the ones that effect behavior and immunity, can be additive. The potentials of the races can be additively combined into one race. Each race will look too different races for genetic potentials that it does not have. Racism becomes a very different issue and the racial issues become win-win. This point offers long term hope for humans, a great variety of genetic potentials held by the different races, as well as a short term hope in the current problems that the races have of getting along now. It’s sort of like an automobile. They were most developed in the United States and Europe. Then the Japanese started adding their expertise to producing cars and revolutionized the automobile and how they were produced. Different strengths added together. Not everything will go together. That will represent a new selective pressure. Desirable traits that hybridize well, may be more successful than perhaps a better form of the same trait that does not hybridize well. Still, at present, it would be far wiser for humans to try to preserve what traits they can until we have a bit more wisdom about how to use the sum of human genetic wealth. So many tribes and so much human variability has already been lost. Another interesting moral point in this is that artificial selection will actually offer more to the genetically weaker members of the society than to the genetically stronger members of the society. Note that according to C.D. Darlington, this description of "Western" civil society developing based upon ongoing hybridization of different tribes has also occurred in the Red River Valley of China, the Indus River Valley of India and in Meso-America where agricultural based civilizations have independently arisen. There are a lot of known "superior" tribes and room for a lot more hybridization based human development. Who knows what the long term potentials of obscure tribes will be. Religious Connotations of the Morality of Artificial Selection Whether you believe in God or not, pre-implantation artificial selection is moral. Humans cannot survive as more than animals without it. There are two views one can take on this controversial subject. If you believe in God or if you don't. In any case, a fertilized egg in a petri dish is not a child. If you don't believe in God, then it is a simple question of survival and quality of life. Humans have a fantastic potential that will only be realized by artificial selection. If we developed technology to provide every resource required. If we solved the problems of pollution, destruction of natural resources and over population. If we discovered revolutionarily advanced social, political and economic systems. None of these would change the problems we would face. We would still have to deal with the problem of the imperfection of humans and human genes. There is only one solution and that is artificial selection. If you believe God determines morality, there is more to the problem. Is artificial selection God's will? You can answer that by asking if science, knowledge and technology are part of God's will. More to the point, is human progress according to God's will? A life of primitive barbarism, ignorance, warfare and the struggle for every day existence is our past. It is not a life of love, forgiveness and peace. Progress has led to what we are told God taught. Progress will reverse without artificial selection. Progress continues with it. On occasion, I have stated that Jesus is responsible for modern technology. I did it to make a point. It is the cooperative potentials of western philosophy, largely based on Christian teachings, that have led to the cooperative efforts that have led to modern technology as well as democracy. There is another point, whether you believe in God or not. We are entering a radically new and different ecology. To survive, humans must make a great jump in adaptation to this new ecology in order to survive. Well, either by design or serendipity, there is an amazing genetic potential available to humans that can probably provide the requirements to make this jump. If one believes in God or not, one would have to be amazed at the potentials available. Besides, there are other, better reasons why I believe that artificial selection is quite moral in terms of God and religion. They are described elsewhere. Morality Summary This is a summary of the first part of what I found by looking at human ecology. It is meant to look at how massively human ecology has changed and what humans might be able to do to adapt to these changes. There is far more to the situation than is described here, but this does cover the most important change, the effect of medicine and other factors that remove natural selective effects. As mentioned, there is far more written about this elsewhere. Still, there is a second part to what I found that is more subtle, but perhaps just as important or perhaps more so. Here it is called morality. Morality is the term for the strategies we use to survive. Often it is mistaken for religion and it is often the message of a religion that they created morality. In truth, morality is independent of religion and the religions are a part of morality. To many people this may seem incorrect. They believe that moralities are the rules laid down by God for humans to follow. A question could be asked, what is God's purpose in laying down these laws? Most of this essay is to describe morality as methods of biological survival and to describe what is necessary for survival. At a point the laws that come from religion that are called morality are examined for their effectiveness in promoting survival. It turns out that the teachings of religions are actually fantastically effective survival strategies. In that human survival is based both on cooperation and competition, this description actually leans more towards religious morality and its emphasis on cooperation than perhaps stricter biology and its emphasis on competition. This seems appropriate in light of the genetic model used. There are many different ways that people survive. People that live in the same city, may survive by completely different methods. Indeed, all civil societies are composed of different occupational castes and they each have a different morality that is appropriate to the niche that they occupy in the city. Also there are moralities that one would not naturally think of as moral. There are criminal organizations such as the Mafia, that are a strategy that a people use to survive over long periods of time. They violate the tenants of most moralities, but they have allowed those people to survive and so are a morality. This part of my study was started because I recognized that humans are undergoing such massive changes in how we survive that it seemed likely that we would need new moral tools and strategies to survive. It was tough, because moralities and beliefs are far more slippery subjects than are genes, which are slippery enough. I started the examination by trying to figure out what moral tools we have used in the past and what we have at present. Early on, I used one premise, that is also a bias of the entire examination. It is an ecological premise though and probably correct. It is that humans have gotten where we have primarily through cooperation and organization. Sometimes, looking at the present world, a person can feel just a little bit cynical and that statement is good for a laugh. Still it's true. This is not to put down individual accomplishment. The truth lies somewhere between Ayn Rand and Karl Marx, but really in the simple process of living, cooperation is our most important strategy. My conclusion was that there is an existing moral system that has so much potential for promoting and allowing cooperation, that we are not going to soon require much in the way of new systems. More than that we are going to require more understanding of the reasons for using moral systems. It is unfortunate that our main vehicle for moralities, religions, have generally been based on precedence and authority instead of reason and understanding. Perhaps it was inevitable and necessary, but in the future, the reasons behind moral rules and techniques will have to be understood instead of just learned or they will not be effectively practiced and passed on. The rest of this essay is a summary of the path I followed to try to find out what humans needed to know and believe in order to survive, as well as some of what I learned on the way. So this part is a summary of how humans have learned to cooperate. To cooperate, there must be communication. Topics that must be examined to describe communication are: Intelligence Language Memes (This is above, but is here a morality, not a trait.) a. Intelligence - The biological definition of intelligence is a social behavior that allows the individual to remember, understand and influence the other members of the society. In humans, there are also occupational and technical aspects to intelligence, but they are discussed elsewhere. A major aspect of the social ability intelligence gives to humans is communication. Communication includes language skills as well as non-verbal communication and the ability to manipulate memes. Intelligence can be considered the natural basis of the ability to understand and create. b. Language - The ability of language to enhance communication is illustrated by the limitations on communication when there is not language. Humans communicate in many ways, but none compare to language for speed, precision and versatility. In ways language seems like such a technical thing, but the mechanisms of language are extremely broad as is shown by languages made for the deaf and blind. c. Memes - Memes are what we communicate. They are natural groupings of information and as such facilitate communication greatly. Like language, you can see how useful memes are to communication by considering what they allow and what would not be possible if information did not naturally group. It was only about 20 years ago that Richard Dawkins described his concept of memes. Any student of humans must realize the incredible importance and power of that concept as a tool to describe and understand humans, but an understanding of memetics has only just begun. The problem of describing memes is that they follow rules similar to genes and yet critically different rules as well. The importance of memes cannot be overstated, but currently the concept is still too new to be more than basically understood. Still, it is clear that the importance of memes cannot be over stated. The long ongoing dichotomous discussion of nature verses nurture could easily become a three way discussion of nature, nurture and memes Cooperation requires some kind of agreement. It can be very formal or it can very tacit and understood. Here, these agreements are all called contracts. They include: Marriage - Marriage has always had at least two components. An economic aspect and a reproductive aspect. Marriage is very important in biological terms because it is so important to the family, which is a basis of human survival. It is a very strong agreement of mutual responsibility and mutual goals. As society has developed, so has the institution and scope of marriage. Money - Money is an odd thing, but here it is used, as it is in human society, to represent the physical resources necessary to survival. The mutability of money represents the variability of resources in the human economy represented in a very basic contract of great versatility. In biological terms, all economic activity and business contract could be categorized as money. All contracts are just another name for a formal cooperative agreement. Law - Law encompasses many aspects of cooperation including regulation of competition. Many, times law is the field upon which cooperative ventures are built and law is what is used to resolve disputes that arise in cooperative ventures. Social stability of the society is basically the purpose of law. Religion - A religion defines a community. A community is defined by its social and cooperative nature. Religions define a morality which is both a method and an agreement about how a community should live. Historically, religions have been the most important vehicle of morality. Social Compact - There are many social compacts. These are the informal agreements between classes and groups that all contribute to a society. if human survival is based on agreements and contracts, it is the informal agreements that are the most important to the most people. These can be agreements within families and communities all the way up to informal agreements between the classes and political bodies of a society. Examination of social contracts and the symbiosis they allow, show how truly important and basic cooperation is to human survival. Also, the social compact may regulate what competition there is in society. These are the understandings of acceptable standards of behavior. Part of the cooperative methods we use to survive are organizational systems including: Religion Politics Industry-- War a. Religion - Religion is about morality and survival. Humans survival is based on families and communities. Morality cannot be regulated by simple law so regulation of the family and community is one of the primary functions of religion. By setting standards of behavior, religion facilitates much of the basis of social organization and allows for the agreements of social compacts. It creates communities that cooperate as families. It also sanctifies marriages, one of the most important contracts of the entire society. b. Politics - In order to create the power structure that politics is all about, politics always creates cooperative groups. Then the function of these groups is to compete for power. Political laws are to regulate this competition so that it is not destructive to the society. c. War - In many ways, war is an extension of politics. In any case, C.D. Darlington discussed the importance of organization to both. Historically, the success of the international ruling caste was based on the ability to organize, especially in terms of warfare. d. Law - Law is how we formalize our agreements. It is essential tot he workings of a complex society. The problem is that there are no perfect laws, so we need judges. Unfortunately there are no perfect judges so we try to make perfect laws. Maybe one day law can be handed over to machines that are impartial, but that can not be until we can create machines that are wise enough to be fair. Another point of laws is that they must be formed to offset the commonest of the human instincts that can be destructive such as greed, violence, exploitive lust and crime as a business. The greedy and covetous will always work against those laws so they will have to contain both the law and the reason for the law. Perhaps all laws should be written as memes that include both the law and the reason for it. ** Then there are philosophies to be considered, since it is philosophy that describes if cooperation is to be used as a tool of survival. It should be recognized that much about cooperation, methods of cooperation and reasons for cooperation, are learned. This is embodied in philosophy. This is examined by looking at philosophies of: Dharma Buddhism Christianity a. Dharma - Dharma (liberally described) is the idea of dividing life into three parts. The first part, from birth to 25 years, is a time to grow and learn, preparing for adulthood. The second part, between 25 and 50 years is a time to rise a family. The third part (and part that is important here) is from 50 years on when the person is supposed to devote their energies to their society. This is important as a very basic model of effort and apparent altruism that is part of what is needed to maintain a healthy functioning society. b. Buddhism - Buddhism is many things, but there is a form of Buddhism that teaches that an individual should love all others. It's actually hard to see what this means in practice, but it is a philosophy that shows great potential for promoting social cooperation, as is mentioned in the next topic. c. Christianity - To a certain extent, Christianity is what this discussion leads to. The original question was, if we are entering a new ecology and undergoing major changes in our genetic nature, what do we need in the way of a morality for this new ecology. Will any existing moralities be adequate or will we need a completely new one. Well, an examination (a long examination) shows Christianity to be the most cooperative of existing philosophies in the western world and probably the whole world. It is natural and so easy to lose sight of the philosophy under any religion. Religions are about Gods. If you ask who Jesus was, you are likely to get an answer that he is God (or God's prophet, in much of the world). People focus on the sacred, mystical or eternal aspects of Jesus and often miss the incredible earthly philosophical impact his teachings have on all aspects of every day life. The lessons of Christianity give western society a basic cooperative nature that is the foundation of the entire society. The cooperation that allows democratic politics to work, modern technology to create and current mega-civil bodies to exist, are all based on teachings descended and husbanded since the time of Jesus. Many cooperative philosophies exist and many did before Jesus, but it is his legacy that we use. The message taught by Jesus was one of love one another and forgive one another. This is remarkable both in that it is somewhat counter intuitive and that it works very well. Following natural instincts, humans seem to be very quarrel some and revenge is the natural response to insult or attack. Generally, those habits work against the development of a civilization. Christianity works to inhibit that quarrelling and benefits everyone. One question here is do Christian philosophies of cooperation make humans work analogously to insect communities where genetics promote cooperation. I think there are fundamental differences, but it is an important question ask to understand human cooperation in a society. It is also quite (potentially) possible. Another important question is whether Christianity is enough to fulfill human requirements in the next ecology. A lot more is going to have to be known about the next ecology, cooperation and Christianity, to answer that question. Obviously this kind of statement about a religion is a controversial position, but this book is to describe a method of viewing even more than any one view. At such, saying that Christianity is such an effective cooperative method is observational and not any more empirical than the description of the cooperation that Christianity has fostered. There are other cooperative systems in use and there are others that have been described, but were never or are not currently implemented. It would be expected and memetics suggests, that just as the development of the civil races was a matter of hybridization, moralities can and will absorb other practices that work well. Also, just as the genetic development of the other civilizations parallel each other, so too will the cultural and moral development. Remember that here this is not immediately about religion, Christians or Gods, it is about human survival based on cooperation. This analysis can be applied to all human systems and will have to be if we are to survive. Also, this is not to ignore the importance of the philosophies of history. The philosophies of from the Greeks, particularly science, will have to be examined for how they will relate to survival, but those can be considered within the framework that has already been described and also they will present rather advanced topics in terms of an ecological analysis. Actually, Christianity inherently incorporates Greek science and Hellenistic thought. The New Testement was written in Greek. Eventually, the philosophies from the time of ancient Egypt to Robert Heinlein will have to be categorized and, more difficultly, evaluated as to their effect and utility in terms of human survival. There is going to be a lot of judgment involved as well. Then it will be time to look at non-cooperation and individuality in morality and survival. Cooperation is the basis of human survival, but not the only method and even in a cooperative situation, there are times for non-cooperation. Also, in biological terms, cooperation always is an attribute of a group. Very often, these cooperative groups compete quite sharply. Conclusion Humans are currently experiencing a huge change in just about everything related to their ecology and survival. In order to survive, humans will have to create and adapt to a new 'stable' ecology. Adaptation will be both genetic and strategic. Technology is presenting incredible potentials and dangers. It is and will be, the basis of many important strategies of all human ecologies. That is part of what being human is. Genetic technology is offering unprecedented potential for understanding and manipulating human genetic nature. Humans will have to use this knowledge to solve many problems that we have created as well as problems that have always existed, but only now can we do something about. C. D. Darlington's work describes a way of looking at and categorizing the genetic potentials that any person, family or peoples have. Technology can already allow humans to take advantage of artificial selection to preserve and spread those potentials. It is the potentials of human hybridization that will offer much to allow us to adapt to the new ecology and it is also the potentials of hybridization that will allow us to survive the genetic disasters already coming due to ecological changes that are already here or soon will be. The future for humanity is either disaster or development into something that is far more than we are now. Corresponding to human genetic adaptation, human survival strategies will also have to adapt. What makes us human is our minds. Human survival has always been based on families and communities, using various survival strategies that are called moralities. Since human survival is based on what we know more than on instincts, what we know will have to develop to suit survival in the new ecology. If, as it seems, cooperative methods are the best survival strategies for humans, there is a long history of cooperative systems that we can draw on for ideas, including various contracts. This book describes some of the situation of humans during a huge transition in our ecology. It describes some of the problems we face and some specific adaptations we have little choice about accepting. It discusses the hazards of change, how to adapt to them gracefully and the great potentials in front of humanity. Still, more than anything, its purpose is to describe how an individual or society can look at their survival with the conscious eye of a human using a tool. Hopefully, it can describe a science of morality that will allow humans to develop into something special. Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed it and found reading it near as interesting as I have writing it. Really though, I see that this is only an end in that it is a beginning. This is a very basic frame work of what it would take for humans to survive. The description of Christianity, like the description law, contracts and economics, is of the most basic system that might work, described in the context of what we have available. We will certainly need far more development of the cooperative, organizational and contractual methods that will make up the moralities of the future. Just consider the source and method of development of those systems. Still, this is a careful ecological analysis and reveals a fair amount of important points. Many of the underlying principles are still be discovered. Up to now, judgments have been kept to a minimum, but that is not the case in the future, because this is all meant as a tool for making judgments. This is not a science in a vacuum. It is meant to lead to methods and plans to consciously guide human destiny, not for the fun of it or perhaps not even for some vision of greatness, but because we must if we are to find a new way to survive. Before we can do much in the way of making any plans though, we will have to accumulate a lot of information and do a lot of hard thinking. So a major part of this book, should be the equivalent of ecological monographs. Single topic essays about single problems o