Sometimes a story must be told in a certain order. This is one of those cases.
It relates to something that is important, but not so complicated. Part of it's interest is the preconceptions related to it, no matter how correct. What it is is Active. Active seems a strange name for a behavior, but it is important in many ways and there is an interesting issue about it that I will mention..

Think of a specie and how different the demands of survival are for that specie at the different extremes of its range. Consider a brown bear in central California or a brown bear in Alaska. In Alaska, the major factor in the bear's survival is the weather and other non-living challenges. In California, the bear is going to have to compete with other bears more than vagaries of the environment. A bear in Alaska is going to work harder for its food and have to be much more active to survive.

In humans this difference in requirements for activity can be huge. A classic example of this is the herder verses the dirt farmer. Herding is a fairly relaxed low energy activity compared to the dirt farmer that is doing hard labor while they can work. There is no end to what they need to get done.

Since for any specie, the requirements for activity can vary greatly with variations in the environment, it is not surprising that there is a strong genetic control on this behavior. That should be enough to scare even the most ardent advocate of social engineering. Using artificial selection, we could select for how much of a workaholic a person would tend to be. Even if you ignore some of the scary potentials of this in the hands of the 'State' this raises some tough questions. If it is a parent that must make decisions about the genetic nature of their children, how can that be determined? This is a case where either extreme is not likely to be good for survival.

I'm what most people would call a workaholic. I follow what is commonly called the "Protestant Work ethic". Which in my case, means if I want something I should work for it. I work hard and don't waste time getting a task completed. That illustrates a value judgment of mine. Now it does not mean that this is best for everyone or even my children. I abhor the idea of lazy, but I realize that lazy people have their place and function. I would not want the mind numbingly dull jobs that many people have to do. Twenty years ago, my beliefs were probably far more popular than they are now, but occupations change and will continue to do so. One day we may all spend most of our time supervising machines because that is more productive than doing the job oneself.

Could you imagine a society making a decision that they want to do some monumental project that will take generations to accomplish so for those generations the society would push parents to select for increased genetic tendency towards workaholism until the project was completed.

This topic of Active behavior is interesting and important because of its genetic basis and its sociological implications. It is a classic example where humans will have to be careful to maintain a genetic balance of a behavior. There is another important point about it though. It's association with Aggressive behavior. I've placed this essay before any essay about aggressive behavior, because the word active is commonly considered an attribute of aggressive. The meaning of aggressive includes active. There is a common conception, correct or not, that active is dependant on aggressive. Aggressive has some other connotations that active do not, but it is commonly believed that a reduction in aggression would result in a reduction in active behavior, another potential hazard to intentionally reducing aggression for social reasons. Now this may be true, but this is not a given. Active is different from aggressive. What the relation is between the behaviors, genetically and in expression is another question, but the two should be considered separately because they are distinct behaviors, maybe.

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