The Other Options

• Human Genome Project: Implications by Brian Robinson, 10/2/98
  
  

Brian,

This is a magnificent statement and carries the belief of the majority of people in our cultures. I grieve that it does.

1) "existing forms of discrimination" ... don't depend on biological determinism at present and won't do so in the future. Crunches in resources, election of charismatic leaders, manipulation of popular information ... may be some of the ingredients of tyranny. My hunch is that our genes are "tuned" by a range of inputs such that mother love can become infanticide, a doting husband becomes an abuser. People in mobs are different than the same number of people dispersed. Failure to understand such influences writes the prologue for the next round of our failures. The Enlightment eroded as shall western culture unless we all bring ourselves into line with resources and unless we understand ourselves -- individually and as groups -- as fine instruments that react in subtle ways to our settings.

2)Tom Henry Huxley ... a little manic and certainly a showman, pushing his way to the top and likely using "morality" as much as he may have tried to support it. He was also grandly, eloquently wrong. He, like all of us, missed the inherent cooperative structures in our nature and in that of Nature. We are adapted to note threats and to remember blood forever. Thus, Darwinian (and other) moral systems have adopted a paradoxical "assert our whole armor of culture and fight the might battle against our natures." Hogwash. None of us would be here if the systems for altruism and nurturance were less genetic than our systems for combat. We don't understand them sufficiently, or the probable genetic foundations of our "morality" because we are so fixated on horror. Unless we understand the foundations of "good" as well as we understand those of "evil" we will lose the former while battling the latter.

3) We're still puzzling through the genes and behavior relationships. Complex human traits, as expressions of multiple genes acting in concert, are perhaps more resistant to disruption than the eating habits of insects.

I'm hopeful but worried. Genes and information about them are not threats to brother/sisterhood. Failure to understand such is a far greater threat. Ignorance allows fundamentalist shamans to build their audiences and fortunes. They will do so on the basis of special relationships with one "god" or another. We may well have psychological adaptations that encourage such hierarchies but with electronic boosts, one despot reaches millions of us instead of the mythic limit of 150.

Let's NOT sit on our hands and do nothing. Let's look into our futures with whatever feeble instruments we can apply from behavior genetics or from complexity theory. Humankind thus far apes the dinosaur. Reproduce to the limits of our niches; earth still changes, niches crumble and our children starve. Defiantly assert our "Free Will," follow our genes instinctively as we always have, pump out children, and eventually eat them.

Humans have foresight, genes don't. Let's get off their escalator by taking charge of them. I treasure your good will; also, your ability to remind me of the altruistic reasons that I'm burning myself and my resources on this controverted sculpture called "evolution."

Jim Brody

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                • 1 reply
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