I understand that a synopsis is supposed to be short, probably shorter than this, but this
represents about four decades of hard work studying many subjects. It's about as short as I
can make it. Read it and it will take you where you have never been before.
This is very complicated, because it is about a very complicated subject, human survival.
It is about a rapidly, dangerously, changing world and how humans, our children and descendants,
can adapt and thrive in it.
It is also a philosophy. We have other philosophies based on things such as the pursuit of power,
wealth, beauty, happiness or other things, but this is based on the persuit of human survival in
the evolutionary sense. It is all built upon that foundation.
It is about morality. Moralities are the learned survival strategies that humans use. Their
importance is shown by that humans will go to war over their different religions and ideologies.
This examines moralities of the past, present and possible future moralities that will serve
a philosophy of survival.
It is hard to not see that the world is changing so rapidly. It is so rapid and chaotic that one
must be concerned about the future of humanity, particularly if you have children and worry about
their future. Many wonder what we can do to make the world a better place. This is to answer that.
It also answers far more. The potentials I found were far more than I would have ever expected.
At the same time, while we must adapt to change, this must be comfortable. I could tell you of
shining cities based on incredible technologies, but this is about survival and so will be judged
by instincts and feelings far older than your intellect. We may fly around the universe one day
in Galaxy Class Starships, but your moral instincts do not think about that. They direct people
to think of survival in terms of family and community. Survival is the ultimate conservatism and
this is framed in that way. Change is risky. This only advocates change for very considered
reasons, all based on survival.
While this is largely about morality, how we can survive, it is based on biology, how life is
described by science and what I am best at. It uses knowledge from many sciences, but other sources
as well. While it is meant to be more than just science, it uses the descriptive and analytic forms
of science that are powerful tools of understanding. It is conservatively stated for that reason as
well. Like the goal of science, this is about providing understandings, often by simplification and
classification, but more by ordering knowledge to make it understandable.
What the first section of this is about has already been written above, how there seems to be
such massive Changes. The first part of the book is to describe that in biological terms. So the
second section gives a general view of Human Biology, which is partly typical for a mammal, but
also pretty unusual in ways. It also gives a view of human ecology to show in a systematic way how
the foundations of human ecology are changing perhaps more radically than has even occurred for any
specie before.
Following that is a discussion of the work of C. D. Darlington who gave possibly the best
description of human social and genetic development during the last 10,000 years as the post
neolithic civil society has developed. He described the co-development of crops, technologies,
societies and human genetics as peoples and societies have come together hybridizing genetically,
socially and technically allowing them to expand world wide. He also described why discussions of
heredity have always been discouraged as they have frequently been used as reasons for racism and
race wars.
So the third section is about Genetics and is based on his background information about human
development and my observations about human heredity. So much has been learned so recently about
human genetics and biology. I was originally
looking at disease and the problem of antibiotic resistance that was observed early on, but
is starting to become of great concern in the medical community as antibiotic resistant
forms of diseases become more common. Overall I saw that that and some other issues point
to a genetic crisis for humans. That is where I started on this book. I saw human survival
at great risk and wanted to see if I could see a path to survival. I found far more than I
expected, both problems and potentials. That is the point. It is not just a genetic crisis
or disease or moral strategy. A simple biological examination shows how radically the entire
human world has changed and is changing. It is best described as that the niche we came from
is gone. The niches we are in are transient and to survive, we must develop a new stable
niche, a new way to survive. That is the objective of this book.
Now my bias is towards genetics and genetics are very important to this, but the mark of humans
is that we adapt behaviorally rather than relying on instincts. That is why the importance of
the Morality section that follows the Genetics section, but both are basically given only as
introductions to illustrate the problems we face. Then before going into detail on those topics,
the Aspirations section discusses human potentials and ... aspirations. What humans have wanted
through history and what we might be able to achieve. I think that the potentials described in
that section are somewhat amazing, but it is meant more to illustrate what we might want to do
with the potentials I described previously in the Morality and Genetics sections. So after the
Aspirations section, those sections are visited again to look at what we are and how we can
become what we have aspired to. First though are the Genetics and Morality sections that lay out
the problems.
We have a number of genetic challenges coming.
1. As said earlier, the first is the problem of disease. Some diseases we will conquer,
but diseases have been overcoming defenses for a long time and some will not be so easily to
defeat. Classical diseases are coming back in novel resistant forms, such as tuberculosis.
Also, what we have seen is that the diseases we encounter often tend to come as novel surprises
such as SARS. There are many more people on Earth, living very closely together now and we travel
far more. Diseases will be able to spread far more rapidly than in the past. Along with this, one
huge change in human ecology as we have adopted technology is that we have changed from a quantity
strategy of reproduction, to one of quality where there is a far greater investment in each child.
That is a huge change to the foundations of our biological nature. Aside from the human cost of
disease, we cannot afford the cost in resources of a traditional mortality rate that was often
over 30%.
2. We will have a problem with genetic load. That is defective or ineffective genes broken by
natural mutation or during recombination. Parents are having children older now.
"Some experts estimate that in 35-year-old women, approximately 1 in 2 eggs are likely to
have chromosomal abnormalities; and about 90 percent of eggs are abnormal in women aged 42
or older." Older fathers have "more copy number mutations, including several linked to
autism and schizophrenia". I think we will certainly find more associated problems as well.
3. What accentuates these problems is that classical diseases often act as a general selective
effect. They introduce toxins or cause the body to heat up and if there is a weak link in the genetic
chain, the person dies. This is a bit different than the effect mentioned above of diseases that may
be pandemic. Really though this is just another part of the problem that what we call "human progress"
is often just the removal of natural selection. It is not just that removing natural selection that
is the driver of evolution could cause a somewhat opposite effect, the problem is that it allows the
build up of genetic load. That will be disastrous.
4. Another problem is that we need to adapt to a new niche and large part of that adaptation
will be genetic.
After years of consideration, including of the biological energetic equation, I concluded that the
only possible way for humans to survive and keep technology was to use artificial genetic selection
at the zygote level to compensate for those changes. There is much reason to this, but this proposal
is a very emotional topic and will be judged by moral instincts far older than intellect, so the moral
implications must be immediately considered.
1. It will result in healthy children, families and communities.
2. We have no choice if we want to survive.
3. It will be considered in a context of religious morality further on, but that does not seem
to be a problem.
4. The genetic wealth will provide an incredible economic wealth.
Now artificial genetic selection has been considered before, but almost always as a privilege of the
privileged class. This cannot be looked at that way. This is something that all humans are subject
to. Nicely the technology does not look very expensive, particularly compared to the
benefits. Also, humans have shown that they reject slavery. To have a group that practiced artificial
selection and one that could not, would amount to slavery and cause a moral conflict that could not
be sustained. No group could survive even with our current technology, without practicing artificial
selection. There are more reasons discussed in the details of the book.
The pluses are that everyone could have superior health, beauty and brains. There are three levels
of artificial selection:
1. Removal of bad or broken genes. There are few bad genes as nature does not tolerate them.
There are some though and some that come from viruses that can occasionally cause nasty problems.
Mostly it would be about selection against the broken genes mentioned above that make up genetic
load.
2. Selection for superior genes. What is it that you respect the most about yourself or your
mate? There is no natural guarantee that your children would inherit it. Natural selection is a slow
random process in general. Artificial selection could be far faster and more directed. In the past,
physical health has been far more important than beauty and beauty far more important than intellect,
particularly the traits suited to technology. It is intellect and beauty that artificial selection
could most easily enhance, but it is health that we will most need because of disease.
3. Selection for the stable hybrid. C. D. Darlington described how in the time of civilization,
which was too short for significant genetic mutations to occur, there was great genetic change and
development caused both by powerful natural selective forces as well as by the hybridization of
different peoples and races. Hybrids tend to be robust and sort of have the potentials of both parents.
The trouble is that the genes do not fit together perfectly so the generations following the initial
hybrid may not be as strong as even the parentals. This is basic biology. Over time though, with back
crossing and natural selection, the hybrid becomes stable and is greater than either parental tribe.
It is what made the vital, energetic peoples of the modern world, but at great human cost. With
artificial selection, that cost could be minimized. Humans of all tribes are fairly closely related.
With the knowledge and technique, most all offspring would qualify as stable hybrids and in actuality
would be after few generations. Everyone could have the best potentials of humanity.
There are a few points that this offers.
1. It would make classical racism meaningless. Instead of as in natural situations where you
look at another tribe as a competitor, you would look at them as potentially having genes that your
offspring might want. Also artificial selection would be used to perpetuate your genes instead of
them being potentially lost by natural circumstance.
2. Those that have the least have the most to gain. Sure, those that have superior health,
beauty and brains have much to gain, but those that do not, have the most to gain the quickest.
3. It is the greatest form of wealth and is perpetually handed down to your descendants.
Think of the value of health, beauty and intellect. What is the monetary cost of genetic based
diseases such as cancer, heart disease, schizophrenia and the rest of the long list that is in
the touched upon in the Known Genetics
Traites page.
It has been asked, "would you rather be healthy or wealthy". The answer is pretty universally for
health. Is there any indication that people desire beauty? Would they use artificial selection to
increase it? I think that answer is easy.
There is far more detail to this and there are questions about moral implications, hazards, methods
and just what to do with the potentials, but those must be considered in greater depth in the book.
It may sound futuristic, but it is already being done to prevent some nastier diseases. Most
important it is moral and in line with human moral instinct. We want the best for our children. It
is not so fashionable in a world where we do not deal with plants, animals and nature daily to think
in terms of heredity, but we do think this way.
As said before though, humans also adapt behaviorally. We use strategies to survive and those
strategies are called moralities. The importance of moral systems can only be suggested by how
humans hold them and defend them. The problem is that most moral systems are based on authority
and precedence from religion and history. They are not meant to be examined and the foundations of
these beliefs can no longer be defended in this critical time. In the future, moral strategies
must be based on reason and understanding or they will not be used or even respected. We are
already seeing this currently. This is not to say that they do not work. Ancient moral laws
like prohibitions against human sacrifice or theft seem like good survival strategies, particularly
in the context of society, but we need a better foundation than to say they are true because God
said so. This is a vast subject of many topics, that must be considered as they look in the past,
present and a future that we desire. It includes organizational systems such as religion, law and
politics. It includes ongoing human requirements served by institutions such as education and
industry. I call those multi-generational behaviors. It includes traditional topics of morality
such as family and relationships, marriage, birth, death and sex. It even includes running as an
important moral topic. First though must be a decision about what we want to do, a target to aim
for. So the next part is the Aspirations section.
The Aspirations section was never meant to be written, by me anyway. I was trying to use biology to
describe how to solve problems from the past, particularly genetic problems, that we face from
changes that already
are upon us. Aspirations is partly about the future, which is always a bad subject to tackle. Also,
the approach to this topic is more controversial than genetics, Still, it may possibly be the most
important part of the book. This is hard to describe at all and hard to describe briefly as must be
done here.
I was looking at moral topics at the time, trying to list and examine items of strategic
importance to survival.
A friend of mine though had developed a very militant atheist view and decided to cure the world of
religion, starting with me. That seemed odd as I had little interest in religion, because though I have
something of a religious background, it did not seem to hold the answers I needed and I don't think I
am what you would call religious. Many people trained in modern thought, living in a world of
causality and reason, have a problem with a story that is based on magic and must be taken on
faith, so we do not often examine it. But he was quite insistent, so though I would probably
never have looked there, I applied the
methods of analysis I had been taught. I did not expect to find much more than the many that had
tried to find this understanding before me, but I think I did and what I found was quite shocking to
me.
This is going to be difficult to summarize, so much will have to be left out here, but this is more
fully supported in the details of the book.
I started by looking at concepts of Gods and trying to define what is believed. At the time I was
describing different Gods such as old spiritual beliefs, Greek Gods, Hindu Gods, some rather obscure
thoughts on the topic and particularly the very well known concept of the Christian God, but I was
thinking about genetics as I always tend to. A number of pieces came together including philosophy
from Michael Polanyi and others, technology trends, neurophysiology, human psychology, lore, cosmology,
cybernetics, my studies of genetics and morality as well as some other factors. Suffice to say, a
bunch of complicated concepts that had to all be serendipitously aligned and considered together as
they are in detail in the book, but cannot be here. ...
... ...
... ...
Questions about Gods have been asked forever, so in any case what I found is quite interesting and
to me was rather shocking, but more importantly it does answer many questions about human survival.
Mention of Gods can easily make one forget that survival is the point of this book, but Gods are how
humans have always described their highest aspirations and ideals, so whether Gods exist or not
they do illustrate human desires and throw light on human potentials. That is why this section is
called Aspirations. We also see human aspirations described in literature. The value of looking at
these is to offer a target or goal for humans to achieve using our genetic and moral potentials. With
those targets, humans can then decide
how to use the tools of artificial selection and what moral strategies we want to use to shape how
we will survive and what we want to be. We can see what is important to us and how we might achieve
it. The potentials are amazing. Also, it may well describe that niche that humans must develop for
long term survival.
So then what follows the Aspirations section is to revisit the Genetics discussion and see how we could
use the tools of artificial selection and the available genetic potentials of humanity to achieve what
we aspire to. It particularly mentions cautions about using such a powerful tool and the importance of
following principles of balance if one is to avoid disaster.
The final section is to revisit Morality and survival strategies. While the Genetics section has
a start and something of a finish, human moral development must be more open ended. We do have a
fair amount to work with and may well even have the most critical parts, but trying to give much
detail would be about describing a future that is not yet formed and will be created by people
far wiser and knowledgeable than anyone living presently. Hey, but that is the fun part, the
unknown adventure of the future. I will say what I can, but I leave the future to the future as
I must and is right.