Transition

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4. Hereditary Sources and Ecological Change

This is a description of the cultural development and genetic sources of the Occidental or Western culture and society. It is largely according to the C. D. Darlington. This is information I would never have had the time and resource to accumulate. His books are brilliant, but at the same time, there may be historical details that are dated. Still, the pattern and is certainly correct. and can be used for this study. Ultimately, this kind of study will need to be done for the other sources of civil populations in the world centered in Asia, India and Meso-America.

Historical Western Humanity
   Sumerians
   Semites
   Indo-Europeans
   Local Populations
   Celts

This is an examination of humans in the time period that is referred to as history. This is pretty well defined as the time since the creation of the cities, when humanity started on a new course of social development. The consequences are amazing and overwhelmingly significant... and ongoing.

This chapter, as most of this book, focuses on the "Western Culture" that originated in the Middle East and developed the most in Europe and then the Americas. The same thing was happening in Asia, India and Mesoamerica. This kind of examination will apply to all races and eventually will be created for all races that survive, but this is the culture I know best and can describe the best. Most of this chapter is based on the work of C.D. Darlington.

Who were your ancestors? What were they really like? What was it about them that allowed all those ancestors, against all odds, survive to produce yourself? What traits from your tribal and historic ancestors, have you got that are what gave them the potential to survive until this time? What are you that is more than your ancestors were? Why and how is that other person different from yourself? What are the similarities? By the way, do you have a talent for mathematics?

Humans developed in small, relatively isolated tribes. With the rise of agriculture and civilization, some of these groups came together in cities. A stratified society developed to allow the different groups to work together and make their contribution to the society. Each tribe or caste specialized in an occupation and basically stayed adjacent, but separate.

Due to a slow continual mixing and hybridization of these tribal groups, largely due to cities, war and slavery, present humans are genetically different from the tribal groups that created the stratified society. The world was colonized by boat. During the time of history, boats were the main way that the world was connected.

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About 400,000 years ago, humans developed the tools and skills necessary to hunt big game. This was actually the time that this present change in ecology was triggered. We still have not reached another stable ecology since that time. About 70,000 years ago, some groups developed agriculture. It was quite possibly conservative groups trying to preserve their way of life by preserving and nurturing the local wild crops. This led to the expansion of the "Neolithic" farming tribes that colonized much of the world before there were any civilizations. Their methods of cultivation were very crude and depleted the soil such that the groups had to remain relatively mobile. Over time, crops, livestock and the humans developed. Humans learned to build by doing terrace farming. This was also a way to farm that did not deplete the soil. It could be endlessly carried back up. They then expanded to farming in the floors of the river valleys. Soil was replenished by the flooding of the rivers and so the soil was not depleted. This allowed the formation of cities on the deltas between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. With the development of cities came revolutions in cultural evolution. It should be remembered that evolution always "works" to speed itself. With the rise of the cities, massive changes become only benchmarks. We developed agricultural technique, industry, early sciences, moralities and complex religions. Humans colonized the world primarily by boat. We developed metallurgy and went to the ends of the earth to seek copper and tin to make bronze. The niche of the warrior and the military ruler opened. Empires were created and the stratified society was developed.

Much of human progress started as technical developments, such as agricultural practices, animal husbandry, transport and warfare. Iron usage was learned. It is hard to estimate the importance of iron to the development of what humans are, but it is very easy to see its importance in history and empire. In response to the rule of iron, very powerful ideologies and religions were born. Advanced political forms were created, notably the American Constitution.

When looking at present circumstances, what peoples have created and thrived through these changes? This is a story of how the Sumerians, Semites, Indo-Europeans and Celts came together to make the core of the present occidental society.

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Sumerians, Semites and Indo Europeans

So where did you come from? If you are a contemporary occidental, your abilities to live in cities came from your Sumerian ancestors who built agricultural cities in Turkey, Iran and Iraq from about 6000 B.C. to 2000 B.C. Really, ongoing archaeological studies tend to keep pushing this back. Originally they were tribes, but over time they became a race. The Sumerians developed most of the civil and agricultural based industries including agricultural engineering, stone working, pottery, bronze working, milling, baking, record keeping and astronomy. Administration and organization was originally by priests. If you are any good at math, you probably got your talent for it from the astronomers and scribes of Sumeria.

This was the first civil society of differing tribes and the tribes had different moral systems. As the society developed and the tribes became occupational castes, there was no one moral system that would work for the different castes or that was acceptable. The first moral systems of the cities were simple and not adaptable enough to serve much more than the groups that developed them.

The moral system of peasants and slaves are enforced by the upper classes. The craftsmen and artisans would have required manual skills, coupled with intelligence and training. The knowledge of the earliest scribes, astronomers and priests may not have been extremely advanced, but it was extremely complex. These castes required very extensive education and discipline.

The history of Sumeria included back and forth raiding with their neighbors. They were attacked at times by mountain tribes, but mostly by shepherds. Peace was achieved by marriage. About 2400 B.C. they were conquered by Semitic pastoralists who replaced the priestly ruling class with a military government. In history, this is attributed to Sargon The Great.

For a thousand years, from the time of Sargon The Great, these "civilized" Sumerian-Semitic peoples hybridized and spread, selectively absorbing the local neolithic farmers and paleolithic hunter-gatherers. The civil people expanded the most, as a class, because the neolithic farming tribes had already expanded well before the creation of the cities. The niche for cities and their advanced techniques and organizational systems, was wide open. Human variation in appearance is highly related to the local populations that were encountered, but the ability to live in cities and tradition of living in cities came from the earliest civil groups.

The Semites added increased aggressiveness, intelligence and organization to the potentials of the Sumerians. In time, their development led to Egypt, Mesopotamia and the migrations of the Phoenicians, Minoans and the Megalithic tribes.

All modern occidental people include this hybrid Sumerian-Semitic base that included Semitic aggressiveness and intelligence as well as the original Sumerian timidity and civil and technical potentials.

Like all of the earliest civilizations, Sumerian agriculture depended on the soil that was replenished by the river. Agriculture probably originated as terrace farming on the side of river valleys. It was only later, with the development of better crops and farmers, that they progressed to the irrigation and farming of the flat delta areas of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The consequence of this is that very early on, the agriculturists developed rock building techniques for constructing terraces. Obviously these skills left what we see today as the most visible and lasting records of the earliest civilizations.

Then came the impact of the Indo-European Tribes. They were pastoralists from the area of the Caucus Mountains and south western Russia. They have been miscalled Aryans, who apparently were just one tribe and they went to the east rather than the west. The names heard for the people that went west, are the Scythians, Mittani and the Hittites. They were known to the Sumerians as conquering invaders. Later in Greece, they were called the Dorians and Ionians. They aggressively conquered what civilization there was, culminating when the Indo-European Greeks of Mycenae conquered the last great element of the Sumerian-Semitic civilization, Minoan Crete. Ultimately this led to the rise of Rome, a culture that led to the civil, social, political and religious forms that have endured until recently. From then on, the written history of western humans is how the Sumerian-Semitic civilized peoples accommodated and then hybridized with the conquering pastoralists. Historically, again the pattern was marriage to create peace.

According to C.D. Darlington, linguistics suggests that even before the colonizing expeditions, the Sumerians had encountered the Indo-Europeans. The Sumerians used the Indo-European words for cattle and bronze.

So the Indo-Europeans selectively got the Sumerian timidity, civil and technical potentials as well as some Semitic aggressiveness and intelligence. The reason the Indo-Europeans replaced the Semitics as the holders of the ruling position was the degree, nature and organization of their aggressiveness. From the Indo-Europeans, the Sumerian-Semites got intelligence, aggressiveness and especially important at the time, organization.

It is time to pause to discuss a little of the meaning and importance of aggressiveness. Aggressive is usually taken to mean simply violence or threat of violence, yet it has many more important meanings. It also means "active". It can be associated with the basis of personal survival, creativity, exploitation, drive, violence, love, protectiveness and many other important human attributes. Aggressiveness enhances all behaviors where an active state works better than a passive state. This is the importance of aggressiveness now. The directly violent aspects of aggressiveness will actually be considered as a separate section.

At the time that the Indo-European tribes were conquering the ancient east, aggressiveness simply meant the talent and inclination towards wars of conquest. The rise of the cities brought many peoples together. That created not only material wealth, but also the potential for political power. The pastoralist were used to fighting among themselves and so were able to fill the power vacuum. The Indo-Europeans replaced the Semitics as the ruling class due both to the nature of their aggressiveness and their organizational ability.

Now the violent aspects of aggressiveness can be seen, but more importantly are the positive effects of aggressive drive when it fuels the creativity of a craftsman, artist or scientist. Over time, the civil races selectively absorbed the aggressive potentials of the aggressive tribes. This hybridization makes us potentially much more aggressive than our early city ancestors. We are aggressive enough that the niche that was completely open at the beginning of the cities, is now almost completely closed. Warfare is more costly now, because most peoples are potentially good fighters now.

This does not discuss aggressiveness as a primary reproductive behavior. That is for another chapter. but this does give enough of a description of the breadth of the meaning of aggressive behavior, to show some of its importance to humans. Aggressiveness has created both destructive violence and much of the creativity that has built civilization and allowed humans to use their minds to understand and manipulate their world.

So far as these ancestral traits mentioned are concerned, the easiest to observe are Sumerian intelligence, especially indicated by mathematical ability, and Indo-European aggressiveness. Both Semitic and Indo-European intelligence can be observed, but they are less noticeable as primarily they add to the Sumerian base. Predators tend to be more intelligent than their prey and hunting or fighting other humans, as pastoralists did due to the economics of their way of life, also requires more intelligence.

The Indo-Europeans showed a talent for organization in the beginning. They could organize what they conquered. Usually competition at the top of the social structure, the ruling class, is extremely tough. So the Indo-European ruling class survived only if they improved their organizational skills.

The Sumerians created the multi-racial stratified city. It was a civil plan that kept different peoples adjacent to utilize their different talents, yet reproductively separate as to perpetuate each group's contribution to the city. They were separated according to occupational nature as different castes. This was a step in social organization and represented Indo-European talent for organization.

The Semites changed it from a society dominated by priests, to a militarily dominated society. The Indo-Europeans followed and replaced them. The Persians, Alexander, created great empires. This whole system expanded, hybridized and evolved. It culminated with the Romans whose law, precedent and tradition still hold sway today. The system initiated by the Romans was restructured into the monarchy and the Catholic church. The fall of the monarchies of Europe was the end of the political entity in the tradition of Babylonia, started by or before the first Indo-Europeans. The end of the monarchies and the two world wars show the end of the power vacuum that was created by the creation of the cities.

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Celts

The description of the development of the Sumerian/Semitic/Indo-Europeans to present day is only to tell the written record of the history of the time and peoples. At the same time there was a different society developing in parallel that left a different kind of record and developed different habits.

The contribution of the Celts to modern European society is extremely important, but due to the lack of written history or other sources, it is rather hard to describe. Also, the importance of the Megalithics in this society can only be guessed at.

The importance of the Celts seems to stem from the result when the older civil races met and hybridized with them. This always initiated historical changes.

A problem arises when talking about the importance of Celts to the older European civil races. The discussion considers the Celts to be the local indigenous tribes in the area of the Eastern Atlantic. It may be that much of the importance of their contributions came from their earlier encounters with very early Sumerians.

The Megalithic tribes organized well planned colonizing expeditions starting about the time of early Egypt. They were Sumerian/Semitic hybrids including priests, builders and sailors. They fit well into the societies they found along the Mediterranean coast and European Atlantic coast where their ships took them. They were urbanites that entered a tribal environment, bringing techniques and beliefs that were readily assimilated by the local peoples. Their genes were assimilated too. They left behind characteristic monuments, tombs and cemeteries such as Stonehenge and Car Nac. Their greatest impact though was that the Celtic hybrids were very dynamic and set off the chain of events that led to the modern world, including science.

They left the main centers of civilization before the main Indo-European impacts. Communication was maintained for 2000 years by Phoenician traders, but there is little written record of these people. Scribes could not expect employment in a colony, so they did not go on the expeditions. Still the record is there in the stones and the genes. There were astronomers and some theories have been advanced that some of the expeditions may have been scientific. They may have run a gold trade (Ross and Robbins).

The peoples that the expeditions met had low melatonin levels in response to the lower light level of the higher latitudes. One race was distinctively red haired, light skinned, freckled and quite aggressive. They might be called proto-Celts. They are well represented today by appearance and their temperament might be considered characteristic. They apparently correspond to the Indo-Europeans in that they contributed useful aggressive characteristics to the more timid Sumerian base that colonized on the Atlantic shores. The only representatives of these tribes, in behavior or appearance, are now thoroughly hybridized with the Megalithic-Sumerian/Semitic base or else they have trouble adjusting to the civil society. The Sumerian/Semitics got aggressiveness and some characteristics of intelligence as well as other characteristics of the passionate hardy peoples of the shores and forests of Europe. The local populations got the basic potentials of civilization.

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Other Sources

The expanding civil tribes did not move into areas that were completely empty. There were many local indigenous groups. To the largest extent they failed to compete, but often, they would have been selectively absorbed. Beauty would have been a trait that would have been perpetuated by the civil tribes on an individual level. Some tribes would have succeeded in surviving by diplomacy, valuable local skills, or an aggressive nature that promoted diplomatic solutions by the invaders.

Quite possibly the traveling Sumerians met and hybridized with the Reindeer followers like present day Lapps. This could be consequential because they are adapted to such an extreme environment. The Beaker folk may well be one of the tribes that joined to become the Celts.

Obviously, from looking at modern Europeans, there is great variation in physical appearance. To a large extent, this represents the appearance of local tribal people that got assimilated. The appearance of our psychologies are more similar. Though you can recognize physical characteristics of these ancestral racial sources, the psychological traits are much more common. The adaptations to urban life, inherited from the Sumerians, is almost universal to any occidental that is comfortable with urban living. Your ancestors were some survivors. You are far hardier and aggressive than your Sumerian ancestors. Your aggressiveness primarily comes from the Indo-Europeans or the redheads of the Atlantic coast or both. The Indo-Europeans included the Greek colonizations and the Romans as well as other ambitious groups that widely traveled and conquered. In consequence, the Indo-Europeans aggressive characteristics are more widely represented than that of the red heads. In general, the further west in Europe, the less the presence of the Indo-Europeans and the more the presence of the Megalithic. The method of warfare of the Indo-Europeans was dependent on mobility of chariot and horse. It did not work so well in the European forest. Apparently the Indo-European descended iron smiths were quite welcome though, because much of that period of history was about the magic of the iron smith and the felling of the Great European Forest. Other tribes and individuals were able to find a niche in the city by aggressiveness, beauty, intelligence or some other trait that fit into the city.

Through this all was the effect of war and slavery leading to further mixing of the tribes.

It must be remembered that it is not just the potential of any particular trait that determines the result of selection. As important is the result when it is hybridized with the Sumerian and other base races. If it does not act as a complement to the base genes, it will be selected against some, independent of its own merit. It is all a balance. All existing occidental traits hybridize well with the traits of the base races. It can cause conflicting pulls, as will be discussed later.

The historic descriptions could actually be misleading or even inaccurate. It has been said that there may not be a connection between the Megalithics and the Celts. It seems unlikely. In any case, it seems that the Celts did have very special potentials. The observational descriptions might even be questionable in some particular. The important point though, is that the characteristics and potentials of our ancestors are clearly visible today. Observation will certainly fail to accurately describe the meanings and selective forces that have led to the genetic combinations of present humanity. Chromosomal study should accurately determine the racial and characteristic makeup of our population and any individual. Modern racial descriptions will tend to fall apart under close examination of different genetic sources. We will have to utilize what potentials are available.

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Genetics - War, Faith and Disease

It is easy to see that the warrior often had great competitive advantages in the civil society as it developed. There were also great limitations. Once a warrior group conquered a people they tended to get assimilated or eventually lose control. Until the time of Alexander, warriors never learned how to make warfare lead to a useful niche in the society. Warfare does not inherently produce its own niche. The Greeks with their incredible city state wars eventually learned the unprofitability of war. As soon as the conquest was done, the talents of the warrior tended to be less important than the talents of the civil populations. Of course, by that time, the warriors owned or taxed what they wanted. The net result tended to be that the warrior had a reproductive advantage. His genes tended to be very successfully hybridized with the civil populations. At present, in the highly hybridized population in the United States, almost everyone is hybridized enough with warriors to be able to act as a warrior. This is true to a lesser extent in Europe. Many traits would contribute to success as a warrior, including speed, coordination, endurance, control under stress and organization, as well as aggressiveness. During history the traits of the warrior groups, primarily pastoralist groups, increased greatly.

Another genetic potential that was focused on by selection during this time, was a general response to the overwhelming problems presented by surviving and adapting to completely new ecologies. This was the basic survival instinct. The will to survive under any condition and adversity. It was what allowed cultures and individuals to survive while completely subjugated as slaves by warrior societies. Many species are so fragile that when their situation changes, they are basically paralyzed. They die without much of an attempt to adapt. Humans are extremely adaptive and will struggle against any odds. This basic survival instinct operates within the context of the individual, family and community/tribe. It is a behavior like others with a genetic basis that comes into play under environmental stimulation. It may grow slowly or burst forth suddenly when circumstances demand. It is the genetic base that causes humans to learn and use the learned survival strategies called moralities. It was probably the main focus of evolutionary selection through most of history and before. The only name generally given to this basic survival instinct that has allowed us to survive and adapt is Faith. It is a loaded word. Because of its importance to human survival it has gotten associated with religions which claim to be its source. Truly, faith is the source and religion is the product. It seems quite likely that faith and morality, in the context of the tribe, was what actually caused the rise and expansion of the neolithics.

Another primary focus of evolution during this time would have been a response to disease. An inevitable consequence of greater population density and greater communication between populations, would be an increase in the rate of communicable disease. The stories of plagues echo through history to the present. Time and again, historical events can be related to a specific event of disease. Part of the response in some cultures, were the development of sanitary practices, often as a part of a moral system. The idea of the Kosher practices of the Jews were primarily a response to reduce disease. In Europe though, people seemed in general to not associate disease and sanitation, so they relied on natural selection. It could be expected that human immune systems have constantly developed from the time of the first cities.

Through the time period called history, it is basically a story of the expansion and development of the occidental society. In many cases the term development means an increase in complexity. Humans main genetic potential for responding to their society is intelligence. Through all of the development of human society, selection has focused on intelligence. This is especially true during the demanding period that has been recent history.

These are considerations of general selective trends. Each caste had selective pressures particular to their different niches. The rulers got more talented at ruling and organization. The warrior got better at the talents of war. The craftsman got better at tool making and tool use. The farmer got better at understanding plant, animals, weather and soil. The scribe developed greater intellectual potentials. Many of these improvements in potentials occurred due to the results of hybridizations between different castes as well as hybridizations between different tribes of the same occupational caste. It seems that the ruling castes, while often practicing marriage for its economic and political functions, often tried selective breeding of their caste. They knew the precariousness of their position.

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Social Development

So these are the ancestral races of the occidental culture. They are almost universally Sumerian/Semitics from the Ancient East or else the Atlantic coast Megalithics. Also the Indo- Europeans are about all pervasive as are the Proto-Celts, in the areas of the Megalithics. Then there are the local tribes that got selectively absorbed. So what is the context that these all fit into? It is the culture that developed in and around the cities. The way that the social system of the cities was organized was called the stratified society. Human habit in cities was to divide themselves according to the occupation of the tribal components of the city. Each tribal component became a caste. Each caste kept separate to preserve the traits that allowed them to fill their occupational niche. Religion was what each caste used to preserve its identity by promoting perpetuation of the community. The simplest possible schematic description of the stratified society, such as Sumeria, would have at least three components. A base of peasant farmers to provide food, craftsmen to make farming tools and to do construction and a priestly class for leadership and organization.

When Sargon conquered Sumeria, this social form was forced to accommodate another component, a military ruling class. They took on some of the functions of the priests, but mostly they were filling the new niche that had opened up for warriors. At different times and locals there were various tribes or castes that specialized as woodworkers, potters, masons, metalworkers, builders, miners, sailors and other occupations that could fit into the cities. As wealth increased and different groups became more affluent, such as the miller being more wealthy than the farmer that produces the grain, economic classes developed that corresponded to the tribal-occupational castes.

Not only did each tribal caste have the potential to fulfill one particular occupational function in the city, but also the best place to learn an occupation is in the home. Widely, the law was that son shall follow father in occupation. Then the whole system was formalized by Alexander and it is pretty much the way it has remained until recently.

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This has been a history lesson according to Darlington. It is a description of social development during history in the context of genetics. The following section is about the same time period, but from a more social than genetic development perspective.

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Note that that description and what follows here is flawed. This is a fairly traditional model of social development, but we know that that view will be changed because of recent archeological discoveries in Turkey at Göbekli Tepe. It has always been assumed that farming led to villages, then to cities and then to monuments and temples. The recent find of the 12,000 year old temple complex shows that a major temple created in neolithic times preceded all known cities. The implications of this are not presently known, but it is almost certain to change what we believe about human development. Still, the following description is useful for laying out a basic description of social development.

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. Even as crops improved and permanent villages began, crops may even have been used more as trade goods, but it would have been a significant change that would have provided more food. Developing metallurgy provided plows to break new soils and animal husbandry produced animals to pull the plows. History was largely about the spread of farming. Those farming techniques developed as did the crops, but there were no qualitative changes even when mechanization replaced muscle power, though that reduced the number of people it took to farm. Eventually things changed. Starting in the 1960's, great increases in crop yields were accomplished by the heavy use of nitrate and phosphate fertilizers. Unfortunately they cause downstream pollution and those fertilizers are limited. They will be mostly used up in less than 50 years. At the same time, technology produces new crops that can survive with less fertilizer and less water or that can survive in places that crops formerly could not, such as salt tolerant varieties. Other non-depletive and innovative farming technologies have been developed and more are being developed.
It is interesting to note that there is a form of farming that is non-depletive. Terrace farming included bringing the soil from the bottom of the hill to the top as it naturally moved down. It was very labor intensive, but an interesting example. New methods of farming are being developed that produce food economically. It is very hard to say what methods of food production will be made available by technology in the future Genetic engineering has offered new crops that are far more productive and can grow where crops have not in the past. Some are self fertilizing. Algae may be convertible into great tasting foods. What is sure is that we will not continue farming as we have.

Herding seems to be about as old as farming, but is a very different lifestyle that included raiding and led to the military castes. Herding generally was practiced where the animals could be supported by grazing on native vegetation, but where conditions were not good enough for there to be farming. The herder would drive their flock from area to area to graze. Using mobility they were able to take advantage of areas with few resources. As farming developed into new lands, the farmer competed with the herders for land.
In developed countries, meat production is about as mobile as farming. The time of the herder is mostly past. Current meat production methods are very resource demanding, particularly of water. There are ethical issues as well that tradition have caused to be unasked. In any case, it seems likely that fairly soon, most meat production will be by tissue culture. It is hard to say what that may make available, considering that it may be more practical, healthy and tasty to culture meats that are not currently imagined as dinner. Meat replacements have never been widely accepted due to inferior taste, but that may change with technology that could soon create very tasty meat replacements from plant products.

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. Now their greatest importance is the transport of materials and goods. They tie the world economy and peoples ever closer together. Currently their historical function of moving people has been replaced by airliners, but it is mostly only a quantitative change in the sense of how fast, not in how peoples move around the world to live and mingle.

Villages represented an increase in social organization and population density. They and their associated farming practices were a response to environmental degradation.
Cities developed with the development of crops and with farming techniques that included large scale diversion of water from rivers. The surplus food produced led to trade and economics. Cities also represented a change to higher population densities and increased disease vectors. that was probably a case of co-development.

Military Rule transferred increased resources to pastoralist tribal groups that traditionally practiced inter-tribal raiding. Military rule led to larger and larger organizations and then ultimately to nations. The military ruled the world. That seems to be changing, but it is hard to say. War is destructive. It may become rare because its economic model is inefficient and not resource creative or it may become more common as we compete for limited resources. The future of war will be determined by the populations that use resources and the technologies that produce them. It is interesting that what we consider cities were mostly a military creation. In the West, they were largely a product of Roman development. That was probably a case of co-development. Rome provided peace and order while the cities supported the Roman Empire. Before that, there were cities based on trade, but aside from ports they were usually far more limited. Certainly roads were more a product of the military than of trade.

Various highly cooperative and social organization philosophies, including numerous religions and associations, were developed and experimented with. Philosophies and sciences were born in various cultures. Science has been ascendant while the religions have waned. The value of science and technology has been shown to be so great that it will undoubtedly grow. We see that as the human future no matter what we make humans look like. Religion is another matter. Some of its functions like directing the planting and organization of the society have been replaced or diminished. Some of its beliefs have been discredited or become unfashionable, but its basic function has been about the survival of peoples. It has husbanded and taught moralities. It has created peoples and their communities. It is hard to say if that function can be replaced. It may be that with religions would add to their functions by taking on the task of explicitly studying moralities for a changing world instead of just relying on the methods that come from the past. They could take on the function of husbanding the knowledge of genetics as well. They might be well suited to that. In a sense, politics is inherently about moralities of wealth and power. While religions have often been diverted from their tasks, religion is inherently about the morality of survival. I doubt that will soon be replaced.

Muscle power was 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, some of it equine. Most developments have lead to new niches opening. In this case, a niche was closing as well.

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. It continues because of individual aspirations and practicality. The traditional roles of the past seem changed. The need for the muscle power that drove farming and industry is passing. Now the competition seems to be between the demands of businesses and the family. Women function and compete well in that environment. Still it must be balanced with the family. Women have a special place in child raising, which must be the most basic industry of any society. Currently we all have ambitions and desires. Change is happening. All roles exist. The future of women's roles are as unpredictable as their current individual roles are now.

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, overpopulation is one of the worst disasters in the world. Theoretically, disease may well change that, but all species reach a balanced population. It is just that humans will have to do it by choice or we will not be in a new ecology.

In a way, use of computers is 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. Computers are also going to be associated with the development of Virtual Realities. Their educational potentials are just starting to be realized.

Humans intentionally using genetic husbandry 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 further on in the book. Some potentials are rather surprising and amazing.

Global climate change, human caused or natural, 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. In general humans are going to have to come to the understanding that the environment of the Earth is their basic life support system and treat it as such. In the meantime, Global climate change may force humans into greater population density and more isolation from the natural environment.

Be aware that though it was Kings and wars that dominate the history books, much of history and progress was made by cooperation by individuals and societies. The plow rarely shows up in history books, but it was a large part of what made history.

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 term stable ones.

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So did we make any progress in all this time, since the beginning of the cities, agriculture, warfare, the stratified society or any of these other genetic and social changes we have already experienced? We have genetically hybridized and developed under great selective pressures. We have learned a lot about the arts, technologies, philosophy and we have developed science as a very useful tool. We have had cultural revolution after cultural revolution within the space of generations. Moralities and genetics evolve. It is a real problem of our genetic potentials adapting to these changes and then causing more cultural changes that require more adaptation. It is a little amazing that we have been able to adapt this far. It has been done by the hybridization and then adaptation of the tribal or caste components of the society. Each nation or race has many of the same basic requirements that have to be fulfilled be different castes. The temperament and nature of the members of the same caste from different races is likely to be more similar than between members of different castes of the same race. That is to say that the nature of a farmer or warrior of one nation is more similar to a farmer or warrior from another nation than is the nature of the farmer and the warrior from the same nation. Racial, tribal, nations, families and castes all have mobile, but useful meanings. The stratified society worked very well, but there were social disruptions and practices that allowed hybridization between races and castes. War and slavery had this effect too. These were followed by periods of social stability and the castes were again effectively segregated by available occupation (this is called assortive mating). Since the sixteenth century, there have been signs of the growing effects of this hybridization, including the Protestant movement. The rise of the Protestants was a rejection of the existing social form. Those groups were hybridized enough that they did not need or desire the old social form with its excessive rigidity. The upper castes and classes had enough reproductive advantage that a great percentage of the population had the potentials and characteristics of the upper classes. It ended up that they were not as dependent or subject to the rule of the upper classes. Many individual communities contained all the skills necessary to their society including organization and defense. In ways this is similar to a tribal situation. From before the time of Luther, there were Protestant groups that though persecuted, continued to grow. Then when Henry VIII replaced the Catholic Church in England, many of the Protestants went there. They were not all that welcome there, so funny thing, They ended up going to America.

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Summary

That is you. Not necessarily your religion, but your breeding and background. Most Americans, Europeans and some Middle Easterners are this high quality hybrid of different races and classes. The development of humankind has been the coming together of peoples. Some groups are very widely represented, but the abilities of innumerable tribes and races are still there and doing quite well. This applies to the Asian and Indian civilizations, though there are differences, particularly in how the Asian castes developed as Asians seem to be far more genetically homogeneous, but it was still a story of the coming together of peoples and cultures. Time will reveal more about the nature of the Meso-American peoples.

All modern occidentals have the Sumerian ability to physically tolerate living in the physical conditions of the city. They also have the aggressive potentials and intelligence of the Semites.

This discussion of social habits of humans in the tribal and stratified societies could be expanded and then compared with the observable and predictable features of the technologically based society that is presently developing.

Because biological systems are inherently conservative, the discussion should be about the similarities between the tribal or stratified societies and the technological society. It is referred to as a technologically based society because of the source of our energy and resources. The stratified society is basically about tribes that live with other tribes and how they have organized into a larger society. Mobility, communication and technology are ending the basis of the tribe and the stratified society by promoting hybridization between tribes. Hybridization, by itself facilitated by the niches opened by technical and social development, would eventually end the historic form of the stratified society by changing aspects of what humans are. We would no longer be tribal. Changes due to hybridization might proceed slowly though, because the stratified society does work pretty well and the system is very conservative. Politics could slow social change, but there are other overwhelming factors, especially genetics, that are going to rapidly propel us into some fundamental changes in the nature of humans and society.

Both the Indo-Europeans and the Celts contributed important aggressive potentials to the civil populations. Though they both contributed behavioral potentials that serve similar purposes, they developed under very different conditions and so should be different in many ways.

The hunter-gatherer ecology was relatively stable in population size and resource utilization over a long period of time. Population size and resource utilization are presently undergoing drastic changes. Humans are in a transition between stable ecologies. If the human specie survives, we will again reach a state of stable population and resource utilization. At least in some local context and time frame. This might be a relatively non-technical ecology like the hunter-gatherer, but if humans retain technology, the ecology will be very different from anything before. Local is going to refer to planets and archology habitats. The time frame is as predictable as human preference. The overall transition has already shown a system where technology is facilitated by specialization of reproductive groups into occupational sub-niches or castes. Instead of hunter- gatherer, it might be called "stratified". We may have reason to use that system again, but it seems more likely that the stratified society is just one step in the development to a different social form that can be stable. The genetic basis of the stratified society is inherently unstable, In any case, our energetic acquisition strategy will be totally dependent on technique and planning to exploit renewable or relatively limitless resources, usually where there was no resource for the tribal human.

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5. Energetics and Resources

1. Energetics - General
2. Limiting Factors
4. Hunter / Gatherer, Big Game Hunters, Agriculture, Technology
5. Tools / Technology and Resources / Energy
6. Symbiosis, Predator / Prey - Standard Definition
7. Living Space and Archologies

The hunter-gatherer ecology was relatively stable in population size and resource utilization over a long period of time. This is not to say that there were no fluctuations (humans almost died out completely at least once), but if you consider the 6 million year time period and the overall population number of humans during that time, the average year to year change in population number was less than the count of fingers on your hand. Population size has recently increased by a factor of perhaps 1000. We use resources that did not exist or were of no use to the hunter-gatherer. Our main energy supply is fossil fuels, but will not be in 100 years. If the human specie survives, we will again reach a state of stable population and resource utilization.

Energetics, how a specie acquires and uses its food and other resources, is a basis of ecology. Energetics is the term used to describe all of the physical resources utilized by an individual or organism. Energetics is the basis of ecology and evolution because it describes organismic life as a function of thermodynamics. Evolution is a facet of entropy and probability in that the organization of all living organisms is maintained by increasing the disorganization of the organisms system. Ecology is that system. Probability intrudes at the molecular level in that high enthalpy primal molecules randomly combined to initially create life that could maintain its organization and reproduce by degrading a resource in the environment.

Evolution occurs when probability at the molecular level creates a change in genetics appropriate to successful exploitation of resources in the environment. In ecology or evolution, the primary goal of a specie is considered to be survival in an evolutionary sense. That includes not just individual or group survival, but also continued reproductive survival. At the level of the individual and the level of the specie, reproduction must be the ultimate goal of the energetic utilization strategy or the specie goes extinct.

Since the ultimate goal of any species resource utilization strategy must be survival in the evolutionary sense, the value of resources can be quantified on the basis of their relationship to survival. In any ecology will be limiting factors that determines the carrying capacity of the environment. The limiting factors in any ecology may be the main selective effects on the specie. This could be food, water, climate extremes, usable cover from predators, disease or other factors that are what limit the population of the specie.

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The Energetic Habits Of The Paleolithic Collector/Gatherer/Hunter

For six million years the hunter-gatherer ecology was relatively stable. An organism foraging for plant food and doing small game hunting could have survived indefinitely without overwhelming the ecology. This is not to say that there was no local damage. On the contrary, as suggested by studies of pinion nut hunters, humans probably had drastic effects on local environments. Still, population density was low enough that the tribe moved on and the environment recovered. Their techniques were not effective enough to cause irreparable damage to the larger ecology. Certainly, they did cause extinctions of some particularly vulnerable local species. In any case, their effects were negligible compared to the ongoing changes to the polar ice packs.

Calling humans generalists refers to what resources they can utilize. Compared to other animals, we can eat just about anything. Not only that, there is also a wide variation in what food was utilized in different local populations. Populations one place might depend on resources non-existent for other populations. This is true of tools and shelter as well. Human tribes came up with local solutions dictated by local needs, materials and techniques.

The main components of human energetic resources were food, shelter, clothing, tools, techniques and fire. Tribal humans well know the plants and animals of their world. They know their location and seasonal abundances. It seems that the digging stick produced more calories than the spear, but most resources were exploited. Also depending on local circumstances there would likely be variations in the role of each sex in obtaining food. It appears that in the commonest situation, the female specialized more towards obtaining vegetable foods that provided most of the calories and the men specialized more towards obtaining meat foods that provided more protein.

Where necessary, hunter-gatherer humans built simple shelters or utilized natural features for protection from the elements and predators. The loin cloth probably developed for protection from bushes, but the concept of clothing to avoid chill probably came easily particularly as peoples expanded into the more northern latitudes. Early tribal humans probably used mud for sun protection as the natives of the Americas do.

The ecology of the hunter/gatherer was based on the potential of energy efficient bipedalism. This was both to cover large areas with widely dispersed food or water resources and for following and overtaking game. The exceptional eyesight that our ancestors developed for living in trees, was now used for high quality scanning of the area foraged. The great dexterity of the fingers allowed collecting of food that was not concentrated.

During the later parts of this ecology, fire was used for warmth, cooking, protection and sometimes for working materials. Fire was one of the tools that eventually led to significant changes in human ecology.

Big Game Hunters - Neolithics

After six million years of mental and technical development in that ecology, humans developed the tools, techniques and potentials to hunt big game such as horse, rhino, camel, giraffe and even the great mammoth. The weapons were still primarily stone and wood, but the techniques to make and use them had changed. This really represented changes in human potentials. Humans were able to communicate and coordinate well enough to be able to take down big animals. Then they shared the catch. The communication necessary for group hunting and the corresponding social cooperation represent the potentials of the human neocortex that evolved during the previous millions of years.

These improved tools and techniques opened up new territories and niches. Of course, the niches of the big game hunters tended to be short lived. Their strategies tended to be extremely destructive. Food preservation techniques were limited such that a great deal of food was wasted. Prey populations were quickly depleted or exterminated. It has been suggested that it was humans that drove the mammoth to extinction and that it could have only taken 500 years. Richard Leakey says that this period lasted roughly between the period 400,000 to 70,000 years ago.

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Early Farmers

It seems that it was the same intellectual potentials that had allowed big game hunting, that led to agriculture. As the big game animals became scarce, some of the local populations discovered early concepts of agriculture. It was probably a conservative reaction in response to the visible depletion of the environment. In ways that ecology was very similar to the ecology before the big game hunters, because the tribes were still mobile and opportunistic. The most advanced forms of neolithic farming include slash and burn to prepare the site. Within a few years, that method inevitably depletes the soil and the tribe must move on.

Considering lack of agricultural sophistication, crop variety and irrigation, it is believed that early agriculture would not have developed in valleys. It would be too dry. Instead it probably developed on hillsides. A progression to terrace farming and irrigation can be easily extrapolated. Crops developed and new ones were domesticated. Within 70,000 years the mobile tribal neolithic farmer was largely replaced by the sedentary civil agriculturist.

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Technology

The value of knowledge as a resource is defined by what it provides to the individual or group for survival, especially over time. Knowledge may bestow resources to overcome limitations within the ecology where survival would be impossible otherwise. As such, the value of the knowledge may be described quantitatively. Without knowledge of stone tools or fire, humans could not have exploited much of the world that they have.

Many other vertebrates acquire extensive data and technique by communication. It can be memories of seasonal abundance, use of stones or sticks for obtaining food or even the use of chewed leaves as a sponge to pick up water, as some primates do. No animal is as good at making tools or as dependent on them as humans.

Technology refers to the use of tools and the methods of using them, specifically tools far more complex than handmade stone or metal implements. This includes tools that produce far more power than muscle can and tools that make choices. Also tools for making other tools. One of the main focuses of evolution, during much of human development, has been for the ability to make and use tools. Humans have co-evolved with their tools. Anthropologists have described human development in terms of the complexity of the tools that they could produce. Recently, humans have developed qualitatively new types of tools and techniques. In biological terms, technological development represents another unprecedented revolution. Technology could be considered as an institution, but it is so important that it must be examined as basic to human energetic strategies.

If you look at technological development since the time of the cities, it did improve the tools, particularly farming implements like the plow. Unfortunately, the greatest part of technological development was for war.

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Human Symbiotic relationships

The development of agriculture represents the transition of humans from predators to symbionts. Instead of just hunting animals and plants, we nurtured and husbanded them. We promoted animal crops by protecting them from predators and providing them with food and water. We have promoted plant crops by planting them as well as providing protection, water and nutrients. We have even manipulated different species to produce desirable hybrids. We have even nurtured plants such as the navel orange that would not exist without humans. The future of symbiosis for humans an important consideration, especially in light of the potential of genetic engineering.

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Living Space and Archologies

A relatively closed system that can support human life is called an archology. The earth is the first archology. A territory that supports a tribe could be called an archology, even though it is only relatively closed. A single family farm could be called the same, with understanding that the designation only refers to the needs of space and resource, generation by generation. Socially, the most basic archology for modern humans is the city with its food and natural resources. How non-polluting or closed any system is, becomes a critical point. In the future, cities will have to be archologies. Our ability to develop archologies will be a major factor effecting population size. How many people the Earth archology can support will partly depend on how clean our habits are.

Long before history, humans had to deal with both pollution and damage to the ecology. Now that there are more humans and our individual resource appetite has gone way up, it becomes a much greater problem. It used to be that the goal was to conquer nature. Now we must try to save her. Nature on this world is our life support system. It gives us our food, water, air and protection. It is the only real thing that we have got.

It has been shown that tribes that collect pinion nuts can cause great changes in the environment. Enough so, that the tribes could no longer subsist in that area. Studies of fossil pollen showed a complete change in the ecology within 200 years. Neolithic humans, by their big game hunting, exterminated probably half of the species of mammals that existed 500,000 years ago. In historic times, the devastation has continued and accelerated. Now, due to the effects of fossil fuels and damage to the ozone, we could make the earth a very difficult place for humans to live. There are many other dangers as well and new technologies will potentially produce even more. Much present and future technology must be specialized for cleaning up pollution.

There is much energy and resource available outside of the gravity wells. Another living space niche that may get exploited would be underground. To many, it would not be comfortable, but if a population developed the habits and techniques, the size of the niche would be incredible. All of these would be called archologies.

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Communication and Transport

One of the major developments of human resource strategies could be called communication and transportation. In general, the consequences include the movement of individuals and populations. The whole change that humans are presently experiencing is largely based on the mixing of different peoples. Early tribes migrated great distances on foot for many reasons. Boats have always been integral to movement. The roots of civilization were spread by ships in the colonizations of the Megalithics and the Greeks. Animals and carts transported people, materials and armies all over the world. Any innovation in transportation technology, past or future, is a factor to be considered in the picture of human development. Still, as far as it effects human energetics, communication and transport mainly refers to the transport of goods and techniques.

Transport can change the equation of ecology, because it looks at resources available in the specie's environment and transport allows the use of resources from outside that.

The consequences of the physical transport of resources is to allow specialized groups survive by producing a local resource (that by itself or combined with other local resources could not support the population) and trading it with distant groups, for resources not produced locally. It is almost as consequential as finding the resource locally, because it constitutes removal of a limiting factor to survival in the area. It may also constitute a unique basis of survival strategy for a local community. A coal mining town does not eat just local produce. Completely new niches open up and promote human occupational specialization.

Trading for local minerals, obsidian, flint, pelts, seashells or other local products was an old habit before agriculture. Many tribes traded and some, quite successfully, specialized at it. Essentially it is a basis of the stratified society. Each occupational caste trades their technical resource rather than local resource, with the others. There are still many resources and related communities, that are a local resource.

There is also the transport of ideas and techniques to be considered. Since knowledge and belief is so important, this description illuminates some important features of human organization. It is far more than the transport of books or even educational institutions. The value of knowledge and technology is incredible.

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Summary

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The hunter-gatherer ecology was relatively stable in population size and resource utilization over a long period of time. Neither the ecology of the big game hunters or the agricultural civil society was stable. Population size and resource utilization are presently undergoing drastic changes. Humans are in a transition between stable ecologies. If the human specie survives, we will again reach a state of stable population and resource utilization. This might be a relatively non-technical ecology like the hunter/gatherer, but if humans retain technology, the ecology will be very different from anything before. No matter what, it ends up being a high energy system. The transition has already shown a system where technology is facilitated by specialization of tribes into occupational sub-niches or castes. How to describe the next social form in the context of occupation and resources, is yet to be seen.

It suffices to say that our technology is progressing rapidly and appears to have the potential to supply the energy and material resource requirements of the next stable ecologies under a variety of conditions. Just as the ecology will stabilize, so eventually will engineering technology, until there is not a complete technological generation gap every decade or so. As it has been in the past, tool using and technical ability will continue to be one of the most important features of human survival strategy.

The physical basis of our ecology, energetics and resources will be dictated in the future primarily by what technologies we can develop, especially energy plants. We actually have simple forms of most of the techniques that we will require, dependent on energy supply. Unless we are stupid or unlucky we will probably solve that problem. More critical in many ways, is the question of what will limit population growth to the resources available.

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6. Genetics

This Section is an analysis of Human Ecology and Genetics in the context of massive ongoing changes that humans will have to adapt to. The first part is about the reproductive strategies in general, then more specifically human habits. It then covers the genetic problems we face including removal of natural selective effects and various factors causing genetic load as well as the need to genetically adapt to whatever new niche we can find. It then discusses the need for using artificial selection to solve those problems. Artificial selection is described in practical as well as moral terms. The intent is to describe the tools we have available, but not so much how to use them. The Aspirations section will describe what we might potentially do with our genetic potentials, then the Morality section will describe how to achieve what we might want to achieve of our Aspirations based on the genetic tools and moral strategies.

Topics Considered:
1. Reproduction
2. Mammalian Reproductive Strategies
3. Natural Selection on Humans
4. Genetic Load From Removal of Selective Effects
5. Heredity
6. The Start of the Transition
7. C. D. Darlington - The Evolution of Man and Society
8. The Problems
9. Genetic Load
10. The Problem of Removal of Disease and other Natural Selective Effects
11. Return of Disease
12. The Solution
13. Artificial Selection
14. Promotion of Hybridization
15. Principles of Artificial Selection
15a. Reduction of Broken or Bad Genes
15b. Increase of Health, Beauty and Brains - Selecting For Good Genes
15.c Hybridization - The Mixing of the Tribes
15.d Genetic Engineering
16. Initial Moral and Religious Connotations of Artificial Selection
17. Artificial Genetic Selection In Humans
18. Emotional Evolution
19. The Integral Gene

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1. Reproduction
The ideal way to describe the ecology of any specie is to present an examination of their energetics and reproduction. Really, that is how a specie is defined in a ecological terms. Energetics is the basis of ecology. Reproduction is how energetics are used. Since the time of Darwin, biology has been based on survival by inheritable traits. At the molecular level it appears that we are simply vehicles and vesicles for our genes. Because of the intent of this book is to discuss how to create a stable ecology, the last chapter was a view of energetics. It was a bit brief so as to set the stage for discussion of much more complex aspects of human ecology. Now, this is to provide a discussion of reproduction. It turns out that human reproductive behavior is so complex and intertwined with community social behaviors that only a small part of human reproductive characteristics will be discussed in this chapter and most discussion of reproductive behaviors will be in the following chapters about Beliefs and Behaviors.

For most species, most of their lives are spent on non-reproductive behaviors. Reproduction has a limited, specific component, though it is obviously very critical. In most animals, there is some reproductive behavior that is related to masculine competition and courtship of the female, but little else. Usually, the offspring are raised by the female with little assistance from the male. Social behavior tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Humans have an extended developmental period corresponding to the development of the brain. This long developmental period relates to human social potentials and basic human survival strategies. This makes human reproductive behavior incredibly complex and inherently linked as part of the social behavior that is related to human cooperative survival strategies.

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Sexual reproduction occurs to facilitate genetic recombination and variability. This is to allow adaptation to a randomly changing environment or perhaps, as Robert Trivers says, cyclically changing environmental effects relating to inter-species competition (disease). Asexual reproduction apparently does not promote enough genetic variability to adequately respond to the changing environment.

The situation is analogous for RNA and DNA. DNA allows for more variability than RNA and so is the usual genetic material. A trinary base system is apparently unnecessary and so never appeared in evolution. In all species of biological organisms, maximum reproductive success is the evolutionary purpose for any generation of the specie. Evolution proceeds by differential reproductive success.

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2. Mammalian Reproductive Strategies
Sociobiology says that the primary difference between mammalian males and females is reproductive potential. A male can impregnate a female and then leave. The female is committed to a long and demanding investment. Typically, a male can have very many children due to the low investment, whereas a female always has a much greater investment and consequently fewer children. The male strategy is oriented towards quantity and the female towards quality. Both males and females have strategies to promote this. The males aggressively compete for the females and to impress them. The females both promote the competition and use information from the competition for selecting the superior mate. Females of some species use strategies to get a material investment beyond the male's genetic investment. Material investment by the male can come in many forms. It may be a bit of food, nest building or include extensive postnatal care.

In a specie where both parents contribute to the offspring's upbringing, consequences of Differential Parental Investment(DPI) tend to dictate much of parental and family interaction. The relationship will relate to the relative investment that each parent has in the raising of the young at any given time. With external fertilization, as in fish, the male must fertilize the eggs, allowing the female to leave and forcing the male to care for eggs. In this case, females may compete for males. In birds, the female makes the greater investment and so you may even get a situation where two females will work as a "couple" to insure the survival of the vulnerable eggs. In higher mammals, DPI means the consequences of internal fertilization. Usually the male has very little initial investment and often none from then on. The results of this, as extensively discussed by E.O. Wilson and others, is that usually the female must raise the offspring alone. Help by the male in raising the offspring occurs when it is necessary for some particular reason. Monogamy occurs in some mammals that do not usually exhibit it, when conditions are marginal enough to require it.

This leads to the commonest social arrangement of mammals being high reproductive potential males competing with each other for the more limited reproductive potential females. At the same time the females are pursuing the fittest male and using coyness to promote investment. Elephant seals, horses and cats are good examples of this. They show species where the males aggressively dominate available reproductive resources. It may be the females themselves that are claimed, such as in the case of horses. It may be a reproductive territory or nursery like beaches. If some limited reproductive resource can be dominated, the specie will probably develop aggressive behaviors in males to compete for it. In these situations, the males are typically larger than the females. A condition called sexual dimorphism.

In humans, monogamy is given to mean more that the male aids in the raising of the young with the mother, rather than just that it is a single male and female. The word monogamy may mean one male and one female in legal terms. In biological terms, it means the male staying with the mate or mates to help raise the offspring. Actually in legal terms it may be more of a social organization function and have more to do with inheritance than even one man and wife.

In a monogamous situation the male will be under similar reproductive constraints as the female and so will take on her "quality" strategies. It also promotes females competing with females for males that are likely to make an ongoing investment in the offspring.

Humans are higher social mammals with typical mammalian reproductive physiology. In many ways they have typical mammalian reproductive behavior, but in other ways they tend to be fairly different. Certain factors make humans almost exclusively monogamous. That fact causes changes in the basic reproductive strategies. While human males are typically larger than females, this may well be as much for different, specialized food gathering requirements as for social competition for mates.

Coyness is the primary reproductive behavior in females. It can involve a variety of techniques and strategies. Primarily it is to be attractive so as to attract the attention of males, between whom they can then choose to accept for mating. It can include promoting competition between the prospective mates to show their relative superiority. Coyness may include behaviors designed to promote the male to contribute resources to the female, ultimately to show how the male might provide towards the raising of offspring. In current terms this is why women are sometimes attracted to bad boys (aggressive) when it might be more reasonable to be attracted to milder, more steady mates that will contribute more. We are still adapting to changes.

Aggressiveness is the primary male reproductive behavior. It is the active search for and pursuit mates as well as competition with other males for access to mates. A male will often try to impress females with their fitness by reproductive displays, including aggressiveness.

Humans are almost exclusively monogamous. This makes for some interesting variations on typical mammalian reproductive strategies and presents a variety of interesting problems. It causes changes in the criteria used by the females in selecting mates and it causes males to take on some of the female quality strategies in response to the limited reproductive potentials it presents. Since a male in a monogamous situation has a much more limited potential for children, he will want to pick the fittest female. Females will be more interested in what the male has to offer in the way of resources that the male can contribute towards the raising of the children. Also females may take on masculine strategies to select and pursue a particular mate.

Human ecology and its parts has been changing very rapidly since we left the neolithic ecology. There have been a number of transitions and transient ecologies. Humans have occupied different ecologies at the same time and still do. In general, the time divisions are of the tribes, the cities and the future. In the tribes we evolved separately. In the cities we mixed some, but still evolved separately, under the influence of great pressures and vast new opportunities. In the future, the tribe will be expanded by the true union of the old tribes, into a more homogeneous specie with very diverse individuals that look at the specie as their tribe. Again, both selection and opportunity will be great. There will be new selective effects. To many people, the question of our genetic health and ability, especially in the future, is a very immediate question. These are questions that have already been asked. In the long run, genetic potentials will determine much of the rest of our social future.

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3. Natural Selection on Humans

Tribal humans were subject to a variety of selective effects. Disease, starvation, exposure and predation all took their toll. These effects worked differently at different times and places. This did not change much for the neolithic hunters. Less would fall to predators and more would die in hunting accidents. Often, selection just passed over the lucky. Still, adaptation to natural selective effects is the task of the specie.

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Much of what is called human progress has been the removal of starvation, disease and exposure. Humans tend to remove or overcome dangers. Technology and science have given us powerful tools to use to do this. So many changes are important, but the consequences of the removal of disease and other selective effects to a lesser degree, is so overwhelming that all further discussion of human ecology must be put in that context. This is because of all the changes that we experience, the most important ones are those that effect our genetics. That is potentially even more important than specific elements of resource strategies.

Without the removal of disease, the present population boom, started by increased food supply, would not have continued nearly as long as it has. Large population centers, such as are common at present, would not be able to exist. In areas dominated by disease, a response of high birth rate can be observed.

Biologically it must be regarded that premature death by disease wastes the resource investment it took to raise the individual. That must include the physical strain of pregnancy. Even if an individual survives a disease, there are often lingering effects. A disease may damage sensory and physiological functions as well as effecting a persons psychology or appearance. All of these could impair an individual's reproductive success. The resource and human cost of any disease can be very high. That which does not kill you, does not always leave you stronger. Sometimes it leaves you crippled.

The prevalence of disease resulted in selection for improvement of the immune system (and the bugs). Depending on the disease and its effect, it requires different things for survival. Immunity may be complete or partial. To survive a disease takes an integration and fitness of body and mind in the organism. Death by disease is caused by the failure of a necessary body system and the subsequent failure of the rest of the organism. Usually it is either excessive temperature or toxins from the disease, that cause respiratory failure. Diseases with a limited mortality rate act on any weak link in the body physiology or integration. Only disease, cold and other stress factors have general effects anything quite like this. They catch biochemical, developmental and various other weak links in physiology. They can even act on lack of psychological integration or strength.

Really, though disease has been the most significant effect with many implications, this applies to all human selective effects. They have changed. We have had to deal less with predators and the dangers of the wild while having to deal with more complex social and technical requirements.

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4. Genetic Load From Removal of Selective Effects

In the absence of disease, cold and other selective agents, a problem with genetic load occurs. Most mutations are not improvements. Since they are primarily random, they usually reduce the function of the gene where they occur. With lowered selective pressures, the frequency of malfunctioning genes is likely to increase, expressed as psychological, biochemical and morphological errors of varying significance. In the absence of the selective effects that promote evolution, something the relative opposite, will occur.

The rate of natural mutation is low enough that it would probably take some time to create a significantly high frequency of ineffective genes, but there are agents other than natural mutation, that change genetic sequences. Chemicals, radiation, drugs and other mutagens exist that could promote a genetic load. Potentially more important is the effect of recombination at meiosis, when the reproductive gametes are developing. Its effect can be to break genetic sequences such as to leave genomes damaged or inoperative.

It took a long time and a lot of selection (that is pain and premature death) to reach this point in evolution. This point in evolution is the total pool of genes of the human race. An accumulated load of defective or ineffective genomes would be disastrous for the human race. Different portions of the of the total chromosomal DNA would be more susceptible to breakage. Some traits would be more likely to be effected than others. There are cellular mechanisms to repair damaged DNA, yet there is still a constant rate of deterioration. More complex and the more recently evolved traits would be more susceptible to damaging effects than older elements of the total genome. The psychological traits that have brought us to the potentials of technology are the traits that have most recently evolved and are likely to be the first to deteriorate in the absence of selective effects.

Much of genetics seems to be an additive process. I love the term "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". It describes that the embryonic development of a creature goes through stages that seem to repeat the evolutionary sequence leading to that specie. We do not lose our past, we build upon it. This seems to be a general genetic principle. I suspect that this is also a psychological and meme principle.

The greater the genetic diversity of a specie, the larger the unit of inheritance upon which selection acts. Cheetahs are notable in that they are extremely genetically related, as a specie. There is little genetic variation between individuals. Selection is going to have to operate on relatively small variations in their genetics. In a specie that is as diverse as humans, selection will be operating on bigger variations. This is why this examination of human genetics focuses on traits and recombination. Actually the same examination will have to be made at the level of alleles and individual mutations, but the hazards of genetic load at that level will take longer to develop. Hopefully, human wisdom will have grown a good deal by then.

Genetics comprises information. They contain all of the blueprints and plans for making the organism. There it is an enormous amount of information involved. The entire genome could be considered to be like a library. A library contains rows with topic related books on them that contain words that are arranged in particular grammatical forms. An organism's genome contains chromosomes with traits and individual genes. The genes could be compared to the words in the books. Traits would be compared to the books on the aisles, the aisles would be compared to the chromosomes and the entire genome would be compared to the library.

It was said earlier that this book is to look at the variation between individuals. The most significant variations in humans are differences in traits related to tribal differences. Examination of this level of variation suggests that humans are particularly susceptible to a type of genetic load that operates at the level above the allele. Humans are still effected by genetic load at the level of the allele, but this book is primarily to discuss what happens at the level of the trait. This is particularly true now that humans are tending to have children at a later age and there are far more genetic errors at the level of the allele, but particularly at the level of the trait and chromosome.

So if the trait would be analogous to the books in the library and the chromosome would be analogous to aisles, this does not suggest looking at words in the books due to the technical difficulty. It suggests looking at what books are actually present in the library and the condition of these books. This is to look to see if recombination has lost or damaged a book.
Note: Technology has been progressing so fast that it seems practical now to look at the words and their meanings in sentences and chapters in the "books".

Already some conditions at the level of the chromosomes can be examined, such as when there is an extra chromosome present as in Downs Syndrome. That would be as if there was an extra aisle in the library. Also some conditions can be detected where the problem is created by a single change in gene sequence. Sickle Cell Anemia is a good example of this. That is as if a word or an instruction in a book was changed to where the trait operates differently or fails to operate. This book is primarily to consider a condition where a trait or book is missing or visibly damaged by recombination (currently called a de novo mutation). Its turns out that many of these same rules and considerations will also apply to the level of the allele, but discussions about that level is generally avoided here to focus on the level of the trait. It all does tend to blend together though.

It must be understood that what this most importantly leads to is about problems associated with traits at the time of reproduction. The discussion about possible solutions to this problem leads directly to new potentials. In that human variation at the level of the trait is based upon tribal variation, it would be expected that changes effecting the traits would influence behaviors related to our present tribal nature. That is why the second part of this book talks about our tribal nature and the associated survival systems that we have developed over time, referred to here as moral systems. While the first intent of this book is to discuss problems associated with genetic load at the level of the trait, the primary intent of the book becomes discussion of the positive potentials offered by the knowledge of these traits.

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5. Heredity

The first question I asked was "why is that person different from me"? It turns out it was not the important question at the time. Later I saw the problem of disease and I then asked "how could humans again achieve a relatively stable ecology that we can survive in"? Then the first question became important, because it is in what makes us different that we will find much of our potential for survival. I asked that first question almost four decades ago. What I found since then amazed me.

First though, a word about heredity. I did not know what I was getting into. I am like many people. I just feel that humanity is in trouble and needs a safe path. While that is what this ended up being about, the initial question "why is that person different from me" is critical. Long after I found answers to it, long after I understood something about how people differ in their genetic and psychological make up, I realized I had really asked a question about heredity. While that did not end up as the prime goal of the study, it is a critical part. I knew that I was basically on my own studying it, but I had a lot of theory and observation to work with. I had to think a lot and eventually go off in directions that the scientific establishment did not pursue. There are cultural, political and ideological reasons that genetic theories do not usually get applied to humans. I did though and discovered the work of the, C. D. Darlington. Even though it was a bit dated, his book The Evolution of Man and Society answered many of my questions. Later when I had thought through much of what I needed to understand. I found another discussion by him about the subject of Heredity and it seems that that is where this part of the book should start.

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   -   Sometimes, Context Is Everything - Heredity.

I have worked on this book for so many years and have always been amazed that no one else had already written it. Sure it is a bit complicated, but it is obvious in so many ways. People are quite ready to talk about it in conversation if they are not afraid of being put on the defensive. It is why I say that I am just trying to put words to what people already know and feel. Well, there is a reason why that is so. 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 describe an alternative to the racism of Social Darwinism. It all has to do with what C.D. Darlington referred to as the Three Great Lies of Science or perhaps more appropriate here, the Three Forbidden Questions 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 challenged. 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 do often appear to be a rather rough sort of win-lose proposition referred to as Social Darwinism. The gain of one comes from the loss of another. All too often science has been used as a reason for racism. Notions of race have led to wars and in particular concepts of racial superiority justified as just natural Social Darwinism were much of the cause of WWII. As such, the study of heredity and race are special fields in science and often seem to be discouraged to avoid racism and instead provide for accommodation. This varnishing of the truth has been bad for science and people, though the alternative may have been worse. The view of this book completely avoids that and quite the contrary is based on the belief that human variation is the wealth of humanity. All this variation will be necessary to be able to adapt to the future. It is not that Social Darwinism was so wrong, it just is not how history usually played out and it will be far different in the future.

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 simple 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.
Realize that this issue of Social Darwinism was recognized and considered within a few decades of Darwin's publication of Origin of the Species. The version that was popular in northern Europe was about competition between races and led to Nazism and Fascism. Another version was Marxism that talked about it in terms of competition between economic systems. Another version was about competition at market level which ended up describing humans as replaceable widgets in a company. None of these reflect the aspirations or moral instincts of humans.
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 magical worth of religion, which represents a different value. Religion is a road, not a destination. It is about human survival, not just God or magic. We have not ascribed individuality and individual worth in terms of genetics, so we seem to lose its importance to survival and focus on a sort of mystical nature and worth. This has all contributed to a very short-term point of view in everything we do. For religion to stay relevant and retain its historic value, it is going to have to recapture its most important function, survival of people. The requirements for that will now include genetic husbandry and critical moral husbandry.
That is besides all other the mis-formed ideologically based social, educational, political, etc. policies and philosophical views created based on this faulty information. Then again, the alternative 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 is 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. Anyone that wanted to study sex was simply called a pervert. Today, it does not 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, a common reaction to it may 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. The reason that heredity must be understood and examined is that much of the key to human survival is in our genes. Technology gives us new knowledge of our genes daily, but if we do cannot put that knowledge in a moral context, we will not be able to use it.

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6. The Start of the Transition

This is an initial description of what ecology and niche mean so that the terms can be applied to the ways humans have lived in the past. Then it offers a basic description of humans and previous human ecologies. It describes the hunter/gather/scavenger ecology that lasted perhaps 4 million years and was based on bipedalism, tool making and social abilities including cooperation, communication and intelligence, many of which were adaptations to cooperative hunting and later to warfare. As this time came to a close there was a period primitive agriculture, but it was always in temporary locations. A new ecology was created by the development of ongoing agriculture and herding in fixed locations that allowed more complex societies, including cities and nations, to develop. This discussion is very limited, but will be expanded after the discussion of genetics.

A good question to start with is what is meant by the terms ecology and niche. Ecology is defined as where a specie conducts its energetic and reproductive strategies. A niche is a particular place in the ecology that a specie survives in and how they survive. The term climax herbivore can be applied to a number of species, but it describes their resource strategy and much of their niche. A climax herbivore is among the largest specie that is the main plant eater in that ecology. It could be any number of species such as bison, elephant, abalone, wildebeast, cattle, etc. Ecology is a science that describes an organism in its environment, particularly its resource utilization and what it does with its resources, reproduction. A stable ecology is one where the resources used by the specie do not change much over time and the reproductive rate stays stable too. If the species' resource strategy changes greatly, they have left their previous niche. They must find a new niche that they can survive in. Humans have left their old long term niche and as they have developed their resource strategies, they have traveled through transient ecologies from one temporary niche to another, using various strategies. Humans must find a stable, long term niche and ecology to survive in or they will not survive long. In humans, a biological survival strategy is called a morally.

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 both 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. That will not be for long. We have already developed new philosophies, technologies and strategies. Also, the changing ecology has created new selective pressures and new potentials that have already caused extremely rapid genetic adaptation and evolution (contrary to some conventional wisdom). Now another ecology has started that is based on technology. It has been and is currently based on the energy of fossil fuels, but that will be replaced before long. Any way you look at it, the time from the first cities until the fall of the Monarchy (definition of a military caste based social system from the time of Sargon) must be looked at as a transitional ecology, but it is unique because of the characteristic social system based on the hereditary occupational caste system. That will not continue. Religions as they have been may pass as well. New political forms such as democracy and collectivism have been developed for social organization. We had left our previous ecologies behind. We must find a new 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 four million plus 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 and have been carefully considered.

The next ecology was the ecology of the cities. The most obvious thing that propelled humans into a new ecology was the domestication of various plants and animals, but it was also need as the changing environment required it. Plant and animal husbandry occurred for a long time, but it was very primitive and very transient. It was when new crops were developed along with new techniques to grow them in the river valleys, that the cities were created. Cities represented the coming together of different peoples. Tribes lived together and fulfilled the occupational requirements of the city, but stayed reproductively separate based on isolation by their different religions. Still it was a fundamentally changing ecology that was not stable and its foundation, agriculture, is going to change more. We have adapted to it a fair amount, but we are still most adapted to the previous ecology. Just about every aspect of human ecology has changed and is continuing to change. The best description of this transitory time is provided by C. D. Darlington.

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7. 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 and culture 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. This is what humans are doing now and going to do in the future. Mixing the tribes offers great advantages, but there is a problem, there is a cost.

His discussion of Western Culture tells how the tribes came together to create the first cities of Sumeria. The tribes lived together, but because of religion and culture, they mostly stayed reproductively separate, as different tribally based occupational castes such as peasants, craftsmen, priests and scribes. That was the social structure of the first cities.

Then the Sumerians 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, Romans and perhaps Eutustrians. 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. Sometimes the political or priestly classes would actually purposely merge their different tribes. Apparently the "Oracle at Delphi" did this and I have heard this described in Indian culture.

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 is not 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 tribes have merged into one and some tribes have vanished. Humans have changed and evolved greatly in recent history.

One point that C.D.Darlington and others have made is that "race" is more a political or even cultural term than a biological one. The more accurate description of how humans genetically vary is "tribe", but eventually it always comes down to the individual.

Civilization was developing the same way at the same time in the Indus River Valley and in the Yellow River Valley of China. It had differences though, including greater fluidity of the military castes. It was also happening in Meso-America, but they had far fewer crops and herd animals to work with. There is speculation that it was happening in North America, but actually seems to have been derailed by a meteor.

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8. The Problems

   -   The Return of Diseases

At this point, some other problems in human ecology show themselves. Even if humans had limitless resources, other problems would predictably arise.

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.
During the time of the cities and very often before the cities, the biggest selective effect on humans was disease. Sometimes disease killed a huge percentage 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 referred to as the 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. Without the selective effect of disease during this recent antibiotic and vaccine fed population increase, a lot of people have survived that would not have survived. The cost would have been enormous.

There is another problem from disease though. It is going to come back and we can not afford it. Shortly after antibiotics were created, antibiotic resistance was documented. Also, pandemic diseases do not provide the same effect of cleaning up the genes as do traditional diseases. They kill far less selectively. 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 and gonorrhea. Also, what we have seen is that the diseases we encounter often tend to come as unexpected surprises such as SARS and the recent swine flu. 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. Traditional diseases tend to adapt to their hosts. In a pandemic, the disease adapts for maximum transmission and so tends to be more lethal. 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 even of traditional diseases, let alone the slaughter of pandemics. Actually, though a bit different, the same might be said about the "Green Revolution" in food production.

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9. Genetic Load

There are a few factors that promote natural genetic deterioration. Mutations are random changes to the genes 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, age or any other natural or unnatural cause. Actually, being random events, most mutations are a bad thing that makes the genes they occur in, either fail to function or function poorly. These are normally removed by natural selection, often disease. 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. Still, most random mutations are a bad thing. Random changes to any blueprint are usually a bad thing. When the genes in any individual have mutated such that they do not function properly, it is called genetic load. The other huge factor propelling this is that humans are having children at much older ages and the reproductive cells accumulate these genetic mistakes as we age. "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.

In humans there is another factor, besides mutations, that causes genetic load. This is when the genes undergo recombination after the egg and sperm come together at fertilization. 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. There are mechanisms to prevent this, but they are not perfect. That can happen even without hybridization and can cause major problems. Instead of changing a single allele when that happens, groups of genes may get re-arranged or broken. Again, sometimes this may be good, but mostly it is bad. This is going to be far more important than single allele mutations and is considered as important to the problem of human genetics as the problem of disease.

Then there is the problem of Hybridization. Humans are tribal and tend to reproduce within their tribes, but not always. Humans are mobile and many things including migration, war and slavery have brought different tribes together. When two races come together, their offspring are hybrids of the two different tribes. The genes may not fit together perfectly. 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 seems to have the best traits of both parents and so is 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 do not fit together again perfectly. Over time, natural selection will combine the two tribes into one by removing the mixes that do not fit well. This has been critical to the development of humans since the start of the civil society, but it has come at a cost of natural selection against the hybrids that did not mix well. Note that quite often crops come from vigorous hybrid varieties, but often only the vigorous first generation hybrid is meant to produce a crop. The seeds from that crop are never replanted. When a plant or animal breeder does want to create a stable hybrid, they carefully back cross the hybrid to the parental stocks to "fix" the traits. In natural local populations, time and selection does this. While hybridization gives humans their best chance for survival, it does require selection to make it work, particularly since we do not always back cross.

Another problem is 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. Natural selection has been relatively focused on selecting for new traits rather than cleaning out old problems. Human society naturally has compensated for occasional weaknesses the same way.

Along with these other changes has been a change in Reproductive Strategy From Quantity to Quality. Biology is about reproductive success. There are infinite strategies to accomplish that, but notably there are often strategies of quality versus quantity. It is like a plant such as an onion that has thousands of small seeds and each seed gets a small investment of resource. Many seeds are produced, but only a small percentage survive. It works though. Compare that to a wheat plant where far fewer seeds are produced, but each seed is far larger and has more food in the seed for it to germinate. Fewer seeds fall to the ground, but a larger percentage survive. Humans have tended to have as many children as possible and though the investment up to birth was relatively large, children matured in terms of having children in their teens. The requirements for reaching maturity were far lower. Also the mortality rate was far higher. In a technological society there are far greater resource requirements, particularly education, for each child and they are mature much later. This has tended to reduce family size. We have gone from a quantity reproductive strategy to much more of a quality strategy. This is a huge change. It makes the consequence of genetic weaknesses far more important.

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10. The Problem of Removal of Disease and other Natural Selective Effects

What accentuates all these problems is that classical diseases often are unique in acting as a general selective effect, removing weaknesses in the overall genome. Disease could cause death by breaking systems based on the genetic weak links that otherwise might never show. This is extremely important. In ways, this applies to many other selective effects. Natural selection occurs particularly during times of stress such as cold, famine, environmental toxins or environmental fluctuation. Like disease, most natural selective effects operate on the sick or weak, not so much on the strong and healthy. Pandemics will generally be far less selective. 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 buildup of genetic load. That will be disastrous. What we call human progress has allowed the weak to survive. Many times, that weakness has represented various genetic problems. The trouble is that just as we are removing the effects that select against genetic problems, we are also increasing the number of genetic 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 and from older parents, it will become a problem sooner, much sooner, as in the space of a few generations at most.

     *

Finally some researchers have offered some hard data on this and it is a bit scary. This is taken from an article by Natalie Wolchover about an article in the online Sept. 26, 2012 medical journal The Lancet.
Intellectual disability affects 1 to 3 percent of children worldwide, half of whom are born to parents of normal intelligence. Researchers have discovered that most of these cases of "sporadic intellectual disability" result from new, random mutations arising spontaneously in the children's genes, not from faulty recessive genes inherited from their parents. These random mutations were referred to as "de novo" mutations. The researchers say their finding is one of the first steps in understanding the underlying causes of this condition (also known as mental retardation), which is marked by having an IQ below 70, and is - perhaps surprisingly - the costliest of all health problems.
Anita Rauch of the University of Zurich and André Reis of Karls Universität led a study that sequenced the DNA of 51 severely intellectually disabled children, who had IQs below 50, and compared these with the DNA of their able-minded parents.People with intellectual disability had slightly more de novo mutations than controls, but they had more mutations with drastic consequences. It appeared that the intellectual damage was caused by the de novo mutations in 55 percent of the cases.
This does not give what the percentages are in the general population, but I strongly suspect that will be known soon. According to this, as predicted, the mutations effected more important genetic based functions. This mentions one kind of effect, intelligence. The same thing is going to be happening to other traits. Note that here, these kinds of mutations were referred to as de novo. Here I have generally referred to them as breaks in integral genes, that is genes that were formerly complete and functional.

There is another interesting article from the October 3, 2012 Science Translational Medicine. It says that researchers at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, have developed a streamlined diagnosis system designed for physicians. Here's how it works. Physicians select descriptions of symptoms from a drop-down menu, from which software compiles a list of potentially suspect genes. Once the genome has been sequenced-using a new machine from Illumina that takes 25 hours to read one genome-the software automatically analyses mutations in those genes to generate a list of potential causes. The whole process takes 50 hours, and costs $13,500 per child.
It further mentions that approximately one third of the newborns admitted to neonatal intensive care units have a genetic disease. Again unfortunately that does not describe the rate of these mutations in the general population. It goes on to say that it found definite or likely causative mutations in four of them, though none affected treatment decisions. Well yes, it's too late by then. That is the point.
The cost of the procedure is quite interesting. Since this is a new technology, if this were done on a mass scale I would expect the cost to be about 1% of the $13,500 per child quoted. Since I have mentioned offhand of doing it for 100 fertilized eggs from a couple, that would put the price quite within common costs of a normal pregnancy these days. Elsewhere I have described the potential cost benefits. class="topicstars">     *     *     *

11. Return of Disease

There are some initial problems here. There are a number of effects that caused an increase in broken or "bad" genes that make up a genetic load. At the same time human progress has removed the mechanisms that remove these "bad" genes. We have also changed to a strategy that requires greater quality of genes. There is another potential bigger problem though. Disease is going to come back and it will not have the exact same effect it used to have. Far a number of reasons it is going to be more of a problem. Human memory may not be long enough to remember, but civil humans have always been ruled by disease. The equation is simple. The increased population density, increased population numbers of the city ecology and the great mobility of modern humans, equals massively increased vectors for the spread of disease. Unfortunately it will make disease less functional as a targeted selective effect. Modern pandemics will not be as selective. A normal disease actually is pressed by evolution to adapt to the host so as not to kill it. If it kills it, then the disease loses its host and its ability to spread. Its best strategy is to act as a symbiot. Pandemic disease is pressed to maximize its ability to spread. That usually results in it also becoming more deadly to its host. Some diseases will change to have a far higher mortality rate. Then mortality from the disease will be less related to the genetic nature of the individual and more based on luck of encountering the disease. Groups may get hit more often rather than individuals. Some diseases will get beat, but some will not as we are already seeing. Also, recent history shows that we tend to get surprised by new and novel diseases. Also it was shortly after the discovery of penicillin that antibiotic resistance was discovered. Now it is becoming a daily problem with many traditional diseases showing partial or complete resistance to antibiotics. Disease is likely to get worse and the traditional cost of disease is too high to sustain in a technological society where investment in children must be higher. We cannot afford to pay the price of disease, because at stake is lives of our children and the existence of society.

Researchers recently demonstrated that the genes for antibiotic resistance exist in bacteria that have never encountered antibiotics. There is great natural variation available including antibiotic resistance. This means that bacteria probably already have the genes for resistance to antibiotics that will be developed in the future. In the future we may need to cycle between the classes of antibiotics we use, just as Robert Trivers postulated that sex is to allow for cycling between genetic states that are susceptible to particular diseases..

Add these effects up and they are overwhelming. It seems unlikely that we can survive as a technical specie with all these factors. I spent many years trying to figure out the solution and found only one. It offers great potential, but it is as much a moral problem as a technical one.

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12. The Solution

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7. Aspirations - Just What Do We Want?

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The Goal - A new stable niche for humans based on our Aspirations

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 and not my focus. According to what I expect, in the future there will be people far more capable of solving the questions of potential human futures. Also we are so new at civilization that we are like children in our knowledge of it. We are gaining knowledge fast, but we have so much to learn and there is much more that will be known. Still, I ended up looking at and it turned out very productive. It may possibly be the most important part of the book. It also turned out to be a far more controversial topic than even genetics. This is hard to describe. As with much of this book, the only way I can think to describe it is to describe how I figured it out. Hopefully that will work.

It could be called something like Human Futures, but I got into it by looking at human Aspiration and hopefully aspirations are what the future of humanity is built upon. We see these aspirations expressed in religions, history and literature. From religion they include leadership, immortality, peace, order, love and contentment. Literature is more current and offers romance, beauty, newness, excitement, success and even the potential to be more than we are. What of these aspirations can we achieve? I was surprised to find out that we can probably achieve most of these.

This is actually almost another book. When I started it, I did not think it was related to the first parts about genetics and morality. At the time, I was looking at topics in morality when a friend convinced me to look at religion. He had decided to cure the world of religion one person at a time, starting with me. Which seemed odd, since I am not particularly religious. He was very insistent though. So I first tried to understand what religion said and what Gods were. I know something about religion. If you do not study religion some, you do not understand humans. Also, I have something of a religious background. My mother was a devout Christian, though also very devoted to science and when growing up, my neighbors were Christian fundamentalists, so I do know those points of view. Also they say that many adults have the religion of their childhood. I have had the opportunity to listen to people with a very adult view of religion. In my adolescence though, the conflict between the Gods of magic that I was told of and the causal, logical world I live in, caused me to put religion aside. It made no sense and did not help me deal with the problems I saw. The conflict I saw between a religion based on magic and the world I live in caused something of a cognizant dissonance. Later I considered what Arthur C. Clarke had said. "Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic". It might be that the magic of one person, could be the science of another. My examination suggested that might just be so in the case of religion and Gods. I capitalize the word God, because whether they exist or not, they are what we venerate.

So though I would probably never have looked there, I applied to God 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. Religion and Gods is such an emotional topic, but not here. This is an analysis like any other topic considered by science or philosophy and why I keep emphasizing that the reason this is examined is to shed light on human survival. Please leave emotions at the door, though I do recommend picking them up again when leaving. Survival is not just about reason. In ways, it is even more about feelings. I will admit that what I found was so shocking to me that it took me years to get comfortable with it. I expect this will effect different people different ways.

I did look some at what philosophers had said in the past on the topic. I think that is where the term "metaphysics" came from. When a person respected for their wisdom put forward a theory that seemed rather weird. I saw things like "well we live in creation, so there must be a creator". I doubt that that would get a very good grade in a logic class today.

I started by looking at concepts of Gods and trying to define what is believed. At the time I was working on the topic of 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. I extrapolated where human development was going, then cross referenced it to what I had been told about God. It seemed surprisingly similar, particularly in a few points that were suggestive such as virtual reality and heaven. I then spread it out over time and space. My conclusion was that Gods could certainly exist and very likely did. There is no hand waving, just facts and reason that made me conclude this. In a way this is an extremely novel concept, but to a later generation raised on Pokemon and Yu Gi yo, these ideas are not so novel. They are familiar with the idea of transformation. With those parts, it is fairly easy to understand it in terms of reverse engineering God. It is not that difficult. It came as a surprise, because we assume that Gods will only be found with faith so I think that mostly we tend to avoid thinking about it. Besides, Gods are related to moral instincts and we are inhibited from closely examining our moral systems. Maybe in this time of technology and data we need a rational explanation that can be critically viewed as we view the rest of the world. In ways, this is a "Gods from Outer Space" concept, but far different from anything postulated before. It is based on a universal need for artificial selection. It ends up far closer to what religions have said than to concepts of science fiction. What I found also suggests something that religions have not been able to offer, what God's purpose would be. It answers many other questions that have been asked many times before. It also offers a novel view of humans as positioned in a long developmental process rather than the static view we tend to think of. I doubt that much of the clerical establishment would like it, but it does make sense. Besides, I do not think that it diminishes the grandeur ascribed to Gods and it leaves one important unanswered question.

The biggest problem is that we have a problem conceptualizing a God with thought rather than just feeling. That is not surprising as a God is generally supposed to be beyond human comprehension. To some degree we can conceptualize superior beauty and physical characteristics, but we have more trouble conceptualizing a superior intelligence and emotional nature that we would attribute to a God. Since I am describing human potentials beyond what humans presently are, including intelligence and other mental attributes, I can describe that a bit, but it also takes a lot of time and thought to internalize the idea.

Questions about Gods have been asked forever, so in any case what I found is quite interesting and to me was quite shocking, but more importantly it does answer many questions about human survival. Mention of Gods can easily make one forget that that 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. 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.

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Topics considered in this section:
1. Definitions of God - Some are from history, including the Christian God. Some are more unusual descriptions, but useful.
2. Physical Immortality - Mostly a bad idea, but it needs discussion because it is one common expression of aspirations.
3. Machines - They are important to how we have gotten where we are and they will be important to where we can go.
4. Reverse Engineering God - Where our trends, technology and aspirations may take us.
5. Implications.
6. The Emotional God.
7. About God.
8. The Fifth Face of God - Reincarnation is a common concept in some religious thinking and very illuminating about human thought and aspiration.
9. Heaven - Sounds like fun.
10. Physical Immortality Revisited.

In the past, many people have asked what Gods are. They have not had the tools to answer the question, but I think the tools are now available to make some kind of answer. Based on the potentials of genetics and technologies, I would expect it could be achieved in less time than the Egyptians spent building the temples, monuments and pyramids that they built to a achieve their aspirations ... including immortality. In ways it is an ecological state, a new niche.

All discussion of religion is distracting, so the end of this section is to back out of it. In ways, whether God exists or not has only so much to do with human survival. Here, questions of God are examined to illustrate issues of human survival. Humans constitute a population on the planet and that is where we must achieve survival. So the discussion will move back to genetics and morality, the tools and resources we have available to achieve survival, but the discussion will then be in the context of what we have aspired to.

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1. Definitions of God

Humans have long had concepts of unseen powers that could help could help or hinder them as well as powers that controlled the natural events that humans could not. We have instincts related to spirituality. We do not have much understanding of the importance of these instincts, but they do seem important. We also know that they are powerful instincts. They are pretty much universal to all human cultures. We can see their power and their expression in religion. Perhaps if you just humans aspiring to be more than they are.

This section is not meant to be complete, I am not a student of theology, but it is meant to provide something of a foundation and also a platform. By describing the most advanced form of a God humans have, it is like providing a tall mountain from which one can look around at other forms of Gods. While it is not complete, it also does not need to be, because most information we have about Gods is conjecture by humans. Also, for another reason to be mentioned later, it might just be accurate. It certainly is reasonable and logical.

Spirituality is an individual day to day thing. Not surprisingly it tends to get institutionalized within religion. That is just how humans do things and there are functions of religion extends beyond spirituality, including social organization, cultural husbandry, agricultural technology and functions. This discussion focuses on Gods and spirituality. Humans seem to have instinctive concepts of what they think a God is, possibly along the line of what Carl Jung would have called collective unconscious. This is to look at some of those concepts. Some of these concepts are also to show a reflection of humans. They are all meant to be familiar and are described that way.

Definitions of Gods to be considered:
a. God of Power and Nature
b. God of Morality and Creation
c. God of Ecology
d. God of Emotion
e. Greek and Hindu type Gods
f. MCGC - The Christian God
g. Reincarnation

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a. God of Power and Nature

Humans have a sense of spirituality and you can easily get a sense there is an intelligence or being controlling elements of what we call nature. It is just how humans think. This is usually referred to as Animism. It could be just because our brains are pattern recognition devices or it is because we are designed to think about other humans. That is what human intelligence is designed for. We anthropomorphize things. It is how we think and it has added an element of beauty to human existence. We have also developed in a pretty scary world with many dangers. Once you have this feeling that the world is controlled by the unseen forces, it seems only natural that humans would ask for their help. It might be for help in the hunt, fertility, weather or anything else that is important that a human has no control over. This also includes that places or things could be spiritually special or sacred.

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b. God of Morality and Creation

This section includes two important concepts of God that should be fairly familiar. This is about God as the creator and God the lawgiver. I will tell a little story to illustrate it.

If a very large spaceship suddenly appeared next to you. Silent, it gave off no heat. You would probably be impressed, but being familiar with technology you would be unlikely to be thinking about a God. You would be thinking about technology. So if this being came out of it, very dignified, and spoke to you (we will not mention the emotional content, that is important but will be mentioned elsewhere). (He) said "Oh very good. I was here about 4 billion years ago and I saw that this place could support life so I seeded it with prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes, some of which I figured would survive. I figured that life would probably have developed on its own as well, but the cellular form would have been simpler. So I decided to give it a boost towards more complicated life. Sure enough, it grew really well. That is what life does. So I came back here about 80 million years ago. There was life. It ran, it flew, it swam, it flopped and it grew to the sky. That was pretty good. This is a good place for life. So I looked for some high metabolism animals that would show some flexibility. I found these proto-mammals. So I created a tailored virus that would insert some genes into their genome that would be selectively advantageous. There was no saying what kind of life form would evolve, but some of the foundational building blocks I was introducing would almost certainly still exist. Sure enough, here are humans. They are high metabolism, good at communication, highly adaptive, good at tool use and there are a number of subtle little things that I was hoping for. So this is great. This worked out really well. Lots of life here. "

Well if you are listening to this, you wouldd notice a couple things including that this being claims to be your creator, which is a fundamental aspect of God. All religions have their Creation story, the story of how they and humanity were created. Still, I do not think this would set off much in the way of thoughts of God. It is just not exactly how we think. We like to have that story for balance, but it is not what we consider a God necessarily. But then, if the being went on and said "I came back here now because I knew you would be making the difficult transition from animal to something more than animal and you could almost certainly use some help. I am going to give you some technology for producing energy, resources, some technical and some technology to help you clean up your environment. Young species like yours tend to be very messy and very damaging to their environment. I am also going to give you some other tools. Techniques to organize your society, your government, your laws, how your family can interact, how you can have relationships with other people close by and around the world. These are strategies that have been used by other people and they work really good. This should allow you to create a society that can exist long enough for you to really develop, to really evolve into something far more than an animal. So, I am going to give you this as a gift."

Now you are starting to touch on instinct, because we have instincts about moralities and following learned strategies of survival. This is what Gods provide, ways to survive. The Torah, the Bible, the Koran, are about how you can live your life and how God wants you to. Now you are starting to hit instinctive thoughts about God. If you are not a technological society, you would already be thinking about that, because the technology you were seeing would imply a superior survival strategy so you might already be thinking this is a God. When primitive South Sea Islanders saw planes flying overhead during World War II, they thought they were from Gods, because they were indications of the superior survival strategy.

So this story illustrates two descriptions of Gods. The creator God and the God of morality.

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c. God of Ecology

You probably have never heard of a God of Ecology, but this is an ecological analysis and it turns out that it is very useful. Whenever you are not subject to nature, you are in what I have called the God Ecology. I do not know if that is a good term, but it may be important in describing this theoretical new niche that humans need to develop.

It can be hard to distinguish between what is natural and what is not natural. One could say that since humans are a product of biology everything they do is natural. That is not useful though. It could start with fire. The use of fire and subsequent technologies is certainly qualitatively different from what the simple technologies that some species use. Fire gives humans the ability to survive where they otherwise could not have. What is more important is the situation like disease where you are using antibiotics to fight off diseases that your immune system could not beat or vaccinations to teach your immune system about diseases that it has not yet encountered. This would also apply when using artificial selection to augment natural selection. This goes further. What if you had a spaceship that was a completely closed system? You recycle all your water and resources. You used technology to produce all your energy and food. That would be completely outside any natural ecology. In these terms that would be what I am calling a God Ecology. It is not natural, it is supernatural. (I always love the term "supernatural". Does it mean magic or just beyond what is found in nature?) Where this would even more be the case would be ecologies that include virtual reality. This is an ecology that never existed in the real world to which we were born into and that may become very important later on.

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d. God of Emotion

In ways the Emotional God is the most simple and basic. A God is one that you encounter and your intellectual mind has nothing to say about it. Your response is overwhelmingly emotional and your emotional mind says "that is a God". This is supposedly what Paul experienced. I mention this for a couple reasons. The people I have talked to that were religious and claim to have experienced God described it as an emotional experience. That was the most consistent and interesting description I heard. It fits well with what I concluded later on. Of course I have heard it said that God is simply a result of a person experiencing a peak emotional state, rather than God causing a peak emotional state. That does not make a lot of sense though.

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e. Greek and Hindu type Gods

These are very familiar because many cultures from around the world have descriptions of Gods like these. They are individuals and are descriptions of beings like humans but very powerful. They have power over natural events like weather, the oceans, the seasons, earthquakes, life, death as well as war. They are explanations where there are no good answers. Interestingly though, one attribute of these Gods has often been that they have more than one aspect (plurality) and can be in more than one place at a time. Humans basically have one track minds and so do not think that way.

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f. The MCGC - The Christian God

Then there is the MCGC as I call it. It is the Christian God that was known by the Jews as Yewah and known to Islam as Allah. I refer to it as the Medieval Catholic God Concept (MCGC) because it is one of the best known concepts of God and was particularly highly developed by the Medieval Catholics to fight off the science of Newton and Copernicus. I studied it partly because it is so highly developed, partly because it is what I am most familiar with and partly because that is what my friend was thinking of. This is the eternal, all knowing, all pervasive, all loving, all powerful, all just and all forgiving (which may not be the contradiction it appears) God. It has included the patriarchal God and the God of peace and love (Jesus). This "all God" is so encompassing that it tends to make me think of a plurality.

Realize one thing that when I mention Christianity, I do not mean just the teachings of Jesus. His teachings were many and often rather monastic and so did not always consider survival as the primary goal as this book does. (Survival may be a simpler goal than moral knowledge.) When I mention Christian philosophy I am usually referring to how the meaning of the Old and New Testament has played out and been interpreted in Christianity and its philosophical descendant, Western philosophy and morality. It is not what I think the Bible, etc. means. It is what it seems the culture has thought it to mean as evidenced by how the culture acts. Western culture has become extremely vital using Christian principles based on the teachings of Jesus, but often in the context of the Old Testament that described more social development. It is a social development based on the message of love taught by Jesus, but not in the strictly religious sense that Jesus must be considered. Western culture is based on Christianity, but not on just the New Testament or religion.

This, including the Old Testament is the first concept of God I looked into and in terms of God is the one I will describe when looking at reverse engineering God.

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g. Reincarnation

Reincarnation is a common religious idea and talks about a few important concepts including growth, balance and newness. These all seem rather important aspects of human survival. In later discussion this will be referenced.

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So in any case, these seemed to be the main descriptions of Gods. It is a good starting point, but I did not see anything real revealing here other that the MCGC represented the greatest challenge as it seems the most unlikely. It has been asked before if some historic Gods might be technologically advanced space travelers, but that does not usually get applied to the MCGC. That one is different.

Now here is a major point. I would be a lousy fundamentalist. I often try to understand what a person's meaning is even when they are not clear on it or can not express it clearly. That is what examination of mythology is about. What historians and other students of history have found is that legend very often carries a core of truth. Manufactured stories do not continue to echo through time like lore does. One of the things that taught this was the discovery of Troy. The Iliad was often considered a fable but was shown to be the story of real people and real places. The trick is to figure out the original meaning from the poetry and additions. At best, religious lore is that way. No one has been able to make anything definitive from it. There are stories of persons and places that certainly did exist, but there is a lot of room for uncertainty of details and the stories also have to be filtered. Religion is an institution. When looking at religious lore and particularly at religions realize, all concepts of God must be separated from human concepts that are intellectual embellishment and speculation. This is particularly true of the MCGC. You had speculation about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin or can God make a rock too large for God to move. These are human things and not worth examination. Religions are institutions that husband one of the most important of human attributes, faith, an expression of our survival instincts. That inherently leads to power and while it has attracted those of great faith, it has also attracted those seeking power and wealth. That is an attribute of all institutions and so must too be removed from examination of the lore. Of all the interesting things I encountered in the lore was the concern the Catholic Church had about the possibility of other planets... that might well contain Christians. They were concerned that their might even be a Pope on those other planets and then who had jurisdiction over who? Consideration of issues like that or even institutional concern with issues like that is not going to lead to any answers of these questions and I do not take notice of them. Human agendas must be understood and discounted. As I said I am not a fundamentalist. I look for meaning, not words.

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2. Physical Immortality

One of the commonest aspirations expressed in religions and even in literature is immortality. It is a pretty common theme. Apparently the pyramids were built to achieve immortality. There is reason to examine this aspiration. There are many concepts of immortality. This chapter is primarily about physical immortality.

Some scientists tell us that there is really no reason why we have to get old and die. Perhaps we do not have to age. Just extend the telomeres some, suppress the free radicals, solve some other problems and you do not need to age. I am not so sure of that, but this is to look at some implications of this. Fundamentally, I consider it a bad idea for a number of reasons though it may get more examination in the morality section.

A question arises of how long should humans live? It has to be about survival. I would say something like three generations. Raising human children is very demanding due to the long complicated developmental period of humans. That is why we tend to have more than one parent doing it and grandparents can lend a great deal of assistance. In most mammals, the father does not help with raising the children. It is not required. In humans, development is very long and there is a chance that one or both of the parents will become incapacitated or killed. In this modern era, many are removed from the scene by drugs. It is a dangerous world out there. So in those cases, it is best if the grandparents can take over raising the children for basic survival. It is not uncommon and it makes for a pretty good baseline of how long humans should live. Beyond that, it becomes problematic.

So with immortality or extended life, how long are we talking about? 100 years, 200 years, 1000 years or what? Is this going to be achieved with genetics, drugs or medical intervention? They all have different implications. Will the person age or will they appear to stay young? In any case, what it comes down to though, is you have a problem that you are interrupting the normal cycle of birth and death which would be short-circuiting evolution. Every generation is a step in evolution. Also it is not likely that a person could stay reproductive as they got older. Both men and women develop significant errors in the genetic material of the reproductive cells before age 50. It is a real problem reproducing past a certain age, even using artificial selection.

We have an archetype of extended life called the Vampire. There are many forms of it besides a bloodsucking Bela Lugosi. All though are the same in that they are about taking the youth of others for their own survival. That is the problem. As you become older, you are likely to become a better competitor and you will be competing with younger others that are supposed to be reproducing. We already see it. There is stiff competition for medical care. We have had social problems in history where wealth is too tied up by the elders to where the youth do not have it when they need it to be raising children. It could get worse, the way our society works. You can see that wealth tends to get concentrated and hoarded. Chaos theory says "that those who have, get". Sometimes it seems that it is only death that can remove an individual of great power.

One should also consider a question of why live so long. According to what I have seen from the psychologists it seems that part of the desire for immortality is fear of the unknown and a characteristic that we are incapable of imagining our own nonexistence. I think it quite fair to say that if one wants immortality simply because they are afraid of dying, that is a very poor reason. Life and death are intertwined. There was the archetype by Robert Heinlein of Lazarus Long who lived for 3000 years. The title of the book do not said it all "Time Enough to Love". He continued to live because he continued to grow and have a reason to live. It described a person whose ongoing life had a purpose and who continued to have children. He was part of the evolutionary process, which Robert Heinlein could not have known would be impossible. It made a point, but also in that book the population problem had basically been solved in the context of spaceflight and an expansion to new worlds. The thing is though, even if you could instantly travel to other planets it does not solve the problem that must be solved here on Earth. This is where the population is and this is a core population and population is going to be a problem. It may come and go some due to disease, but population is going to be one of the biggest problems that humans face. Increased longevity is going to increase that problem. We can already see that. So in most cases, in terms of biology and evolution, significantly extended life would be a very bad thing. This will be discussed more later and perhaps I can come up with some useful variations on that, though I am not sure due to the reproductive problems, but for now I bring this up because it is a commonly expressed human aspiration. Also, one of the main points of the discussion further on it the potential for virtual immortality that would use less resources and not compete with the young that are reproducing and doing the dance of evolution.

There is one other archetype of people that lived a long time. There was some obscure story of the "Strudelbugs" I read. They were not allowed to own property.

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3. Machines

This section is about machines. Machines have been so important to how we've gotten where we are and they will be important to where we can get to. It started the tools we used for hunting and collecting food as well as fire that we used for many purposes including preparing food that otherwise would have been inedible. Part of how we describe human development corresponds to the development of the tools that were used. Tools have developed a lot in the time of the cities. A lot of times this that the development of tools for warfare as much as other technologies. Then about 300 years ago we started replacing muscle power with machines during the steam revolution. This continually progressed using other various engines including electricity. Now technology has given us computers that we are using to replace human thought. It is pretty incredible what they can be used for. Machines will continue to be important in the future. We can not husband our genes without the use of machines. So that is what this is about. Machines have some amazing potentials and some distinct hazards.

I will jump right to the archetype of Ray Kurzweil's description of machines of the future. He has probably the most advanced concept of machine potentials. He is a brilliant futurist who describes the idea of humans making a machine that can design a machine that is more advanced. That machine will then design a machine that is even more advanced and that will design a machine that is even more advanced and so on. Then machine development would just take off geometrically. He projects that by the year 2045, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence. He points out how much faster this would be than human development. He does not include in his equation the potentials of artificial selection, but that does not really change the situation a great deal. Human development would certainly be much slower than he expects machine development to proceed. I think it may be a little bit more difficult than he says due to some subtleties, but what what he says makes sense.

There seem to be two things to consider here, artificial intelligence and artificial life, and you need to distinguish between the two. I have looked into what he has written and I have asked people that are enthusiasts of his ideas about them. I have asked who is going to make this? The answer I seem to always get is "it is just going to happen, it is inevitable". Okay. Then I ask who is going to pay for it and they get the same answer "it is just inevitable". Then I ask what is the benefit of it to humans? I tend to get an answer that is sort of an indignant "what does it matter, it is not about humans". Well, to me everything is about humans, that is what I study. I think I put it in a different context when I study this than how many people look at it. Mr. Kurzweil himself has said that he is not sure of what this entity will think of humans. So I think he is not talking just about artificial intelligence, I am pretty sure he is talking about artificial life. A new form of life. People seem to like that idea. They also like to think of memes as a form of life. Well there are a few things to say about this. This should not "just happen". If it does, we are likely to be in trouble, because life implies many things including survival. If you give the machine a survival instinct anything like a human survival instinct, you basically written a death warrant for humans. If you understand the survival instincts that evolution has given humans, you would not want to meet a machine with instincts anything like that. Humans are dangerous. We have the archetypes of Frankenstein and Skynet, the creation that destroys its creator. If you think of the stories of two of the greatest speculative fiction writers there are, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert, they give very specific warnings about this. If you look at all the writings of Isaac Asimov, starting with the I Robot, it tells about the Three Laws Of Robotics that make it so humans are protected from robots. He says that those laws must be a critical foundation of our relationship with robots. What you may not be aware of if he follows that with something like 20 or 30 books including the famous Foundation series that all are based on his robot stories whether there are any robots in the story or not. At the end of the Foundation series he gives the conclusion that humans and robots were incompatible. He also wrote a short story about a robot with a modification to one of the three laws of robotics and he pointed out how dangerous that was. Frank Herbert wrote the stories of Dune, brilliant science fiction with a foundation of ecology. If you read through them, you will find that Duke Leto's Golden Path that he spent 2000 years directing humans towards was to try to prevent the inevitable extinction of humans by machines. These are pretty prophetic. They are speculative, but they are written by some of the most brilliant futurists and should be seriously considered. Artificial Intelligence is one thing, but I would highly recommend against creating machine life without a lot of caution. This is sort of from the morality section. Just to be clear about it, there is a great potential that human life could be threatened by artificial life.

Can you replace humans with machines? Quite possibly, so do not do it.

There are many revolutionary computer designs progressing that will be qualitatively more powerful than anything that exists today. Relevant to all this, IBM has recently announced great progress on their quantum computer project. This is a computer that outclasses any modern supercomputer in computing power. In ways, this seems to vindicate Kurzweil's predictions. At the same time, in his book The Chess Master and the Computer, Garry Kasparov discusses that current computer chess technology seems completely based on brute force methodology. The computer that finally beat the reigning human chessmaster did not play chess by thinking like a human or even really thinking. It just judged billions of possibilities and evaluated which path got the greatest score. Since it worked, there was little motivation for innovation, particularly from a financial perspective. Until engineers work to develop a more sophisticated thought process for machines, the Kurzweil machine will be irrelevant no matter how powerful the underlying hardware.
Mr. Kasparov discussed this limitation on software further. In an open competition where moves were phoned in, the winner was found to be a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers at the same time. He said that it illustrated the "Moravec's Paradox", in chess, as in so many things, what computers are good at is where humans are weak, and vice versa." Since I like humans more than machines, this seems like a good thing. At the same time, IBM is modeling or that is reverse engineering the human brain. You could end up with two kinds of computers. Those designed by humans and those designed by nature. It is hard to say what will ultimately come from all this. It may well be that it will be hard to develop a machine that really can think like a human. I think that would be good. The best situation in the future for humans would be where machines continue to be dependent on humans and the strength of one complements the other.

Back to it, on the other hand Artificial Intelligence is another story and offers great potential. You still have to be careful with that because there is another topic, automation, replacing human labor and thought with machines, that will be considered in another section. Still, Artificial Intelligence offers great potential for solving many problems in geology, cosmology biology, engineering and other sciences including artificial selection. I do not see much point in using it to make art and that sort of illustrates part of the problem of automation. It raises the question of whether you can replace humans with machines. I think that is very likely, so do not do it.

Artificial Intelligence offers other possibilities. Maybe it would be good in some leadership roles. It can have such a knowledge of laws and might be able to develop new laws, but I expect that programming judgment and compassion into it would be very difficult. There might also be the question of whether you should. Leave that to humans. Also, as pointed out by Edward O. Wilson, humans just naturally have a rather short point of view. That is suitable to our survival requirements, but we might be able to use Artificial Intelligence to provide us an aspect of leadership with a longer-term point of view. Again be careful. We fought so many wars, the American Revolution, World War I, World War II and others to throw off the rule of the traditional military ruling class that has existed since the time of the beginning of the cities. Try not to replace that, because you might not be able to get rid of it this time.

All of this is about machines is intellectually quite interesting, but it is described for a purpose. These potentials I have described here is really to lead to one more key possibility that I will mention a little further on, but first there are three other items of technology that must be mentioned.

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4. Reverse Engineering God

While this is all well and good, I had said that one must keep in mind that this is about survival. That will be on this earth and so in terms of aspirations, what might be more important to consider are the earthly aspirations of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and taking care of our families. Those are the primary considerations that will be discussed in the Morality Section.

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8. Human Morality Introduction - Survival Strategies For A Changing Specie

Morality is how we decide what is right and wrong. A moral philosophy is what the morality is trying to achieve. A moral philosophy could be that a person should be as happy as possible. The morality could be the strategy of how to achieve happiness. A moral philosophy could be about wealth or peace. The strategy could be how to achieve those. This is a moral philosophy about survival of the individual, society and humanity in the evolutionary sense. The morality is the learned survival strategies we use that are the mark of humans. It may seem obvious that moralities are about survival, but that is not always the case and must be here. Here, survival is considered to be what is right.

Morality is the will and the method to survive. A morality is the lessons that we start learning as children that tell us how we can live our lives. 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.

An examination of human ecology shows that it has already changed greatly and will continue to change in the future. To survive, humans must find and enter a new niche. To do that, they will have to adapt genetically and behaviorally. They will have to develop new survival strategies, that is new moralities. This section is to describe these strategies in the context not only of the environment, but in terms of where humans have come from, what humans are and what they can become, particularly in the context of artificial selection and recent trends.

This is a difficult topic. In ways it is a bit like predicting the future, something that is always problematic. Luckily there are powerful tools available to help solve this problem. This uses the patterns of Ecology to describe the needs of a specie. Humans can be described and the basis of their ecology, Energetics and Reproduction as well as other ecological features, can be described. Then various changes that are predictable can be considered and the description of the ecology can be made again. What it shows is fascinating.

In that this is about predicting the future, it will intentionally be quite restricted. The original time frame of this book was supposed to be 10,000 years. That was a wild guess I made about how long it would take for humans to use artificial selection to take advantage of existing human genetic variation and presumably enter the beginnings of a new ecology. It is quite a short period in terms of natural evolution. Seeing how things seem to naturally accelerate though, this could just as well be 1000 years or some other number, but the time frame used is related to genetic adaptation. This is good, because I can see that past that the possibilities and potentials are clearly beyond prediction. The Aspirations Section that includes consideration of the meaning of Gods does break this rule and speculates far beyond, but that is to follow thoughts that exist today. The rest of this morality section looks at things that are far closer and more familiar.

This book is based on science, but it must be far more. Science is about what is known. This is about possibilities within what is known, so it is about the unknown and possibly about some of the unknowable. This asks what is good, what is bad and what is important. This must address the questions of Who Am I, Why Am I Here and What Can I Become. It is like a conversation where you come up with the perfect answer, but a minute too late. You have to know the right answer at the right time. We need to know where we have come from and what we are. Particularly we need to know what we can become before we have to get there. Without a destination, we will flounder and get lost. Known goals can be achieved, even if they are difficult. Reaching a new stable niche will be difficult. This part of the book talks about where we can go and the strategies we can use to get there. The potentials we can achieve though are astounding. We can achieve our greatest aspirations.

This is an important topic and I have approached it in the past, particularly in the Morality Monographs. At the time I knew its importance, but I also knew the difficulty so I just listed all the moral issues, the behaviors and decisions that make up survival, and examined them as well as I could. This is different. This is years later and written with much greater understanding and organization. This includes the topics in the Morality Monographs, but there is a quantitative difference. Instead of elements being listed, this is formed around the analysis patterns of ecology. It does not just ask questions and make observations. It offers answers.

There are other moral philosophies, such as ones based on happiness or material wealth. In terms of biology, these are less correct, because the pursuit of happiness or wealth can come at the cost of survival. In terms of biology, it is about survival. You can see how the self absorption of seeking personal happiness can conflict with the work, sacrifice and difficulty involved in raising a child. The love of wealth can conflict with the love of family. These are common enough stories that they are known as archetypes. Happiness and wealth have their importance, but you can also see their dangers and limitations.

In a way, this is to make Morality and "Open Source" Project. Based on reason and logic, it can be evaluated, extended and critiqued by the community of humanity. It is meant to be a science rather than a body of knowledge. That is the reason so many topics have been included, to offer a foundation to start from.

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This is broken into sections:

Energetics - The first basis of ecology.

Reproduction and Disease - The second basis of ecology and our biggest problem.

Caste Morality - The nature and potentials of our ancestors.

Balance - Behaviors and Genetics - Topics that must exist in a balance, including a balance of the genetic component. These are topics like risk taking, courage, faith, conformity and the like.

Individual Moral Topics - Was the Morality Monographs. Topics that just are parts of human survival and less prone to adjustment such as communication, law, organization, sanitation, family, touching, etc.

Institutional Morality - Institutions are Multi-Generational Behavior Patterns.

Moral Strategies - Looking at various moral strategies and their potentials.

All those topics are considered in the usual terms of moral systems, but also in the context of artificial selection, particularly the topics where a balance must be maintained. Also, topics are considered in terms of some particularly human characteristics that usually do not exist in natural biological systems. Biological systems work by renewal. They do not have history as humans do and humans are comfortable thinking of permanence. Also, biological systems work by diversity and variation. Humans tend to make giant singular systems with minimal variation to take advantage of the benefits of scale and efficiency. These factors must be considered in some of the topics.

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The Way We Were

Without going into Anthropology too far, it seems that humans lived in small highly social groups that used strategies of cooperation to hunt and scavenge meat as well as collect what vegetation they could. The most food came from plant sources. Some notable features were the wide variety of their diet, that they walked upright, were sight oriented and they had big brains used for their social interactions and their tool use. Eventually fire was used for cooking and scaring away predators. They likely had camps that they occupied at different times of the year depending on the food availability. Transportation was by foot. Childhood was very long compared to other animals and demanding due to the requirements of essential learning. It is believed that though monogamous in the sense that the father contributed to the raising of the young, it seems that "marriage" commonly lasted about 7 years. Life was shorter then. Status, a social behavior, was a foundation of the social system and started to replace the typical mammalian aggressive displays to determine access to females. It is believed that they liked to live near the shores of lakes or possibly the ocean, where food would be found.

Humans lived in a lot of different places and modern human variation suggests that there was a lot of variation back then. Humans existed and developed in an ecology like this for more than a million years. This is what they were most adapted to and arguably what we are still most adapted to. They were called hunter/gatherer/collectors, politely skipping the scavenger aspect. This is the world that they were adapted to and that they would have "liked". The question is what will we need to survive it the future and what would we like. If you made this same short overview of humans in the future, what would it say?

Then came the time of the cities. In terms of energetics, it would say that humans developed farming and domesticated animals. This made them, the farmers in particular, less nomadic and provided more food. They created cities and more sophisticated technologies. They developed mining that provided even more resources. They used their tools and new crops to adapt to new areas. Their mobility and higher population density made them more subject to mortality by disease, though their tools reduced mortality due to predatory animals. The size of their social groups grew and new organizational systems emerged including clans, politics, religions, nations and stratified societies where different groups lived together, but stayed separate as different occupational castes. Now class, caste, clan and status dictated access to females within a society. War became a huge factor during history as did slavery. Now migrations were by boat. Instead of living by lake shores, they tended to live near rivers that provided water for farming. Herding was done by more nomadic groups that took their flocks to where there was forage. Herding groups raided each others flocks and so developed the beginnings of war.

There is a lot we do not know and the views of anthropology change over time. Unfortunately at this point we do not know the implications of the Gobekli Tepe site in Turkey. It can be assumed though that it will eventually tell us more about human nature as it shows that instead of the past prevailing view that cities preceded religious sites, they actually followed them.

In ways, the most notable changes would have been related to the larger social groups, but looking closer, bigger changes related to ownership and farming. Ownership became more important. That made marriage more important as an economic mechanism. Humans became more monogamous in one sense, that the male provided resources to raise the children, but promoted the mammalian feature of multiple females for the most successful males because economics and war allowed them to broadly dominate resources again.

Occupational castes came into existence and developed that had never existed before except as individuals in tribes such as priests, builders, warriors and scribes. Most people though were still farmers or herders in societies dominated by warriors and a ruling class. New breeds of humans, plants and animals developed. New crops were developed and used.

In terms of resources, more complex houses were built and non-muscle energy sources were used now for lighting as well as heat. Animals were used for transport and farming. Minerals were extracted, metallurgy advanced and new uses were developed. Arts developed and writing was invented. Many new technologies developed during this millinias long time period. Changes occurred rapidly in biological terms and the demands of the environment pushed adaptation as fast as it could go. Fossil fuels like oil and coal became the biggest part of the human energy budget.

Another age came to the cities, the age of the machines. It was the age of coal, iron, steam and steel. It is the age we are still in, but now it is too close to see from a distance that shows it clearly. It is an age that is driven by the power of science. New engines were created and new machines to use them. Many of these were machines of transport and war. Science has become more dominant and has created an age of medicine and mass production. It offered a new energy sources such as nuclear and solar. It also offered new dangers. Science promises new sources with less danger and toxic wastes. Just recently the age of computers was born. More recently the age of genetics has started. We see unprecedented changes in society and dangers we never imagined. This is meant as a platform to contain some of those answers.

There are some other questions I would love to see answered that I do not expect to be able to, but perhaps the other answers I offer will one day provide the opportunity to answer them. There are so many... After millennia of thought by the greatest thinkers, we have Democracy. "The worst political system, except for all the rest". We have elegant economic theories, but economic events still come as complete surprises. We have religions that worship teachers of the greatest moralities, yet priests seem so corruptible by power, wealth and failings of the flesh and judgment. What is identity? What is free will? We will need a better understanding. What can we do? Artificial selection can solve many problems. Reason, understanding and wisdom will solve many more, but what does reality really look like?

About the only thing we can say for sure is that the all important energy source of today that our civilization depends on, fossil fuels, will not last far into the future.

The question can be asked then. What do we think of the world as it looks now? Do we like it? From this point of view can we say what we would like? Looking at the possibilities, what would we choose, especially in the context of survival? What do trends suggest? All I was looking for was a relatively stable ecology. I can say something about that, but I found more. This is to give a systematic overview of what looks possible and what humans are likely to choose from. The potentials turned out to be more than I expected.

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So what is morality? It is the strategies of survival. You have to think about the tribes of humanity, since whenever you want to consider the dawn of humanity. That might be defined as since a specie started relying on survival strategies for survival instead of just instinct. That gets slippery since many animals are dependent on what their parents teach them about survival, such as lions teaching their cubs to hunt, but it is still a useful description for humans. No, it did not happen overnight. The change from one specie to another is a slow, gradual process, but you have to define the survival techniques of the hunter, gatherer, collector tribes leading to modern humans as moral, because it worked. They survived. I would propose for consideration that you would call them "middle class". They were not wealthy. There was little that could be called wealth. They had the food, clothing and shelter that they needed to survive. The elderly were cared for when they were too old to actively forage for food. They provided knowledge and helped with raising the children. Tribal groups we mobil, following seasonal food supplies and so travelled between areas, though they probably did protect territories. They were probably not what could be called poor, because they had what they needed to survive and if survival was marginal, they moved on or went extinct as a tribe. The tribes had what they needed to survive and insure the survival of the next generation. That is a statement of morality. It offers another view of morality based on the family that is worth considering.
Life in the time we call history included famine and hard times. Life was often short, but for the survivors, most of the time, life was not particularly tough. They had a lot of free time. Food was stored for winter, but what we call crops were often seen as trade goods. There was a great deal of food provided by nature. They were middle class and their children survived. The creation of cities, war and economics allowed the creation of "upper classes". At this time, individuals and groups could dominate different forms of wealth, but these were relatively small groups. Unfortunately, these same economics created a large group of poor, partly because they could be used as tools to concentrate wealth for the new upper classes.
Currently, "middle class" has basically the same meaning though, the context and some particulars have changed. Now what is still considered basic is to have enough to eat and wear as well as a home. Some requirements never change. At the same time other requirements have been added. Education is now a basic need. Many goods are now considered basic such as transportation and various manufactured goods. Light at night has been a revolutionary change. Retirement is longer. Hobbies have often gotten elaborate, but for the working middle class, we have far less leisure time than humans have generally had in the past. We now have to consider "retirement", because we live longer. Still, though the requirements have changed some, the end result is the same, survival and the ability for the next generation to survive the same way. So in terms of morality, "middle class" represents a moral concept. If we are trying to find strategies of survival in time frames of even the tribes, hundreds of thousands of years, we must be "middle class", whatever that is at any time. That is to have the requirements of survival for ourselves and our children.

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9. Human Energetics

Topics to be considered:
1. Energetics and Resources (resources and food)
2. Reproduction
3. Disease
4. Population
5. Climate Change
6. Relationship To Nature

This is meant to be an ecological analysis. Energetics and Reproduction are the basis of the description of the ecology of any specie. Energetics describes all the resources that a specie uses for survival and reproduction is ultimately what they do with those resources. Population, climate change and our relationship to nature are also considered here, because they are huge general problems of our ecology that we will have to deal with or adapt to.

Energetics is the basis of ecology. Ultimately the power sources we have available will determine much of human nature.

Human energetics has gotten complicated. We use food and shelter like other species, but how we produce those is far more complicated than other species. Currently we use fossil fuels, nuclear power, hydro-electric power, solar and other methods of energy that we convert to what we use to survive. We mine minerals and harvest forests. We use tools. No other specie uses a resource strategy anything like humans, even if there is a fundamental similarity of result. In that context we examine our resource strategies of food, shelter, water and the other needs of life. These are independent of our genetics and not largely effected by artificial selection. We are currently dependent on non-sustainable sources of our most critical resources, energy and fertilizers for food, but we can solve those problems. A related problem is population, but we should be able to solve that as well. Then we have to make decisions about how we want to live.

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1. Energetics and Resources
Life is an eddy in the stream of entropy.
All that exists in this universe follows the physical patterns describes in the Laws of Thermodynamics. Life particularly seems to fall under the second law which could be paraphrased that in any system, randomness (entropy) increases. Life maintains its essential organization by reducing the net organization of the system it is in. The energy of human life starts at the sun, is captured by plants and transferred to humans from the plants or through animals that eat plants.

Energetics is the basis of ecology and so the basis of survival. At least that is what I was taught, but that was before there were spell checkers and now they always seem to object to the word. Still, the word is appropriate in its use that describes the interface between biology and the thermodynamics of physics. Besides, I owe too much to the instructors I learned from to think of changing what they taught me.

It is referred to as Energetics, but it is all the resources that a specie uses to survive. Mostly that is food, but it includes water, nesting materials and even the physical features of the environment that shelter it from predators. Recently ecologists using computers and highly developed models to describe the energetic requirements of organisms in their ecology. The work has been remarkably revealing and subtle. For humans though the details can be remarkably different, but they are still subject to the same basic rules of physics as all other species. If it were only so simple. Some parts are though. I will stick to those.

Humans resource development has always been about exploiting new resources or getting better at exploiting existing resources more efficiently. The end result has very often been the destruction of the resource. So in ways this should be looked at less about creating more resources than at creating resources sustainably and ethically. There are judgments to be made. An analysis of resources must be biased to human desire. Theoretically we could say that we want a huge population. Then we could all eat algae, but that is not what we want. This is to describe a variety of strategies and possibilities, in the context of what looks probable and desirable. Again, we may go outside these parameters, but the rules should still apply.

Humans have been remarkable generalists in what they have used for resources for survival. Early humans would eat almost anything biological, except cellulose. They used fire or grinders to make things edible that would not be. They learned to soak out toxins and bad tastes. They used tools to break open bones to get marrow that most other animals could not get to. They used energy efficient walking to find food where it was far between. They used clothing to keep warm. They built homes to keep warm and for protection. They had amazing strategies for getting resources. Then they developed farming and domesticated animals. That increased resources dramatically. Development continued. Water and even wind were harnessed to replace muscle, then more machines. Fossil fuels were fed to engines to provide more resources. Nitrate and Phosphate fertilizers were mined or manufactured to boost crop yields. Other energy sources such as nuclear, wind and solar were added. Sophisticated transport methods and economic strategies were developed to distribute resources. Strategies were made to develop new resources and to use existing resources more efficiently. Humans have learned how to create and exploit an amount and range of resources unlike any specie that has existed on Earth. Early in the time frame I have described we will learn to efficiently develop bio-diesel, economical photovoltaic/thermovoltaic cells and wind. We will probably learn to efficiently create fusion energy fairly soon, though there is a poetic problem with that and it may be more difficult than we think. In any case, given the assumption of a specie that consciously controls its population, we should have a quite adequate basic energy supply.

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2. Food Production.
Food includes not just what we eat, but a huge package of cultural and flavor preferences. Those must be considered.

Currently we eat plants and animal protein. Plant food production is about converting a fixed amount of sunlight to chemical energy that humans can use. Our plant production is about at its maximum yield and is dependent on factors that are not sustainable over the long run. We will continue to develop crops that can grow in areas that could not previously be farmed, but we are not going to be able to do much to increase the plant's efficiency of conversion. What we call the Green Revolution of food production was created by the use of phosphate and nitrate fertilizers from sources that are projected to run out well before the end of this century. Our current methods of food production are not sustainable. It is soil depletive. It is an interesting footnote that terrace farming is not nearly as depletive. Soil can be transported from bottom to top. There are currently experiments with closed circuit farming in greenhouses that lose minimal water and nutrients. Urban farming in buildings using efficient LED lights shows promise due to new technology and that there is then minimal transportation requirement. These seem to be practical in terms of return on investment. Methods like this could probably sustain a fairly large population indefinitely. It is quite likely that we will eventually be able to replace farmed plant foods with factory produced foods that does not get its energy from the sun. We will probably even be able to make it tasty.

We take so for granted the domesticated and wild animals we use for food that we do not question the potential biohazards involved or the ethical questions. Meat production requires incredible amounts of water and other resources for feed production. I have heard of a prediction that within 10 years, most meat will be produced by tissue culture. I am skeptical of that time frame, it is remarkably short, but then ecological time frames are far longer. It seems very unlikely that we will have traditional animal husbandry for food any more than we use horses as primary methods of transportation. The question is how long will it take for manufactured meats to be more desirable than natural ones. I do not expect it to be long based on cost and technology.

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3. Shelter
Shelter is important to most animals. The amount of natural shelter available (cutely called micro topographical variation) often determines the carrying capacity of life in any local environment. Humans have often exploited natural shelter like caves, but early on they learned to build houses for protection from predators and weather. It also provides privacy for a family.
What we see today seems to reflect what people require and desire in a home. Individuals like a private space, though that is a more recent development. There are places for food preparation and for eating. There are rooms for sanitation. There are spaces for socializing and entertainment. There may be a work space and storage. It seems reasonable to think we will keep a similar pattern, because the home is a need dictated by the family.
How housing is laid out tells a story as well. Until the Industrial Revolution, land ownership was just about the only form of wealth. We have always lived on the land. Homes were on the land where the food was produced. Cities were when homes were built without the land being primarily for food production. Population reached a far greater density. The question is about density in the future. It will be effected by many factors including transportation, communication, disease and other factors. The question is whether we will have a distributed population with land in between or occupy huge, population dense cities. In ways it does not matter. Space is just another resource. It is really going to have to do with human preferences and human relationship to nature. This has been discussed in speculative fiction and seems a relatively simple factor to evaluate.

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4. Relationship to Nature
Here is what seems to be an open question. What will human interaction with nature be? Will humans interact with nature a lot or stay out of it? How much will humans work to protect nature? We are designed for life in a natural world of fractal complexity and varied stimulus that nature provides, but it does not mean it will stay that way. We like cities and we may find more interest in virtual reality. Speculative fiction writers have considered this before and Isaac Asimov wrote the book "Caves of Steel". It was a good archetype of humans living in a completely artificial environment and not interacting with nature at all. Other stories have shown humans as adapting to become an integral part of an ecology driven by and subject to nature. Then again, if humans do not preserve nature in a healthy state at least, we may be causing our own extinction.

In the early history of humanity, humans were a very small population and had pretty much negligible impact on nature. The neolithics changed that with their improved hunting skills and almost certainly even drove some species to extinction. Studies of pinon nut gathers also showed that they impacted the ecology in major ways by non-hunters. Early on, the relationship between humans and nature was a struggle to survive within it. We were still quite subject to predation. At the time of the rise of the cities, our relationship became one of trying to conquer nature as well as co-opting it to our needs with farming and herding. Humans were the predator rather than the prey. Now, we have such power that we must work to preserve nature against human exploitative and destructive potential.

It is clear that humans have been hugely destructive of nature. Two areas of the world that are considered biological treasure troves are the demilitarized zone between the Koreas and the area around Chernobyl nuclear plant. Both are areas deadly to humans. Testing has shown the effects of radiation around Chernobyl, but still life thrives due to the absence of humans. It is not a great commentary.

On the other hand, in the Americas, the indigenous tribes seemed to cultivate the forest. Instead of typical crop farming that we are most familiar with, they enhanced the habitat of the local forest resources. It might be that humans would "adopt" natural areas for their restoration, preservation and enhancement. In a sense, we already do in the form of parks and nature preserves.

It is interesting that one of the clearest genetically based human traits is what I refer to as "neolithic hunting behavior". It is well known that Michigan sort of shuts down at the start of deer season. I learned about this looking at timber harvesting practices and deer harvesting. There just does not seem to be an off switch. Regulations seem to mostly be that it is unregulated or banned. Either it is just over harvesting or none at all. Both seem to cause problems, largely because we have removed so many natural predators. Finally with the fishing resources in such crisis, policies have been formulated to try for some sustainability, though enforcement has been difficult. In that many people have such a strong genetic predisposition to hunting, it is a unique activity in how it stimulates and sharpens the senses. A hunter is hyper aware of their environment. Often it has been hunters that have promoted conservation, to try to preserve their hunting grounds.

It would be assumed that if we want a future where humans interact with nature, we might need to choose to have a more limited population, just to limit our impact on nature. There would be an advantage that the natural world could be the primary life support system would be nature. The world might become a wild garden. There are a lot of interesting potentials, but it is hard to say how to combine technology and nature. I expect it is a matter of will and desire. We may find virtual reality to be a better place for humans.

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5. Population
There is one "elephant in the room". A big issue that no one wants to mention. That is over population. Previously it was said that this could only be written in the context of a short time period otherwise the analysis became too vast to even organize. Humans transitioning into a new ecology can only be discussed in the context of a stable population or it is not a description of a specie or an ecology. One thing is sure. That is that one way or another, human population will stop growing. Whether this occurs because of starvation, war, disease or conscious decision, population will stop growing. If humans are to be more than animals though, ultimately we will have to control our population by decision. Indications are that we can do that. Here are some of the indicators that humanity can intentionally control their population and factors to promote that control.

1. Self Interest. Humans will respond to what is necessary to survive. We are already adapting to a quality strategy from a traditionally quantity strategy of reproduction. It may have to do with custom or law, but one of the few moral laws I see is that humans must control their population.
2. Using artificial selection to conserve the best genes of the parents should make them more comfortable with less children.
3. It has been shown that women given the ability to limit family size, generally will.
4. The Catholic Church has adjusted its teachings to not promote large families. This is an enormous factor and indicator. If they can do it, other groups can.

If over population continues to be a significant danger, there will probably be laws passed to limit family size. This will most likely be controversial, but just as we limit violence as a mode of competition in our society, it will be important to limit fecundity as a method of competition. We certainly do not want to develop it as a major genetic strategy. We have enough of that instinct already. Demographic competition will lead invariably to disaster. It is just selfish and will lead to a population with destructive instincts. It would be like allowing rape as a reproductive strategy. People have instincts to follow laws that are fair and that the importance of the law has been explained. Under the circumstances, any groups that clearly attempt demographic competition are likely to draw some stiff sanctions.

I expect worldwide human population to stabilize at between 1 and 10 billion. That is a pretty wild guess of a broad range, but it is meant to reflect a population number that does not imply some radical change in human nature that would make this analysis completely meaningless. Even a population size out of this range could still possibly exist in the following description of ecology and moral strategy, but it does not change anything beyond predictable ecological parameters.

In reality, what is going to limit what is now runaway population growth? Theory and history says that it will be disease. Remember, in the beginning of this book that was what I said was the reason we had to use artificial selection more than any other. We can not see it. It is in the future, but what if AIDS had been transmissible by air as was first feared or avian flu by human to human transmission? We have been fighting disease all our evolutionary history. Diseases have been evolving far longer and we know that they are evolving to adapt to antibiotics. There has never been a specie with such mobility and population density. It is a great environment for disease. The human race is likely to get hit over and over by diseases, some with high mortality rates. It might be centuries apart, but that is not so long in terms of survival. Theory says we will get hit hard occasionally, particularly under certain conditions such as overpopulation. Really, it would probably be better if our population is limited by disease rather than by starvation or war. Otherwise the survivors will carry a huge moral debt.

Times of major pandemics will be times of huge change. You may look at the changes I propose and think them far too radical to be realistic, but that is what has happened historically during pandemic events. One broader problem of human society is its conservatism and resistance to change. Just as the tragedy of pandemic may be an undeserved, but optimal moral solution to our population problem, in the future it may also allow for social change and development that is needed. The dinosaurs did not like that meteor, but it allowed for the changes that make our current world.

Notice that that also implies that disease could easily wipe out most of the population of humans. Theoretically we could suddenly find the population of humans at one million or less. Suddenly moral strategy might include focusing on large families. In all cases, this is about an species of intelligent, self aware individuals making conscious decisions about the plans and strategies of the entire specie. It will not be long before we will have technological capability to make machine based natural or artificial or virtual intelligences that could potentially resurrect humans from frozen germ tissue after they had otherwise vanished due to a disease that they could not defeat. It is hard to say, but sometimes speculation becomes fact.

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6. Climate Change
I like to look at possibilities and trends, particularly based on genes and moral choices that humans make. Unfortunately it seems there is a factor that almost no one had considered when I started this book decades ago. That is major climate change. In ways it does not change the analysis I have made. In other ways, it suggests it could be harder for humans to survive and transition to a new ecology. It may change the likelihoods of what particular ecologies we will exist in. It is hard to say how much trouble we could be in or what potential solutions we may find, but some analysis is very bleak. It may be that the powers conferred to us by the potential of artificial selection may be all that allow us to survive. Due to environmental degradation, it makes it more likely we would survive in artificial environments rather than in the relatively more open and natural one like we exist in now. It is another challenge. Natural variation shows the world regularly goes into ice ages, some of which it barely came out of. We may need to develop technologies to generally regulate the weather of the earth. It seems a big problem, but it may be quite doable and might be necessary, particularly in terms of what is being observed now. We may even have to live in archologies. It is perhaps a difficult challenge for humans to overcome to find a new niche to survive in, but we must and these survival patterns will still apply.

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10. Human Reproductive Strategy

Topics to be considered:
1. Reproduction Summary
2. Beauty
3. Aggressive
4. Sex and Reproduction
5. Artificial Wombs and Education Pills
6. Human Cloning
7. Sexual Dimorphism
8. Homosexuality
9. Birth Control
10. Population
11. Family
12. Death and Dying
13. Sex - Part 2

1. Reproduction Summary

Reproduction is what a specie does with its resources. It gets very complicated when it comes to humans. it is also the basis of most of our social system. Current strategies will change massively. Technology is pushing us from a quantity reproductive strategy to a quality strategy. In a context of artificial selection, sex might not even be for reproduction. Much of human behavior and social forms are about regulation of reproductive behavior and are expressed as status. Status is about who we have reproductive access to. It is a conscious and unconscious breeding program, but qualitatively similar to common mammalian reproductive behavior, competing for the fittest mates. In the context of artificial selection, everyone will be extremely genetically fit. That is quite a change. Really, the changes in reproductive strategy will be so massive that they will be largely unpredictable.

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Reproduction is pretty basic to survival. Basic mammalian reproductive strategies are characteristically different for males and females. The male strategies are primarily aggressive to get access and control of the females. Females use coyness to get the fittest mates. In simple animals these strategies can get fairly complicated. In humans it seems that they can get infinitely complicated. Our entire social system is ultimately oriented around our reproductive strategies. This is to consider those strategies and the changes that make it further complicated. As this is a description of something exceedingly complicated, it will just be a brief summary of the topics covered and their most basic features. Where applicable, that is most places, the changes related to artificial selection will be considered. In a sense, this is where the biggest changes are that human will experience

Humans are changing from a quality to quantity reproductive strategy. Monogamy and related changes are changing masculine and feminine strategies. Masculine strategies have and will become closer to the female strategies now that male reproductive potential is more limited. There is reason to think that females may become typically larger than males. Considering artificial selection, reproduction may not even be about physical sex. The foundation of reproduction, competing for the fittest mate, including status will change when genetic matching is done by using genetic analysis to offer a pool of potential mates rather than social competition. Superior health, beauty and brains will become far more common. Genetic weaknesses will become uncommon. The family will most probably remain the foundation of raising children. Cloning might exist, but it is skipping a step in evolution that each generation represents. Birth control is one of the most important aspects of humans surviving and adapting to a new ecology, but in typical evolutionary terms, it is radical and changes the consequences of sex. That relates to our most basic instincts. Artificial wombs and education pills represent incredible potentials for change, good and bad. Homosexuality is currently a very controversial subject, but in terms of artificial selection, it would be expected to be very rare. Still, in biological terms it is very odd that it even exists in mammals and so its significance absolutely must be understood. Much of reproductive strategy has related to husbanding material wealth. Added to material wealth will be the issue of genetic wealth.

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This is supposed to describe characteristics of human reproduction in ecological terms, particularly in the context of artificial selection. The changes are not small. Still, this will start with a description of a reproductive strategy based on the family. That is not how most species would be described, but many factors and trends suggest it will be that way. Besides, if it is not, then the predictive tools used here are completely useless and something quite novel has occurred. Raising a human is a complicated, demanding task that requires a great deal of physical resources, attention and love for the children. The best environment for that is a family. The rewards for the parents are great as well including the love and newness that only children can supply. There are drawbacks and there are dysfunctional families, but usually families are the best way to raise children. Most discussion of other forms for child raising are based on a desire to remove the children from the parents so that they can be indoctrinated to some ideology or another. I have never seen any indication of that being a good idea.

In the most basic terms, humans are typical mammals with typical mammalian reproductive characteristics, but that is changing. It is internal fertilization that dictates human reproductive strategies. It means that males can potentially have many children with different mates so it is worth it for them to aggressively compete for females. Theirs can be a quantity strategy. It means that females are very limited in the number of offspring they can have and that they have a larger initial investment in each one. Theirs is more a quality strategy and so they use beauty, coyness and other strategies to attract the fittest mate and sometimes to promote competition between the males to reveal the "fittest". The degree that this strategy is followed in mammals varies, but is indicated by how sexually dimorphic the species is, that is how much bigger the males are than the females. Human males tend to be far bigger than females and much more adapted to fighting. Genetic studies show incredible numbers of offspring from certain warlords in history. With the use of technology, this is drastically changing. It takes far more investment to raise children. Humans are changing from a quantity strategy to a quality strategy. For this and social reasons humans have become strongly monogamous. In terms of biology, monogamy refers more to the father making significant investment in raising the children more even than how many mates he may have. Monogamy occurs in otherwise non-monogamous mammals when the conditions are demanding enough to require help from the male or when the social structure requires it. As such, human males will have to take on more strategies typical of females and to a lesser degree, females will have to take on male strategies. The question is what are these strategies and how do they relate to humans adapting to a new ecology.

Again, this is going to be dictated by human choice as well, but this extrapolation is based on current human trends and common biological patterns, not ideology or whim. Speculative fiction has considered societies with ultra aggressive males and non-sentient females as well as totally female societies with an occasional male for breeding purposes. I will leave those in speculative fiction and base this on precedence. Besides, the point is looking at patterns and methods of adaptation to change, not any particular adaptation. This assumes humans will continue to be monogamous and that children will be raised in families. There is careful reasoning behind that assumption.

In reproductive terms, everyone is looking for the most genetically superior (accessible) mate they can get in terms of genetics and physical resources the mate can provide. Evolution has highly refined this tendency and ability. We even use our sense of smell to ascertain genetic characteristics of potential mates, particularly related to disease immunity. Evolution operates at every imaginable level, something to keep in mind particularly when looking at reproduction. Also, always keep in mind balance. In general, humans are changing from a quantity reproductive strategy to one of quality. This is a huge change.

Raising human children to maturity demands a great deal of resources and so humans do not use the commonest form of mammalian reproductive strategy which is a polygamy where dominant males can have a number of mates at any one time and the offspring are raised with minimal or no help from the male parent. Humans are what are called monogamous, that is a pair bonded male and female work together to raise children. Anthropologists refer to serial monogamy in that primitive humans may to change mates every 7 years. Considering the lifespan of primitive humans, that may not mean a lot. Also in primitive cultures humans mature at a much younger age. Studies by primatologists and sociologists suggest that females may "cheat" in a polygamy by taking advantage of the resources provided by their mate, but attempt to secretly get impregnated by what they perceive as a superior male. Humans have elaborate customs to prevent that and even laws to regulate it. There are also laws that require the males to provide resources for any children that they father in or out of marriage, even in cultures where polygamy occurs.

As is often the case, there is room for ambiguity in some terms. Linguistically and culturally, monogamy refers to a man and a women. In biological terms and other cultures it may not be so clear. It always refers to the male making substantial resource investment in the raising of the child, so it could mean one male and multiple females or polygyny. Here, the local cultural meaning is used. There is reason to believe that this will be the commonest basic arrangement of parenting, partly because it reduces social conflict, but there may be variation as there is today even in Western Cultures. There may even be marriages with multiple males and females. The point is to create a form conducive to raising children and preserving social order.

In that this book is based in part on the use of artificial selection, it basically says that physical sex could no longer be for reproduction, but for social bonding and recreation. The meeting of egg and sperm would normally not be in vivo. It could be that in the future having sex for reproduction could be looked at like having a casual sexual encounter for getting pregnant would be now. A caveat of that is that artificial selection might get skipped by a couple who were products of some generations of artificial selection and had genes that were superior enough to not need artificial selection for problems or a strong need of improvement. Evolution does "work" to speed itself though...

We can currently say that this, that or the other is reproductive behavior. That is going to be harder in the future. If we ever fail to respond to beauty, I suspect something will be wrong, but status, the basis of much of human behavior, is likely to change. Status defines who you have reproductive access to. In the past it has been the key to so much of human social behavior that it can be expected to be important in the future, but there will be changes. It is based on some kind of reproductive resource one can bring to a relationship. Obvious ones are beauty and strength. Less obvious are other methods humans instinctively use to detect genetic or survival superiority, such as smell to detect genetic compatibility. In humans the existence of ownership and material wealth has created a new, important form of status. That is also true of ancestry, a history which is not available to most animals. In a time of widespread genetic analysis and artificial selection, genes will become a significant component of status, especially because most common forms of beauty will have become more common in the population. Genes are the truest form of wealth.

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2. Beauty

A good simple place to start this examination of human reproductive strategy would be beauty. It is primarily a female strategy, but clearly there is masculine beauty as well and it is important. It is expected that beauty will become a more important reproductive strategy for males in the future. Artificial and natural selection will both increase its frequency. Particularly because of artificial selection, it would be expected that all males and females will have beauty and lots of it. Genes that make for beauty in both females and males will be most advantageous. Because beauty has been more a female than male strategy, one would expect a general feminization of masculine beauty. This is not a given though, both in genetic and social terms. Currently some families have both male and female beauty and they are different. Also the society is full of customs to emphasize the difference between men and women such as dress and hairstyle. There is reasoning on both sides about whether that will continue, but trends and genes suggest it will.

In the developing ecologies it would be expected that females would have a large say in who their mates will be. (Arranged marriages for tribal, class and caste reasons are expected to be unusual in the future.) This is not just for social reasons, this is also because we are evolved to make decisions like that. At the same time, the society is becoming far more fluid. Humans are losing the long term family structures of traditional tribes. In history marriage arranged between moieties has changed to marriage within one's caste. It has also changed to marriage within one's class. With artificial selection, it would be expected that the reasons for marriage within caste and even within class would be reduced. It should not be discounted though because these are basically expressions of status, which is a genetic feature. With artificial selection, genetics could create a new form of status. I do not expect this though and humans would do well to avoid the specialization that could cause this. Of course, specialization may eventually be found to be necessary or desirable, but that will be based on knowledge not currently available. It is not expected, but it has happened in the past and it worked. Human reproductive habits have consistently led to increased natural hybridization in the past and seem likely to continue that way in the future.

There are things to be said for arranged marriages, but there is a lot to be said for the joys of love and its discovery. It is an experience that can bring ecstasy, great pain, inspiration and great growth. It demands courage. It can teach commitment. Experience, newness and exploration are things I fear will be in short supply in the future. This is so important that is commented upon again in the last chapter.

This book is based on survival in the evolutionary sense. In that sense, a woman's body could be called the most valuable thing that exists. It is the most basic limited requirement of survival. Not only that, but it is the embodiment of beauty, the symbol of desirability. Huge parts of custom and law have been created around controlling that wealth, both its use and misuse. Artificial selection would change this. It would increase the amount of feminine resource, that is the amount and beauty of healthy females. Control of population would limit the reproductive potential, that is the potential wealth that could be created. This is probably as it should be. Too much of politics, economics and status have been based on control of women and the power of their particular wealth. It distorts things irrationally, usually with a destructive result. So how to control that wealth? Probably it is like politics, there is no good way, but just like democracy there is a best way. Distribute the power as much as possible to limit it. Women must control their bodies.

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3. Aggressive
Males are a lot less likely to use traditional aggressive methods of acquiring mates than they have in the past. This is both because of social requirements and because technology, or Mr. Colt as they say, has lessened the advantage of physical aggression. At the same time, do not be positive that it will not be reduced as a social behavior, but increased as a sexual behavior. I can not say why, but I can see the nature of human behavior and it would not surprise me.

A key point is that the one meaning of the word aggressive is active. Like many behaviors, aggression has many meanings and purposes. It is serves as a social behavior as well as a reproductive behavior. Hunters and herders use it when dealing with other species. The active connotation of it even seems to be useful in using technology. In that humans are so adaptable, we are our own predators and aggressive behavior is commonly used for defense.

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4. Sex and Reproduction
Sex has always been a foundation of reproduction and so is tightly wound around the foundation of survival and morality. Birth control methods, particularly the modern "Pill" have evoked many emotional responses based on "acceptable behavior", but a more biologically pertinent observation is that it changed the consequence of having sex. Humans do not have nearly as strong an instinct to have children as to have sex. It worked out, because the result was babies and we do have behavioral response instincts about them. Because of artificial selection, it may very well be that we will not always or even usually use sex for reproduction.

In the past, sex has had to be a great part of morality for a number of reasons that are mostly related to family. It has been used to strengthen the family and in turn the family helped with the demanding task of raising children.
Right now, it is very hard to predict the morality of sex. The very concept of birth control is in simpler terms completely foreign to most concepts of biology. Still, natural reproductive rates of species are often highly regulated by genes showing that it can be an important strategy.
Considering that humans become fertile before reaching physical maturity and the demonstrated potential of child production, it must be assumed that high fecundity is a strategy that has been commonly used by humans in the past. History shows it too. Unfortunately, at the present, it looks like it will result in disastrous overpopulation.
Presently sex falls into two categories, recreational sex and reproductive sex. These must be considered separately and because of birth control, can be. Few societies currently use sex for cohesiveness, but they have in the past.
The basis of this book is that reproductive sex must be meticulously planned to husband the genes. That may not sound so romantic to people, but the potentials and consequences will be so important that people will accept it. If not, the next generations may, or the family may not be able to adapt to the changing ecologies and survive. Really, artificial selection would separate reproduction from sex. That would be particularly true if artificial wombs become common. It is possible that artificial selection would be used each generation indefinitely or it may be that after some number of generations, the gene pool would be clean enough that it might get skipped some generations.

Parents put so much effort and resource into preparing their children to compete and succeed in this world. Artificial selection will initially allow huge leaps in health, beauty and brains. It is much easier to educate an intelligent child. It is much easier to care for a healthy child. Artificial selection will have an initial cost, but it will be recouped quickly.

Recreational sex is already a fact of life, as are the consequences, including social diseases. Really, the potentials are rather unpredictable. It seems likely that most sexually transmitted diseases will be conquered, but that is not completely clear. Never underestimate disease. Humans like recreational sex, but there can be psychological consequences. Overall I suspect that recreational sex will be a bit like virtual immortality, so desirable that humans will figure out a way to make it work. Still, it must not conflict with either reproductive sex or the family or it will threaten survival.

Traditionally, incest has been one of the greatest of taboos, but it is not simply for the commonest reasons offered. There is a risk of reinforcing bad genes, but the main reason may really have to do with social consequences. A father that "marries" his daughters would be disastrous for his social group. Marriage has been an essential part of the social cohesiveness.

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5. Artificial Wombs and Education Pills
The most important factor in the basic equation of human existence is the relatively high cost of raising children. It is higher than that of any other specie and it is one of the main reasons for complex social characteristics including variations of monogamy. Two things could notably change that equation. The first is artificial wombs and a second might be called an education pill. A pregnancy is demanding and dangerous. Especially in a technological society, education is a long and costly process. If someone created an education pill or machine they could somehow induce an education in such a way that it fundamentally lowered the cost of an education, this would change basic characteristics of the human equation.

A recurring science-fiction theme has been that of clone armies. The premise being that using cloning techniques one could start out with one superior warrior and cheaply manufacture an army. There are a couple flaws in this scenario. The most important flaw is assuming that the largest cost of creating the warrior would be their initial production or birth. The greatest cost would really be raising them to maturity and training them in the art of fighting. As an army, their effectiveness would both be enhanced and limited by limitations on their overall diversity.

If changes were made in the overall cost equation of raising children to maturity, including pregnancy, physical development or education, that would change the nature of human survival and ecology. Cloning almost certainly would not do this, but an artificial womb or an "education pill" (even virtual reality potentially) might well. There would be differences in the effect of the two. These are classic cases of things that could have unpredictable results and consequences if they become reality.

First, the down side arguments of an artificial womb. In ecology, two contrasting situations often occur. There is the plant that makes numerous seeds with a small supply of energy for each. If one of the seeds gets real lucky, it survives. Another strategy of a plant is to make only a few seeds, but devote more resources to each one. Each seed has more protection and food and a better chance to survive. This would be called a quality strategy as opposed to a quantity strategy of survival. Right now, humans must concentrate primarily on a quality strategy, because of the large investment necessary to raise each child. Disease has also demanded the balance of some of a quantity strategy as well, but not overly. Well, artificial wombs could change the equation to a situation where the investment to create an infant would be quite low. This would put humans in a radically new ecological situation. That is not something to be done carelessly. Changes of that magnitude should be contemplated with trepidation.

Another consideration about artificial wombs relates to the issue that humans are a single population and therefore very susceptible to catastrophe. If there was a widespread catastrophe on earth, that limited technology, and humans had become dependent on artificial wombs, the result could be disaster. It is always better if humans can adapt themselves to change evolutionarily, rather than using artifacts. Tools are important, but we got here with our minds and bodies.

Another consideration is that the nature of our society is cooperative. Cooperation may sometimes come from dependencies, but that is not necessarily a drawback. Weaknesses often lead to strengths. Having artificial wombs could remove some of the basic interdependencies that have formed the human family. The basic nature of the needs of family have forced men and women to compromise greatly. This is a good thing. People would be forced to compromise less. While that may not seem like such a good thing, it is fundamental to how we have survived.

An "education pill" would be similar to an artificial womb. It seems a bit counter intuitive. We see it in economics as well. Nature strives for efficiency and humans follow that pattern. It cheapens what is produced and may not produce the result desired. Both an artificial womb and an education pill would potentially cheapen human life. To avoid the dangers of this would take some real wisdom. Do consider the advantage to women, but it should probably be avoided at least until we know more and humans show the wisdom to use automation wisely.

As a late follow up on this, very recently a new science has developed called "Epigenetics". In a way, it is like "Malthusian" evolution, that is environmental effects on the parents have results inherited by the children. Epigenetics seems more a matter of the regulation of gene expression, than changes in the genome though. This is a very new field of study, but developing quickly. Initial recognition of it showed effects of diet, particularly malnutrition. The result looked almost like the effect of prions. It was a not an adaptive change in heredity. It was like the genes got damaged. There was no method detected to change it back. Since then more has been learned and it looks like one effect has been detected that is adaptive. More will be found. Far more will be learned about this in the years to come. It seems to be important. This brings up another point. There is the technical difficulty of artificial wombs. How do you create a prenatal environment as good as the natural one of a mother. Now it appears that you might be able to create a better environment. This is another case that is currently unpredictable, but potentially it could change the foundations of ecology that have led to the family being the basic unit of the society.

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6. Human Cloning
It seems likely that Reproductive cloning of an individual human is a very thorny moral issue, but how does it relate to human survival?

There are a number of moral issues to cloning a human. Who are its parents? Who is responsible for the clone as a child? What are those responsibilities? What consent was there by the clone and cloned? Are there developmental risks to cloning?

By all standards, a clone skips a step in evolution that is represented by each generation. It would seem that if developmental problems are just a result of cloning adults, then cloning is by most standards a very bad thing. It would produce nothing good and creating developmentally handicapped individuals would almost have to be regarded as very undesirable.

Since it will be almost impossible to currently prevent the cloning of individuals, it would seem practical to try to universally require that any researcher attempting to do so, provide an insurance policy adequate to cover the needs of the individual to be cloned in the event that they have developmental or health problems as they grow and mature. It would slow down the process and demand responsibility.

If cloning can be accomplished that creates a normal human without developmental problems, a big if, the moral issues will be more complicated. Who would be cloned? Sports stars, great scientists, great politicians or perhaps even great beauties? How does that effect the non-cloned in the ongoing competition that is life? If cloning became fashionable, the problem of skipping each generations step of re-combining genetics, might become significant.

It would seem that artificial development of an individual's organs for medical reasons is not likely to bring up much more in the way of moral issues than do other medical procedures, which actually bring up a lot of moral issues.

What though if it becomes possible for an individual to replace their own organs with a much 'superior' organ? Potentially, that too could thwart evolution.

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7. Sexual Dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism where the male and female are different sizes is common in nature. In most mammalian species the male is larger than the female. Generally this is because it is worth it for males to compete for females. With internal fertilization, a male can potentially have far more offspring than a female so it is worth it to compete. Females have a different strategy that generally does not include brawling over men. It is characteristic of humans that the male contributes to the raising of the young, so he often has a similar reproductive constraint as women, but the same thing has also pushed for stronger males to support their role in contributing resources to the family.

I have discussed elsewhere that the biggest selective effect on humans after diseases is mortality at childbirth. In history up to one in four women died during their first childbirth. I have said that this is a good case study of artificial selection. My assumption is that somewhere in the diverse tribes of humanity, some tribe would have the genes to make childbirth easier. Some subtle, but important refinement of the birth canal that just works better. Eventually, perhaps all humans might carry this gene or something like it. Well, subsequent to that idea has come a report that Neanderthals probably had the same problem. If true, it sounds like a deep problem. There may not be a subtle elegant solution to the problem. So it crossed my mind, what might human size and size relationships be in the future. One solution to the problem of childbirth might be if women were just larger. Babies (especially their heads) have tended to be larger with the better nutrition of the mother, but that increase is unlikely to continue. So what if women were just bigger? So where does that leave men? From personal experience I never recommend large size for the sake of large size. Part of the reality of it is the world has changed. The saying is that "God created man, Sam Colt made them equal". On the surface, physical competition for females in a technological society does not seem a reason for increased size in males. The physical size related to occupational demands seems less important, though it might be a reason for women to become more physically robust now that women are filling more traditionally male roles. So just following this logic, I would be willing to bet a quarter that humans will either stop being sexually dimorphic or the females will be larger than the males. It might also reduce the problem of dominance, maybe. Ecology in Action.

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8. Homosexuality
I guess I have to cover that topic. Nature could care less, but a lot of people do. Reason and research clearly suggest homosexuality is a matter of nature, almost never nurture or choice. It would be assumed that using artificial selection, parents would never select for homosexuality (assuming it is never used as a birth control strategy). So all the emotional issues of current society, pro and con would not be expected to exist. I have never heard someone, gay or otherwise, say that they always wanted to be gay. Any way you look at it though, homosexuality in mammals is a surprise in terms of nature. In birds it makes sense because sometimes, eggs just have to be constantly protected. In mammals though it generally just does not lead directly to survival. That really makes it something to take notice of. Why then does it occur? That issue is a very important question since it relates to survival, but the reason is obviously hidden. It may be just a weakness of the genes, a problem of complexity. It may be because there needs to be a balance between masculine and feminine that is hard to maintain perfectly, but is so important that a certain frequency of homosexuality is just a price paid for survival. In any case, that is a major blind spot in our understanding of humans and one that we had better understand before we claim much wisdom.

Some late additions have come in on this topic.

Statistically it seems that the female relatives of gay men are more successful reproductively. The research did not indicate why, but it does say something about why it might be selected for.

Another point to note and it would relate to the paragraph following is that men that are homosexual tend to be completely homosexual. There are few truly bisexual men that are attracted to both sexes. Women on the other hand are more frequently attracted to both men and women. It may also relate that women have had more selective pressure for beauty. Women are generally just more beautiful than men.

A very interesting article was published August 2012. Gerulf Rieger, a researcher at Cornell University was the lead author of a study examining pupil reaction in terms of sexual preference. The pupil dilates when someone sees something they like sexually. They measured pupil dilation in humans to see what their natural responses were. Basically they found that the pupils of heterosexual women dilated when viewing attractive men and women. That fits with previous data. The pupils of heterosexual men dilated when viewing women, but not men. The pupils of homosexual men dilated when viewing men. Pupil dilation showed that bisexual men were attracted to both men and women. The interesting part of this is not just that visual response showed sexual orientation, but it also might be a major part of how sexual orientation works. It is a question of how are men and women genetically programmed to like the opposite sex. It is well known that men are particularly visual. The genetic programming could very well work through visual response. Evolution tends to use the simplest solution that works. If this is true, it means a few things related to artificial selection. It is probably best in terms of survival if men are attracted visually to women and women to men. That is often not the case. Not only are some attracted only to the same sex, some people are not attracted at all. It might be easy to select for this using artificial selection. Perhaps not as well, since no genetic markers have been found so far. Undoubtable a controversial statement, but there could eventually be reason for both sexes to be attracted to both sexes.      *     *     *

9. Birth Control
Humans certainly seem to have instincts to have sex. They also have instincts to nurture and care for children. On the other hand, it is not at all clear that they all have instincts to have children. That just seems to come naturally from the instinct to have sex. The point is that birth control is a moral issue because it acts to interfere with the result of an important instinct, having sex, that has been important to human survival. At the same time, historically, humans have commonly had an overpopulation problem. It has been dealt with before. The Greeks widely practiced homosexuality and then had families later in life. This was a fairly successful method. Hopefully that does not make you too morally queasy because the far more common method of birth control was warfare. This was true of Asia, Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and Meso-America. The Yucatan peninsula is a great example of this because the soil is poor and the porous limestone ground absorbs all surface water. This greatly limited agriculture, but they still managed to build agriculturally based civilizations. Famine was common. Warfare became constant to the point of being ritualized. Morally no group can kill their own, but they can kill the "others" and the "others" kill them in turn. Then again, some civilizations sent the excess population into slavery. This is just the way most humans in history have dealt with over-population.

It seems clear that part of humans making a transition to another, more developed ecology, will have to come up with new ways. Luckily we have, in the form of various methods called birth control that mostly work by preventing fertilization during sex. Obviously from current population dynamics, this has not been adequate. Even if human numbers are periodically devastated by disease, as seems likely, conscious birth control becomes a necessity to survival for the same reason that disease cannot be released. The equation of technical humans is that life is too expensive to waste it.

One thing that will help is related to instincts. Humans must move from a quantity strategy to a quality strategy. Using artificial selection is part of this. The conscious knowledge though that the children are highly likely to be survivors, can reduce the pressure of the instinct to use a quantity strategy. In ways we already see this in the more developed nations.

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10. Population
Part of the topic of reproduction must be population control. For all species including humans, this has always been the effect of natural selection. It does not work well that way for humans. It does not fit well with our psychology. Due to the problems caused for humans by natural mechanisms of population control by natural selection, humans will almost certainly control their population growth by custom and probably by law. The idea of a specie that controls its population growth by decision would be practically unique in the biological world, though in some harsh natural or social environments, humans have made that difficult moral decision before.

There are a number of effects that should make me think that humans can control their population.
1. In cultures that have characteristically had high birth rates, as the society has developed and women have been given more control of reproduction, they have reduced their family size..
2. A number of factors are changing human reproductive strategy from a quantity strategy to a quality strategy, particularly artificial selection and the increased costs of raising and socializing children in a technological environment.
3. If the Catholic Church can recognize the danger of overpopulation, it suggests that other conservative institutions can recognize that and adjust. Some people claim that religions do not respond to reality and reason, but recent history has shown them to be responding faster to developing moral dangers than other institutions such as politics.
Eventually there will almost certainly have to be laws regulating family size both to prevent social competition by demographics and to avoid selecting for individuals that want to over reproduce because of instinct or reproduce thoughtlessly like animals do. This is where humans must show that they are more than animals. This certainly a controversial statement, but human instinct to use moral systems shows a great respect for law and humans have demonstrated a respect for fairness.

The theories that this book is based on is that if humans do not control their population growth, something else will, most likely disease. But then again, if humans do not control their population, it will indicate that they have failed to adapt to a new niche. At the same time, if humans do manage to control their population at a manageable level, the history of disease suggests that there will occasionally be diseases that will kill off significant percentages of humans. The survivors will have to increase their reproductive rate temporarily.

Do not forget that the idea of uncontrolled population growth, qualitative variation between humans and even real poverty are contradictory to the idea of a new niche. This is not due to sentiment, ideology or wishful thinking. It is because it does not describe a specie successfully using artificial selection over time. Also, it contradicts not just the trends we see in humans, but the values as well.

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11. Family
The nuclear family with just two parents present is called the "modern family", but mostly it seems anomalous, particularly in history. Family once meant tribe. It later meant clan. The extended family was the rule far more than the exception. Raising children is difficult and demanding. Take it from me, for two people to raise a family with no support is difficult and dicey. Even in the modern nuclear family, there is usually some support from grandparents, siblings or community.

In the United States it started as a common circumstance, because usually it was not the extended family that immigrated. Parents had to be very self reliant and they usually existed in strong, mutually supportive communities. Extended families did naturally develop though for support of the children and also the aged. The aged were valuable though for taking care of the children and providing wisdom. After World War II, many families migrated west and again they were nuclear families. As corporate industry has developed, mobility has again become more important as careers have demanded it. Really, the nuclear family is an indication both of the development of individuals able to do it and the demands of careers, but it also indicates a rapidly changing ecology. A non-extended family commonly is a product of short term adjustment including need and a wealthy society. An extended family is almost certainly better for a number of reasons. It does take cooperation though. A family that cannot or does not cooperate is weakened.

In that the nuclear family is something of an anomaly, another valid description of the modern family is the extended family. The original reason for marriage was perhaps more economic than even specifically raising children. An extended family can be an economic powerhouse. In the modern cities of today, often families will live together, then buy houses located nearby to take advantages that the extended family provides, particularly in times of emergency. The extended family is a great survival strategy.

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12. Death and Dying
Life and death go together, but decisions about death can be even harder than about life. Many people fear dying, which seems reasonable. Some people do not though which also seems reasonable. Psychologists say that there is a built in aversion to the idea of one's non-existence. A person should live their life fully enough that at its end, they should not fear its loss. A person should never be ruled by fear, including fear of death.

Really, in ways this issue has been well explored. Religious custom and most law forbid anything but natural death. Some groups and societies, promote "death with dignity". That is allowing the natural progression towards death without interference or even promoting it to prevent useless pain and suffering. Very often the medical community will try to preserve life at any cost when there is seemingly no rational reason and they are just putting off the inevitable at enormous financial cost and discomfort to the patient. It can become a situation of enormous resources being applied to provide a few more days of life. There are many possibilities and society will set its standards, some of which will be ignored without sanction based on a case by case judgment.

Death is such a problem for our modern society, because we have never in the past been able to interfere with it any. Now if a person's heart stops or their brain ceases to function, their body can be kept alive potentially for long periods of time. We simply do not know how to deal with some of the complexities and unexpected turns of events that can occur. Our society, prompted by its conservative instincts, generally chooses to error on the side of caution. One does not want to murder. The only problem is not considering death because of fear or denial. As for "playing God", I think it clear that God would want us to "play God" as part of our growing up.

There are a few different issues here. One is heroic medical efforts to extend a person's life. Another is to discontinue life support when a person is non-responsive and is not going to recover. Related to that is the Do Not Resuscitate order or an order to not start life support when a person cannot breathe or their heart fails. Another is suicide. Another is "Assisted Death". All have different implications.

Suicide by a healthy person is usually out of desperation or mental illness. It is usually forbidden by custom and law. Usually the reality is that the problems that drive a person to suicide can be surmounted in time, but not always. Sometimes a person gives up hope due to financial problems. In a healthy ecology, this should not happen. In a balanced ecology, the society should be able to help someone in financial extreme. A person should not commit suicide for reason of honor. A healthy society should be forgiving enough that that is not necessary. A person should never commit suicide for love. You will get over it and you do not know what the future will bring. Suicide always hurts those left behind and is almost always a cry for help that should not have had to have been expressed in such a way.

Assisted Death is when a person is so ill that death is a mercy and an escape from pain or dependency. In this case, the family and doctor should participate in the decision. Ultimately though, it must be the individual's own decision. There is nothing morally wrong with this if it is their competent considered choice. A coerced decision would be murder. A doctor should always be allowed their decision too should they choose to refuse.

There seems nothing immoral about a Do Not Resuscitate order. They are only given when a person is expecting to die.

What about some other situations, gray areas or the difficult cases? What about the occasional current cases such as where a loving spouse kills out of mercy? Is that murder? The situation tends to fall under law, so judgment cannot be just of the individual's actions, but also in the context of the society. It seems that in those cases, judges enforce the law, but practice appropriate mercy and that is what is needed when law is not adequate to address a difficult situation, but must still be protected to protect the society. In a way it is similar to when the state intervenes for a minor whose parents have decided to withhold medical treatment for religious reasons. It takes a wise and compassionate judge to do the right thing and the society must trust the judgment of those they have chosen as judges.

I and a number of my friends have expressed that under certain circumstances that they would not want to be alive either because hope would be gone or they would just be a burden. The social contract of humans is that we will care for each other in sickness and age, but can a person choose to not be a burden or to die when their mental facilities are soon to fade? It may not be difficult to answer that question now, but what about then or what about when you are no longer mentally able to? I do not want my body lingering around as a burden to others if it is no use to me or "me" has moved on. The reality is that if you ask bedridden individuals in a nursing home if they would rather be dead, many will sincerely say that they have wished it for years. To fulfill their wish is not a danger to them, but is a potential danger to society. Still, society owes it to them to try to deal with the situation.

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13. Sex - Part 2
Darlington called Sex the Second Forbidden Subject in science. Until the 1940's (1939 Kinsey Report), bringing it up in academia or polite society would get you kicked out of both. A friend of mine put it so well; "why are the priests and religion so obsessed about sex". Not that it is something rare, but certainly in this culture it freaks people out to talk about it in reasonable terms. While it can now be studied in academia without too much trouble, what is the issue or the subject of sex? Maybe the question is "what is the question". Just because it can be studied in academia does not mean that the questions are answered. I suspect it is like race. I do not think anyone really wants to state the question, because simply they do not have an answer. In any case, the answer must be to our moral instinct, rather than our intellect. The question is whether sex is bad. Is it dirty? Is it animalistic? Is it going to lead us to depravity and Sodom and Gomorrah? Or is it something we can enjoy, because people certainly seem to and they will go to great lengths for it. It is one of our most powerful instincts and essential to survival. So... Sex. What about it?

Sex and mating particularly have a component of status. Your deepest instincts, particularly for females due to their investment, are always going to prod you to try to mate with the fittest partner you can. In most mammals, the males aggressively compete for access to the females, so that determines fittest right there. In that situation, males are going for a quantity strategy, so fittest may mean still breathing. It is a bit different for humans. In humans, the long developmental period requires that the male help raise the children. That constrains his reproductive potential and demands a greater investment, so he takes on the feminine reproductive strategy of quality rather than the more common male strategy of quantity. Obviously that is not always a given and human males will often still try for a quantity strategy if they can get away with it, but that is the exception in society. This also means that females have to take on a strategy of not just looking for the genetically fittest male, but one that they can get a commitment from.

Anthropologists also talk about reproductive moieties in tribal societies, groupings that cannot internally mate as a method of preventing inbreeding. Mates must come from different moieties. This is still true in some current societies.

So status is defined as who you have mating access to. In all societies there are things that confer status. It may be a leadership position, a great hunter, family or parentage, wealth of some form including beauty, a great warrior, a skill such as an artist or artisan has, great vitality or many other things that could confer status in a society.

Human reproduction has pretty much gone into the unknown zone around this point.

The thing is that in all species where the reproductive habit is in some way dominated by an alpha (even status), there are always opportunistic males trying to get a shot at evolutionary survival by getting access to a fertile female and there is half of the conundrum. Many human customs have developed to prevent rape whether consensual or not both because the male wants only to contribute to raising his own children and because it could disrupt the society. You have to look at this from where we have come from to have any idea where we are or where we are going. This is the why of so much human behavior and social structure.

During most of history, marriage has been arranged by family or clan. Marriages were often used to make peace or extend political power. They were also a tool of economic continuity. You are not going to see much of that behavior outside of humans and since other animals have very little history, any clan or moiety behavior is going to last only so many generations. Also, some social structures have promoted inbreeding, such as royalty trying to concentrate power. This description is of circumstances, common strategies, spanning only some thousands of years, so it is going to be considered as transient. It may be important in the future and will be considered as such, but here it is mentioned only to describe how we got to the current moral situation which is largely about controlling sex.

What we seem to be entering is an age of love where individuals will choose their mates based on genetic and psychological compatibility. In the sense of genetics, we do so naturally to some degree, particularly using sense of smell to recognize complementary immune systems. It is hard to say what else we may instinctively recognize related to compatibility, but certainly there are psychological, intellectual and emotional traits. Evolution works at all levels. In the future, we will have specific genetic information to work with. Status will include what genetic potentials are available to work with between two people using artificial selection. We are already learning something about love and more will be learned about in the future. Technology will be a great help in finding and selecting a good mate within whatever social group a person is in. Consider that everyone will be very superior genetically than they are now. But after that, back to sex for the moment. We are still not at any of the issues.

I mentioned that Darlington called sex the Second Forbidden Subject In Science, but it could finally be studied after the 1940's. So is that really the question? Has science given us the answers to the question of sex. Nope, at least not in moral terms and that is what is important. Because of the diversity of humans and the unpredictability of the future, I tend to describe moral situations so that they can be analyzed and then I am a bit vague about moral laws. In this case I cannot be. The real question that we need to answer in terms of morality is whether sex is bad or good. That is what morality is about. In history it has usually been considered bad and for good reason. Generally the result of sex has been children, the foundation of the entire moral system. Is it surprising that priests get agitated when there is potentially an unwanted child. It can be a moral crisis in a family or community. In some classes it could lead to political, economic or social instability. Also about half of humans in early history were herders and most humans are quite aware of their nature and heredity. Their reproductive instincts gave them good reason to sequester women. At the same time, law has tended to be the exception rather than the rule. There have always been those opportunists I mentioned and rape was quite a problem. Also there is that beauty is a form of wealth that has been carefully bartered in most societies. Only recently has that wealth been left in the control of the woman. There is reason after reason that sex has been regulated where it could be and at many levels. There are many reasons sex has been called bad.

There are other reasons to prevent promiscuity. It can lead to social instability. It can transmit diseases. Not all pandemics are from casual contact and no diseases are more devastating than immune diseases like HIV. Some STDs effect fertility. You also have the thinkers getting involved that said "yech, it is animalistic". There are more reasons, but I think those will suffice since they include the potential of an unwanted child, social disruption, disease and fear. There is one other key reason that promiscuity may not be a good idea. It is also because to the best of my knowledge desire follows love, generally not the other way around and love is more important than desire.

Sex has always led to babies, but not necessarily now. With that dire consequence removed, that is an unwanted, socially disruptive child, it illustrates what the real forbidden question is. Can it safely (means morally) be for pleasure or even recreation? Well, obviously it is being used that way and that is the point. Particularly at this point, it is not a question of whether it is OK, it is a question of what is dangerous. It is illustrated by the term "free love". What that meant was free from responsibility. That is when sex becomes morally bad. With birth control, the moral disaster of a child that cannot be cared for can be prevented. In terms of our moral instincts, that is what has to be managed. Beyond that, there are still some other issues, but they do not so much fall within instincts. One of the few moral laws I am sure defines humans as more than animals is that sex must be responsible.

This book originated because of the unique hazards of diseases for humans. Sexually transmitted diseases (STD) are no exception. HIV is such a lethal disease that if it spread as some people thought it would, it is very possible that our culture would not have survived. Immune system diseases are suspected as factors in a number of extinctions. Even less lethal diseases can do profound damage to a person and as expected the traditional STDs are showing antibiotic resistance such as Gonorrhea. Because disease is only so predictable it is hard to say how it will play out in the future, but HIV put an end to the level of promiscuity in the gay community. STDs are a major restraint on current sexual promiscuity in all communities and new diseases or circumstances could demand a new moral standard of promiscuity or more likely lack thereof. There are now forms of gonorrhea that are considered untreatable. Until we develop new medical technologies and social habits, disease is going to be an important enough risk factor to make a high level of sexual promiscuity dangerous or bad. Irresponsible sex in terms of STDs is very immoral.

The last two issues were generally applicable to anyone, but there is another issue applicable only to "couples". That is a "pair" that have a commitment that can be disrupted by infidelity. The commonest and most important of these commitments is children. As mentioned before children are a special case in morality as they are the purpose of it. If promiscuity threatens a family, the support unit of the children, then it is immoral.

Luckily, what we see is that humans are usually not naturally highly promiscuous. It varies from group to group, but most people can find satisfaction in long term pair bonds. The problems will come from young adults exploring, learning and enjoying their sexual nature. That is a risk that comes with all growth and learning. There is enough advantage to stable pair bonds, that it would seem to be something that should not only be promoted by law and culture, but in the future is seems like a good place for parents to make choices about artificial selection since it provides degrees of protection from all the above mentioned moral hazards related to sex.

Love and sex are great. Keep in mind that they are something to be grateful for. Do not ever take them for granted. Love and sex should always be something special. They are a luxury. The price can be high and can only be easily "afforded" based on the wealth of the culture. When survival is threatened, discipline is more likely to be needed than sex. The desirability of love and sex have another side. They can consume time that you need for something else, such as education or some other goal. They can also get you into relationships that you otherwise would not get into. Masturbation is not immoral and may be a good alternative to the energy, time and resources required for a relationship, while keeping one's psychological balance unperturbed by too much distraction by hormones. Too much contemplation of sex can generate hormones that inhibit sleep and may act as stress hormones.

There is a caveat about pair bonding. Anthropologists suggest that our natural period of "marriage' is about seven years which is appropriate in a hunter gather society where children are mature at a far younger age. There is the common idea of the seven year itch in marriages. In the current and future society, a longer natural period of "marriage is more appropriate as the developmental period of humans is far longer now. The task of child raising is unique and uniquly important. The rules protecting it are special. What though if humans had greatly expanded life times. Do we expect humans to stay married for 100 years? That may work for some, but only the very lucky.

Sex represents a form of wealth. Men have always competed for women. It is good for survival. Unfortunately it has also fostered a great sex trade that has often been exploitative. Because of the value of youth, it has effected both men, women and children. Children should never be part of the sex trade in any way. In general, that there is a sex trade shows an imbalance. Some, but most people in the sex trade did not get into it by choice. Usually it has been out of desperation. If there is a flourishing exploitative sex trade, it indicates that it is not a balanced stable ecology. It is not moral then.

In biological terms, men and women may have different characteristic sex habits, but not as much as you might think. In ways, women are less adapted than men. That is they have not had to adapt so much. Men on the other hand have and have had to adapt a great deal to monogamy. It is a situation where strength comes from weakness. In ways men are very adaptable about sex and women more instinctive. While men need to refrain from behaviors that might serve a more primitive mammal, aggressiveness and quantity strategy, women need to get past their instincts some. They have their own ways of competing, particularly with other women and it is not always pretty. Women have an instinct to be "selfish" about sex, using it to their advantage. It would probably be best if this were not so. It may be that men should adapt more to monogamy and women should embrace more of some masculine behaviors. Still, current events seem to show that for a number of reasons women should not be controlled as they have been during history. Maybe it was more necessary in a more primitive time. It implies an aggressively dominated society which makes no sense in the way society seems to be developing. Also, it seems to work with one of the other most important challenges facing humanity, over population. When women are educated and empowered, they choose to limit their family size. That is critically important. On the other side of that coin, consider in the aftermath of a pandemic. That could easily change. In a monogamy, men are under the same constraints. Men need to reduce their competitive nature as well. Aggressive behavior should not need to be a major component of sexual behavior. Men are designed to be competitive, which is OK and it might be that women could use to have a more competitive nature. There are a lot of possibilities, including some continued division of labor in the team effort to raise children and maybe other things, but that is likely to be a natural experiment over time.

Another inherent difference in men and women that comes from biology is their interest in sex. Obviously the consequences have been quite different historically. Going from a quantity to a quality strategy and artificial birth control changes everything. The thing is that while there is a reason that men have a great deal of interest in sex until they die while many women may not after they have had children. It creates a great deal of tension. I think that is a place where we might want to consider change. It is just something that we can bring closer together. Many mammals, particularly marine mammals use sex for recreation and even social behavior. I think it is a potential for humans. Sex can safely be social and recreational under the right conditions. This is a pretty radical statement, but it is exactly why it was called the second forbidden question in science. I think it should be considered. Though humans are presently not predisposed to it or well adapted to it as a social behavior, we could be genetically and socially far more adapted to it if we think we should.

On a cautionary note, there are drawbacks. In most cases, sex does not create personal growth. Initially it does, in that it fosters learning about self, but beyond that it is limited. In a way it is like money. I say that if you do not have anything better to do, make money. Also it is like other things, there can be a problem of sex addiction. It is not usually as toxic as other drugs, but it can be a distraction from what is important and particularly in men, sex hormones can be like stress hormones and cause a problem with health. Too little or too much of anything is generally not good. Sex must always be considered in a moral context. It should always be responsible and appropriate. We found out about that in the 1970's and if you forget, watch Caddyshack. The best sex is related to love. If you fall in love, you learn that sex is far less important than love.

Sex is an odd case, as many hormonal things are that do not follow strictly rational rules. For a person enjoying sex regularly, it is not so important. It may have the comparative importance of enjoying a sporting or entertainment event. For a person not having sex, it can take on enormous importance. It can be an important part of love or it can become a minor thing compared to love. It can be a transient bit of lust for beauty or even when a person is smitten (likely pheromones). The value of sex can be minor in the case of the physical act or it can be profound in the context of love or lust.

Sex is a natural behavior. It is now something far more than than just reproductive behavior and in the future, when practiced safely and responsibly, offers humans great potentials even in terms of growth, recreation and social behavior. To answer the second forbidden question in science, it is not bad.

A late addition: August 2012. Gerulf Rieger, a researcher at Cornell University was the lead author of a study examining pupil reaction in terms of sexual preference. The pupil dilates when someone sees something they like sexually. They measured pupil dilation in humans to see what their natural responses were. Basically they found that the pupils of heterosexual women dilated when viewing attractive men and women. That fits with previous data. The pupils of heterosexual men dilated when viewing women, but not men. The pupils of homoosexual men dilated when viewing men. Pupil dilation showed that bisexual men were attracted to both men and women. The interesting part of this to me is not just that visual response showed sexual orientation, but it also might be a major part of how sexual orientation works. It is a question of how are men and women genetically programmed to like the opposite sex. It is well known that men are particularly visual. The genetic programming could very well work through visual response. Evolution tends to use the simplest solution that works. If this is true, it means a few things related to artificial selection. It is probably best in terms of survival if men are attracted visually to women and women to men. That is often not the case. Not only are some attracted only to the same sex, some people are not attracted at all. It might be easy to select for this using artificial selection. Perhaps not as well, since no genetic markers have been found so far. Undoubtable a controversial statement, but there could eventually be reason for both sexes to be very strongly attracted exclusively to the opposite sex or it may be that it would work better socially if they we somewhat attracted also to the same sex.

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11. Caste Morality

Looking at humans there are some natural divisions that show natural human differences and potentials. We call neolithic humans "hunter/gatherer/scavengers" in that these were the strategies used for obtaining food. Upright walking and superior vision were critical for these strategies. early humans foraged for roots

In the time of the cities, particularly in the West, humans assorted themselves according to occupational castes. According to C. D. Darlington, these were all based on potentials from tribal roots. It was why a "city" or nation could be comprised from different tribes. Each different tribe could make a different occupational contribution to the needs of the society. This section is to describe something of what those potentials (and some others) are and their significance as humanity develops.

Topics to be considered:
1. Hunting
2. Gathering
3. Scavenging
4. Peasants
5. Herders
6. Scribes
7. Craftsmen
8. Warriors
9. Priests
10. Ruling Class
11. Traders
12. Cooking

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1. Hunting
Hunting is one of the oldest and most notable instincts of humans. Many humans, particularly men, love to hunt. I do. It is a behavior from paleolithic and neolithic times. Hunting releases ancient instincts and sharpens the mind and senses to a high pitch. From our hunting ancestors comes our greatest potentials for the patience, self control and cooperative communication potentials. Hunting drove tool development and really led to what distinguished paleolithic from neolithic. A hunter must be completely focused mentally and physically when making the kill. The problem in modern times is that there does not seem to be an off switch. Humans tend to hunt wild crops to destruction if they can. The better the hunt, the better the stories. This applies to all wild crops including timber. As a general statement, harvesting of wild crops must be carefully regulated, probably in terms of overall take limits to keep the wild populations healthy.

The upside of hunting is it is exciting and teaches many skills. The downside is its potential damage to the environment. That lack of an off switch may well be a foundation of greed. Just how many billions do you need?

In the neolithic period and part of what distinguishes it from the earlier neolithic period is that the hunting tools and techniques got better. Hunting became more important. This is also when cooperative hunting became more developed and the communication it required. Some groups became very dependent on hunting such as some of the plains Indians and their ties to the buffalo. In that context they were taking on a predator niche like that of wolves.

In terms of artificial selection, most of the potentials of hunting ability such as patience, enhanced awareness, tool using and the precisely powerful quick strike ability required for the kill should be selected for. I think that clearly we also need to select for potentials and morality that control the destructive aspects of hunting. Consequential intelligence, education and laws will be necessary. Releasing that enhanced awareness is something that is learnable and should be.

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2. Gathering
Humans used to forage over great areas using knowledge of the land and vision to find widely dispersed resources of wild grains and roots for food. It gave a great diversity of diet. It would require a good memory of location and seasonal availability of food sources. Gathering required a great awareness and short term adaptability of behavior. Also it gave respect to elders with knowledge (memory) learned over time, especially in times of unusual environmental stress such as drought. Humans in that environment would need highly developed spatial awareness and the ability to mentally map where they were. They would need great vision and perceptiveness to spot the small quantities of food. It has been said that the digging stick provided more food than the hunting spear. Many techniques were developed by experimentation to make food of otherwise inedible including cooking, grinding and leaching out toxins.
All of these characteristics seem valuable to modern humans. In many ways they made modern humans and are a description of them. They are genetic foundations that should be carefully husbanded.

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3. Scavenging
Humans often scavenged food as well. Like other predators they would have watched carrion birds for indications of a fresh kill. Modern neolithics will follow predators like lions. When the lions make a kill, they may try to startle the predators and scare them off the kill long enough to steel a piece of meat before the lions return. This would take steely nerves and courage. They would also have to always be very aware of their surrounding so that they did not become the hunted.

Another important strategy to human survival was using tools to get to the rich source of food that is the marrow of bones. Tools were used to break open bones. Currently only the hyena has jaws powerful enough to break open bones for the marrow. The use of fire also developed to make meats accessible and edible that could otherwise not be easily have been gotten to.

The paleolithics and later neolithics developed the foundations of art, music and spirituality, extremely important potentials that must be husbanded. Our vision inherited from our tree dwelling ancestors probably improved during this time as likely did hearing as it is a distance sense and needed for communication. It does not seem to have done much for our sense of smell. Our intelligence and emotional potentials would have greatly developed under social pressures and technical requirements of these times. Skill for storytelling gave status. It was the first virtual reality. They developed tribal social forms that we allow communication and social organization that are the basis of civilization.

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4. Farmers
The most basic caste of the cities were the peasants that provided food. The neolithic used primitive slash and burn farming methods that rapidly depleted the soil. They had few crops to cultivate, notably root crops like potatoes. Anthropologists believe that sedentary farming developed on the slopes of river valleys. Water was available and weather would have replenished the soil. It is hard to say how or when terrace farming developed, but it is quite ancient and allows soil to be moved up from the bottom to the top of the terraces allowing long term soil fertility. It is thought that farming may well have developed in response to the degradation of the wild food sources due to drought and over exploitation.

Over time, new grain crops were discovered and developed as well as techniques to use small grains that would otherwise have been difficult to accumulate many calories from. New tools and techniques of farming developed as well as social organizations of cities that allowed leadership that could direct the planting season and even irrigation projects. More food availability would have led to surpluses that could allow the specializations of the civil society. It is thought that in early civil societies, crops would actually have been largely used as trade goods even more than for local consumption.

The farmer would have enhanced and developed many genetic potentials appropriate to their niche. From them we get a much physically tougher and harder working person than was required for the casual life of the previous peoples. They would probably have been rather timid, depending on perseverance rather than shorter exertions. They would have developed a sense of seasons, longer time periods, weather, plants and the land. They would have developed an enduring toughness. Many of the genetic potentials of the farmers should be husbanded in the future.

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5. Herders
Herders existed in something of a symbiosis with their herds. They protected them from predators and directed them to forage. The animals provided food, hides and other resources. It was a casual life wandering with the herd animals, yet requiring alertness, punctuated by moments of great excitement when a predator had to be confronted. They raided each others herds and developed the potentials for warfare. In ways it takes more intelligence for that dynamic niche than for farming. They would have developed communication with their animals and particularly with the dogs they domesticated to help them. In later times this developed into the incredible abilities for the symbiosis and communication that humans can have with horses. These are valuable genetically based abilities that must be husbanded and it is likely that they will provide potentials for unexpected possibilities in the future.

It seems that another typical characteristic of Herders is a high degree of dominance behavior. Particularly it would be necessary for cattle and horse herders as the animals are far more physically powerful than humans. You see it more in how they treat their leaders. It seems that once they have chosen a leader, they stick with them even when their leadership qualities may come into question. In ways it seems to be an effective strategy based upon that leaders become more powerful over time and consolidate their power. As such it also seems to frequently lead to a conflict with the principles of democracy. This is observable in many societies of the world, particularly in the Middle East in its social, political and religious structures.

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6. Scribes
Intelligence is generally considered a social behavior. The scribes skills are presumably descended from those potentials, but they are different. While many animals use reason and logic to solve problems, reading, writing and mathematical skills are not of value to any other animals. They are fantastically important to modern humans. Reading is one of the fastest ways for humans to absorb information.

The skills of the scribes are the foundations of the technical professions that make the modern world such as the sciences, law, architecture, economics, philosophy, formalized logic and this book. We refer to scribes, but there are a number of genetic based skills and potentials involved, many that we have yet to really understand. These skills are what we will need to compete with machines. Artificial selection should be used to husband and enhance these skills.

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7. Craftsmen
They say that a civilization can be judged by its architecture. It is the craftsman that has built the machines that have uplifted human existence from the time of the skilled flint napper making that made a quality hunting spear. They were a critical component of the civil populations during the development of cities and war. It is the crafter that makes our homes and give them their artistic nature. Often the crafter is a fine artist using innumerable materials and tools to make objects of beauty and message. Crafters have their roots in many tribes with many different potentials for technical skills. Some tribes build with soft materials like mud. Some more naturally build with hard materials like wood and bone. Stone was a common building material and crafters had skills to make buildings, monuments, roads, waterways and other artifacts. Some people show a natural ability, quite trainable, for machines and electronics. As with other caste occupations, these abilities did not come from one tribe and are composed of many genetic potentials that have developed and accumulated together as the tribes have hybridized.

These abilities are important and should be artificially selected for. It seems quite possible that all humans could have strong genetic potentials for crafts, mechanics and artistic skills.

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8. Warriors
War has been a huge part of human history and the warrior castes, mostly descended from mountain tribes and pastoralists have been the political rulers of the world. They embody a form of competition, which has driven development. Unfortunately there is a great downside. There is a great cost. I think and hope that the utility and frequency of warfare reduces. If there is much war in the future, it will indicate that we are not in a stable ecology. Still, from everything I have learned, the most effective way to survive and deter aggression is to have the potential for it. War on any level is the ultimate challenge, whether that is one on one combat or culture versus culture. The problem is that it is destructive and inherently non-productive. Superiority at war does not seem to translate into what I think is likely to be what our aspirations desire. Still, the ability for war is what is needed to protect what we create.

In that this is meant to be a practical description of the future, the warrior cannot be disenfranchised. Maybe war can be restricted to martial arts and virtual reality to keep the economic and human cost at a minimum.

One key lesson about the warrior though is that you almost certainly do not want them as the ruling entity of the society. Their priorities should not be the priorities of the society. You do not want decisions made by someone who is primary responses to problems are war. Even now while there are many democracies in the world, often the political philosophy is very prone to war. There should be better solutions, it is just that sometimes that is what is thought of first, not last. In modern parlance, warrior politicians have been called hawks or neocons.

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9. Priests
Priestly castes were originally associated with the scribes and provided civil leadership. They were the ruling class of the first cities. They were the educated class. They provided the essential organization of the city, organizing civil works including irrigation projects and providing the time of the crop plantings. Often they kept the seeds for the next years crops as well and provided what medical care was available. Priests were scribes, engineers, explorers, warriors, political leaders and many other things. They performed the religious rituals and sacraments that ordered the society and comforted those that were in need. A priest's greatest skills are their empathy and understanding. A priest is a moral leader. The power of the position of moral leadership meant that the corrupt were attracted too, but that was not the function of a priest. Their function was to serve the survival of their people and husbanded moral teachings. Their instincts are essential to survival of a society.

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10. Ruling Class
C. D. Darlington discussed the hereditary ruling class of the Western culture. This was the first international caste. Selection was very intense at that level. Failure was often fatal. Their primary requirement was the ability to organize. They also needed the skills of leadership including intelligence, foresight, military prowess and many others. Usually they had them. In ways they were like hybrids of priests and warriors. Probably they were. Through history they would have had such reproductive advantage that most modern Westerners are descended in part from them. They were the superior members of their society by the standards at the time and almost certainly by current standards. They were very socially skilled. I have mentioned that I think we might want to reduce dominance behavior some though and that may well be a characteristic of the hereditary ruling class.

Here is one place that as far as I know, the pattern was different in Asia. Apparently India was similar to the West in caste structure, but the Chinese were far more homogeneous. I would like to know better, but have not had the time to study it. I dare say the history is known and the study will be done, including at the genetic level of analysis. Really, I expect that there were other differences related to caste and tribal genetics, but it is the same in that the societies started based on genetic potentials of tribes that came together socially and genetically and developed greatly during the time of the cities. If you are a person living today, you are descended from ancestors that were tough, smart survivors that never lost at the game of survival. Your genes are special and are the potential for future human survival and development.

Now there is another related aspect of morality to consider and that is of leaders. That is learned in time of need and so does not need much discussion here. Those that need to know it, will learn.

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11. Traders
C. D. Darlington did not mention Traders and Merchants as a caste. It seems though that almost every Persian I have met was a serious and skilled merchant. They are not the only ones. It has been a way of life for many peoples since the beginnings of civilization. There are special skills attendant to that occupation and it requires intelligence. Those are skills that should be husbanded.

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12. Cooking
Including cooking ability here seems odd, even to me and cooking and food care is a learned technical skill, but I suspect that there are genetic predispositions as well. Any way you look at it, it is such a human thing. Maybe this is where the human sense of smell comes into its own. In any case, there are so many skills that can be brought to bare that I suspect that there must be genetic potentials involved. For many reasons these should be husbanded.
Ah, I figured out why I added it. Not only do I love cooking, but it is about my favorite social event. There is no conversation like kitchen conversation flowing along with the process of cooking to stimulate it. When I am cooking with a person, it is an exercise in teamwork. It is probably matched or surpassed by a "team" of musicians playing together, other teams as well. We are social and we like to socialize.

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12. Balance

     Praise be to Ma'at

This is the next section on Moral Issues. There are many elements of moral strategy, parts that make up the whole of human survival. Some like language and law are just tools we use. Some like risk, anger or faith are behaviors that must exist in a careful balance. Too much or too little and we will not be well adapted to the ecology. Survival will be in doubt. Luckily we just naturally achieve a balance by dealing with everyday demands and by dealing with other people. It is part of mental hygiene. In the future, this will be more conscious as more and more people will try to effect what we think and we deal with more stress from living in a complicated environment that we may not be well adapted to. The other side of this is that most behaviors have a genetic component. If we are to do artificial selection, we must understand and consciously select for these balances. This may be hard because a person may strongly have some attribute like honesty or greed. It is a part of them so it is an important part of their moral strategy. It would seem natural that if you are deciding the genetic makeup of your children that you would select for those traits, but even stronger. That is likely to not be the case, especially if the parents balance is already biased towards that trait. Instead, even if you think your best trait is that you are hard working, you want to be very careful before deciding that your children should have genes that will make them even more hard working or you risk throwing off balances that are critical to survival. Life is not constant and neither are balances. Balances can shift and very often swing back and forth like a pendulum. The problem is when an interest group or ideology tries to fix the balance at one extreme. That arises as a natural situation, because individuals and groups tend to adapt to a situation and then resist when there is change.

Most of the topics here have been already discussed through history as personal strengths and weaknesses, but they were not considered in terms of parents making decisions about artificial selections for those traits. They cannot be ignored. Carelessness will not only be uncomfortable or dangerous for the individual, it could be problematic or dangerous to the society.

The list of human attributes is not meant to be complete, though it tries to focus on some of the most important ones. More importantly though it is meant to illustrate how these balances can be recognized and understood so that good decisions can be made.

Topics to be considered:
1. Courage
2. Self
3. Intelligence 3. Intelligence
4. Faith
5. Aggressive
6. Curiosity
7. Masculine and Feminine.
8. Honesty
9. Newness
10. Work
11. Rational
12. Personal Power
13. Ego and Ethnicity
14. Risk Taking
15. Individuality and Conformity
16. Humility and Confidence
17. Tattling
18. Greed
19. Happiness

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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. Still, what is imbalanced in one person may be 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. In the future, humans will need to 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.

Avoid the Jack In The Box problem. This book is all about change. We make a cause and get an effect. It is about control. Well, control has its own problems. Too often you control something and it resists. It builds up pressure and eventually explodes out because the control has been released or fails. That is also part of why this book emphasizes balance, to avoid these situations. It applies to human laws to control things. Laws must be minimal, natural, reasonable, fairly easy to follow and acceptable or they will not work. Prohibition was a good example. The negative consequences of the cure were worse than the disease. That points to another issue, particularly related to drugs like alcohol. We might want to prohibit them by law, but what would be best is if over time that a prohibitive law is in effect, people learn and incorporate into their morality to avoid or handle them. If not, natural or artificial selection will eventually correct the problem. By then the Jack In The Box problem will be avoided. Drugs are going to be a problem over time. We have already seen stronger versions of drugs getting introduced. It will continue and it is best that we can slowly adapt to them as well as discourage them. It seems that this can apply to non-chemical based "drugs". Some forms of entertainment can be overwhelming and one needs to develop tolerance to them to resist or survive them. This will apply to virtual reality which already is dangerously seductive and will become more so over time.

Another issue is development. Often in nature there is a trade off between the speed of development and the reach of development. Chimpanzees develop far quicker than humans, but humans develop farther. Some humans may develop slower, but they may develop farther. We have to be careful looking at what we value or we may select for less development by selecting for it to be more rapid or orderly.

Simple things are easy, unlike life which tends to be complicated and difficult, far too complicated even for easy description. There are some general rules though. One is that simple rules often just do not apply and simple descriptions just are not going to work. In terms of morality, many things must be described as balances to be looked at with human judgment. I cannot tell you what will work, but I can tell you what will not work and not keeping things in balance will not work. Certainly many of the most important aspects of morality must be addressed as balances rather than simple laws. This is to describe some factors from that perspective.

This list is not meant to be complete. It is meant to show patterns and to cover some topics that seem particularly important in terms of survival, but I see that these pretty much all fall into categories of human knowledge that have been well examined. The point here is to consider them in the context that humans may well have to be making choices about artificially selecting genes in their children that will help maintain these critical balances for both the individual and society.

As I said, this is not a complete list. If you want a more complete list I suggest examining the Seven Deadly Sins, The Twenty Virtues, The Ten Commandments, The Five Benedictions, The Three Unforgivable Spells and quite a number of other bodies of topical wisdom. I did like the wisdom in Grecian’s Manual and the Buddhists seem to have accumulated a large number of great ideas for balanced living. There are many other books containing great wisdom for living one's lives. I highly recommend them. Without these balances, there can be no wisdom. I note that pride in particular shows up in lists of sins as well as lists of virtues. All items in lists should be considered from both views.

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This book is about human development. Naturally this raises what has been called the nature-nurture question about the relative effects of genetics and environment on what a human is. There have been a lot of argument about this, but I think it fair to say that it is obviously a combination of the two. Part of the reason there have been so much arguing over this subject is that there are ideological associations. What would be considered liberal ideology claims that humans are mostly a product of their environment. This is because they can then say that social problems can be solved by social engineering. If you provide a better childhood environment, better education, social programs and enlightened laws, then all human problems will be solved. They like to ignore the inherent inequalities of our heredity. At the other hand the conservatives have an ideological stake in claiming that heredity is the most important component. This supports their arguments for inequality, personal responsibility and not wanting to take responsibility for other members of their society. These ideological arguments are distorting and distracting. Konrad Lorenz has offered probably the best reasoned and science-based explanation in his description of behavioral releases. He said that we have genetically programmed behavioral potentials that are released (or emerge) in response to appropriate environmental stimulus or requirements. The classic case is the fight or flight mechanism where in the situation of danger a person has two genetically based potential responses. They could fight or they can run, both of which potentials are programmed to the genes. This is the sort of simplistic description to start with. Human behavior and environment tends to be a bit more complicated with more potential for complicated learned behaviors.

A more complicated description of human behavior appropriate here would be that of self-actualization. The term was originally introduced by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one's full potential. The description of the term as it is used here comes from Abraham Maslow. Maslow loosely defined self-actualization as "the full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc. " (Motivation and Personality). This term is used a couple ways here. In this sense, a person presented with danger could give a fight or flight response as well as a number of other potential responses. They might call for their buddies to help them. They might call out "$100 to whoever thumps this guy". They might act like they are starting to have a heart attack. These are not behaviors that come from genetic programming. Really though, self-actualization is mentioned here only partly to describe, but human behavior extends beyond Konrad Lorenz's simple behavioral model. It is more important for another reason. In this Morality section, it is not only about genetically programmed or just culturally learned behaviors. It is also about human potential. Morality here is described in terms of ontogeny. What it is and how it got to be that way. It also tries to describe morality in the context of creating a new niche in the future. One of the greatest requirements for humans is education. One of the greatest problems is going to be consistently providing a moral education in the future. So for each moral topic will be description of what morality is and why as well as what we may want it to be and how to teach it. Finally it will have a description in the context of self-actualization of how individual can look at their behavior and morality and optimize it to the best of their ability. This will not dwell on what Maslow described as characteristics of self-actualization, though I may list them later on. More it is to describe the general principle that behaviorally and morally humans need to develop intellectually, psychologically and morally more than just as a response to their environment and genes. I do recommend looking up further information about Self Actualization.

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1. Courage
Courage is a good example moral topic to start with. This description is to show the form that will be used throughout the description of moral topics. It includes common views on the topics, the topic in the context of genetics and then in what looks like a somewhat idealistic view. Why the view is given will be explained in this first example topic.

Courage is necessary to survival for humans, but there is a time to stand one's ground and a time to run. There is a large genetic foundation to this behavior. If there is not a balance, enough courage, enough timidity, then the behavior becomes contra survival. In history, the behavior was a primary strategy of the military caste and extreme courage was basic to the strategy. That kind of courage is now referred to as suicidal. In an technological environment with current weapons, too much courage can just get you killed, as can lack of courage. For a peasant farmer, it was usually not useful and dangerous. Not enough courage can cripple a person socially. Not enough courage can cause a person to be exploited. There must be a balance.

That is a description of a genetic or instinctual foundation of a behavior. In terms of what a human can become and must in the future, they need both potentials, but they must not be ruled by their instincts. They should not ignore them, but their rational mind should be in control and must be able to override their fear and instincts, to the point of death. They must make a decision whether to fight or run away or look for another strategy altogether. In that situations that require courage, dangerous or uncomfortable situations that is, are so important, many people find ways to defuse a situation or sidestep the problem. That is what humans will have to be able to do in the future to reach our aspirations. This applies to all behaviors with strong instinctual responses. That is the ideal, but there is a corresponding danger though that rationally thinking about a solution may be too slow. Well, it is a problem and why instincts are not to be ignored, but instead used when they serve. It is a challenging balance to achieve, but it is what survival must be made of. That is what this discussion of moral strategies must illustrate.

This is another part that should be discussed for each moral topic. One thing this shows is an issue that is at odds with how we naturally think. In ways this seems very idealistic, that everyone should have well developed courage. It is like saying that everyone should be Self Actualized. I at least tend to naturally think in terms of an unequal society. Some people exist with the best abilities of humanity and in ways provide leadership to the majority that are not as blessed with superior abilities. I think that is quite natural. In the niche of the cities, we know that the warrior required a well developed and disciplined courage. Most of the rest of the society did not require it and was better off just evading danger. The same was true of education. It is rather hard to think of a homogeneous society where everyone would use a moral strategy that includes a high development of courage or universally superior education, but that is what artificial selection and the Aspirations section is about. Widely providing all with superior potentials that are not nearly universal now. Everyone will not be the same. Some will have great talents and many will have different focus in their lives, but everyone should have more ability that even the most gifted person of the present and should have the capability for all virtues and potentials that are called superior now. As well, they should all have a fair amount of drive. As discussed elsewhere, a huge challenge of this would be training those genetic potentials, but virtual reality should be able to provide that.

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2. Self
Human psychology includes an essential balance related to how a person perceives self. Recent reports say that it is controlled by the parietal node of the brain. It has a strong genetic basis. Think of a priest. Ideally they would need a consciousness that is very sensitive and empathic. A warrior could be in trouble if they had too much empathy. This is a balance that will need to be carefully maintained at a level appropriate to the nature of the society. This is going to be a subtle and important issue of genetics and training. This might be the most important educational use for virtual reality. Know thy self.

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3. Intelligence
In terms of biology, Intelligence is primarily defined as a social behavior for understanding, remembering and influencing those around us. It is the talent for strategy. Sometimes this has been called Machiavellian intelligence. As humans have developed, that description must be expanded to many other abilities. It is the mathematical ability of logic and reason. It is talent for mastery of academics like language, mathematics and the sciences. It is the skills of the physician. It is all the skills of the various castes that provide their talents to the functioning of society. It is the many skills of the crafters, technicians and artists.

Intelligence is a primary way that humans compete. It is interesting that it is considered more acceptable to make a threat of physical violence than to claim that you are more intelligent than another person. Our moral codes are still strongly influenced by the long dominance of society by warriors. It is because we still are not sure about intelligence or its worth. This is changing rapidly.

Intelligence is rather novel in evolution. Animals have always relied on instinct and that has worked pretty well. Most animals have a very limited need for intelligence to survive. The human brain consumes a great deal of energy. There are indications that humans still rely on instinct more than we might expect. That suggests that we have great potential to increase our intelligence, because it has not usually been a major focus of natural selection. There are associated philosophical questions. If we have free will, it largely comes from our intelligence. In those terms I think that is a good reason to select for the genes of intelligence. It is not so eay. Instinct requires little training and can offer very prompt responses. Intelligence takes training and knowledge to be more useful than instinct.

In some ways, intelligence remains a mystery. Occasionally individuals show savant talents that inexplicably allow them to perform feats of intellect that seem unexplainable. In terms of technology there seems to be more to it than that. Think of Nicola Tesla, Albert Einstein or Steven Hawkins, as well as many of the other great thinkers of science. Their creativity seems to have been based on more than just calculation. They had vision as well. Their abilities may have been related to memes or even genetic chance, but in any case, it seems that there is no simple description of creative intellect. That is something that will take time to develop. They can uniquely reach conclusions, solve problems or learn new subjects that are impossible for most humans. Neurophysiology shows a number of things common to high intelligence such as deep white matter in the brain and unusually long neuron connections between brain regions. Our understanding of brain physiology grows rapidly, but the greatest part we do not understand. Clearly we have far more potential to develop and there is great genetic foundations to intelligence. I do not think we have any choice but to use artificial selection to increase intelligence. In ways that will move us farther from the niches we came from, but then it was intelligence that fundamentally caused us to change the world from what we were adapted to. It is also intelligence that gives us our best chance to cope with the competition from machines that we will face.

I have always thought intelligence is associated with emotion and said why. Interestingly if you consider communication and understanding of others to be the main purpose of intelligence, then empathy, the ability to internalize of emulate what others are feeling, also suggests that intelligence and emotion are tightly bound together. Emotion seems to be able to aggregate intelligence. At the same time, emotional fixation can limit intelligence. The current term "resilience" is used to describe how fast a human can shake off emotional drive and return to reasoned drive. There will need to be a balance in that.

Since intelligence is about manipulating information, memory is an important part of intelligence and recently there has been some discussion about the importance of short term memory to intelligence. That is understandable. Occasionally savants demonstrate amazing memory which suggests that all humans have the potential for far better memory than we are familiar with. Artificial selection could certainly improve short and long term memory greatly.

While I do not discuss genetic engineering much, it may be that in the case of intelligence that genetic engineering will one day offer potentials for greatly improved intellect. We do need greater intelligence for adapting to the niche we are entering, but just how much? In a way, it is sort of like an arms race. We will need more intelligence because other humans will have greater intelligence. We will want it, because it is an ideal. With greater intelligence though we will need more psychological balance. There will be problems because intelligence is a relatively recently developed trait. We just do not know. I do not expect so, but intelligence could potentially be dangerous to survival and in any case can probably only be compensated for by faith.

I am a very large guy, but I never really considered much of a correlation between size and intelligence. It have not noticed it. Also those old SciFi movies with the big headed aliens sort of make me laugh. I have never seen a reason for humans to be larger than they are. Still, the human brain consumes an enormous amount of energy. There are other reasons that one could think the brain might need to be bigger for increased intelligence, rather than just design efficiency. Maybe the requirements of intelligence will give a reason for humans to select to be physically bigger.

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4. Faith
Faith is another good example of balance. Faith is defined as an unsupported belief that a person chooses. In terms of human biology and psychology, faith seems to be an expression of the most basic survival instinct, to struggle to survive. It is also linked to intelligence. It is adaptable. When faith is combined with a meme that describes a God, it can become overwhelmingly powerful, powerful enough to conflict with the individual's survival. (Maybe powerful enough to allow for group selection...). A balance is required between faith (a reason not based on reason or fact) and intellect that operates upon facts and reason. Faith is needed, because facts and reason do not make an evolutionary survival instinct. Faith makes a person value moral systems that provide a measure of right and wrong in terms of survival. Without that instinctive value, survival is going to be pretty dicey. Faith has a strong genetic component that must be kept in balance. Too much of it and it is a problem as well. It is a great use for artificial selection, but it will have to be done to keep a balance. I can easily imagine a parent with or without faith deciding that their children should have the same predisposition, only more so. It even seems reasonable, but it could be extremely dangerous to change that balance.

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5. Aggressive
Aggressive behavior is another good example, but is a little more complicated both because the emotional connotations of social aggressiveness and also because a secondary meaning of aggressive is active.

Social dominance is the commonest form of aggression. In its instinctive form, it is part of mammalian male reproductive strategy to use violence or threat of violence to dominate reproductive resource. That may be as the females themselves such as a harem or an essential reproductive resource such as a beach.

Between societies, historically (the civil ecology) in humans it has been brought to extremes because of the nature of society. The first Western civilization in Sumeria was run by priests. The grain farmers would have had no reason to be aggressive. Their challenge was the land. Herders were naturally more aggressive because a strategy of raiding others herds was useful. Their society could aggressively dominate the farming society and exploit their resources (and to a certain extent, their females). It was like a predator and prey relationship almost, but with parasitic characteristics. The aggressive societies could take the resources of the less aggressive societies. As society became more complex, the herders became the military castes and they dominated the other castes of the society. Predators do generally need to be smarter than prey.

Within society aggressiveness would be used more for competition for mates and as part of the status of the individual in their society. You would particularly see it in the young as they jostle for social position and before they learn more developed social interactions.

Humans often regulate competition. Aggressive competition and particularly war can be extremely destructive and damaging to the society, so it tends to be regulated. Most law is about resolving differences without using violence. This is a difficult one, because a balance is needed where a person is aggressive enough for it to be an advantage to their personal survival, but not so aggressive that they endanger their society. Because of the huge negatives that have resulted from aggressive strategies and the fact that the benefit is always to a minority, aggression is widely considered immoral. There must be a balance though for a number of reasons, but primarily for self defense. If a society were to use artificial selection and training to remove aggressiveness, the society and the individuals of the society could be dominated by societies and individuals that were aggressive. You might say that there is a better way or another way to deal with aggression, but I have not found it and I am rather uniquely qualified for the search. It is appropriate to mention here that I am physically massive and powerful, but even with my strength, if I am unable to project an aggressive strategy, I am subject to aggression. (Interesting commentary on this in the book Self Made Man by Norah Vincent) Maybe law will one day be able to prevent that, but I am dubious. I do have aggressive instincts though and when they are combined with my physical ability, I can resist most aggression. Aggression must be resisted or accommodated. It cannot be ignored or wished away.

This takes on similar connotations in the context of a culture or a society. A society may have to fight for its survival.

Another issue is that active seems to be associated with aggressive. It can be active in the pursuit of success or a mate, but if humans were to use artificial selection and training to remove aggressive potentials, I think there would be a large risk of losing active potentials that are essential to survival and creativity.

The solution must be three parts. The society must use law to regulate the use of aggression for competition. In genetic and socialization terms, aggression must be kept at a balance. Not too much and not too little, though circumstances might make that level higher than expected. Also, in terms of genetics, the best strategy is rather than removing a trait that might be problematic, add a control to it, perhaps intelligence and moral training. Sports function to train a person to control and use their aggressiveness. At the same time, social aggressiveness might well be less useful as its purpose is to acquire the most fit mate. It is natural selection in action, but the point is to introduce a new form of genetic selection so the importance of aggressiveness used for competition for superior genes would be less important. After a few generations, beauty and other superior traits would be common enough that it would be far less important as a focal point of competition than it is now. Also, as far as that goes, the process of artificial selection would be far more effective for producing superior genetic offspring than would aggressive competition. For that matter, genetic analysis would be a far superior method for producing genetically complementary mating pools for natural instincts to operate in when selecting a mate.

So it might well end up that aggressiveness as a reproductive trait would become useless. Then again, it might not. This makes some assumptions. The first is that the family will continue be the best way to raise children. This seems likely to be true for a number of important reasons. The next assumption though is that due to the resource requirements of raising children in a technological society, humans will use some form of marriage such that the father is an important part of raising the children. This may not be strictly a monogamy in terms of one man and woman. In many places the custom is for one man to have multiple wives, based on status or economic success. Then perhaps competition for economic resources would translate into reproductive success. This kind of speculation can go on and on to many variations and many extremes, but an overall assumption indicated by trends and supported by logic is that the equality of men and women will increase, which would lead to monogamy of a man and a woman. You can describe where this is not true, including current trends mentioned below where the man is getting disenfranchised, but then you can see how balancing forces will tend to pull it back to a balance where both the man and woman are partners contributing to raising the children.

Perhaps the other side of aggressive is passive. Passive has its place and can even be a useful response to aggression for an individual or society at any particular time, but it cannot be a primary strategy of survival or the passive get replaced by the active.

In any case, a person, male or female must judge when to use aggression. It must not be used just because it can be. Males and females should never use aggression because it is just an instinct. It has a time and place based on judgment.

Here is a late addendum. The problem of aggressiveness was one of the first that I examined. I have thought about it for a very long time. As I said, the main solution I can see is the potential for deterrence. A little further thought makes me wonder about Dominance behavior. What is its relationship to aggressive behavior? I group aggression and active principles pretty closely together, but there is definitely a difference. "Aggressive" seems to have more of a connotation of "competition". "Domination" is more about removing the competition. In nature, time removes domination, but in many human situations our longer time frame makes domination, removing a competitor, is a good strategy. Unfortunately, it leads to a number of problems both because it removes the benefits of competition and limits diversity. Political, commercial and religious institutions (multi-generational) tend to practice domination. Individuals do too, but as said, they tend to be limited. Still, behaviors come from individuals, even if they become institutionalized. Understand and recognise the memes of domination. "There is no prize for second place". "We will crush them". "Do not worry about collateral damage". Somewhat recent archetypes of domination include Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, William Randolph Hearst (the Chief), J. P. Morgan, Standard Oil, some familiar, but unnamed evangelical leaders and endless more. Domination can be represented by an individual or an institution. We often call individuals practicing domination, megalomaniacs. Currently it is easy to see how damaging institutionalized dominance behavior is in all major institutions. It creates political gridlock, economic manipulation and religious wars. Some years ago, a certain Speaker of the House formulated a plan for complete political domination based on demonizing the opposition and allowing no compromise. His plan bore fruit. If anything can destroy the democracy of the United States, that will be it. Financial manipulation is usually more hidden, but it involves extensive warfare. Financial institutions particularly would rather dominate than compete and it makes sense to use any political or legal manipulation or even extra-legal strategy possible to control a market or revenue source. Think drug cartel violence. It would be expected to involve incredible corruption. Think early American railroads. Think oil wars. In terms of banks, think of "too big to fail". It sounds like a dominance strategy. Religions will remove competition when possible and have historically justified the killing of heretics. Aggression and dominance behaviors are similar. They are closely associated, but not inseparably. Aggression and competition are important, but dominance seems to be a problem. There will be definite differences in genetic predisposition that could be exploited. If there is any behavior that I think we should use artificial selection to decrease, it is dominance behavior. It is an aspect of exploitation. It conflicts with democracy. It conflicts with human and individual rights, which I think are critical to human progress. It tends to pit individuals and groups against each other. It resists change and adaptation. It puts the interests of a group above the interests of the society and when institutionalized, can become a hazard to the society. Domination is much of the reason that law has developed through history, It is why democracy was created and is a form of government based on checks and balances. It is why there are laws against monopolies and controlling economic institutions. It is when power corrupts. I do not see an easy way to override dominance behavior with another behavior. I recommend great caution, but I do recommend selecting against it. A moral lesson would be that individuals and the society should always reject and resist domination behaviors.

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6. Curiosity
Humans have many natural balances that are critical to survival and with current knowledge changing those balances seems risky. The idea of using artificial selection to increase health, beauty and brains, seems safe enough in general, but an increase in intelligence is an inherent change in balance, I think it will be necessary and safe enough. There is one other behavior that I would think safe and important to adjust. That is curiosity. We need a greater awareness of ourselves and the world around us. It would be an instinct to learn and use one's mind. In ways, this relates to the topic of what has been called Self Actualization.

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7. Masculine and Feminine.
Human nature has been explored and described using both reason and emotion far as long as there has been self awareness. When a woman first thought introspectively, her next though was to ask why men are different. It is not even about sexual orientation. There are very feminine men who are extremely heterosexual and very masculine men that are strongly homosexual. Women are similar. The problem to usefully understanding this is to describe the things that differ between what we label as masculine and feminine. In terms of sex, it is fairly easy, men are attracted to women and women are attracted to men. In terms of mammalian biology, it is also fairly straight forward. Beyond that, good luck. It is important though. Characteristic reproductive strategies are changing due to technology. The usefulness of physical competition is changing for the same reason. Masculine behavior is associated with war and other destructive dominance behaviors. Also and perhaps most importantly, we are seeing males not fitting well into the modern society. The modern world is demanding and rewarding cooperative (typically feminine) behaviors more than competitive (typically masculine) behaviors. The reality is that too often the men are found in their coffee houses, hookah bars or pubs complaining about the world and wishing that they had a relevant part in it. This examination of masculine and feminine is oriented around them. There are many aspects to masculine behavior. It must be figured out which connotations are going to help or hinder survival.

Connotations of masculine behavior are said to include honor, risk, respect, lack of compromise and others, but the connotation that will need to be focused on for survival and for masculine principles to integrate into the developing ecology is doing what must be done. That is pragmatism and stoicism in the face of difficulty. That is the best moral strategy that men can use as a philosophical foundation for survival in the future. It is a natural aspect of masculine behavior that must be cultivated genetically, morally and in lore.

Masculine and feminine behavior aside from sex in a very heterosexual individual, can be very fluid between the sexes. Some people are very masculine and very feminine. Even dominance can have its place. They tend to mask it some as it can be disconcerting to others. I would assume that this would be a good thing allowing for communication and a greater general behavioral repertoire.

Another interesting point is that as men come under similar reproductive constraints as women, their strategies will include more feminine methods. Men would be expected to become more beautiful. Currently (to the best of my knowledge and according to theory) there are proportionally more beautiful women than there are men. It can be hard to say as there seems to be conflicting evidence about how men and women perceive beauty. Both have far more magazines about feminine beauty. No doubt some women value masculine beauty and no doubt some men are beautiful, but are we talking about masculine beauty or feminine beauty? It may be that masculine beauty (whatever that is) becomes largely replaced by feminine beauty or it may be that women will take on some aspects of masculine beauty. It is just something I will try to describe, not solve. Note that there is a very different characteristic shape to the abdominal region of men and women and it is associated with beauty.

Women should avoid some of the behaviors considered typical of the gender and learn something from masculine behavior. Women are usually less inclined to humor, supposedly because it has an aspect of risk taking. Women are known for being harsh to other women and lacking fraternity. They certainly seem to know how to organize and collaborate though. Women can be very selfish, which makes sense evolutionarily. Evolutionarily men needed to be more cooperative to hunt. In terms of evolution women may have less interest in sex other than having children. This can cause discord in a marriage, because men generally want sex until they die... which makes evolutionary sense. All things considered, that might be good for women as well. It is an addition, which is usually safe. Really this is likely to be largely a matter of individuals, but all people should know their weaknesses and try to compensate for them.

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8. Honesty
Honesty is commonly seen as more than a survival issue because dishonesty is mentioned as a sin in many religions. It seems so simple to say that one must be truthful, always. It does not even make sense socially. Yes, a person's social position and reputation will be based on their honesty, but there is obviously more to it than that. Totally honesty is just going to conflict with manners and cause social friction. There are people that will say that they are so honest that they are going to tell the truth no matter how much it might hurt, insult or anger another person, but they are often just being mean and rude. A person with a reputation for dishonesty though will not be trusted and can put their society at risk. There is a difference between the two and knowing that balance is part of the complicated education that is called socialization. There are also going to be genetic foundations to it that will need to be kept in a range of balance. The word honesty here could almost certainly be replaced with the word honor, respect, loyalty, pride or a number of other words that name virtues or vices. Loyalty and respect in particular are critical to a healthy society. Loyalty itself is a form of honesty and must be honest internally and externally. From weakness can come strength, from strength can come weakness. They are not static and must exist in a balance appropriate to the circumstance.

Avoid self deception. It is a weakness. At times, it may be useful, but only when a problem has not been solved. Solve the problem. Sometimes it will just be by being honest. If you are not honest with yourself, it can be hard to be honest with others. Never use self deception to try to be dishonest with others.

Without honesty agreements cannot be made. Neither the business contracts with which we control our resources, nor the social contracts that organize and bind our society, can exist without truth. At the same time, our society cannot work with only truth. Our society depends on courtesy. We call that manners and politeness. Our sanity depends on assumptions that are not always truth.

Respect social contracts. Just because they are not written, does not mean they are invalid. Quite the opposite. They are often unwritten because they are assumed based on what is just. A society must be just. Someone that abrogates social contracts, is violating the society.

I like to give the example of Ayn Rand. She spoke of truth with a capital 'T'. She spoke of simply telling the truth with no deception. Try it some time. It does not work. I made it about a month and I doubt I was completely honest, regardless of how much I held my tongue. She did not even mention not allowing a person to deceive themselves.

So when is truth important and when is it not wrong to violate truth? Again, like so many other human things, there is no law or rule sufficiently wise enough to answer that. It must be based on human judgment. We survive by helping each other, yet we must help ourselves as well. The two do not always go together. Mistakes are inevitable. It is like the 'atta boy' rule. One harmful act, nullifies a number of helpful acts, so one must avoid doing harm. The society can only survive a small amount of harm before it is damaged.

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9. Newness
Humans love things that are new. That is part of what drives progress, but all newness comes with an energetic cost and a survival risk. Humans love things that are familiar, but this can lead to many forms of stagnation. There is individual variation related to this based on genetics. It needs to be balanced and will become more important as new potentials are developed. Survival is the ultimate form of conservatism, but survival is accomplished by the newness of birth.

The desire for newness is what drives all forms of entertainment and virtual reality from story telling to advanced computer games. It drives far more than that.

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10. Work
There has been a lot of warfare in history for many reasons, but one of the longest ongoing conflicts has been between farmers and herders. A farmer's life was a hard one of constant labor. While a herder's life was one resembling a predator where they relaxed and conserved energy, while staying alert to the dangers of the natural terrain their animals wandered. You can see the similarity to a warrior. Farmers considered them lazy. As the farmer's tools, crops and methods improved and farmers themselves got tougher, they would have been able to farm areas that were formerly only exploitable by tribes that herded sheep, goats, cattle, horses or other domesticated animals that would graze the natural growth of an area and then move on. The herder saw them as encroaching on their traditional land. (In ways, this was a foundation of the American Civil War. It has been said that the slave owners were just managing herds of slaves.) This conflict is still happening today as new farming techniques and new crops are developed. It is also evident during the development of technology in some societies verses societies that never used technology of any kind. They were always just hunters.

This difference in work ethic has become a moral issue in many ways. Sloth or laziness is considered to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but there must be a balance and it might not be what is expected. It has been shown that there is a genetic basis to this. Monkeys could be made to be procrastinators or workaholics based on genes controlling dopamine. If we control our genes and use technology, how do we achieve a balance conducive to survival. Then the question becomes what should humans be doing? This is the old question of why are we here? That question will be considered more at the end of this book, but needs to be considered some here because of closer topics. See, the problem is that it is hard to beat or stop efficiency. The question of why are we here might not be a problem if it were not for machines. The reason has always been to struggle to survive. That is what we are adapted to do. We are genetically adapted to work for survival. That might have once been walking through the forest looking for food or working hides to make clothing. It became the caste occupations of the civil society such as farmers, scribes, craters, warriors and priests. It is an explicit philosophical concept in terms of vocation. What though, if we did not need to work and perhaps there was no work, because automation is more efficient? It may be that procrastination and the passiveness of the pastoralist could be survival traits. This is a challenge posed by technology and automation and is one of the most profound questions I have encountered. It is something that only the future will tell, but the problem can be laid out some. As my brother so delicately puts it, often those made chronically unemployed by automation or obsolescence, become surely drunks. Humans, like all species have always existed in a context of a struggle to survive. What if that struggle is removed by technology and automation? The danger of sloth is obvious, but then can we devote our lives to personal education, socializing, sports and entertainment (often in virtual reality). Can humans retain a monopoly on creativity? Humans like newness and entertainment. If we are not occupied by the demands of survival, perhaps we will be distracted by virtual reality. We are good at time structuring. With children making up less of the population, the newness of children could become more widely recognized for its real value.

This is a thought that has already occurred to modern thinkers. A theme that has been repeatedly visited by speculative fiction writers is the effect of robots and automation on humanity. Possibilities are described ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. In any case the effect is already very profound and will become more so as computers can replace human thought. This seems important in a number of cases. The first case to mention would seem to be about the risk of human sloth and subsequent weakness brought on by robotic pampering. Note that two of the most visionary SciFi series, Frank Herbert's Dune and Isaac Asimov's Foundation, were based on that premise and both wrote that they did not see how humans could co-exist with robots.

This will become a more and more important moral issue. A crutch can lead to weakness. If it does, it will have to be solved by moral knowledge. For many years I wondered how that moral knowledge could be taught without endangering the person's life. Self awareness is created by many things, but requires a behavioral release. In humans that is usually a challenge to survival. I wondered how you could cause this release without overly endangering the person's life. Eventually I figured out that the solution might be something that could safely be provided by virtual reality.

Then again it could be different if we went into space. Life for humans in an artificial habitat could be so labor demanding that it will only be accomplished by workaholics with the help of highly developed machines to make and maintain the artificial habitats.

It would be best if a human had the genetic potentials to be both a workaholic or able to relax as the situation demands. How we deal with this may be different experiments by different groups (populations) as development has proceeded in the evolutionary past. There will be a genetic and moral component to this. Competing with machine labor is a bad idea in any case. Hopefully "Moravec's Paradox", will hold and humans will always naturally have places that computers cannot replace.

Really, it takes work to accomplish anything.

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Here is a concept referring back to the Aspirations section. This is a stretch and since I avoid speculation about that topic, I will cover myself by mention something Larry Niven wrote. In his scifi vision of the universe, humans were actually descended from a specie called the Pak (who had built the Ring World) who were divided into Breeders and Protectors. Compared to their modern human descendants, Pak Breeders were primitive (basically homo-habilis). They were like butterflys though in that with maturity (and a viral infusion of genes), they metamorphised into Pak Protectors. Pak Protectors were extremely intelligent and extremely scary, but not reproductive. They had hard wired instincts to protect their genetically related Breeders and they fought endlessly to do that. In that description, humans were like Pak Breeders and had evolved from them when a crisis killed all the Pak Protectors long ago on Earth. It is a great story that describes a "human" specie that metamorphised into another form. It is not a big stretch. In ways that story is similar to what the Aspirations section suggests, sort of. It describes humans on Earth as metamorphising into life in Virtual Reality. Those living in Virtual Reality would be as different as Pak. Maybe they would be the ones to do work and take care of humans on Earth, including directing artificial selection. You still have a purpose problem. Maybe it would become to foster the development of intelligent species, particularly if entities in virtual reality did network/merge into the plurality described in the Aspirations section. This is just meant to offer a thought because of the potentials of artificial selection and artificial reality, that the human future could be and is very likely to be very different that we are now likely to figure out. In that I and this book follow the conservative principles of biology, that is not how I think, but... Luckily I do not have to solve this problem, but then to further suggest why I do not want to try, consider if life in virtual reality could reproduce. If not or if there was a limit on the originality of life created in virtual reality, that would explain a lot related to religions. Maybe only the randomness of biological process could ... Whups, brain overload, overload, overload. Danger, Danger Will Robinson.

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11. 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 most naturally 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 that is learned, 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. The human mind is a pattern recognition device and will make patterns where there are none. 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, there 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 an extremely complex balance to the system that extends over lifetimes.

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 learnable 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 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 and is important to survival.

We have the rational archetype of Mr. Spock. Yet even that archetype included a time of intense irrational passion. Without it, what do we have? No desires? No hobbies or avocations? No love? Having children with all the work, sacrifice and yes, pain is not entirely rational. Neither would be the happiness they bring or the exstasy and satisfaction of love. Life is tough. We need an irrational drive to face it. Part of it is faith, the will to live, but there is more to life than survival and a lot of it is neither logical or rational, but it can be a lot of fun.

This is another important human behavior that is genetically based as well as learned. I leave this to wiser people of the future to suggest what we might want to do to to our genes in relation to this. I think it will be difficult and hazardous to try to change. It certainly should not be changed without good reason. If one thinks we should be more rational, then we should try to increase intelligence to understand causality, not reduce irrationality.

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12. 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.

At the same time, Personal Power is probably like ego. Too much or too little is a bad thing.

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13. Ego and Ethnicity
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. Worse yet, in extreme cases some people manage to come to the conclusion that they are perfect, whatever that means. It is immoral for a number of reasons. It is dangerous to survival and social interaction. There are genetic foundations to egocentricity that need to be kept in a balance appropriate to the society the individual is in. I can also see where virtual reality could offer what would be a very painful lesson in reality

In ways, Ethnicity is similar to egocentricity. It can be quite helpful to believe in the superiority of one's race and quite dangerous. It is assumed that artificial selection will so intermix the races that ethnocentricity will be come mostly meaningless. In the mean time there may be individuals that think that their tribe is so superior that they should not intermingle with other tribes. This will eventually become a suicidal strategy. With hybridization from artificial selection, tribalism and ethnocentricity may disappear. It would probably not be missed.

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14. Risk Taking
Risk taking is considered to have a strong genetic basis. Its traditional importance to survival is not that hard to guess. The payoff of a risk can be enormous. Survival requires risk taking. Just getting a mate almost always requires risk taking. Gaining status usually has meant taking risks. Failure to take a risk at the right time is likely to mean complete failure in so many endeavors. At the same time it is also easy to see why there has to be a balance. The cost of failure when taking a risk is usually high and can be the loss of life. It is important to recognize when the downside of risk is relatively less than the upside, but that is not always what must determine if a risk should be taken. It is nice if risk can be avoided, but it just often cannot be and must not be avoided without rational reason. Also, risk can be managed by having a fallback plan.

Risk is likely to be a more positive strategy in a chaotic situation than in stable situations. Risk can be fun though and is part of newness.

Our current society has worked strongly to cut down risk in terms of injury and death. In a society where genetic wealth is common, there may be less reason to take risk to get a good mate. Another way of looking at it is that in an ecology like we are heading towards where reproductive strategy is more quality than quantity, the risk reward equation changes to where risk is less important to individual survival. At the same time, I could easily see where individual risk aversion could hurt the society as a whole. Great strides are made with great risk. It would be safer for the society to restrict risky experimentation to individuals to see the results before embracing them. This would apply to some more exotic aspects of artificial selection. The society should be conservative, but not overly inhibit personal experimentation.

Another way of looking at it is that there is risk if we become too conservative. The society might well become dangerously unadaptive or even dangerously boring.

Similar to Risk Taking behavior is Impulsiveness. The difference is the idea that risks are usually calculated whereas impulsiveness is more intuitive or even thoughtless. Thought must be the basis of how humans survive. Impulsiveness should be saved for circumstances that are not serious or dangerous.

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15. Individuality and Conformity
One of the biggest divisions in the philosophies of the peoples of the world has to do with Individuality and Conformity. In ways it is a major difference between East and West. They do not seem to be all that balanced, but they must be. Unfortunately it is hard enough to describe normal ranges of both, let alone extremes. Conformity would seem to be associated with social behavior, but examination of conformist cultures sometimes shows extreme self interest to the point of threatening the society. Individuality is superficially associated with less social behavior, but it does not seem to work out that way. Creativity is associated with individuality.

This is a case where I have not heard of known genetic foundations for these differences, though I assume that they exist. There does on the other hand exist strong learned components to them. In any case, these are attributes that will have to be left for far wiser people in the future than I to understand and evaluate. Also, that evaluation will likely need to be based on ecological factors that are currently unknown. Again it would be expected that a balance should be available to the individual based on the situational requirements.

There is another major point to this that is very problematic but ultimately may be very important. It reaches into the realm of speculation, but its potential importance makes it worth considering. It has survival and philosophical implications and often has been a popular topic for SciFi writers, but it may well already be happening. How it plays out may be based on intent and decision or it may just be how it happens. It is best though to explicitly understand it.
Humanity is young. There are so many fundamental unknowns. One that I will mention here is "Inclusive Fitness" as it is referred to in biology. You will be familiar with the concept in other ways. On the web, it is found to be defined as "The expansion of the concept of the fitness of a genotype to include benefits accrued to relatives of an individual since relatives share parts of their genomes. Hence an apparently altruistic act toward a relative may in fact enhance the fitness of the individual performing the act." This part is not a huge issue in biology or to understand. It sort of says if you help your family genetically survive, you are helping yourself genetically survive because of your relatedness. The problem is when you mention Group Selection. What is the relatedness and importance of the relatedness in the group? If the relatedness is cultural or social and you protect the society, such as a person going to war, are you enhancing your genetic survival potential? Or even more questionably, does the society and culture have enough importance to survival as to require it. In the first case, it would mostly then depend on the relatedness of individuals. In the second case, the entire society and culture could be exterminated. It has happened. Also entire parts of cultures have been exterminated (say the political class and warrior component) while the rest of the culture survived and thrived (It seems that modern warfare is supposed to accomplish that)... On the other hand, mentioning Group Selection to a biologist may get them rather upset. As Professor Moldenke, my ecology instructor explained "we all die alone". It is a problematic, but important issue and only recently has there been any mathematical modeling to indicate its potential validity (Hamilton's Rule). If anything stretches our ability to use Darwin's principles for understanding human survival, this is it and it makes for some serious difficulty. Worse yet, it may well be up to us and human decision. Is the importance of culture and society to survival reducing the importance of the individual in this ecology? In the long term, it will likely be human decisions that determine how genetically related we are and how interdependent. Then again, in simpler terms it is just a matter of that together things can be accomplished that an individual simply cannot do. I think that is actually the most important point. Often survival, even of unrelated individuals in a civil society becomes possible only when they cooperate. Cooperation may have developed in tribal environments where people were closely related, but it is far more than that now. Well, it is all OK. Artificial selection will change a bunch of other factors such that we will be going far into the unknown zone anyway. Almost anything will be possible. I sure hope our understanding will be up to it. This is when space flight becomes important. In biology, evolution proceeds largely by experiments in isolated populations. It is going to be difficult to have isolated cultures on Earth so we are going to have to get it right the first time, so to speak and there is almost certainly more than one way to survive. If spaceflight becomes practical, humans may naturally experiment with different systems. Hopefully we will use a great deal of smart modeling to decide where we want to direct our future and direct it we must. The degree of Individuality and Collectivism will be one of the most critical decisions humans make. We need to make it in a way that can be adjusted as needed.

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16. Humility and Confidence
Confidence is good. Arrogance risks mistakes and can be annoying. Humility can be a good thing or it can be crippling. Degree of humility can also be socially dictated, but has genetic foundations as well that must be kept in balance.

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17. Tattling
Also related to the individual versus the society might be tattling. It too has a questionable genetic basis, but it needs a balance in the society. Too much for too little reason and it is just spiteful and disruptive. At the same time, it can be necessary to preserve the truth and even the society.

There are going to be a number of factors that come into the judgment of tattling.

The formal moral system of the community.
The degree of family or community relatedness of the two parties.
The severity of the improper conduct.
The negative consequence to the community of the two parties.
The stress that the larger society is under.

Currently, there are institutions that demand the reporting of internal improper conduct by those who may witness it. These tend to be the institutions referred to as the Authorities. These groups include military officers, police agencies, clergy, the judiciary and various groups or communities that need or desire to have a high moral standard or who is functions include the teaching or enforcement of moral standards.

There is the institution of the news media that has often held its responsibility to be that of finding and reporting violations of the public trust as well as private injustices and crimes. It is their job to keep the public informed and is particularly critical in a democracy. They tend to accumulate no stigma for tattling, but they can if they are too zealous and are judged to have harmed the community by telling about crimes that are not perceived as harmful or if they did it to fulfill their own agenda. On the other hand, they may be judged immoral if they knowingly fail to report crimes for some reason. Not only may they be considered culpable for the crime in some way, but they may be judged to have violated the public trust. They are trying to use public censure to forward their goals, rather than protect the community. The media is supposed to take a neutral position in their reporting, otherwise they are just another tool in someone's employ. Privacy may come into play here. If someone violates another person's privacy to expose their misdeed, they may well be judged as having acted worse than the person they are exposing.

An important factor to consider in this examination is a change in ecology that is the size of the communities that an individual lives in. In some ways, we still live in families and the small community that is our immediate social group, but crimes are often committed in the context of a very broad and impersonal society. This is a change. There is far more anonymity now than there has been in the past.

Consider that as part of the cooperative habits that human society requires, trust must be very widespread, so the determination of when to tattle on a person is not always determined by their degree of separation of the people in the community. Trust must be pretty broad and every time a person is betrayed to the authorities, it reduces that general level of trust. So the frequency of betrayal must be kept to a minimum, no matter how unrelated the person is. Still, the more close is the community that two people exist in, the more the need for trust and the more they need to refrain from tattling.

The consequence of being told on, tends to harm the family and community that the person is part of. That is another inhibition against tattling on a member of ones family or community.

Also factored into this is the effect on the individual being told on. It may cause minor censure or destroy their life. It may be judged that perhaps a parent is guilty of a crime, but reporting it would badly harm their family. If the crime will not be repeated, perhaps it was an accident, there is no benefit to the society to report it and inevitably damage. If a crime is ongoing, the threat of exposure may be enough to stop it. Still, sometimes a crime must be exposed to discourage its re-occurrence elsewhere in the society. More than the degree of separation, the moral decision of whether to "tattle" on another person must be determined by the consequence of their improper actions. If a family member litters, it may be considered proper that they be reprimanded, but only in private so that collateral harm is minimized. On the other hand if they are doing something that will cause physical harm to someone, it is usually considered morally proper to report them before they can do significant harm.

Unfortunately, this modern world can be impersonal and corruptive that it seems that it is frequently morally appropriate to report a person who is breaking the rules. It is quite possible that what is at stake is the society. Over and over again, we see societies destroyed or co-opted by criminal behavior. Regardless of the reason, that is a common fact. Perhaps it will change due to individual moral behavior or more effective police methods, but likely it is largely a result of living in a larger society and so it will continue to be a problem.

Morality and moral judgment must be adaptive in the complex relationship between the benefits and costs of tattling, but the decision must be based on the consequence to the larger society. Public "whistleblowers" should be protected. Tattling is about law and so there is no perfect law to describe when it should occur. Like all laws, it requires a judge and judgment to make it work properly.

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18. Greed
In biological terms, greed is the excessive hoarding of resources. What is the significance of greed? I think that would be most correctly answered by asking how it would effect cooperation than in terms of an individual's resources. Greed tends to be a problem because it generally goes against social behaviors. It is about me and mine. Any description of a stable human ecology says that resources are not going to be the primary limiting factor that they have been in the past. What is the source and result of greed, past and present? There are a few aspects to greed that should be considered. These include resources, status and self.

Resources are the term we put on the energetics part of all ecologies. Many animals hoard food when food is plentiful for seasons when it is scarcer. Humans though take it to a different level because their resources are more extensive and can be more than food hoarded from one season to another. Also human resource hoarding can be facilitated by economic instruments representing resources that have no time limit. Humans can actually accumulate and hoard far more resources than they can ever use. I suspect that greed is related to neolithic hunting behavior in that it is a very powerful drive and has no apparent off switch. It may also be about aggressiveness and dominance.

When examining most any specie and especially humans, most behaviors should be examined in terms of status and reproduction. In many ways, greed just looks like reproductive resource behavior common to mammals. They aggressively compete to dominate whatever the most limited reproductive resource there is whether it is a territory, a harem, a reproductive beach or any other resource that gives a reproductive edge. In humans that includes whatever give social status, notably wealth. In humans that are polygamous, greed is more useful as a survival trait than when humans are monogamous. In moral terms, this is significant, because it suggests morality and greed are morally/strategically related. Generally monogamy is a quality strategy and polygamy is a quantity strategy. It appears that humans are developing to a more quality oriented strategy of reproduction based on a greater investment in fewer children. The trouble with greed is that a person often gets wealthy because they love wealth. That can conflict with the values needed for survival of the family.

Greed is another one of the behaviors with a characteristic of self to it and so has some basis in the Parietal Lobe where one's concept of self is managed. That this trait is at least partly hardwired from the genes shows it to be one of the most difficult moral/survival/ethical/philosophical problems that humans will have to resolve. For survival of the individual and society there will have to be a pretty fine balance between a person's concept of self and others. In terms of artificial selection, it will take a lot of wisdom to know what represents a balance for survival. If humans become more cooperative to survive, we will want to select for less focus on self and more on others. Too much reduction in sense of self may also be quite dangerous to survival as ecology and evolution have generally demonstrated that they operate on the individual. Inclusive fitness, fitness of the group, seems less important in nature than the fitness of the individuals of the group. In future human ecologies though, that could change drastically in that our primary survival strategy includes cooperation. Individual greed is not likely to be a good strategy and it would be hard for groups to manage inevitable rivalries that wealth of a group would lead to, verses the potential advantages greed would provide.

Greed would most likely be a good survival strategy in an ecology where resources are a primary limiting factor for the species. Human planning will have to be the main limiting factor in human ecology or we will not be in a new ecology.

As I see it though the greatest problem with greed is that it blinds a person. I saw it in the Pyramid schemes, another name for Ponzi schemes. I see it in the disastrous economic crash of 2009. A person must avoid being fooled. Greed is the best way to blind a person that you want to swindle.

Materialism can be a plague that competes with far more important values. Need I repeat? There must be a balance.

Some more thought on another topic makes me wonder if greed is not actually a connotation of dominance behavior. It seems quite likely. To dominate wealth and resources. As in other descriptions of dominance, this describes a conflict between an individual and the society. My best understanding suggests that greed, like dominance, will work against developing the kind of society that we describe in our aspirations.

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19. Happiness
It has been debated whether happiness is necessary to survival. Temporarily, perhaps not, but life must be about more than survival. It must be why we survive. It may not even be for us. It might not be for our children, but it must be for theirs. Animals survive only for survival. Humans must do that, but they must do it for more as well. Luckily we are made to survive and be happy doing it. There is a genetic component to happiness that must be kept in a balance. Happy people are not driven. It is better if happiness is learned.

The Greek Epicurus used the term Kinetic to describe he pleasures of the body. He noted the problem of the development of dependency upon them. They can be enjoyed, but they must not become an addiction where the person depends on them or is distracted by them from the business of survival.

Humans may be more than animals, but that is a pretty recent development if so.

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13. Individual Morality

        ... or how I re-wrote my Morality Monographs notes

This is just a listing of various topics in morality that I wanted to consider. The purpose is not as much to describe moral issues and solutions as describe how to make judgments about what is important and to judge what it means based on the criteria that seem important. Some topics may initially come as a surprise. They are so obvious that we never think of them, actually, we are generally designed not to think about moral topics. They are just unquestioned and unexamined beliefs. Most of these topics exist. Some of them will change little in the future. Some will change greatly. All need to be understood in a biological context.

Topics Considered:
1. Communication
2. Sanitation
3. Touching
4. Manners
5. Speech
6. Running
5. Dancing
8. Leadership
9. Faith - The Key to Survival
10. Love - How We Can survive and Grow
11. Men, Women and Sociobiology
12. Emotional Energy - What Comes Around, Goes Around
13. Psychological Stimulation
14. Selfishness
15. Obsession

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1. Communication
Communication is generally the first lesson we are taught. A large part of intelligence is for communication. Communication is a basic aspect of socialization. Our brains are designed to quickly learn language and other forms of communication. We communicate unconsciously with touch, with our bodies and emotions. Our faces are designed for communication by subtle movement. Later we learn to communicate with what we wear and our learned mannerisms. An infant probably thinks about communicating before being born. Learning communication skills is a lifelong process and does much to determine a person's place in life. There are large genetic components to communication and these should be husbanded. Virtual reality can be used to teach it.

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2. Sanitation
Why mention sanitation so prominently? Because it is the first survival lesson taught to children. Also, it is one of the most important.

The lessons of moralities are many and varied. The earliest lessons we are taught include personal sanitation. Our tree dwelling ancestors had no reason for an instinct to avoid fouling their temporary nest. As we have developed the habit of occupying the same location continuously, we have started to develop cleaner habits in the direction of the habits of a cat. According to Desmond Morris, this is also why we lost a lot of our hairiness, so as to avoid the hazard of fleas. That was a genetic adaptation. Since we do not have a well developed instinct towards cleanliness necessary to sedentary or civil living, it must be taught. Theoretically we could undergo a good deal of genetic adaptation to the problem (and have, such as increased disease resistance), but the human way is to adapt behaviorally and that is where moral rules come in. Sanitation is a basic part of all moral systems, often separate from religion.

Sanitation illustrates an interesting point. While humans do not have much in the way of instincts for sanitation, some animals do, so it can be genetically based. Whether humans rely on instinct or training, one must wonder how a behavior like that could be genetically programmed in, but it almost certainly can be since other animals display limited instincts for the behavior. It seems like it would be worth artificially selecting for. Hard wiring avoids the Jack In The Box problem.

With the increase in population density, sanitation is even more important, partly in social terms, but even more in terms of disease. Lessons are dynamic. Recent concerns about new diseases have changed the messages of sanitation. instead of coughing in one's hand, you are supposed to cough into your elbow. That may seem mundane, but that is what survival is made of. If disease is as important as seems likely, sanitation is going to be one of the most important aspects of morality. Scientists have been studying what worked historically, particularly during the 1917 Spanish flu. Those lessons have become part of sanitation.

There is another issue that like many things, sanitation can be carried too far. People seem to have a fear of germs or are convinced to fear germs by marketeers. We are adapted to germs and dependent on many of them. Houses that are too clean seem to contribute to asthma and allergy as the body's defenses, unaccustomed to dust or hair, can give an extreme response when they are encountered. The body seems to function better when exposed to the common micro life in dirt. Overuse of antibiotics has led to antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Over usage of antibacterial cleaning agents in homes and hospitals seems to encourage the growth of dangerous forms of bacteria. Concern about disease is good, but fear of germs is not.

In ecological terms, humans will almost certainly need to develop better ways to process human waste. At least it is currently processed not to be toxic, but we completely dispose of it. In the future it can be expected that everything humans use will need to be recycled. We are already on track to run out of the fertilizers that we depend on for food production. We throw away those nutrients and just cannot afford to. It is not just a matter of personal sanitation, it is about sustainability and they are very polluting, often by making bacterial or algae growth where it normally could not exist.

Parents and social institutions will need to carefully teach children and adults to use what sanitary practices are available and necessary. It is likely, though I hope not, that this is something that is going to greatly shape the society. Eventually, the most dangerous diseases may be the ones we are already very familiar with. There may come a time when social physical contact becomes a rarity, but that will indicate an ecology that is not stable.

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3. Touching Touching is the name of an amazing book by Ashly Montagu that describes in great length and detail the importance of touching to humans, especially for the young. Children thrive on it and weaken when denied it
Humans have great dexterity. Partly it is because of our use of tools, but a large part of our skills come from mutual grooming as is common to social primates. This shows a large genetic component. In that it is an existing innate skill, it should be enhanced as possible for both tool use and personal touch. It is interesting that massage generally takes a great deal of concentration.
I have a pretty good touch. It is one of the things I learned along the way. I took up massage as a hobby, because it fascinated me that it was one of the few activities that took my full attention to do correctly. It is completely non-verbal. I have been known to get bored at family get togethers and start walking around giving neck rubs. It never gets anyone bothered. The pets like it too. I can touch soft enough to drive almost any dog into glassy eyed bliss.

Now I have children. I wondered what putting theory into practice might mean.

One thing I noticed about Mr. Montague's discussion about the importance of touching, is that he did not define what constituted the best touching. Is it hugs and kisses or perhaps a gentle tickle for a child? No, he did not say near as much about quality as quantity. So I decided long ago to put that into practice. My kids get hugs certainly, but they also get poked, pinched, their hair ruffled and pulled, cold wet fingers on the neck, and more tickling than I think I would ever have enjoyed. When I go shopping with them, my son used to put his head under my arm so that it looks like I am dragging him through the store by the head. Some of what I do is not going to feel real good, but at the base of every touch is the gentleness and sensitivity of touch I learned that is what would make a pet go glassy eyed and half asleep. This was personally verified over years of testing. A gentle touch is best, but it is not the only touch. It also depends on the child.

The point it, they seem to eat up physical contact just like Mr. Montagu said they would. It gives them confidence such that they need it a little less from their peers. It is a method of communication. This essay is to mention the importance of touching to humans especially during development. No one describes this better than Mr. Montague. More than just from my studies of humans, I have found from my experience that he is quite correct.

Much of our present manual dexterity is thought to have come from social grooming. In current primate species it serves to remove parasites, but far more importantly it provides for social bonding and comfort. If you want to do something for your significant other, give them something of a massage. Is there anything more pleasurable? Try brushing their hair. In the future we may need to fill in more time. Socially is one of the best ways to do that and social massage may be one way we can. It has no apparent downside.

Touch is important socially, but it is those same skills that now provide the dexterity needed for advanced tool use and for playing a musical instrument. This is a trait I can see being artificially selected for that has no downside.

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4. Manners
Manners are an essential part of social behavior. They are the lubrication that allows a society to operate with the minimum of friction. It dictates how we expect to interact with another person. Manners are our primary formal way to avoid conflict. Manners are one of the ways we judge a person. Children must be carefully and consistently taught manners as it will effect their success in society and life. Manners are part of what make a person pleasant to socialize with. If we are trying to increase our social skills, manners are a good place to focus. At the same time, ritualized manners tend to be developed for reasons of exclusion. I recommend against those. Social grace is a far better form. As manners are part of social behavior, there are genetic as well as learned components.

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5. Speech
Speech is our commonest form of communication. It uses language to rapidly communicate a good deal of information. Speech can be made to convey far more meaning than just what is in the words. The cooperation that is the foundation of human survival would not be possible without speech. The rich social behaviors of all human activity require speech. Speech is what teams use for communication when working together and may have a language learned by and specialized for the team. While speech for humans is usually based on sound for transmission, it need not be. A variety of languages exist for the deaf and the sign alphabet can be communicated by touch.

Speech definitely says something about a person. Speaking exposes a person. The question is, how much can any person understand and perceive in that message. The words are almost certainly the most important part for humans. The emotional content is extremely important as well and is expected to get more important as humans evolve more emotionally. Speech is important to socializing in many ways from critical communication ability to storytelling. Speech is a large part of what socializing is.

A human must develop their skills at speech both in terms of words and emotion. It may well be that speech is limited by human potential and humans are limited by the potentials of their speech. Speech seems like a good place to try to take advantage of artificial genetic selection. It is hard to say how what the potentials are, but it certainly has been a focus of natural selection since humanity's origins and is fundamental to what a human is.

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6. Running
Humans are bipedal. Walking is like a controlled fall. We evolved that was for covering large distances to look for food. Humans are also runners. We are designed for it by evolution and over a distance our efficient bipedal method allows humans to outrun any other animal on feet. It was not only a primary hunting technique, it also is a primary defense technique. In that it is a human specialization, we are well enough designed for it by nature that it will be difficult to improve on it much with artificial selection. It is one of the most special abilities we have and it will be one of the hardest to improve. Evolution already has.

There was an amusing point made about artificial selection. Would a committee of Chimpanzees or Gorillas, when contemplating potential evolutionary paths for their species, choose something like a human? Would they select for the loss of strength, loss of hair and smaller teeth?

Recently there was a discussion of what the improvements could be made in humans. Mostly, the decisions were based on what wore out quickest on humans, such as the hips, back, knees, hearts and eyes as well as some other features. Accordingly, their design was for improvements in these areas. A picture of this supposed improved person looked a bit odd with larger heavier hips and legs than are common now. They did not look like runners.

We will find the genetic potentials for improvements in the heart, eyes, joints, hearing and such, but when it comes to modifications in structure, I would be careful and keep certain things in mind. Since that is what we are primarily designed for running, I would suggest that we work to retain and enhance that ability. We should work to enhance what abilities we already have and are designed for. Besides running, we have a special talent for climbing and exceptional vision. Selecting for modifications that change our basic strategies are to be considered most carefully and hesitantly. We should take advantage of what we have from evolution.

Sometimes survival is just a matter of running away from danger. It is a simple strategy. When younger I met a number of gentlemen that had small tattoos on their arms. They were put there by the Nazis. Their stories seemed similar. They were the only member of their families that survived. The lived because they were fleet and they ran at the right time.

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7. Dancing
Dancing is an extremely common and popular social activity. Like other social activities it contributes to the cohesiveness of the society and can be an important part of reproductive behavior. As far as entertainment or distraction from the stresses of the realities of survival, it has to be one of the cheapest and most positive forms of recreation there is. I do not qualify as much of a dancer, but I recognize that it is immensely popular and has almost none of the drawbacks of many other forms of recreation. Usually it is inherently social. It brings together groups. Individual dance should be considered differently from group or couple dancing that includes the deep communication of a team. Dance also draws on many other genetically based potentials including rhythm and grace. The genetic potentials for it should be carefully husbanded.
Dancing also has erotic connotations that will be considered under the topic of Sex.

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8. Leadership
The importance of leadership to survival cannot be overestimated or overstated. It is important in terms of morality from two points of view; both the importance of leadership and the importance of providing leadership.
A society thrives under good leadership. Under bad leadership, it becomes a topic of history. Without leadership, a society is like a person that is brain damaged or insane. Good things are not going to come from it. This is especially true in modern societies with well established, highly hierarchical lines of authority representing leadership. This is extremely well described in history and should be common moral knowledge based on survival. At all levels of society and organizations, leadership is fantastically important. Laws and charters are made to try to assist or replace leadership, but so far we do not know any perfect system of rules that can work without human judgment.
It is highly moral for a person to provide leadership in state, society, organization, family and in day to day activities. It is an essential element to the workings of society. Leadership is often the essence of cooperation. Cooperation allows us to accomplish far more than an individual can. A leader, like a brain, is to make different parts work together.
The importance of leadership may be why inclusive fitness could be extremely important in human survival. It has already been mentioned that humans have a genetic predisposition to seek and create moral systems. The same seems true of leaders.
At the same time, the critical importance of leadership shows how unevenly we are adapted to the requirements of even the current ecology. We are quite aware of what a relatively few brilliant artists, intellectuals and creative team leaders have been able to provide humanity. Think Leonardo De Vinci, Marie Curie, Nicola Tesla, Rosalind Franklin, William Shockley, Steve Jobs. Think of the artistic offerings of Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Gershwin, John Williams and so many more, yet so few. They have offered us such wealth. Partly this is intelligence and can be provided greatly by artificial selection. It is other things as well though and the society must foster that.

So what makes a leader? Surely there are genetic components. Artificial selection should be used to provide the potential for teamwork. A person should be able to lead or follow as needed.

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9. Faith - The Key to Survival
Faith. What a loaded word. Because of its importance to human survival it has gotten associated with religions and Gods, but there is far more to it than that and it has very Earthly importance. Faith is what we call survival instinct in other animals. It is the basic survival instinct of humans.
Faith is an interesting topic because of the different meanings available to it. It is defined as belief in something without proof. To most people it means a belief in God without proof. Yet its meaning in terms of biology is and must be completely different. Faith is a genetically based. It is the foundation of a number of instinctive behaviors including the most basic of human survival instincts. It is also what drives humans to seek out and use learned survival strategies, including religions.
More than anything, Faith seems to be an emotion. Faith is like love. It is a natural human behavior. Different things bring it out. It can develop for different reasons. It can grow slowly or all at once. It has many meanings. It can bring happiness and fulfillment. We can desire it without understanding the desire. It can be learned and can grow over time. Both love and faith are essential elements of human survival and have a genetic basis that make them natural to learn. It is how we are designed.
Data from twin studies suggest that faith is inheritable. That is even mentioned in the Bible. Some people have faith. Some do not. That begs just how common it is.
Faith is a fundamental part of human drive. One can have faith in country, self, a god, a religion, a leader or many other things. Faith is to assign an importance to something. Until a person places an importance on something, it is really not part of their world. It is a matter of awareness or consciousness. Other words might be used, such as belief or respect, but faith is the behavior being described and it is a powerful behavior.
Part of faith is belief without understanding. That is important to humans because there is so much we do not understand, especially about our drives and our survival. Too much understanding can interfere with feeling and it is feeling that makes us live. Religions often claim to be the source of faith, but they know better. Truly, faith is the source and religion is the product. In that case, religion is an expression of people's faith that there is more than we know or can directly experience. On of the greatest roles of religion though is to teach and foster faith.
Humans require a balanced world concept for psychological reasons. We require explanations. They do not have to be accurate, only useful to the needs of the balance of psychology. Does it matter if you know that an earthquake is a tectonic event or Poseidon's sneeze? Knowing an explanation is what matters. The human brain is a pattern recognition device. Anything that we experience must be fit into the pattern somehow. Human intelligence is primarily designed for understanding of other humans. This is why we anthropomorphize or give human attributes to things and events that are not human. It seems normal and comfortable to give human attributes to the sea, the slopes, an institution, a car, computer or pet. It is our method of understanding. Often, it is projection.
So what is the source of faith? Humans require certain forms of understanding around which to base their operating view of the world. We use a concept of our self image when considering how to deal with others. Our existence makes us presuppose a creator associated with our creation. A balanced psychology produces a respect for one's life and a corresponding reverence for its source. Faith is a part of a balanced psychology and is necessary to full health. Basically, faith represents one's feelings about existence. The way we express this is to give these as human attributes of god. So gods are given the personification of what we believe, value and desire. They are a personification of faith.
One appreciates the strength and understanding available to a person who can use some human concept to acknowledge their creation and existence. It helps orient their world and develop a clear knowledge of their beliefs and values.
Realize that an atheist can have powerful faith. It may even be their faith that forces them to reject religion, as not adequate to their faith.
Faith can be seen in a person's nature. Do they believe in values? Do they believe in right and wrong? Do they believe they should build? Do they believe that it should be done right?
Look at a person's life. Did they strive? Did they value? If they did, it shows their faith.
A description of faith is all fine and dandy, but there is more to the description, or perhaps consequences. To describe faith, especially as an emotion is to tell a person how to sensitize themselves to it so that they can sense it in people they encounter. It is not to hard to sense anger or gentleness in a person. If you are aware of what faith is in a person, it is not hard to sense. So how does faith relate to survival? It is of fundamental importance. It is the difference between feeling something and being able to express it. It is part of the difference between what makes most primates fragile and humans almost impossible to kill. It also drives the filter of our values. It is what makes one chose if something is moral or if it is incorrect.

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One thing I learned long ago about looking at the topics of the influence of genes on behaviors is that while reductionism is nice and a valid tool of analysis, there is a lot of cases where genetically directed behavior is very complex. Trying to reduce the complexity of what the genes must do to direct behavior, seems natural, but it is an illusion. The genes can produce very complicated behaviors especially in the right external environment. So I will indulge in a bit of reductionism with no illusions.

According to this definition of Faith, it must explain a number of issues in terms of genes, memes and function. These are:
1. It has a strong genetically inheritable component.
2. It has a strong memetic component.
3. It promotes the use of learned survival strategies called moralities.
4. It involves belief without proof.
5. It uses reason and logic, with a bias towards survival.
6. It has a great basis of loyalty.

This is talking about a special type of survival instinct and a number of interesting extensions. The question is how much of this is linked to older survival instincts and how much is new. My belief is that Faith has been a primary focus of evolution since the start of the cities.

An interesting thing about Faith is that it seems to have more than one form of focus. Sometimes the focus seems to be on a morality, such as the lessons of a holy book. Sometimes it focuses on a God as described in a holy book. Sometimes it focuses on individuals that represent a belief system or religion. These may very well represent differences in genetic foundations. It seems very possible that the behavior, faith, was the primary trigger for the development of humans to being more than just animals. There may have been one form of faith at one time and various other forms evolved from that. Combinations probably exist with different expressions and consequences. Again, the different "flavors" of faith will have to be understood both from what their genetic basis is, how they combine and from what their effect on survival is. I would expect that the most useful form of faith is that which is directed towards moral strategies, rather than personifications in the form of individuals, whether human or God.

We know about logic and reason. Human minds can use mathematically based analysis methods. Science likes this view because it is very predictable, testable and relates to both simple mathematics and the real world. It is one of the most useful of human psychological abilities, but there is a problem with logic and reason as far as survival is concerned. It offers no reason to live. Quite the contrary, it repeatedly asks the question of why one would want to labor and struggle to survive. It inherently offers no reason to live. It is just a mathematical function.

One innovative function of Faith is to make a behavioral link between a human's logical and reasoning abilities and a survival instinct. The survival instinct validly biases the logic to a purpose, survival. I think this is a relatively new feature in humans. Of course this is where the reductionism collapses. You are not going to easily reduce that function to simplicity.

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10. Love - How We Can survive and Grow
Love is many things. It is best known as an emotion. That is a superficial description. It must also be considered as a reproductive behavior, a meme, a behavior, a strategy and other things. There are even specialized hormones related to it. Love is considered here in three contexts. First is family love that relates more directly to reproductive behavior. The second is love in a general sense as the basis of cooperative strategies that are the morality of a society. The third is just a state of mind.

Love is a behavior. It is not necessarily related to a person. A person can be angry without being angry about anything or angry at anyone. Love is the same way.

Love is best known as it functions as a reproductive behavior. It is a bonding behavior especially useful to the extended families that are basic to human survival. Ultimately it is the basis of the most cooperative current survival strategy in existence.

Passionate love is another thing and quite interesting to all concerned. It does not necessarily have to even be sexual, though it usually is. It can also be based on emotional compatibility of different types. It is largely hormonally based and is more than a just a strategy or a meme.

How do you explain water to a goldfish? Love is that way. We certainly know when it is missing. It is hard to pin down love historically, but since many animals seem to exhibit it, I will assume that it existed well before human history. It probably has been a focus of evolution since human social systems started to become more complex.

Some historians say that romantic love has a history that only goes back to the 14th century. That has to refer to a meme or a behavior, because hormones are older than that. They were probably referring to traditional courtship rituals. Looking at something like that, it must be remembered that the habits of the different classes were recorded differently in history. In history, marriage is commonly referred to as an economic relationship to retain property. Unfortunately, many people of history had marriage and children, but very little property. Property was a consequential strategy of reproductive survival.

There is another possibility though. Love, like other behaviors has a genetic basis. It seems likely that there is more than one genetic basis. What we call Romantic Love may have been a genetic contribution of the Celts. There is reason to believe this and the timing would have been about right. Like other genetic based traites, various forms of love must be understood and artificially selected for as appropriate. Love as it was known before Romantic Love, may have been far closer to friendship or cooperation more directly be related to raising children. I will leave it to the psychologists geneticists and philosophers to figure that out. Like many things, an understanding of human genetic variation may allow a reverse engineering understanding. Really, Romantic Love is one of the most rewarding behaviors humans have. All good things come at a potential cost.

Love is psychologically satisfying and consequently physiologically good for a person. This may be a love directed at another person or not. It may just be a state of mind.

Love is not only a motivation, it can also be an inspiration.

A primary importance of God to humans comes in the context of the Christian God and his teachings about love. This is cross referenced elsewhere. This whole book is based on human survival strategies based on cooperation. The most cooperative morality currently available is Christian philosophy. That philosophy is based on the teachings of a religion who says it is the primary commandment of their God. This commandment was to love God and to love one another. It seems unlikely that a less cooperative survival strategy can take us to the next ecology.

The Meaning of Love

There is a meaning to our thoughts that is not readily apparent. This is part of my interest in memes. My description of Faith showed something interesting. The dictionary definition of Faith is an unsupported belief. It is best known as a belief in a God. It is more complicated than that though because faith is an inheritable trait. Even the Bible mentions that and genetic studies show it as well. So how can genes lead to a belief in God? In its original form and purpose, faith had little to do with God. Faith is our basic survival instinct. A critical part of Faith is the instinctive drive to seek out survival strategies, the basis of how humans live. In history, these are complex moral systems that have been taught and husbanded by religions that are personified by their Gods. The instinct to seek out survival strategies leads to Gods. So the meaning of faith in genetic terms is different from the definition found in books. The book definition is a corollary of the genetic meaning.

So what is the meaning of love in these terms? I have already talked about Love as a philosophical concept, especially taught by the Christians, that is a great facilitator of cooperation in a society. The trouble with Love is that there are hormones involved too. I guess I would not have it any other way. Still, leaving out sexual and family love, there is a great deal of love in the society, for the society. This is based on an instinct to cooperate. That is how we have survived. Not only do we have a moral system teaching love, but we also have the genetic programming to love. It is perhaps closest in a team of any kind where the group is practiced at working together. Still, it is part of the general society as well. Like faith, some people do not have as much love, but it would probably be more common than faith. Cooperation was most developed by the Neolithic hunters because they had to cooperate and communicate well for the hunt, but faith seems to be something that has been a more recent focus of selection and evolution.

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11. Men, Women and Sociobiology

There are differences between men and women, if you needed to be notified.

As explained by Sociobiology, they tend to have different reproductive strategies, mostly based on different reproductive potential. A woman can potentially have a dozen children. A man can potentially have far more. It is said that 1 in 7 people in Mongolia are descended from Genghis Khan. Our basic reproductive strategy is changing though from a quantity to a quality strategy. Instead of trying to have the most children possible so that some would survive to reproductive age, we are trying to make the much greater investment in a few so that they can survive in the far more complex world we live in now. A technological society takes a longer and far more demanding developmental period than it did in a time of tribes, simple agriculture or animal husbandry or even simple manufacturing.

In most mammals the strategy was for males to use aggressiveness to reproductively dominate the most females possible. Females used coyness to make sure that they got the fittest male possible and the most resources from the male that they could. In most mammals the female raise the children with minimal or no help from the male. The long demanding development requirements of human children has changed this to some form of monogamy that in biological terms means that the male stays with the female to help raise the children. This change has defined much of the nature of humans and society. Families have become extended even to the level of the tribe or community. Anthropologists say that in natural tribal human societies this has meant that "marriage" has naturally extended to about seven years. It seems that that is the time required for development until they were less dependant on the parents and the tribe became more important to the individual's development and place in their society. As society has become more complex, this period of dependency has increased, but we are not necessarily adapted to this change.

Neither men or women are well adapted to the changes that have occurred. In a sense, men are more adapted than women, because they had to undergo a good deal more adaptation to the changes that have already occurred. Both need to adapt more. This is a case where there is great variation and there can be great ambiguity between the sexes. Any behavior typical of a particular sex can occur in the other. There is great average variation between not only individuals, but tribes and races as well. This book makes the assumption that we will continue to have a "monogamous" strategy in the future because of the increasing demands of child development in a more complex society and for other reasons that monogamy presents advantages. Current research describes the importance of men to the psychological and emotional development of children. Monogamy is not a given. Monogamy is a dependency relationship. Technology may remove that dependency. It may be that females will not need men to help them raise children. I think that is a bad thing because monogamy is also a cooperative relationship and the removal of it would greatly damage the cooperative foundation of society. Potentially though it could increase natural selection for fitness, though hopefully artificial selection will make that unnecessary. For a number of reasons, I will not follow that thread.

So it becomes a question of how men and women can adapt strategically and morally to optimize survival in a changing world and achieve our aspirations. Love is one of the primary aspirations mentioned in both religion and literature. Family is always more satisfying than any transient trend or fashion.

This is one of the last sections written. I suspect you can understand the difficulty.

The basic reproductive strategy in a monogamy is to get the fittest mate, biologically a more feminine strategy though males now practice it. It is the reason for beauty in both sexes. Our strategies are to achieve that. In the future, technology should facilitate that in different ways. We should be able to contact individuals that are the most genetically compatible and artificial selection will allow for far better genetic outcomes in our children. Also artificial selection should make everyone genetically superior.

Men have to resist their urge to try to get access to any potentially reproductive female. They must avoid some aspects of using aggressive strategy. It seems that those strategies should not be as important, partially just because of the requirements of monogamy. They are also less important because monogamy means that they do not need to try to risk everything for the potential of one or a few seasons of reproductive success like most mammals must. In most mammalian species, the majority of males never reproduce and a few are very successful when they are at their peak. In monogamy, the individual has a far better chance of reproductive success. Luckily in humans, males are well on the way to this adaptation. Males will continue to take on the feminine strategy of beauty.

Women have to resist their urges to try to get men to physically compete. It works well for showing superiority in a primitive society, but is not so good now. Women have to be careful to not follow their instinctive preference for the most aggressive males. As mentioned elsewhere "aggressive" is problematic due to its many meanings, including "active". In a way, women have had to adapt far less to monogamy than men have. Unfortunately, this means that women often consider men to be accessories, particularly after children are born. They can get focused on a man's value as a provider rather than on emotional attachment. Men may end up far more emotionally attached. This may be a good place for adaptation.

Men, do not try to dominate or control. Be respectful. Women, be gentle and generous. Do not just look at what is in it for you. Do not forget your guy when you have children. Those are your instincts speaking. Be nice to each other. Help each other. One may be the giver and one may be the taker, but it may change over time and circumstance. Do not resist that. You can have a lot together. Apart there is nothing.

Love is not necessary rational. Reproductive instincts can override reason. It is interesting in the book Dune by Frank Herbert that love was considered so dangerous because it could override reason. "Marriage" was just considered an aspect of child raising and biological survival. I understand that, but a loss of love would be a great loss and I do not think the gain would compensate. Marriage was once considered a financial institution, but we have largely progressed from that. Yes, this is about survival, but it is also about aspirations, one of the greatest of which is love. Falling in love is one of the greatest experiences a person can have.

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12. Emotional Energy - What Comes Around, Goes Around
This essay is just to describe something that happens in our interactions. This is an odd topic, but it can be important in a number of different ways especially in terms of how the parts of a society get along.

Emotions are used for communication. We can communicate happiness, despair or excitement. It is said that emotions are contagious. It can be hard to resist the communication of emotions. A person is excited and those around them will almost certainly get stimulated as well.

In terms of how our society gets along, there is another importance. In an analogy to physics, emotional energy is conserved. Anger can be passed from one person to another and then on to another and then on. The same is true of more positive emotions, though unfortunately they seem to dissipate more.

This book is about how humans can survive based upon existence in a society. This survival will be based on cooperation. Still, it is about more than just survival, it is also about how we can be happy, though survival and happiness are linked. In this sense, there is moral law on the matter. This is also about making the world a better place. It may seem like a simple platitude, but it is extremely important in the real world.

Avoid creating or passing on negative emotional energy. Do create and pass on positive emotional energy.

This becomes something real in a number of situations and it can scale up through the whole society. Your boss wretches at you. You bring home the bad energy and give it to your wife and kids. Your wife gives it back to you. It is bad for everyone.

Back when I used to experiment with emotional communication, I learned that if I smiled at a person just right at just the right time, I could make their whole day. In the bigger scale, many people believe that if a favor is done for them, that they are obligated to do a favor for someone else. Behavior like this can make a society work, especially when there are other factors hurting the society such as an economic downturn. At times of crisis in a society, the solution is usually how the individuals respond to each other that solves the wider problem. A good example of this would be FDR's statement that "All we have to fear is fear itself". It was true. Recovery from that economic disaster could only be accomplished by the society working together and overcoming beliefs within the society.

At the same time, a few years back, there was a politician who decided that winning at all costs was more important than anything else. He was not the first to do this or the last, but his hate, anger and conscious choice to avoid any compromise spread to friend and enemy alike. He developed methods and policies to avoid compromise and the political system that had to be based on compromise, lost its effectiveness that came from compromise. It became more and more polarized to where it did not represent the people who tend to be fairly moderate instead of fanatic. Only the future will show where this leads to, but it has already caused a lot of political disaster for the people of the United States. It all has occurred because of an institutionalized anger and hate that was created mostly by one man who chose to spread it.

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13. Psychological Stimulation
Mania is often considered a psychological illness, but it is a highly stimulated mental state that may be perfectly normal.

People love to quote the statement that humans only use perhaps 15 percent of their brain. In general, that is a meaningless statement, but it is true that most of the time, we do not need the full capability of our brains. When we do have a problem to solve, we can bring most of our useful mental capacity to bear on the problem. Remember, the human brain is optimized to solve human social problems and it kicks into high gear for those, though it can solve many other kinds of problems as well. Psychedelics can cause extreme neural stimulation.

Most of the time, we are relaxed and just cruising along. That is to be expected, since we work to remove crisis in our life. Sometimes, we encounter a problem though. It may be a problem of how to get some technology to work, but more often it is a social problem. It may be how to impress someone we are attracted to or it may be that someone's actions are angering us. We try to understand the situation so that we can effect it in some way we desire. It is called problem solving. Well, humans can naturally go into a highly stimulated mental state that is naturally good for problem solving. There are a number of implications to this, including that judgment may be reduced when in this state and that people tend to enjoy this state.

The first of these issues to consider are that while being in a manic state a person may be very intuitive and able to easily solve problems that would normally be difficult, the judgment that a person must always use, may not be working that well.

A good example of this might be a social problem where a person gets angry at someone they associate with for a particular reason, maybe they feel insulted by something the person did. The person noticing this then gets in a naturally stimulated mental state, mildly manic perhaps stimulated by anger, and then realize that that person has actually insulted them frequently in the past, but it was ignored up to now. Well, the upside to this is that in the normal course of events, the person uses this understanding to change the social dynamics so that the other person does not insult them. The downside is that when the person is in the manic state and has just realized this truth, they are also likely to have bad judgment and make an immediate scene by not just accusing the person of insulting them, but of a pattern and history of insults.

Well, there is a lot that can be made from this, but it shows both why the manic state is natural for problem solving and why it can be a hazard. The degree of mania in people is one of the most important psychological balancing acts there is in individuals and in nature. In an individual, it is largely genetically determined. It is something that can be consciously controlled to some degree, if the individual is aware of it. A person that is considered to have a pathological mania is considered sick because they make bad decisions. They may binge shop or spout wild ideas. the balance has gone to too much stimulation. On the other hand, not enough stimulation has been called depressive and the person simply is not stimulated enough to deal with the world. It is a miserable state, that is a bad situation and is often treated medicinally and non-medicinally. A person may take a vacation or any of many forms of stimulating entertainment or recreation to lift their mood. Many recreational intoxicants do the same thing. Interestingly, a huge number of people today are prescribed regular doses of psychoactive drugs to elevate their mood. I have to wonder if they have the natural non-manic periods during which they more carefully judge their experiences in the manic state.

While this is all extremely interesting in many ways, especially in light the common use of intoxicants and all those implications, in evolutionary terms this balance between stimulated and non-heightened mental states is very important both because it is genetically controlled and because it is critical to how we deal with the world.

One interesting question is whether manic states are necessary for problem solving at all or would these solutions "emerge" (in Michael Polanyi's terms) after some more time anyway. There is strong reason to suspect not. It takes a stimulated state to make broad associations, not just time or the entire pattern of a problem may not be recognized.

In terms of artificial selection, the manic state would be part of intellect. The manic state can contribute to intellect and even genius. At the same time, the manic state must be tempered by judgment and the judgmental abilities of a person are limited by intellectual ability. Manic states are just a part of a person's intellectual tools. You could artificially select for mania in a person, but without psychological balances to offset that, the person would be dysfunctionally manic. More important than intellect in terms of artificial selection though, would be the individual's general mood. To survive, there must be a balance between the psychological highs and lows. It also seems that drug dependency may be more common in people without a psychological balance leaning to an adequately naturally stimulated or high mood. Besides that, in terms of the changing human ecology, a more stimulated psychology may be more advantageous. The modern world is far more stimulating, perhaps excessively so, than the world typically has been in the past. This may not just require a somewhat more stimulated psychological balance, but also a more resiliently balanced psychology to deal with the stimulus of the modern world. Features related to psychological balance will be the most problematic, potentially hazardous and potentially beneficial aspects of artificial selection that humans will have to come to understand. We will have to come to understand it though and effect it.

In terms of discussion of this, there is an interesting discussion of this issue under the heading of "Hedonism". The term is used to describe a speculative situation where through the use of psychoactive chemistry (and nanotechnology) so that humans (and perhaps all other animals) are permanently in a state of ecstatic mental stimulation. It is an interesting discussion in some ways, but it illustrates that other psychological features that humans do not have to deal with a highly stimulated state. How would one rest? how would one have the judgment to control ones actions in such a stimulated state? It also described such a high energy system, that the idea seemed problematic for natural reasons.

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14. Selfishness
In a sense, selfishness is anti-social. The individual has needs and requirements, but in most cases selfishness is not necessary. This is more about emotional selfishness and reciprocity rather than material considerations. Emotionally and socially we can give without diminishing ourselves, quite the opposite in fact. Be sure that you are not just a giver though. If there is not reciprocation, something is not healthy. Material gift giving can be part of social behavior and can form relationships, but can also be complicated and may be very calculating, ritualized or manipulative. Selfishness is not hard to understand or recognize.

There must be a balance between the individual, the group, the family and the society. There must be a balance between the individual and their mate and their children. It will be different between individuals and individual situations, but it needs to be honest or it will prevent the benefits of cooperation as well as being unfair. Selfishness must be balanced. Too little and it hurts the individual's survival. Too much hurts as well and it becomes anti-social.

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15. Obsession
There is a fine line between a hobby and mental illness. The same is true of ideology.

The amazing thing about the long nature-nurture debate, whether we are products of our environment or our heredity, is how recently it has become heavily weighted towards heredity. It used to be that a reasonable person usually considered it a balance. The advocates of one or the other were usually motivated by ideology, with progressives saying it was nature so as to support their call for better education and social services while the conservatives claiming nurture to support their calls for individual responsibility. The question was just how much genetics even could program complex behavior. Recent genetic research has shown an incredible determination of habit and belief based on heredity. It seems that political, religious, work ethic and many social attitudes of individuals may be heavily genetically influenced. The idea of Free Will has come heavily into question.

An individual must not only know their self and their avocation, they must question them. Anytime a person finds themselves to be in an extreme of opinion or habit, they must step back and examine it rationally. Obsession and fanaticism have their place, but recognise that they violate the principle of balance and are inherently dangerous. A person indulging in obsession or going against conventional wisdom must be extremely self critical to insure that they are not making a mistake and they must be open to change if they find an indication that they are mistaken.

Where this commentary is meant to apply is the current situation where so often people seem to have political, religious or social positions that cannot be so well factually supported. They are just strongly held opinions or ideologies based on feelings. If a person's beliefs are extreme, they should be carefully and rationally examined. If they are based on feelings, I would suggest that they consider adjusting their opinions with the recognition that they may well be based on genetic foundations that not only may not be rational, but may be dangerous. To be human is to be more than your genetic based instincts. Irrational is OK and necessary at times, but it absolutely must be balanced with being rational as well or you are no more than an animal. If you hold an opinion and find disagreement, be sure that you have the facts and reason to back it up. Also if you hold a position, be sure you know the opposing opinion and its supports. If you claim to be thoughtful, you should understand and be able to use those arguments. Otherwise, keep your opinions to yourself.

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14. Institutions

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. Besides providing the material needs of society, institutions have provided for psychological, spiritual, medicinal and especially organizational needs of the society and individual. These can be looked at in terms of history. Also, just as learning existed before science, but science is an updated systematic way to look at learning, so institutions can now be compared to modern business models. Do so carefully though. There are important differences.

This says that institutions fulfill multi-generational survival requirements. To a large extent that often implicitly or explicitly refers to needs of the society. There is little precedence in biology to society unless you consider a biological community of interacting species in an ecology. That comparison is valid and will be considered here.

Now to start with there is a critical moral lesson about Institutions. Institutions are (usually) created to fill a need. The problem is the way it goes, survival of the institution or even making a profit may become the main priority of the institution rather than the purpose that created it. Mr. Darwin's principles extend far beyond biology. Somehow we need to pay attention to this, because an institution can morph into something where it no longer fulfills its function and may even prevent that function from being fulfilled. It may even come to be a problem as it competes with society. Charters help. A statement of purpose can provide direction and allow for evaluation of mission focus. Some institutions like industry are so diverse that it can be hard to describe its function, but most of the institutions listed here have very long term functions. If their function becomes just their own survival or as just an investment opportunity, most likey they are not efficiently focusing on their real purpose. If it seems that the purpose of the institution has changed, it must be examined to see if its purpose was really understood. (ie. the classic example of railroads trying to prevent competition from trucking companies, but having to accept trucking and consider themselves to be transport companies rather than just railroad transport companies.)

On the other hand... In that institutions are defined as fulfilling a need of survival, they all should include principles for their own survival. All systems need resilience. Governments, religions and businesses make sure that their lines of authority can be maintained if broken or in an emergency. They have contingency plans and disaster recovery plans. At various levels, families do the same thing. This is a good example of the ongoing learning process of moral strategies. Businesses have widely developed continuity and disaster planning strategies, because there were a number of business disasters due to failure to have these plans in place. Biological communities have features that make them resilient and able to tolerate damage to component parts. Institutions and societies should be designed the same way.

Another thing about things that function at the level of the society is that it implies a society. A society can have an intent and can act. It can also have a philosophy. Often how an institution operates in a society relates to this philosophy. There seems to be a natural dichotomy here between self interest and the interest of the society. The best expression of "Social Interests" might be the United States Constitution which states "We The People". This value system will be referenced when appropriate. It is best when the public and private interests coincide, but that is not always the case. It is why drug sales are regulated. Often self interest comes down just to personal profit, regardless of cost to the broader society. These exist in a balance that moves back and forth. Sometimes society must regulate institutions, particularly in industry, medicine and other institutions that hold inherent power due to financial or moral presence, to protect the society's interests. Those being regulated may protest and society must make sure that regulations that benefit the society allow the institutions to stay healthy.

Some of these institutions here are to provide Social Organization. Organization is critical to complicated social systems. The trouble is we are pretty new at it and have a lot to learn. Most modern governmental systems are less than 200 years old. Religions have gone through revolutionary changes. Finance, Business and Industry have undergone dramatic changes at a breakneck pace. If I can give a schematic description here, ask some good questions and lay out some general principles for these topics, I will be satisfied.

To be considered here:
1. Family
2. Education
3. Language
4. Caste
5. Status and Class
6. Industry
7. Science and Philosophy
8. Gene Husbandry
9. Law
10. Contracts and Agreements
11. Religion
12. Government
13. Politics
14. War
15. Food

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1. Family
Children is what it is all about. They are the essence of survival. They provide newness. Any society whose primary function is not about children, is doomed.

Family can be so many things. In terms of biology, it is a group of related individuals. A Family is a reproductive group of parents and children, brothers and sisters. In terms of society it can be people living together for mutual support. While the latter definition does emphasize how much humans depend on cooperation to survive, that meaning will mostly not be covered here. Here family is examined more in terms of children, parents, clans and tribes. It is all based on social behavior, the requirements for extended childhood for its development and the potentials of social behavior that include cooperation in groups and recognition of extended families. All family forms are to provide organization and are reliant on organization to function.

Not just historically, but biologically the extended family is most natural for humans. It provides maximum support for raising children and fulfills the social contract of caring for the aged. It is a rich environment for the social and technical education of children.

One critical attribute of the family is that it provides the individual with a longer timeframe, Humans need to operate in a longer timeframe than other animals which are quite restricted in the timeframe that they can operate.

How fast the "nuclear family" came and went, sort of. It originally had to do with mobility. Immigrants to the new world and those moving west usually did it in relatively small family groups rather than extended families. The mobility of families because of the World Wars and economic factors creates the concept of the nuclear family. My best understanding though is that it is mostly an anomaly, though it does have an advantage of mobility. Humans survive in a system based on a minimum of two parents due to the requirements of raising children and that the real hazards of the world can remove both parents, particularly with disease as a problem. The nuclear family removes the grandparents as an educational resource and to free up the parents to "work". It seems in ways that the nuclear family of two parents and children is now a creation of corporations and marketing to describe the family as a widget that can moved and interchanged at will. In ways, it is hard to say. Like many things, there will be variations based on choices and circumstance. Some families do not get along. In a safer, wealthier world with media and virtual reality for education, an extended family might be less important for survival. Still, family seems to have a special value in the modern world. So many things are transient and friendships are just not the same as family. A tradition will always be more satisfying than the latest fad. Family bonds are generally the strongest. Only extended families can make multi-generational financial, business or genetic plans. In the future I would not be surprised to see a family or group of families plan sophisticated long term breeding programs.

The tribe is pretty basic to humans. It is the entity of genetic relatedness in which families exist. Being larger it can retain a larger culture better and even support some specialization such as a shaman or healers. It particularly provides leadership. The tribe is a society with a number of ways to insure its survival and more capability than a smaller grouping. The term tribe is similar to specie in that what it is genetically can get very fuzzy. A tribe may consider itself related to tribe A to the north and tribe B to the south, but tribe A and tribe B may not consider themselves related.
Tribes fight other tribes for territories and resources. "Wars" can be for other reasons though.
Generally all tribes have "rites of passages" that provides both a fitness test of individuals (selection by the society) and shows the individual's commitment to the society. Without going through the rite of passage, the individual cannot become accepted as an adult in the tribe.
The segregation provided by families helps prevent inbreeding, but tribes may also be broken into reproductive moieties that are groups of families that are considered too related to marry.
Tribes can contain Clans that are like sub-tribes, but the rules are largely similar for function, family, relatedness, leadership, etc. It is all pretty fluid.

Community is something of a post tribal concept, because it implies families from different backgrounds living together. In that castes related to tribes and operated as them, the community even suggests a post caste social form. Likely the term most comes from the communities formed by immigrants to the New World that were not in a tribal context like most of the Old World sources of Western culture (Middle East and Europe). There would have been social/occupational specialization, but it would be missing many of the caste features common to an Old World civil society. (Hey, there were no traditional tribal lands there for immigrants). In that sense it was a pretty radical concept. Class is a bigger distinction in a community than caste, as in most older societies. It is a social construct, not a tribal one. There had been hybridization in multi-tribal civil societies and even in tribal society, but in those cases, the genetic sources were far more limited and ongoing hybridization would have been matched by ongoing backcrossing. The diversity of genetic sources in a community in the Americas could be far greater than in the Old World.

This is not written in a vacuum. I spent many years questioning people on their values. Many things are important to people, but their values are the most fundamental. They are survival values. There was the famous line from the story "The Shoes of the Fisherman". It was the story of a Pope that went anonymously among the people to find out what they thought and valued. He asked what a man wanted and the reply was "I want my son to grow taller than myself". It was a statement that he wanted his son to do better and be more than he had been. It is the fundamental statement of evolution and the morality of survival. The question is whether people's deepest values are aligned to survival. All my extensive examination showed this to be very much the case, as expected or perhaps as hoped. If this were not true, this exercise in creating a path to survival and explaining it would be a wasted exercise, but deep down, people do value survival above all else.

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2. Education

Education is a critical factor in the scheme of human things and a very large part of the cost of human development and survival. Artificial selection to enhance intellectual potentials and technology should reduce the resources required to teach the same amount, but there will almost certainly be a corresponding increase in what is required to teach. Education shows motivation. A society's development is based in large part on their investment in education. The potential for education from the internet and other electronic media is amazing. In ways, its potential value is similar to that of artificial selection in that it would be far cheaper.

Human education should include morality, socialization, culture, history and technical subjects, but particularly it should teach a person about themselves and how to find their unique potentials and strengths. It should help them find and achieve their vocation and avocation. In the United States, education was made universal based that a democracy needed an educated electorate. All forms of democracy are going to require education for that purpose. In practical terms, education has usually been to prepare a person to be economically productive for themselves and to provide for functional of their society. Beyond the technical utility of education would be what is commonly called Liberal Arts. This is to teach a person about their and others culture, arts, history, literature, psychology, philosophy, etc. This is to develop the person's mind and expand the person's knowledge and experience for their own benefit and growth. What has been found though is that this education is a great aid to the person's more practical endeavors in government, technology and industry. This is why many research organizations such as the Templeton Foundation sponsor multidisciplinary symposiums with academicians and experts from very diverse fields to examine difficult problems.

The modern world has expanded the reach of opinions, particularly via the internet. Many of these opinions are deceptive, manipulative and downright dishonest with specific agendas. Since there is unlikely to be anyway to independently validate what is on the web, Education is needed for a person to be able to judge the truth of what they read and see. In moral terms a person must be open to new ideas, even ideas they are not happy with. Telling a person what they want to hear is the greatest way to lie. If you are not familiar with the arguments and their supports that oppose your opinions, you are not adequately informed. If it is by your choice, you are being immoral.

Our development as humans socially and economically is so dependent on education, particularly as we develop a more complex and technologically dependent environment. Education is considered here independent from its genetic base, because that is considered separately, but intelligence is the behavior that facilitates education. There are many forms of intelligence and many things that can be learned.

The reason to use artificial selection is to survive, but it will produce a great wealth of many forms. That and other factors will present great potential moral hazards. The dangers of wealth are well known and displayed daily. Moral education is as difficult as it is critically important. Virtual reality will be an amazing tool.

With mentioning the overwhelming importance of education should be mentioned the huge cost. Apparently much of recent human evolution and social development is to allow for the extensive education that humans require. In this day and age, all education is expensive. As mentioned elsewhere, education is so fundamental to what a human is that if you invented an "education pill", you would change the equation of a human so much that predicting the future based on the past would become problematic. Only it may be somewhat possible. I try to avoid too much speculation, but sometimes it seems appropriate. I studied this to figure out how I came up with the idea that is this book. While I started this book over 40 years ago and have had to do a great deal of work to develop it, even when I started this, I could see much of the end of it. It was fuzzy and there was much I could not see, but amazingly I knew most of the end long ago before I could put it into words or communicate it. I encountered the concept of Heuristic and Emergent Knowledge by Michael Polanyi that described how ideas develop. First there is no order, but a question or concept exists that a person is examining. Then what must happen is that a form of the understanding must emerge. There must be a skeleton of the answer. It can then be fleshed out. Well, apparently I saw the skeleton of this idea decades ago and have been fleshing it out ever since. Now maybe it is a Meme, the same idea, but including that the idea can be communicated.
Ideas can be communicated and taught. That is the idea of the meme. The question is, is there a mechanism to represent that concept framework or skeleton, chemically that the brain can absorb. Could you give a person a dose of RNA or something that would build memories and understandings in their brain? Are there building blocks of ideas and memes that have chemical representations that the brain can translate. There are indications it may be so. Prions may be involved even. I have mentioned elsewhere that I have to wonder about that from a personal point of view, because I have reason to wonder if this entire book was developed based on something like that happening to me. It is basically explained in the Aspirations section. Aside from my personal experience, if this is true, then how much education could be programmed into the genes. We already have caste based occupational genetic potentials. I have repeatedly warned of the hazard of genetic behavioral programming, but programming in technical expertise should be fairly safe. It would be sort of like the basic default applications that come with a computer operating system. It might include a Calculator (math ability), word processor (default language), principles of chemistry, physics, mechanics, biology, electronics, defense, etc. Things that are pretty constant. It is pretty speculative, but not that far out there or unprecedented at all. It seems a good use for artificial selection, but as always use caution.
There might be another reason to use artificial selection for these purposes. Even if there is no way to form memory and ideas in the human brain using chemicals, it might be good to try to select for the ability and refine it. It may be one of the ways we can compete with machines.

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3. Language
An enormous amount of energy is put into teaching language. From the first time a mother coos at her infant, she has started teaching words. In the United States, students must take years of English classes through middle and high school as well as college. Foreign language learning is encouraged partly to enhance an understanding to the person's native language.

There is a very strong genetic component to the use of language. Deaf communities have demonstrated that in the absence of language, humans will naturally develop one. In ways language seems like such a technical thing, but the mechanisms of language are extremely broad as is shown by the variety of languages including languages made for the deaf and blind. Due to its importance and the importance of communication, language ability is something that artificial selection should definitely be used to enhance. It will probably be a critical component of long term human evolutionary development.

Language is one of those things that forms a society and a people. It causes a co-evolution. Natural selection selects for the people that are adapted to the language that the society uses. An advanced language gives advantage to advanced people. I could see an advanced society using more than one language. Perhaps an aesthetic poetic personal and social language as well as a more brief technical and precise language. With what I see as potentials of artificial selection, it does not look unlikely or difficult.

I am not an expert on languages, but I have long asked questions about languages to try to find out about their efficiency in this context. English is said to be a difficult language to learn, but a good language for communication. It is great because you can say something using its Greek, Roman, Germanic or possibly some other language root. Many languages apparently use colloquialisms and cultural references which limit them. English has a word for everything. I understand Hebrew does as well. English defies the previous paragraph, because it's assorted roots gives it beauty as well as precision. I am familiar enough with Western languages to know that English is generally considered the most useful of the Western Languages for communication. In my profession, I work with people from other cultures. I have tremendous respect for Eastern cultures, so when I have had the opportunity I have asked my Chinese co-workers that knew both English and Chinese which language was better for communication. They always said English. Your mileage may vary.

Language is so amazing. It offers a mode of rapid, versatile, sophisticated communication. It can be simple or subtle. It can warn. It can be used to teach. It can be a form of art. Language can also be so limiting. There are complicated differences in the meanings of words. Consider the word aggressive. Aggressive refers to both active and threatening. They are very different meanings, but in the real world, they are linked in some way. The single word with two meanings suggests that that is the best that humans can understand and differentiate between the two meanings even given their relationship. This is the case with many words and situations. The language we have available has weaknesses, but they probably reflect both human weaknesses and real natural associations. Think of the meaning of love, hate or anger. Such simple, meaningful and deceptive words.

The ability of language to enhance communication is illustrated by the limitations on communication when there is not common language. Humans communicate in many ways, but none compare to language for speed, precision and versatility. Human speech ability seems amazing. I have told people that if you were looking for evidence of Intelligent Design, that is genetic tampering in humans by another specie, look at the genes for the voice box. Well... if another specie did tamper with humans they would probably want to communicate with us eventually.

The written word is special. There is a mathematics to language which is primarily mastered by use of the written word. The spoken word usually involves a shorter thought process and may blow away in the wind. The written word lasts longer.

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4. Caste
Caste is a term that refers both to a groups tribal nature and their occupational nature. Humans have always survived in tribes. Caste is an aspect of tribes in multi-tribal societies. The basic castes have been 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 relates to occupational intelligence. Competition has been highest in the ruling castes. Their skills must include organization. In a sense, castes husbanded the available genetic based occupational talents just as they husbanded the occupational skill sets. Caste society is a social ecology that follows the patterns explained in Homage To Santa Rosalia.

The question is whether caste will exist in the future. It seems unlikely, because caste it tribally based and the tribe is already getting superseded by the hybrid. Caste would theoretically become completely obsolete in a highly hybridized population. There are obviously unknowns. I could see caste existing in a form for a few of reasons. It might turn out that modeling shows it to be a good stable social form. This seems unlikely because there is always gene flow. Note that various authors have speculated about a future with castes. This makes sense because they have been such an important aspect of human society in the past. The other reason that castes existed though was not just because of different genetic based skills, but also different requirements by the society. The questions are what will requirements be in future societies and will it require specialization to fulfill them. Will caste be used for social organization. Again I doubt it. Artificial selection will lead to greatly increased intellectual and technical ability as genes from different tribal sources are added (hybridized) and developed together. The question is whether specialization will be required or advantageous. Again I doubt it. What we are already seeing in a post tribal society is that a person's vocation, their most natural occupational skill and predisposition is not predictable from their parentage. This is partly just due to the diversity of specialties that a human can pursue. Maybe families will try to specialize based on genes and education, but that will still not be a caste.

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5. Status and Class
Status refers to who you have reproductive access to. In a tribal society only a great hunter from a good family gets to "date" the chief's daughter. The mail room clerk does not get to date the boss, except in romantic movies that are based on just how class conscious we are, also that we sense an unfairness to it The importance of status is that it is one of the greatest human drives. It is the method humans use to acquire the most superior mate. It is natural selection as implemented by humans. This selection is based on all things that confer status including health, beauty, brains, wealth, demonstrated ability as well as these same things judged as exhibited by your family and ancestors. Natural selection always occurs at all levels. This book has repeatedly said how important cooperation is to human survival. Class and status both are large factors in human cooperation as well as organization.

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. In civil society, class has simplified how individual status worked for the tribes. Class were added to how status worked and material wealth changed in nature and importance. 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. That is the upside. The downside is that the economics of class has led to many many wars and huge political conflicts such as Communism.

In the West, class may be an aspect of caste, but is generally separate. It seems to be a bit different in India though. Apparently there it is more related. A person of a high caste, but low economic state, has a higher status than a person of lower caste, but higher economic state.

There has commonly been a real difference between the classes. Class denotes status and the drive for status has always been a huge driver for humans. The higher the class, the higher the competition to get and stay there. In this sense class often represented drive as well as risk taking and luck at it. This could be critically important in the future or it could be an annoyance. It may be necessary to drive continued human development or it may be creating a status and genetic "arms race". This is about survival, not grandiose visions of some idealistic ultimate evolution of humans. Lets keep this comfortable.

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In the time of the cities, human wealth has largely been based on two things, exploitation of natural resources and wealth creation by individual creativity. (Wealth from interest is considered under systems.) In the past, more wealth has come from exploitation of natural resources than from human creativity. That will most likely change in the future to where most wealth is derived from human creativity.
There is another factor to consider after these. Some people are just good at making wealth. They create and they organize. Generally, the wealth they create is good for everyone, again that is depending on what model of Capitalism they are following. At the same time, their tendencies and skills are usually not as strongly represented in their children and their wealth tends then to be managed by technicians.

The basis of any ecology of any specie is energetics. This is true for humans. Energetics and wealth are currently a matter of exploiting natural resources. This will not go on. Eventually, and not so long from now, all resources will be derived from techniques based on human creativity. In this model, the methods of wealth controlled the way it is now or has been in the past, just will not hold up under those conditions.

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In the 1960's scientists were looking at IQ and widely measuring it. What happened was that in ways, that measurement crept into status. It was something of a way to "scientifically" measure status. It was a bit weird seeing comments about a person's IQ when it popped up as parts of romantic plots in movies. Also, though intelligence contributes a good deal to status, historically it has been less importance. The society was dominated by militarists and they could always whack you over the head no matter how intelligent you were if you were not able to fight back. Its value and niche has risen with technology. The thing is, with the genetic analysis available attendant to artificial selection, it is unimaginable what aspect of status that is going to take on. The meaning of status might even change if one is looking at details of genetic compatibility and complementation rather then general aspects that are interpreted to mean superiority.

Natural economic factors, as well as remaining tribal issues, have continually re-created class. Then again, modern chaos theory says it is a natural event as well. Those who have, get. Already we see the wealth that a technological economy can provide to all members of a society. Depending on what energy supplies and resources technology can provide us with, material wealth could become almost limitless. That still leaves real estate, but potentially, that could change too. Predicting human economic futures is not useful here not only for technical reasons, but also because our concept of wealth and subsequently class, are a matter of beliefs and are very subject to change. The best example of this perhaps is capitalism. Wealth is considered a tool of investment to create more wealth. More often historically, wealth has been considered a static thing to be accumulated and hoarded. These are very different concepts with very different results. In the first case, the role of the person of high economic class is to own and protect wealth. The role of the capitalist is to husband and create wealth. In ways, this is similar to the idea of a politician being either a ruler or a leader. It is a matter of belief and consequence. In ways the truest form of wealth is genetic. What we currently do not know is what the disparity of material and genetic wealth will be in the future. If the disparities are big, we will likely have a class society. Everything I see when I add up a stable ecology says that there will not naturally be that disparity. Still, class and caste have served humans as organizational systems in the past. There were huge drawbacks to them, but perhaps we will we use them in the future in some form.

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6. Industry
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 complexity of the organizational system of an industry can rival that of a military organization or government. It can often far surpass them in efficiency.

What we call business is industry in an economic context. Industry can exist and be very inefficient, but in the terms of business, industry exists within a very Darwinian environment of competition for survival. Efficiency is a major part of how business competes. As in other systems that evolve that way, competition can take many forms such as product design, production technology, supply chain, marketing and others.

Industries also gain efficiency by scale. That is that theoretically and often in practice, one provider of any required product can create it more efficiently than two. They have less duplication of effort, etc. This is particularly true now where transport is less of an issue. The downside of this is two fold. The well known problems of monopolies and the problem of the vulnerability of the system to disruption due to lack of resilience. These are a couple places that effect the larger society.

Historically we have seen that a very effective way for a business to compete is by absorbing or eliminating its competition. This has tended to be disastrous for the society as a whole, because monopolies have well known problems such as high prices, inefficiency and lack of innovation.

Another principle that governments and businesses are trying to come to grips with is overall resilience and particularly supply chain resilience. The principle of efficiency of scale (and economics) means that institutions consolidate. This is largely unprecedented in natural systems (though climax herbivores get bigger on the same principle) and so should raise a large flag. Smart institutions protect the diversity of their dependencies so that if one fails (a supplier goes out of business), they are not badly hurt. These big systems with too little resilience create a risk that they can fail and then fail to provide the needs of society or the needs of other industries that supply other needs of society. At a finer point, many institutions have learned the importance of fully redundant computer systems. Power generation stations generally have multiple generator units to provide redundancy and to allow for maintenance. Like automation, this may point to a case where trying to achieve maximum efficiency leads to a system with its own problems. A society needs to be resilient and needs its critical dependencies such as industry to be resilient as well.

Another problem of society with industry is that institutions represent powers of various sorts and will compete not just with each other, but with the larger society. This is an unavoidable Darwinian effect, the competition for survival and resources, but it can become corporation verses society. Businesses have a different view of time and success than society must. Business represent people to a greater or lesser extent, but is not a person. It is basically a piece of software. That is a machine. It has no more social sense than what is built into its charter and enforced by its members. Sometimes this is a problem and so industry and business gets regulated to create a balance between the interests of the society and the business. Businesses have to be able to function and be profitable, but they cannot engage in behavior that is too harmful to or exploitative of the society. Business and its profits are a powerful force that can cause people to be acting on behalf of a machine that has no moral instincts and a time sense far shorter than even that of human survival. Monopolies are illegal, because they do not benefit the society as much as competition would. Pollution, exploitation of people or resources, predatory practices, fraud and other practices are all regulated, because though profitable for the company, it comes at a high expense to the larger society. Like in other things, a balance must be maintained. The problem is that business, acting as special interests, often works to remove the regulation that is there to protect society. They have the advantage of the active principle in their offense. The society constantly has the problem of playing defense in that they do not know the offense's plan or where the attack will be. They may not know the consequences of something that business has thought through.

Finance is a unique industry and uniquely problematic. In ways it controls all most resources, because all resources are valued and owned in terms of money. Oddly the finance industry itself does not inherently produce a product, but it controls a great power in the form of money. After the pain of the Great Depression in the 30's, the United States enacted a number of regulations to prevent the practices that led to the Depression. Business though seems to take on a life of its own. It keeps coming up with new ways to work around the safeguards. Credit Default Swaps, Derivatives and monetization of mortgages are good recent examples of new financial products (products used in the definitions of the industry). It seems that what really fueled those problems from those were a combination of incomplete regulation due to lobbying and lack of information about consequence as well as individual greed, rather than the weakness in the economic theory.
Another interesting aspect of finance is interest. It is taken for granted as part of the workings of Western finance, but I do not know if it should be taken for granted. I have heard of very different ideas of economic theory.
The problem of the inherent power of financial institutions is that they can just be hard for society to regulate. A good example might be financial institutions called to big to fail. It has happened before, such as U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, AT&T as well as others. Society must cope with it when any institution competes with it too successfully.

When looking at industry, business and finance, it is perhaps worth looking at them as parts of a body that is the society. They must be kept healthy and well functioning. They are powerful parts and tools of survival. At the same time that model is incomplete. They do not always act as parts and have their own interests that may not coincide with society such as organs in a body do. Society must develop laws and practices that allow businesses to operate and stay healthy that also protect the society from the characteristic problems businesses cause. Sometimes this will be regulation. Sometimes it will be economics. It seems a case like other systems where we are unlikely to easily find perfect laws so it will also be up to vigilant, moral people to make sure that any business serves, but does not endanger society.

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7. Science and Philosophy
Most sciences are primarily about understanding and categorizing natural phenomena. It has shown itself to be an amazingly powerful tool.
The science of Morality is different because it is created with an objective beyond just a description of what exists. It is specifically created with an objective in mind and a recognized bias, survival. It makes descriptive observations of survival methods, but it also makes evaluations of what is observed in terms of what appears to effect survival. It is to provide the tools needed for human survival into the future, that is be predictive. That puts a speculative component, a subjective component and an evaluation of the descriptive observation that is not always as present in other sciences.

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The most general and useful meaning of philosophy seems to be more about why we decide we know something rather than what we know. How we know something is usually called epistemology, but while we may have many ways of looking at anything, we make choices about how we will.

In science, philosophy refers to what may or may not be true, but has not yet been made science. Science is a belief system about knowledge that is arranged in certain standard ways (descriptive science) or that is supported by rigorous logic (theoretical science) or by the tests of repeatability and predictability (empirical science). Another true definition of science is "the accepted body of knowledge that is accepted by the accepted leaders of the science". That may sound like goblty gook, but it is an important description that illustrates that science is aware of its self-imposed limitations. A student receives a Doctorate of Philosophy in a science, for creating a new part of the science that is accepted by the accepted masters in the field. When so accepted, the knowledge then is transformed from philosophy into science. It is not that it has gained any greater truth this way, but it has been officially added to the tool chest of human scientific knowledge. What is called Eastern Science seems to focus more on repeatability and less on theoretical cause, than does Western Science.
The point of this is that science is a philosophy. It is a way we know something. "This is science, so I choose to believe it". A main purpose of science is to explain things. It has become a powerful and valuable tool that we depend on for much of human progress and ultimately survival.

There are other philosophies and they may be more generally used than science. Most of the knowledge people create for personal use is based on logic without ever approaching the realm of science. That is not what science is usually about. Most anything that can be expressed in words can be examined by the logic that is inherent in words. Logic is another common form of philosophy that can be described as a type of mathematics. "This is logical, so I believe it".

A person knows more than they can put into words. There is a great deal of difference between what a person can describe and what they know. Feeling as a way of knowing, represents more than one philosophy.

Another way of knowing called intuition, seems based on logical processes and pattern recognition that are not put into words and we may not be aware of. "I really feel that I have been through this before and I believe this for that reason", or "I have a hunch".

A person very often believes something because someone taught them it. That may be their parents or a priest. It may be something they read in a holy book or a truth they found in literature. If they believe it, it is a philosophy of theirs.

Other ways of knowing are not completely based on logical processes at all. A person may fear and react to a past event at a time when there is no logical connection with the present. It’s funny, but understandable that the fastest learning process in nature is considered to be when an animal eats something bad for them. That might sound familiar.

Science is based upon a system of reason and logic that allows a person to solve problems of science, but it is not applicable to every problem, particularly problems in life. We have other ways of solving things for those. Our main problem in life is survival. We have methods of other than science for solving moral problems. It is found in life and is taught by religions and many wise people through the ages. Science is not inherently about survival. It cannot tell a person why they should survive. Humans have a huge body of knowledge about morality and a variety of facets of a moral instincts that solves moral problems. In most cases, it is more important than science.

These are all philosophies and there are more that are known and unknown. They contribute to how we survive.

The nature of human consciousness is plural. We can hold more than one, even conflicting, opinions at the same time. A healthy person should have multiple points of view. A person can at the same time believe in both a science that says that "God cannot be proven to exist and so does not exist according to science" and yet can clearly say "I feel God and so know God's existence". This is to be human. It is an apparent chaotic weakness that actually leads to strength.

Know this, so that you will know how you know things. It is part of how one knows oneself. It is how one can reconcile differing beliefs that a single person or a group, may have.

This book is to describe humans in a variety of ways that will apply to different philosophies. It uses science to describe humans, but it also uses reason and basic human premises. I have said all along, "this book should sound familiar, because it is what people already feel, they just have rarely put it into words". The book is written to describe humans in ways that address different methods of believing. It also takes advantage of different ways of belief to describe different things. Some things about humans can be well described by science. Some things are better described by archetypes and familiar situations, or by describing feelings that are commonly experienced. The objective is to give a useful description of humans in a systematic descriptive form that is used by science, but more importantly, to illustrate human problems and survival methods that are moral strategies. Many different philosophies will be used to do this and humans use many different philosophies to survive.

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8. Gene Husbandry
Gene husbandry is not something new. We have always competed for the fittest mates. Socially, it is called status, that is reproductive access to those that are considered superior. This is not difficult. It is how we are designed. It is practiced by every society. Since the military castes were normally descended from herders, they were quite aware of animal breeding and very often practiced it upon themselves quite consciously.

For humans in the future, this is going to mean what it has in the past, but also it will include new knowledge, new tools and artificial selection. It will also include institutions. Because of the technical requirements it would be assumed that the medical profession would be involved. It will be scientists and computer programmers that decipher the patterns and meanings of the genes. But more will be required. Who will retain and interpret this information? It is the wealth of an individual and family. It will be husbanded by the family, but will there be institutions that can take a broader view and provide a better understanding of this information that an individual or family can? It seems like a natural function of religion. Ultimately this is going to be a huge business with many ethical and moral complexities. It will represent a great form of power so its functioning should probably be isolated from government. Whatever institution does provide husbanding of genetic knowledge must be held to the absolute highest ethical standards.

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9. Law
Law is a human creation. It has a purpose. Historically law has often been to protect the power of an individual or social group. Think royalty, religion or wealth. This discussion is limited to later developments in law that were explicitly to provide for social development and order such as the United States Constitution or Napoleonic Law. Older "royal decree" does not seem likely to be important in the future. What will be important is complex systems of law to help the society function. These will include political, economic, civil and criminal law. Some of the hallmarks of these laws is the right to protection of one's rights and property by law as well as the ability to be found innocent of an accusation. American law contrasts to Napoleonic law in that in Napoleonic Law one must prove their innocence while in American law, the court must prove guilt. One principle implicit in current legal systems is an equality between individuals as far as the law is concerned. No longer are you right because you are royalty. Then again, at minimum there is still bias in who law protects because it is to preserve order even more than fairness. As such it tends to favor the political and economic establishment as well as protect rights of ownership. Fairness is a nice ideal, but in practical terms it is even more desired to make law work by making it consistent and respected.

Law is how society makes and formalizes our agreements. It is essential to the workings of a complex society. It is to replace fighting. 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 some very smart and compassionate machines.

Law is to deal with criminal behavior. That is behavior that breaks the agreements of the society whether they are about politics or law, robbery or murder, fraud or embezzlement, drug sales or speeding. The difficulty is that some criminals are pretty smart and some would like to make a living based on breaking laws or as parasites on the society. Law is imperfect and so always has gray areas that criminals can take advantage of. The search for perfection can improve systems or cause its own problems by damaging systems that are the best available and work pretty well.

Law has to resolve disputes between private parties including family and community members, business and even community members or businesses and government. It must resolve political law.

It is best that laws are fair, but laws are also political entities and so may really lack fairness. It is the ideal of the law, but the reality is that the purpose of law is to make the society work. Fairness legitimizes the law preventing private vendettas, promotes economic activity and maintains order. In a contested election, the judiciary may have the role of deciding the election. It is likely to consider promptness to maintain order to be more important in their decision making process even more than the fairness of accuracy that could take longer. A primary purpose of law is to maintain order.

Law is inherently a social function. Like many social functions, particularly at this time when we are so new at the practice of complex society, law is one of those things that is only going to work if good people using moral instincts work to make law the best it can be to preserve the society.

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10. Contracts and Agreements
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. All contracts are just another name for a cooperative agreement. Some are formal and written. Some are verbal or implied. They often allow things to be accomplished that one person or even one group could do alone. They include many things.

Marriage is an agreement that can be informal or a formal contract. Marriage has always had multiple components including political, economic and reproductive aspects. Marriage is very important in biological terms because it is so important to the family, which is a basis of human survival. Marriage has also been very practically used to achieve peace and to preserve wealth. It is a very strong agreement of mutual responsibility and mutual goals. Love has traditionally been a secondary issue, but has become more important and will probably continue to be. We have called that progress. As society has developed, so has the institution and scope of marriage. In its function for child raising, marriage is probably the most important contract in the society. It may be detailed out in writing, but should always have aspects of a social contract. It is hard to say what all its functions will be in the future.

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. It changes wealth from something to be hoarded to something to be traded and grown. In biological terms, all economic activity and business contract could be categorized as money. Monetary wealth can represent a great power and must be understood as such. In that money is so powerful and mutable it has increased the occurrence and problem of greed, which will be considered elsewhere.

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.

The Social Contract - There are many social contracts. These are the informal agreements between classes and groups that all contribute to a society. They exist because they are important and often existed before law. They tend to be special requirements shaped by needs in history, so must be respected. 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 contract may regulate what competition there is in society. These are the understandings of acceptable standards of behavior. Often it is the contract between the leaders and those they lead, but too often the leader’s desire power or for some other reason ignore their responsibility. It would be nice to describe and formalize the social contract so that it is less often violated, but in other ways that would weaken them by subjecting them to legal manipulation. If artificial selection makes people more equal, in ways the social contract is likely to become more important as more of the society is going to be subject to the same issues as opposed to in a caste society.

While cooperation is the key to survival, even with contracts, the key to cooperation is trust. This is why the ancient virtues of honesty, honor, fairness and loyalty are still so important. They are critical to trust and are still required even with contracts, particularly social contracts. It seems that the impersonal nature and reach of electronic communication is actually making this a greater problem and in many cases trust is even more important than it has been in the past.

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11. Religion
Religion is and has been so many things. It is a community with common beliefs and moral strategies. It provides social organization. It has a spiritual aspect that has come in many forms from Gods to helping the sick and comforting the lonely. It provides for the needs of the community and society, particularly the needs that other institutions cannot or will not provide.

Wealth represents a form of power. Armies represent a form of power. Moral authority represents a form of power. It is where the power of religion is supposed to come from. Like other forms of power, it has often attracted the corruptible. It has endured though because the of the importance of its many functions in society. Its purpose is to promote survival of its community by husbanding the moral (survival) strategy of the group and providing functions required by the group. It is composed of people with many different agendas, trying to accomplish many different things that do not always harmonize. As an institution, it has had a difficult time articulating its mission because it is usually attributed to a God, yet its mission is its people. It is so hard to know what the best survival strategies for a community and society are at every time and situation. Because of that and so many other reasons, it has often lost its way, but it has always renewed itself because it is made of people trying to survive. Its charter comes from that and is externally defined by the needs of survival as well as the moral instincts of the many good people that make up the community.

A religion defines a community. A community is defined by its social and cooperative nature as well as its moral practices. Religions define a morality which is both a method and an agreement about how a community should live and the common moral laws they shall follow. Historically, religions have been the most important vehicle of morality. Human survival is based on families and communities. Morality can only be regulated so much by civil law so regulation of the family and community is one of the primary functions of religion. It functioned that way before any civil law existed. It has laws to be followed voluntarily, but also has enforcement mechanisms. By setting standards of behavior, religion facilitates much of the basis of social organization. It has been the enforcer of many of the agreements of social contracts. It creates communities that cooperate as families. It allows communication and cooperation by setting what is expected. It creates cohesiveness in the larger society and is important when societies or cultures clash. It also sanctifies marriages, one of the most important contracts of the entire society.

Religions have provided organizational functions of every kinds. At one time, they were the rulers of the society and so just about the only social organizer. At different times religions have fulfilled all the various functions of a society, but their most fundamental importance is husbanding morality for their group. This is where the future holds great potential for and from religion. Governments have a hard time enforcing moral law on a heterogeneous population and it is only their business as far as how things effect society. I asked a friend, "who would husband morality if not religions, business?" I think that has been answered with quite a negative. Right now, only religions can do much to promote any kind of comprehensive morality.

Some people believe that religion has passed its time, particularly when it focuses on what looks like magic or God. Sometimes the inherent conservatism of religion makes it seem at odds with social progress. Some people point out the wars and atrocities done in the name of religion as well as the great corruption that has occurred. Talking with them, I never see much examination of the context or alternatives. Religion is far from perfect, but as we see it today, it was a response to the horrors of Iron Age warfare. It was so much better than what existed then, that it consumed the Roman Empire in fairly short order. Oh yes, there have been problems, but I have to think those were more often human shortcomings than the institutions of religions, because the charters of religion renewed them. That was the Protestant Reformation and is still going on. The Catholic church even is being forced to act in accordance with their charter. It is made of good people with great moral instinct and they are the real church. Much of the larger institution can hardly be called religion. Religion functions in the community, so the larger institution must be a support system for that. In the past, it has often been looked at backwards from that. Well, survival has its demands. It seems that what we call progress is a development of the people to demand that the church fulfill its given function to serve the people. I see other potential functions for it in the future.

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12. Government Government and politics are many things, but primarily they reflect organization of economic, tribal, moral and philosophical factions in a society. Government is also supposed to provide leadership in war and peace. The role of government is to minimize conflict and promote cooperation. It should promote economic health and all forms of social justice. It should be a conservative, prudent, forward looking force of survival.

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13. Politics
In order to create the power structure that politics is all about, politics always creates cooperative groups. It is how political agreements are made and so is critical to the functioning of the leadership aspect of society. 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. The failure of politics implies conflict which can be very destructive to the society.

Politics is another topic where I am not a specialist, but I have to try to lay down a foundation of the topic that fits in terms of biology and more specifically since it is a strategy, morality. Actually, I think I noticed a number of interesting points and biology is certainly going to get be a different view of the subject. There are many political labels and terms, all of which have meanings attributed to them that may or may not have anything to do with what the actual word means. So this section is to look at those terms as to what they might mean in terms of biology and survival. The interesting terms of the day seem to be Politics, Government, Democracy, Republic, Dictatorship, Monarchy, Oligarchy, Feudalism, Socialism, Collectivism, Capitalism, Capital, Military, Religion, Merchants, Science. Some of these describe a political power structure from military, moral or economic power. Almost all imply some a class structure, some a form of power, connotations of ownership and economics.
Politics is also how a group is organized and how its resources are utilized. A government has a purpose. It is not just to provide order, it also has a "charter". It may be just to retain power or it may be to "provide for the general welfare". In any case, it must provide order and organize the society or the "nation" will not function.
Many of these are modern political labels are worth considering because they are the language used. What interests me though are that meanings of words that are labels do not always match what the label means in political terms. Often political labels are buzzwords meant to represent a particular meaning while hiding the truth behind the illusion of words. The meaning of all of these need to be considered in terms of reason rather than political labels. They are revealing.

It seems that for this purpose, the most important meanings that have to be extracted from these terms is who has the power, which comes in a variety of forms including military, capital and moral. Politics describes how power is managed and used. The consequences of this is the class structure of the society. It is surprising how the parts get moved around. Some words are commonly associated, that are not necessarily linked.

Mostly this seems to break down into two categories of who has power. There are various Collective forms of government including what is labeled Democracy, Socialism and perhaps Communism. There are various forms of Feudalism generally labeled Monarchy, Dictatorship, Oligarchy and even Presidents. In these are just about every degree of balance.

It has been said that power is the Power to Kill. Historically, that has meant Military power and there have mostly been just a few exceptions to that rule, but economics have also always been a power. Even in Rome, it was important. Economics has always been about food though and the landowners that produced it. Trade was always a much smaller part. Now with the rise of industry, transport, consumerism and other factors, economic power has grown to rival military power. Economic power is different from military power though in that it creates something, where military power is inherently unproductive. Military power has almost always relied on economic power.

Government represents a number of types of power. Traditionally it has been based on a monopoly on Military Power and Law, including taxation. Note that criminal organizations also levy taxes. Like all institutions, government is inclined to grow and try dominate more resources and power. In Democracy it has included the moral power of the people. In some cases, government has also included the authority of a God.

Religion represents a form of power, Moral Power. Its has a variety of functions that provide that. When cities and agriculture were young, it was the priestly class provided administrative functions such as organizing the society, medicine and determining the time of planting as well as other seasonal activities. Religion has provided identity to peoples. Perhaps its greatest power came from the husbanding of morality and its attendant religious rituals. Religion has been a critical institution of social survival. Religion has lost much of its power to political entities, but it has still retained its moral authority.

Capital is a power. That is the meaning of Capitalism, using capital as a tool. It is hard to accomplish much without resources. Amazing things can be accomplished with adequate resources. We did land on the Moon. Capital is necessary to governments and commercial projects. Capital is one of the main sources of power of the Merchants. Modern corporations rival governments in power. In biology it would be called resources, but due to economics, capital has a huge power compared to the resources any other specie uses. Capital can be used for many things besides creation. It can be used as a weapon as well.

Science represents a power, particularly its child, Technology. It is a power that can be used by many entities including Political, Military and Merchants. Religion tends not to use Science as Religions are inherently conservative and Science tends to be about change and innovation. Science is a great egalitarian. It cannot be ordered or threatened, but it can is highly dependant on Capital. At the same time, even Capital cannot create the wild genius that revolutionizes science on occasion.

Feudalism is a very classed society, particularly ruled by a small, rich upper class that dominated all power and wealth, separated from a large, poor lower class that were the ruled. In the West, the traditional form of this was Monarchy. Feudalism has occurred over most of the world at various times. In a sense, the Oligarchy and Dictatorship of today is usually similar. In the past they would have been warlords. Now they are sometimes that and sometimes "Merchants". That term includes corporations and other mercantile based organizations. Traditionally, power has been the power to kill. Economic power is many things including the power to kill, the power to build and the power to morally manipulate.

Collectivism is a concept of ownership of power by "The People". In its different forms it may be ownership of land or industry. In a Democracy it is ownership of political power by the citizens. There are a number of concepts of Collectivism.

A Dictatorship can take many forms. It usually represents the power of a "Cult of Personality". The dictator is not alone. They need a power base which can be military, economic, religious or a combination of those. A dictatorship can function excellently as a form of social organization, partly because it does not have to deal with contending agendas. It can be benevolent, that is it can work for the benefit of "The People", Usually though, it works for the benefit of the ruling class. The biggest problem of dictatorships seems to be the transmission of power to the next generation of leadership, because dictatorships tend to depend on suppressing all competition for power so no one may remain to assume power after the dictator is gone. Many dictatorships are forms of Monarchy where power is concentrated in a family, so they have rules of succession to ensure the transfer of power.

Communism is an interesting term that has many connotations including autocratic dictatorships and extreme collectivism. Particularly it also was a reaction to the harsh feudalism and hereditary ruling classes of Russia, China and elsewhere. To the modern West, it largely meant a system that did not follow the traditional rules of ownership and Capitalism, so it was seen as an extreme threat. In ways, Communism was almost a buzzword for a type of socialism.

As political systems, Communism and Socialism are mostly new, though technically there have been experiments with them all through history. In a sense they are a collectivism based on collective ownership. Socialism defines its charter as what is good for the society as a whole. They are supposed to be about collectivism of power, but have initially tended towards dictators, probably based on how they were created.

Democracy is a collectivism, but of power, not ownership. Everyone has political power, a vote. In human society it is basically a fairly recent development. It was created in response to the excesses of Feudalism, that is a ruling class. Its purpose is to be fair. The mechanism for achieving that is complicated and still developing. The United States of America is a good example of a democracy and historically, most democracies are ideologically descended from the American Revolution. It is an attempt to replace various military based ruling classes with rule by "The People". In the United States, a complex law, The Constitution, was created to describe the form and intent of the government. This included a Republican form of representation of the people. It also has a complex system of checks and balances within a three part governmental system to prevent an individual or group from seizing power. Power is controlled by law and compromise. The problem, particularly in the United States, is that there is a great deal of power and many who want to seize or control it.
A requirement of a democracy is an informed, engaged and moral electorate that work to insure that the power remains under the control of "The People". That is largely an intellectual concept derived from the problems of Feudalism's. Democracy can only be good for the majority. Unfortunately our instincts tend to be more tribally oriented and so we instinctively think in terms of leadership in terms of the tribe. There was a lot of variation and sometimes tribal traditions included democracy, but often did not.

There are many forms of Democracy around the world. Some are very effective at providing for "the general welfare" and some are thinly disguised feudalisms governed by a small class of Merchants, Military or Clerics. There are so many ways to manipulate a vote of "The People" from manipulation to outright stealing the election by "stuffing the ballot box".

Democracy is an experiment. Currently it is based on Western values, derived from Christianity. It is a dynamic, developing system, so there is ongoing political and social change. It is based on law, not ust power. It is an institution with a charter that is probably the greatest expression of human aspirations ever written. The Constitution of the United States says "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That is the purpose of the law describing how the government shall work. A purpose of this book is to describe how humans can survive and achieve our aspirations. This aspiration expressed in the American Constitution is recognized as a major part of that target, so democracy is not just considered another form of government, but an attribute of aspirations.

The reality currently in the United States, a Democratic Republic, is that power is concentrated in the political party which represents the people, perhaps more directly than do the political representatives that get elected. It is a matter of scale. Political parties are bigger and more powerful than any elected individual. That shows that a big problem with a democracy is the potential for manipulation as well as gridlock by unelected groups. If consensus cannot be achieved, nothing may get done.
It is interesting that China, called a socialism, has largely embraced Capitalism, with restriction. They have a one party political system, but it works remarkably like what is called Democracy in that it works for consensus among the party as a power structure rather than being dominated just by individuals of military or economic power. That power is distributed through the party, which is a large part of the population. The power is still relatively in the hands of the people, for the benefit of the people.
European Democracy has formed around a larger number of political parties.
In that a Democracy is based on informed, engaged participation, the political party seems to represent that group. In that sense, perhaps political parties are a better indication of a democratic government than any particular form of government or label.

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That is the best, simple description of government I can offer. So what do we end up with? Politics and government have developed over time as society has developed. We have progressed towards the aspirations of fairness and equality. Amazingly, Democracy, a relatively new system of government created to avoid the excesses of past political systems and provide equality, ends up imperfect. Still, it is the best we have.

The American Founding Fathers were very smart, educated, idealistic and thorough when they designed their system of government. They did their best and still knew it was a risky proposition even with the separation of powers they used to build in a system of checks and balances. They were concerned with the "tyranny of the majority". The misuse of democratic power. Any group that can control the political process can vote for anything they want, sometimes based on manipulation or the same self interest of feudal ruling classes. We have seen that. Where this is already a problem and is likely to become more so in the future is groups trying to disenfranchise another group from sharing power by avoiding the built in mechanisms of compromise. The worst problem could be between the young and old, particularly because if humans have a stable ecology, the young will always be a minority. If the electorate is not moral, that group will be discriminated against, because their limited power. Also, in the United States, the traditional Capitalism and private ownership of Democracy means economic inequality and potentially a class society. Greed is built into the system. This follows naturally from natural inequality of individuals and also from the time and people that formed the United States. These were predictable problems of democracy without even considering that individuals would try to destroy the democracy by legal and illegal means for reasons of ideology, greed or psychopathy. There is even the problem of the government as an entity, competing with the society. Governments work for their own survival and that may compete with the benefits to the society. All institutions work to capture available resources.

David Brin said that Feudalism was a recurring nuisance. It seemed like he did not understand why it occurred at all. I consider it the most natural state of humanity. Humans are only equal in our Aspirations, such as in the eyes of law or God. Nature does not make people equal, otherwise natural selection would not occur, nor evolution. Feudalism occurs for a couple of reasons, some benign and some not so much. Humans are generalists as a specie, but individuals and groups act as specialists in their society. We have leaders and followers in every society. It provides an order to the society and hopefully provides the best leadership. Because of human nature, it has usually ended up very exploitive. Still, Feudalism, a class society, is also a way for society to function as individuals and groups provide for specialized requirements of the society. If your society has scribes, they fulfill that function and need to be neither craftsman, nor warrior, nor farmer. It is a method that works to make a functioning society and basically goes back to the more limited specializations of tribal times. It even promotes an interdependence that can lead to further social stability and an economy. On the other hand, it has not always so benign. Traditionally, feudal leadership was comprised of competing interests of the Military, Moral and Mercantile powers. With the rise of economic power, we see the balance shifting from the Military to Oligarchies. Humans work for status and self benefit, sometimes at great cost to other members of their society. We like to think of those having the most status as our leaders, but they are likely to think of themselves as rulers, ruling for their own benefit. It makes democracy difficult.

I see a couple potentials for the future. Right now, humans are largely still tribal. It is what they are adapted to and it naturally conflicts with democracy. Democracy is something that is learned. It is a strategy, a moral strategy and difficult to effectively teach as well as practice. An educated electorate is one of the critical requirements for a democracy to work. That takes intelligence. Using artificial selection would both diminish the natural inequality that leads to an inequitable society and offer increased intelligence to limit tribalism and support democracy. Virtual reality might also be used as a powerful teaching tool for the purpose.

Looking back from thousands of years in the future, the system might look flawed for obvious reasons. Maybe small adjustments might be recognized as necessary or maybe another system will be created that serves the same purpose, achieving our aspirations. No system is perfect. Ultimately, it seems that it will be up to the vigilance and efforts of good men and women to protect the rights and welfare of all "The People".

Just as a bit of conjecture. You are going to have elites that will control or at least direct the powers of the society. It would be nice if you had elites that were not corrupted by power. Also, E. O. Wilson pointed out the problem of the natural divergence between the necessarily short term interests of the individual versus the required longer term interests of the society and specie. It has been repeatedly suggested in speculative fiction that intelligent machines could perhaps be used to create a fair and just government, because they would be quite capable and not be subject to short term self interest. While I leave do not much consider some of the more speculative parts of the Aspirations section, if we do develop virtual immortality, perhaps we could end up being governed by people without physical existence, virtual immortals. Their point of view would be very different, particularly after a few human generations. I will leave speculation to others.

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14. War
War is obviously an important topic and one that I will tackle late. The reasons and results of war are complicated. This mostly makes a premise that there should not be war. That is a carefully worded statement. I would normally say something like war should be avoided, but that can lead to war. It seems quite counter intuitive, but unfortunately it is true, because it seems that the only effective way to prevent war is deterrence. In the world of our aspirations I do not think that there is a place for war as we have known it. Unfortunately that may be a bit in the future. No war though may be a good indicator that we have reached our aspirations.

I guess the simplest question to ask is why has there been war. It can be an effective strategy and seems to be part of human nature. It is also self reinforcing. On the other hand, it does cause change.

Researchers these days commonly see a very nasty, murderous aspect to some primates. The more the anthropologists look, the more they see the place of murder and war in human habit. In a way, it is part of the competition that is an essence of survival. For humans, other humans are generally the most important part of their ecology. We used to compete with some of the big cats for food and they were our predators. No longer. We mostly no longer compete with species other than other humans (insects excluded). The question is how does it relate to survival. This postulates that the main drives that lead to war are economic or resources, status and ideology or tribalism. Sometimes war has been waged simply because it could be, sometimes without any substantial material gain. It may be simply about removing competition. Fundamental to it though, is a dominance behavior.

It seems that almost all the obvious reasons for war can be removed. All of those reasons, besides perhaps ideology, seem unimportant in terms of the ecology that humans seem to be heading towards. The cost certainly seems to outweigh them, besides that we could easily end up destroying ourselves. Tribalism should not exist in the context of artificial selection. Also, if we do not have a balanced population and resource strategy, we will not be in a stable ecology. I think that covers most of the material reasons for war.

It does bring up something that is extremely important though. War has other results that are critically important. It causes change. A militarist will say that it removes the weak. I do not think that will be the issue, but it does cause genetic, social and technological change, usually development. These have been critical for humans. It is not just a matter of if those forms of change can continue without war. I think they can clearly can. Artificial selection will insure that in terms of genetics and technological change seems to feed on itself. Social change will follow. It raises the question of how much change is good for or required for survival? Stability is the best environment for social and economic growth. At the same time this book points out though that there can be danger from stagnation. An animal does not need to worry about that. Humans do, partly because of our communication and record keeping technology. What was, years ago, still exists today. The need for a balance between stability and ongoing change in the future is another topic considered through history and that will be considered elsewhere in this book.

Overall, war must be mostly considered a waste of resources, but remember that it may have been the cost of survival. The problem is that war has just worked. History gets written by the survivors and the dead, injured and trampled innocent on both sides tend to get ignored and forgotten. In a way it is like natural selection. It is a brutal process, but without it we could not survive. To prevent war, new forms of real competition and resultant change will have to replace it. In a sense, since the beginning, that is what sports have been about. They are a replacement for battle. Capitalism is supposed to be where survival of the fittest is judged in terms of innovation and efficiency (supposed to be). Business operates a great deal based on Creative Destruction (Joseph Schumpeter's version more than Karl Marx) and Disruptive Technology. We know of the idea of economic warfare between nations, but it could perhaps as well apply to corporate entities. Consider Apple and Microsoft (based on competition), then consider Linux (based on cooperation). Still, war must be considered from the context of human nature and that has been about killing.

When considering war, do not forget Saint Michael, the patron saint of warriors. That is do not forget that warriors are part of humanity. War is a horror. I would like it to never occur again. At the same time, war brings out the greatest in people and a people. It is also an aspect of humanity. The warrior had the (reproductive) advantage so long in history that just about all people have the ability to fight. It is a powerful instinct and important. War is a major part of what we are. It is quite possibly the reason modern humans survived while other branches passed away. In history the warrior caste was large and dynamic. In ways, I wonder what happened to them. It has been tempered. Since the time of the American Civil War, the skills of war have changed some. Organizational ability is still paramount, but some of the physical and instinctive requirements have changed. Mr. Colt did a great deal to equalize that. Looking at the history of WWI and WWII, it is clear that a lot of the warriors got exterminated by following their old instincts into wars fought with new weapons. It really started when new weapons like the rifled musket started to become more important than the instincts and physical ability of the warrior. Looking at what happened, it seems that the effect was probably large enough to make a (evolutionary) change. Many times the cream of nations "charged into machine gun fire". Still the warrior is with us and must not be discounted. You cannot say that the warrior has no place, for they are us. I would like to see war largely restricted to sports, martial training and virtual reality. Sports largely started out as substitutes for war. Sports are probably the most popular activities for participation and entertainment in the world. Already, war in virtual reality (games) is a very popular pass time. It is unpredictable and exciting in a tame world that we are making more tame. It can be hard to see the warrior now. A natural niche seems to be law enforcement officers. Are bikers warriors?

I emphasize that one of the hardest things in the future is going to be teaching morality. War is an abject lesson in morality. Unfortunately it seems to get forgotten quickly. The psychopath is good at war and may use it as a tool. That must be prevented at all cost. The psychopath does not think of survival of the society, only their own.

The issue of war is complicated because on one hand it seems that the removal of war is one of the commonest of human aspirations. At the same time it is also a significant part of our nature and it seems that almost the only way to deter war and aggression is to be able to resist. Also, war has worked and has become a part of natural selection. There is a genetic component to war. There is a question of if war is universal. The early farmers were certainly bad at it, but that might just have been in comparison. I usually say that the solution to a problem with a genetic foundation is to select for genes that compensate or control that one and develop a moral strategy to inhibit the behavior. I have mentioned that one of the few cases where I would suggest reduction in a genetic trait would be dominance behavior. It seems that that might be part of the foundation of war and the solution.

I always suggest the utmost caution when considering intentionally changing human nature. Choosing to change our genetic nature using artificial selection to remove war would be a fairly radical decision. It could be dangerous, particularly if "someone cheated" and retained the ability. It might not be possible for a variety of reasons. Still, the end of war is one of the greatest Aspirations we express and one of the most dangerous destructive forces there is, so it certainly seems that any way we can remove war is a goal, particularly in such a way as to not to endanger ourselves by making ourselves subject to war. A reduction in dominance behavior would mean less inclination to use war as a strategy, but would not necessarily remove the capability to fight, that is to deter. That might do it.

Anyway you look at it, this is of such great importance that any major decision related to this beyond a reduction in dominance behavior, should be put off until we have more knowledge and understanding.

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15. Food
Food is pretty basic to survival. Most of any animals activity is related to getting food. If energetics is the basis of ecology, then food is generally basic to the energetics of any animal. Humans are pretty unusual as far as food though. Most species eat a fairly small selection of foods and few eat both meat and vegetable. Humans basically eat anything and everything. Also humans in one place may eat things that are simply not consumed in another place. Humans can be exclusively vegetarian, but are less adapted to being completely carnivorous. Our digestive system is designed about half way between typical carnivore and typical herbivore. We cannot digest cellulose like many herbivorous animals. In the past, food has been a major limiting factor for humans and starvation has frequently been a major population limiter. Aside from the ruling class, most people have often been one disaster away from starvation. Examination of teeth and various mummified remains has shown that famines have been common. Humans need to eat food that is fairly high in energy.

In the future the issue of food is going to be very broad. Many people think that humans would naturally progress to a vegetarian diet based on the efficiency of food production and due to both environmental and ethical concerns. It seems just as likely that humans will bring tissue culture to food production and grow what meats they want in vats. In that context, it is impossible to predict what humans may want to eat. It may turn out that a tissue culture of the leg muscle of a mouse might be healthy and delicious. Depending on the population and the husbandry, domestic and wild crops may still be a part of the human diet.

One element of the description of the ecology we are coming from is that we cannot indefinitely continue the farming practices we currently use because of soil depletion and excessive fertilizer use. Modern technology and advanced farming practices can do wonders to preserve soil, if it is not overworked. A lot of farming can actually be done practically without soil. In a sense, this may be how humans evaluate just what the sustainable population of the Earth is. How much food can be produced with available water or other resource without environmental damage.

Theoretically a group of humans could speciate based on diet. If a group were isolated and decided that they were going to survive on processed yeast and algae, that could soon represent a new ecology. Something like this might be expected if humans inhabit space or for some other reason have a limited food supply.

Really, assuming that we continue as a technical specie with a limited population, adaptation to food will not be critical for survival. We would use artificial selection to remove food allergies where possible. We might want to spread around the gene for lactose digestion. I doubt that there would be any advantage to widely being able to digest cellulose, but as a scifi reader, I could see it as something to have in the toolbox. There may be adaptations that would allow us to eat processed or fatty foods with less harm. There are essential vitamins that we have to get from our diet. We could probably manage genetic adaptations that would create those vitamins. Most species naturally create vitamin C, but not humans for some reason.

It seems likely that eventually food production, which was such a limiting factor in the past, will not be a major overt limitation on humans. That is saying a lot, but if it is, we do not have a stable ecology. Freedom from hunger has always been a major human aspiration.

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15. Moral Strategy

Human survival strategies are given the name morality. There are an awful lot of humans strategic requirements and very often more than one strategy of how to fulfill the requirement. Some are more successful or efficient than others. A critical criteria is that a strategy does not lead to a dead end. At a point though, it is not just about survival. Happiness and comfort have to be factored in as well. This is meant to be a high-level view of moral strategies based on all the factors preceding it.

In a way, I guess this is supposed to be like the Gang of Four book written about software design patterns. It was a book by four master software designers who said that there were many software applications written, but they repeatedly used similar strategies to recognize and solve problems. Those similar problems and solutions were called Design Patterns. Their book described the patterns to provide a common language for communicating about design patterns and to describe the problems that typical Design Patterns were applied to solve. It gave great power to software developers. Be aware that these patterns were taken from experimentation and theory. Eventually they provided solutions that were not intuitive. What else is morality, but software? This is to describe common moral problems and how to recognize their nature. It also describes common solutions as well as patterns that can be applied to create solutions. In a way it is to apply theory to what has always been practice. It is to formalize the reason and understanding of what has been a body of knowledge based on authority and precedence (that came from experience and reason). Just like in computer science though, be careful not to get carried away with Design Patterns. In simpler cases, a Design Pattern may not be required at all. Common sense will do. Also, designers like to develop new patterns and elaborate existing ones. Beware unnecessary complexity masked by apparent elegance, the language and jargon can be used to confuse the non-specialist. Design Patterns give a power to manage very complex problems, unfortunately sometimes at a great cost of efficiency. Whether these are applied appropriately to computer systems or not, they almost certainly should not be applied to human social systems if they provide to much complexity.
One thing nice about that is that I do not have to always be accurate of come up with a solution, let alone a correct one. The purpose of this book is to create a framework for understanding and solving survival problems. I have tried to solve some problems such as the use of artificial selection, but I have no illusion that I can recognize or solve all of them. For me, this is the end of the book. For society, this is a hopefully a beginning. Aside from the problem of genetics and disease, I now can see other problems that are only likely to be solved by society working very systematically and cooperatively towards their solution.

In human history there have probably been more discussion about moral strategies than any other topic. Books about moral "Design Patterns" are common. We have a lot to work with. The most famous books in Western history ,including the Torah, Bible and Koran, are all descriptions of morality. I have already mentioned the seven deadly sins, the forty virtues, Grecian’s Manual and the Wisdom of Lazarus Long. What this discussion of moral strategy is meant to be is to focus on moral issues that seem important or are particularly subject to choice and described them according to biological principles. Less than to offer solutions (Which I likely would not have adequate knowledge to be an authority on. Only Gods are that wise, maybe), this is to show how to best frame the questions and look for the solutions based upon biological principles, which I do understand quite well and that are very revealing. Many technical sciences are today looking for technical solutions by examining the biological solutions created by evolution. This tries to apply that principle to moral problems.

Humans are so new at this niche. This niche is changing so quickly. Technology and its effects are changing so quickly. Artificial selection is going to cause such a huge change. There is so much that is unknown and trying to accurately predict the consequences of moral strategies over the long term is difficult to impossible, but the niche humans are entering is going to require that we try and that we succeed enough to survive. This section is meant to describe strategies that mostly seem to be about preferences. A good example might be should humans live in big cities separate from nature or should we live a more pastoralist life more thinly distributed through a world preserved in a more natural state. There are many questions like this. I will not try to answer questions like this, but only try to lay out the question, offer a foundation of how to look for answers in the biological context I use for this analysis and the pertinent information I can offer from my knowledge of biological principles.

Remember that ultimately this is about creating a niche in a "stable ecology". This is a time of such rapid change that it is hard to understand that usually change is very slow. Wolves do not need to keep adapting as long as the sheep do not get any faster. That is a "stable ecology". At the same time, like other social animals, other wolves are a large or the largest competitive factor in their ecology. Social development continues driven by competition from other wolves, not just the sheep. Ecologies are only so stable. This is the way it will be for humans, but I strongly caution that humans should not get in a genetic or strategic "arms race" with other humans. It could make a miserable world.

Survival is the ultimate conservatism. Conservatism is a philosophy of doing what has worked in the past. That is its greatest strength. It is a good principle to follow for survival. Change should not be for the sake of change. If I did not think we had to do a great deal of adaptation to survive, if I thought any previous or existing ecology would allow long-term survival, I would recommend it. There is also a place for trying to achieve our ideals, but survival must come first.

Evolution in nature proceeds by unintentional experimentation. That process relies on parallel development in isolated populations. It is sort of like the states in a nation. The different states may have different laws and pursue different strategies. If a particular strategy seems like a good solution to a problem common to the nation, the nation may adopt that strategy. It is hard for a single nation or state to carry on multiple strategic experiments. This is a problem for humans because modern travel technology and mass media tends to prevent the genetic and cultural isolation that is needed for original cultural experimentation. (Note that this would all change if we somehow got cheap efficient space travel, but it is almost certain that planets at least would still represent local populations that would have to solve the problems addressed here.) There is cultural experimentation, but it tends to be limited because it is financially driven. This changes over time. Music in the past 50 years provides a great illustration of this. Periods of great innovation led to success and commercialization that inhibited innovation.

The future will be shaped by powers interacting. There are many powers. There is the military (criminals too) with the most basic power, the power to kill that allowed them to rule civilization for thousands of years. Their power has grown more complicated now. There is the power of governments that includes law and tax. If the current trend towards "liberal Democracies" continues, this will include the power of the people. There is the power of religion and other moral authorities. There is the power of finance and money that represents both resources for survival and wealth. There is the power of the truth provided by science and philosophy. Technology has always largely shaped humans and will continue to. These powers will all shape the future and will often compete.

There has long been a debate about whether human is a product of nature or nurture. Are we a product or genetics or upbringing and environment? There is a lot of ideology bound up in this. What science is starting to show is a larger effect from genetics. Many of our opinions, habits, beliefs and even political leanings seem to have genetic foundations. This then enters the realm of the debate over Free Will. The problem is that genetics are not adaptive enough to match the time frame of change in the human world. Genetic based strategies just cannot match the complexity of human problems, so humans adapt strategically. That is fundamental to our niche. We also like to think we have more free will than that. Part of the idea of the potentials of artificial selection is that humans in the future would have a richness of genetic potential and predisposition such that they would be more inclined to make the decisions based on reason, judgment and education, rather than genetically prompted leanings. In a way this is to say that we want to be genetically hybridized enough that we are capable of free will, free of our genes. Let our future be formed by reason, rather than instinct.

This section is about possible strategies and goals that can be decided. If someone asked you how you thought the world should be, what would you say? Myself, I would look at it in the context of the trends I already see happening and choose within those. A main bias I use is the assumption that we should develop individually and socially.

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Topics to be considered here:
1. Self
2. Dating
3. Family
4. Community
5. Occupational Castes
6. Ayn Rand
7. Population
8. Wealth
9. Technology
10. Artificial Genetic Selection
11. Economics
12. Politics
13. Society
14. Sloth
15. Psychopaths
16. Possibilities
17. Space
18. Gaia

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1. Self
A person lives and dies as an individual. It is what is in between that counts. This book is about survival of society and the human race, but there must be a balance between that and the individual. An individual can take risks that a society cannot afford to. Humans have dreams and aspirations. Humans should pursue those.

Every individual must work towards their own development. Their family, society and community must help and support them, but ultimately it is up to the individual. An individual must try to find their vocation and avocation. They must try to achieve Self Actualization. They cannot be just a product of their genes and environment. They must be a product also of their own desires, choice and will as well as necessity. We take much of our identity from our vocation. It is how we support ourselves. our families and our society. A work ethic is needed. A belief in the value of the work we do, the belief that we should do any job right and the belief that work is how to achieve. Without work and effort, nothing is accomplished. We must be more than our vocation or we are like a machine. We must also know our avocation whether it is a sport or hobby, it is critical to growth. It is a lucky person that knows their vocation and avocation, because that is where they will find much of the growth and happiness that their life offers them. The term self actualization has been described many ways. I suggest learning more about it, but mostly it is to become more than just what your environment makes you and requires. Make yourself a product of yourself and not just what the world makes you. Make yourself more than you are and work to be what you want to be.

An individual must be educated. This includes self, moral, technical and cultural knowledge. They should have knowledge of history. I recommend a knowledge of an art. Learn of the beauty of humanity and nature. They should have a knowledge of humanity and humans that lends an understanding of self and others. Know thyself. Know your weaknesses and strengths. Know how to use your strengths and how to overcome your weaknesses or compensate for them. One must be able to take care of themself and others as that is what a parent must do and what one may be called on to do at any time. Take care of your friends, especially when they are in need. Read. Simply read and do not spend too much time on mindless pursuits. I say read, but I will say that some media has now developed enough to be able to present knowledge like only books could in the past. Still, read. When immersive virtual reality becomes available, it may be able to teach moral lessons that are hard to learn from books, but that is not here yet. There will always be competition between the individual and larger powers. The only way that the individual can compete is through education.

Consider that current research indicates that our commonest view of ourselves tends to be very inaccurate. We usually do not have an accurate opinion of our abilities, how people see us or even our appearance. We naturally have great areas of blindness to our own nature. A person should try to remedy this. We should try to know the opinions our family, friends and acquaintances hold of us. It may be hard to get these honest opinions, but try. Try to provide these when people ask you for them. Honesty is not always what we call social courtesy, but it is so valuable. Sometimes, when wanted, honesty is more important than courtesy, though manners are always required. There are also tools you can access tools for objective analysis of your skills, predispositions, vocational potentials, avocational possibilities, psychological nature and especially potential weaknesses. Use these. Even if you do not agree with results from the tools, know. Strength comes from weakness and weaknesses can come from strengths. Growth comes from knowledge. Seek opinions from wise people.

Develop manners, respect, honesty, compassion, courtesy, loyalty, persistence and pride. Develop your beauty. That includes physical attributes, but also grace, singing ability, humor, storytelling, and dance. Have beautiful hair. Develop your physical abilities, your strength, agility, speed, grace and endurance.

The human mind is far from perfect and takes shortcuts for efficiency. One shortcut it makes is in long term memory. It does not remember every detail. When retrieved, long term memories are logical reconstructions from details that have been remembered. While there are demonstrations that various people have incredible memories, that is the exception. Maybe we can take advantage of that and other rare, special intellectual talents using artificial selection, but in the meantime, there are disciplines that can be learned for enhancing memory. If a person tries to always remember things from multiple points of view, they can greatly enhance the accuracy of their long term memory.
Related to this is that with a little self training a person can often ignore things that cause visual illusions. I joke that I am a follower of Asura, a mythical God whose followers work to never be fooled by illusions. Know what causes natural illusions and when they occur. One should develop their perceptions to see small details that tell more of the story than is immediate to the eye. Most of the nerve traffic between the eye and brain is actually from the brain to the eye. It is setting up the eye to look for patterns. That is based on training and attention. At the same time, one can use illusions to let the brain construct what is hidden as well.
There is so much that a person can learn that is just natural, but not usually developed. Self hypnosis is a great way to learn to make subroutines that just run and sensitize a person to be able to notice things that they might not see or be aware of. Everyone naturally does it, but it is also a learned skill. Learning a disciplined breath control teaches great control of the body. Breathing is the only function that is both conscious and unconscious. Training breathing consciously seems to forge a unique link between the mind and body as well as giving a great form of endurance. If you are breathing, you are alive. Learning stress reduction techniques is important. There are so many important things to learn about one's body and mind, but they require a decision to do it.
Learn to recognize and understand your feelings. They are very important. Controlled breathing, aloneness and self-hypnosis can help. It is like other things where understanding, particularly with words empowers you. It strengthens bonds when you can communicate your feelings to others.

Be alone some time. Remove all distractions. Be sure that you are good company for yourself. Often, it is when you are alone that you will learn the most and what you cannot learn with others. Some things must be done alone and sometimes you will do your greatest things by yourself. Do not just be a product of your groups.

Use sunscreen. Practice good physical and psychological hygiene, particularly in terms of truth. There is much that is unknown and that a person cannot easily know. There are many powers that want to manipulate what you believe and they have powerful tools to use for the purpose. That presents a limitation and dangers, but what is unacceptable is when a person willingly ignores truth. Part of that seems to be due to genetic predispositions, which hopefully artificial selection can help to overcome, but it will be the individual's choice to be informed and honest that will count the most. Forgiveness is critical both to the functioning of the society and to the health of the individual. So is memory and caution though.

Ego is important to the individual's survival. They must value themself and have a good opinion of themself. It must be kept in a balance though. Too little and it weakens a person. Too much and it becomes what is a common dangerous illusion amounting to pathology. I have seen more people blinded by ego. I was once asked "how do you get in the same room with him and his ego". Cute. I guess it relates to status. A person wants to think they are great, but control yourself. It makes you vulnerable and can damage you socially.
There is a particular flavor of excess ego I will mention that I have encountered on more than one occasion. When examining religion, I encountered the word "perfect". It is a word that has its uses, but one branch of its meaning refers to God. It is a tautology, "God is perfect", "Godlike is perfect". The word "divine" is similar. Well, in Western religion is the common concept that "Man was made in the image of God". Theologians debate what that means and generally consider it a spiritual resemblance. What I have seen though is that one of the way people misuse religion is to gratify ego. They claim that because they are like God, they are perfect. It allows great latitude for hypocrisy and blindness. Humans are imperfect. Know it and live with it.

A human should enjoy themselves, but never be consumed by kinetic pleasures. A human should enjoy things, but never allow themselves to be subject to excessive distraction. The modern world offers so many distractions and pleasures that have value, but danger as well. Survival means primarily a focus on development, growth and family. One must not be too distracted from these.

When it is time to die, do it with grace and dignity. That is when you will be glad that you used your life wisely.

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2. Dating
This might just as well be called reproduction, the topic in biology, but it is a bit different so the topic is Dating. This is not your usual dating guide. In history and before, it was unusual for a person to "marry" outside their social group and tribe. Now it is the norm in many places and modern travel will make it more common. There are a few differences though. Arranged marriages seem unlikely in the future. It just does not seem the way we are going. The internet offers new potentials for selectively meeting people with which you are likely to be compatible. With the genetic technologies becoming available, a person is likely to be able to contact a large pool of individuals to choose from that would be good genetic compliments. A high degree of hybridization is likely to be common. Part of genetic complementation would be a genetic makeup that would allow for localized backcrossing to stabilize the hybrid. Do not worry. That will not take the romance out of it. Already web sites offer individuals contact with people that seem psychologically compatible and at least one tries to match based on immunological complementation similar to how humans choose based on smell. It all seems far better than the traditional hit or miss methods of the past that have been great fodder for the mishaps of so many charming romantic comedies.

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3. Family
In history the family has been the most important institution to survival. It probably will be in the foreseeable future. The primary mission of parents is to teach their children how to survive. Everything else is gravy. A family needs love and touching and nurturing. A family must provide support. A family is where moral education must start. A family should provide cultural education. The primary function of a society must be to support the family and the main industry of any society must be child raising.

Let children be children. Let them play. You may think you are doing them a favor by giving them a head start. Sometimes you are, but sometimes you might just be preventing them from being children. I do not think you can do any worse than being raised on Felix the Cat like myself. It passed.

It is hard to say what the extent of family will be, particularly in the information age where record keeping is so easy. Right now, many families seem anchor-less. A strong family is very satisfying and and is an aspect of survival, though less so in a generally wealthy society. Extended family has been the custom of the past. It provided for children in many ways and provided comfort and support for the aged. The latest trends will never be as satisfying as family customs, which should be intentionally developed and nurtured. Mobility has been the rule in technological societies, but might not be in the future. At the same time, there must be a balance between the family and its individuals. It seems likely that families will develop and retain records that reflect long pedigrees.

One thing that needs mentioning in light of the potentials of medical technology is that with any social structure similar to what we have, sexual selection is a disaster and should be forbidden. Not only does it seem unethical, it can certainly be dangerous. It can lead to war and certainly promotes a thriving sex trade.

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4. Community
A community is probably the largest local social unit that humans are really adapted to continuously living in. It is analogous to the village of a tribe. Really, how many people can you actually know? It is a support system for the family and it is the larger moral context in which children develop. It is the smallest reproductive system and in that sense, it is not enough over time though. The community is subject to inbreeding. Really, there is a fluidity to the description of community and tribe. Community is the local population that a person develops and lives in. It is independent of, but intimately part of the larger tribe. Tribal humans were composed of village populations for cultural exchange and outbreeding. The village and community are constrained, the village by available accessible resources and the community by distance. Often it has been that humans group together for safety as well as social interaction. Isolated humans tend to get psychologically shifted. Contact with other humans keeps psychology balanced or maybe re-oriented.

Religion is common to a tribe, but it is usually really more functional at the community level. The institution of religion may exist at the tribal level or higher, but its action is within the community. (Historically it was also important in clashes between larger societies and cultures. Looking at current events, it could still be.) In those terms, religion might be best called an association. There may be many associations within a society, tribe or even a village, based on mutual interest. In that sense they can be institutions that serve a function over generations. At that point, they might be called social or moral institutions. Associations are very important to human society and individuals in many ways. They can provide social interaction, support and various forms of education including moral. They can also lead to a community.

Religion is such a complicated subject. Its most basic function is husbanding morality and the survival of its people. That is where it becomes valuable as a larger institution. At the same time, that is where the problem seems to arise as that is where a power gets concentrated. That role is very complex and there are many different ideas of what that should be. It is basic to the cohesiveness of the society though. To make matters worse, there are many different religions. This role represents a great power, because people have powerful instincts to seek out moral systems and defend them vigorously.
Religion is interesting in that it includes the custom of constant moral education. Particularly in the future, this seems a great role for it, perhaps its most basic role. Not because of a God, but because of humanity. Who else is going to do it, government or corporations? I think not.
Another basic role I can see for religion is not just husbanding morality, but husbanding the community's genetics. It needs to be done by an institution, an institution that will protect its reputation for putting people before itself. It must put its people before itself. Its first rule must be not to succumb to the temptation to advise parents to change the balance of faith or loyalty. Somehow it will have to find a balance between its natural conservatism and the freedom and creativity of individuals.

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5. Occupational Castes
It is quite possible that we could intentionally sort back into genetically based occupational casts for reasons of social stability and to take advantage of specialization. It is a familiar social form and ecology of the society does have occupational niches similar to what Hutchinson described in "Homage to Santa Rosalia". It seems a little unlikely, because of the mobility and diversity of humans, but could it be done intentionally.

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6. Ayn Rand
I consider Ayn Rand one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Her view was so practical and logical. Her stories were compelling and here characters were so interesting. It is easy to understand why she is considered bread and butter for college students (or maybe that they can relate to the song "Yesterday"). There have been so many great thinkers, but how many that addressed problems as current as she did? A large part of what formed her thoughts were the then very current clash between Totalitarian Communism and Capitalistic Democracy, individualism and collectivism. There is so much to learn from her, particularly about the incredible creative drive of the individual. From my point of view though, her work was critically flawed, because her well developed morality was not a good survival strategy. It was not based on survival as this describes it as relating to the specie. It only related to the individual. Notice that children were really not a part of it. The logical extension of her beliefs sort of unavoidably caste them as parasites and marriage was not about growth or survival, but simply self fulfillment. Also, though she criticized religion quite appropriately in ways, there was no discussion of faith as it is to either the pious or non-believer. That is in terms of how we survive. It was only about deception, yet faith is more than that. Indeed her vision include apocalypse where society ended and most people simply died. Problem solved. At the same time, her vision laid out so many real problems that humanity must confront. Because her discussions were particularly shaped by Communism, her response particularly focused on individuality. In any case, as one of the most modern philosophers, her view can be a good starting point for many issues, but particularly individualism and collectivism. If the moral strategy I describe here does not address the moral problems she tried to solve, then I am likely missing something.

Her view on individuality, even for an archetype, seemed a bit extreme. She never mentioned teams, one of the best creations of humans. Her view was along the lines of that anyone who was not a leader and 100% self sufficient, is a parasite. A rather extreme modern interpretation of that looks at employees that way. That is not the common lot of humanity. We work together to succeed. Cooperation is how we survive even if individuals show up more in the history books. Perhaps artificial selection might modify that one day, but that would imply a very fundamental change in what humans are. Now, we are by nature more social than we are creative and teams can often create what individuals cannot. We have always relied on our leaders and it is appropriate that there are followers as well as leaders. I know some amazingly intelligent, capable people, which has led to their great weakness that they cannot work with or even easily tolerate lesser gifted people. They cannot work in a team and will not even lead. From their strength, comes a great weakness. From another point of view, it is not surprising that her view was flawed, because it made no pretense of balance.

Ayn Rand considered greed to be one of the greatest virtues. It has been an incredible motivator through history, but there are other powerful motivations. Greed, the dominance it implies and the imbalance between the individual and society that it fosters will not lead to the society of our aspirations. It has a great potential power, but so then does violence. It just does not seem like a good path.
I am going to add a little discussion of greed here. Perhaps it should be in the Balance section of topics, but in a way I find myself responding to other people's view of Ayn Rand's discussion, so it goes here.
Ayn Rand was responding to the ongoing conflict of Individuality versus Collectivism, particularly in the context of her time, Communism. She argued that it was Individuality and consequently greed that motivates all the great accomplishments. Really though, her characters did not create what they did out of greed. She said it was their own individual creativity. Hank Reardon was not a greedy man. First and foremost he was inspired and creative. She said what was evil was how it was used and it was the evil of collectivism or non-individuality, that used their creations against them. She was really complaining about the society and the mediocrity and venality of the average people that it was composed of. She particularly railed against those that dishonestly manipulated the force that those people represented. My experience is that most people are good, not evil. They are creative and appreciative, not exploitative. Elsewhere I specifically mention those that have no "better" intentions, the psychopath as well as those guilty of sloth.
I did not write this book out of greed. Yes, I would like to get a lick out of it and may one day, but I wrote it because I saw humanity in crisis. I have asked myself why I have gone to so much effort to write it. People that know me can tell you of the decades of constant work I put into solving it. I think I did it because of my instinct for leadership. It may also be a priestly or simple moral instinct. I have met others that have tried to follow this path. Most were young and gave up after a few years. It is difficult. When I meet a young person interested in marine biology, I question them. It seems that how this problem must be solved starts with understanding the fundamentals of life, which are to be discovered in the simple forms of life of a tide-pool. They are following an instinctive path that I followed.
There is no doubt that greed is one thing that has been a great builder of the modern world, particularly the United States, but it has come at a terrible human cost. If one is heartlessly pragmatic, you might say that all that suffering was by expendables, exploited like animals, ultimately to create the modern world and the potentials I write of here. One only has to be honest to say that they were used and disposed of if you were the one doing it. The victims of greed know full well that their worth on earth is only so long as they can produce a profit for their task master. OK, maybe that is how it has had to be in the past, but that is not how I see it in the future. That is not our aspirations. The people I envision in the future cannot be called animals.
Greed might be compared to modern nuclear power. It is a great power that can create great good, but it has drawbacks and great dangers. It would be better if it can be replaced with something else more benign. Greed is like that. It is a great power, but there are replacements like thorium, fusion or solar that are far safer, with fewer drawbacks. Traditional nuclear power is a primitive, transitional power source. Greed is a primitive, transitional motivator that can be replaced and I think will it have to be for humans to reach their aspirations. There are innumerable examples in history and currently. Greed is particularly dangerous when exhibited by psychopaths that by definition do not care about the society any. Also note that if humans develop an even moderately extended life span, That will be even a greater danger. Psychopaths have an inherent power that is a great danger to society.

I would like to emphasize that in that case, she was not wrong, she was not writing about survival as I am trying to. She had a different objective and here strategy was appropriate to achieve that. She was responding to Communism, an extreme form of collectivism. Then again, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Greed is not what will achieve human aspiration or probably even of human survival.

A balance to science comes from the philosophy of science. There is the question of whether science advanced by one person single mindedly trying to make their vision real such as Isaac Newton (or Hank Reardon) or is it advanced by teams of researchers building on the work of the scientific community? It is both and that is appropriate. Even in a team, an individual is usually the source of the most creativity. What is amazing is when there is more than one highly creative individual in the team. May I mention the Beatles. It may require a team to create, but creativity is an attribute of individuals.

In the future the balance between individuality and collectivism could go either way. Humans are naturally conservative which is not where individuality flourishes, but there needs to be a balance. That is the nature of the future and of humans and is important in so many ways.

     *    Spoken words blow away in the wind. The written word endures.

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7. Population
A relatively stable population number is a mark of a stable ecology. Either it will be controlled by nature as it is for all animals or it will be controlled by humans. Self control is a sign of maturity. Conscious control of the species' population will be an indication of having achieved a stable ecology and will also be a hallmark of the kind of specie that I see humans being able to become and having to become. I have already said that it can probably be mostly accomplished without resorting to laws for three reasons. People will follow customs for survival if the they figure it is being fairly applied. Women will limit their family size if empowered to and they are educated. There will be the added factor that with artificial selection, a person can far better insure their family continuity and survival. My guess is though that there will have to be a law, because it conflicts with natural law and because some groups will want to practice demographic warfare. Over time it may become custom and part of common moral law, but I fear that that would be the result of a lesson from a catastrophe.

So what should the human population of Earth be? It is hard to say, because population has always been based on available resources, but this talks about it being based on conscious decision. Right now, it seems clear that we have more people than resources for any human niche I have described as being for more than animals. But say in the next hundred years population did not go up, artificial selection became common which would produce a great wealth and say we developed cheap fusion or solar power. Then we might well be able to provide the resources for say 10 billion people. Theoretically it might be far more. There is so much that is unknown and so much potential from technology, but if I were asked, I would guess that a good population for earth might be a billion or two. It should be plenty for the requirements of survival, strains the ecology less and be adequate to accomplish most of what we might want to accomplish. Maybe we will one day embark on a project so ambitious that we will need more people to accomplish it, but I cannot envision it.

It may be that for some reason though that humans decide that they want far fewer people and that could be achieved. Perhaps because we decide we want to be able to live in a more natural type environment that we are more adapted to with its weather and fractal complexity as well as to reduce the human impact on the natural ecology. Then a billion humans would be more practical. Then again, if I am correct about disease, we might find ourselves suddenly going from a population of 10 billion to a population of a billion or two. We might decide that we need to maintain a smaller population to mitigate the danger of disease in the future.

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8. Wealth
Genetics is the ultimate wealth. All other forms of wealth are transient. Genetics is the wealth you can give your descendants. Any wealth that an animal has that is not based upon its genetics is short-term and likely based on luck or the season. Material wealth that has been a feature of the civil society and especially modern technical society, can rarely be reliably transmitted between generations. It also carries great inherent danger. It gives great opportunity for corruption and distraction. While it can give a person a reproductive advantage, it has great danger as well. In terms of survival over generations, it is unlikely to provide much reproductive advantage. Very often a person has wealth because they love wealth, something that very well may compete with values that nurture a family or society. Now there is even a term coined to describe one problem of wealth "Sudden Wealth Syndrome" when a person suddenly acquires wealth such as by winning the lottery. Usually they are not prepared or knowledgeable enough to husband, preserve and protect the wealth. For many, it is basically a disaster. All forms of wealth require strategies of proper usage and preservation. A person with a great intellect needs education and experience. A person with a great physique needs exercise, practice and training. A person with beauty must know how to display it, preserve it and the dangers associated with it. How to deal with various forms of wealth are important moral strategies that a person should be trained in. Particularly in light of that in the future, we will almost certainly have great genetic and material wealth.
Wealth is best as the power to invest and build, necessary to creating a future. When it is used to increase knowledge, it is transformed to a wealth like genetics, it keeps on giving.

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9. Technology
The power of machines is immense. Humans have co-evolved with it. It has allowed humans to achieve what we have achieved. Our future will be based upon it. It is the power to be tamed and controlled. It has already given us the power to destroy ourselves. Without it, we will not survive as more than animals.

The most fundamental aspect of a specie's ecology is its energetics. Humans use technology to provide for their energetic and resource requirements. In any stable ecology that humans occupy in the future, they will require a high quality energy supply. Maybe it will be fusion. Maybe that will get replaced by high-efficiency solar technology. Maybe that will get replaced by antimatter or zero point energy. The method is not as important as the results. It will be essential. Almost all other resources can be produced with sufficient energy.

In the history of the world, everything has been recycled. Bone, hair, wood, shells and all other products created by life either naturally degrade or are degraded by some biological process. That is the way it has to be. For humans, this must become part of our strategy. Some things that humans produce immediately or later become a problem in the environment, such as lead or mercury. Some things seem relatively inert, but they accumulate like CO2 and aluminum. The trouble is when you are talking in terms of the time frame of a species survival, any trash heap gets extremely large. Packaging should all be designed to be easily recycled. There is also the problem of biologically active chemicals such as hormones that disperse in the environment and cause problems. In the long term, these problems are very very dangerous.

Beyond that, the issue seems to largely be about machines that can imitate human thought and movement. I have already mentioned the danger of machines that would have a survival instinct or some form of dominance behavior. The trouble is that machines are so efficient and efficiency is hard to beat. It is fine that there is a symbiosis between human and machine, but it will have to be maintained in such a way that it is more beneficial to humans than machines. That may become difficult. Frankly, at this time many humans are just not that smart and can have their productive activities replaced by machines. So many jobs have already been replaced by automation. Artificial selection can help here by increasing human ability. The ability of machines also increases. Humans have only so many requirements. What about if all of these requirements can be met by machines as well as humans can perform them, but at a cheaper cost? As I said, it is hard to stop efficiency. Maybe having a job or occupation will be unusual in the future. Maybe humans can occupy their time with child raising, socializing, education, hobbies, sports, entertainment, art and other activities that are not elements of the requirements of maintaining the physical aspects of a society. This is a huge change from what many humans are now and from the elements of human nature that have created technology. This is where some very critical decisions may have to be made. The problem is that experiments to find out the consequences of these decisions will be difficult. If we develop machines that are so advanced that they are relied upon to do our most advanced thinking for us, we will become very dangerously dependent upon them and have defined our own limitations. It is hard to say just what human potential is possible for retaining the ability of humans to compete with machines, particularly in terms of artificial selection. I see artificial selection being able to provide everyone with an IQ of at least 200. There is reason to think it could be far more than that. That raises additional questions of its own, but more precisely it asks will we need more than that for survival. It also raises the question of what we need laws to regulate the usage of machines. Perhaps we will only allow advanced machines to be used for the jobs that are too tedious or dangerous for humans to want to do them. Perhaps they will be used to maintain existing infrastructure or solve environmental problems. These are problems that has already been considered by great thinkers, but are going to have to be considered more pointedly in the future.

Technology works against privacy. That is an aspect of the incredible memory it makes available. This is where law has to become weighted in favor of the individual. It is not just the intrusiveness and risk to civil rights. Already we see where this capability is used for fraud, let alone manipulation. People must learn to protect their privacy and society must allow it.

The implications of virtual reality are unpredictable. It will become part of our ecology, the space within which we live. It certainly will be a fantastic tool for critical moral education, particularly if the general human environment continues to get physically safer and generally more distracting. It could offer great beauty, newness and adventure. A rather metaphysical idea that has been touched upon is entering virtual reality with limited knowledge of true self to experience and learn what would not be available to the person as they are, particularly if we become long lived. We could experience the heady flavors of newness that are denied by experience. It may be that we prefer the virtual to the real, though I account that as a danger akin to drugs. Will a virtual lover be more satisfying than a real one? Only faith is likely to protect against that. It may be that ultimately as a specie we one day choose to exist in virtual worlds, though that would likely represent an experimental dichotomy of ecology. One of the main problems we will have to overcome to achieve the immersive virtual reality I foresee, is the interface between the brain and machines. It may be that we would use genetic engineering to make the brain capable of that communication. That is speculative enough for me.
The consequences of virtual immortality are rather unpredictable. Many people would not want immortality. I think few would want individual limitless permanence. It is not what humans have developed for. In that it would be based on a technologically produced soul, it would have to provide individuality, but it would almost certainly be based on a model of sanity, which I hope becomes well understood and also broad. A person whose consciousness was in an artificial mind needs to be restricted to sanity by the design of the mind. There is much reason to think we should create an aggregate consciousness. It could do and understand many things that I doubt will be in the reach of any human. It may be that the immortal will be concerned with the living. I think that their direct effect should be limited. That would prevent the growth of individuals. On the other hand, they would inherently have a longer point of view inappropriate to the shorter lived. It might be a solution to many problems of human survival. It might well be that their interest in the living would be naturally limited. That would be convenient. Immortality in any form would give a great power and I do not think we want the living to be ruled by the dead in the traditional sense.

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Automation

Automation is one of the last and hardest topics to be considered, because the issue and implications are so great. Machines have done so much for us, but there is often a downside and that is particularly true for automation, because it is basically replacing the current function of humans with machines. It is the issue of can humans be replaced and made useless. The problem is that in our current context, they can. The solution must be in thinking in a different context. It requires a major stretch, but at the same time, it must be comfortable to our moral instincts or we will not accept that stretch.

Automation is already occurring and has been for a long time. Perhaps it started when we began using horses for travel or carts for carrying things that used to have to be carried by hand. In the past, it has usually just enhanced and extended human ability such as the creation of steam hammers for metal working or steam drills for mining. It might not correctly even be called automation at that point, just tools. Now though, machines are capable of doing more and often can be made to do work without human direction. More and more, as machines have developed, they have been able to replace more and more skilled labor. They can do it faster, cheaper and better. Machines are more efficient than humans. Some people have said that is an argument for the superiority of machines and that humans should just accept that. It might raise the question about the meaning of the word "superiority". In biology that usually translates to "fittest" as in survival of the fittest. This book clearly states that it is about human survival, so it sort of defines humans as "superior". In a way this book is about how humans can survive and that must mean keeping them "superior". The systems this book describes trys to allow natural trends to play out to avoid the "jack in the box" effect of a system suddenly re-conforming to natural laws when human laws do not reflect reality (think prohibition). In the case of automation, the system must be planned so that there is a good outcome. Think of democracy as opposed to feudalism which is in ways a more natural system.

It is a relative thing. Efficiency is measured in production versus cost. The resources to make a product are relatively fixed. The cost of assembly can change with the cost of the workers or machines needed to do the work. Some things that could be automated, have not been, because labor has been cheap enough to not justify it.

There are so many touch points to the development of automation including the looms of England or the assembly lines of Henry Ford when industrial production developed. Maybe it should be when the automatic welders started appearing on assembly lines. Another touch point might be right now when automation is developing to a certain point where it is more and more becoming able to replace skilled labor. As one discussion mentioned, now machines are capable not just of doing a task, but of doing multiple tasks. One machine can cut, weld, rivet, assemble and test. This development will continue. New developments have produced not just machines that are faster, but that are also more dexterous and precise. An Italian team has developed a mechanical hand that is as capable and delicate as a human hand. Machines can put wires too small for a human to handle, into holes too small for a human to see.

Maybe a more accurate touch point would be right now when manufacturing is moving back to the United States from China because in the balance, automated production machinery is changing the balance of cost of manufacturing to being cheaper than the cheapest labor available on Earth.

This does not apply just to manufacturing. This will also apply to the labor and judgement intensive industries of agriculture. With new machines being developed with the manual delicacy and sensory ability of humans, the notoriously labor intensive demands of agriculture can be automated. Keep in mind though that it is the human mind that is most unique, not our bodies. Major professions like medicine, law and accounting will also be touched. There is great human judgement to those professions, but the sheer data handling and analysis functions of the data of those professions will allow machines to compete. It may turn out that "Moravec's Paradox", the different strengths of machines and humans, that a combination of both human and machine will be the future of these professions. That will only hold true if machines keep the limitations they currently have, which will only hold true if we do not reverse engineer the human brain. Still, machines will be able to replace a great deal of the functionality of humans in many professions. Consider medicine. A patient in a hospital may be visited by a doctor and a machine. The machine would be able to automatically take all patient vital signs, do blood tests, x-rays and any other clinical tests needed. It could understand the patients statements of symptoms. It could then analyze the data against all the available medical data, the volume of which is already overwhelming to highly trained doctors. It could even suggest a course of treatment. Software already exists that can do very good diagnostics and prescribe treatment. At that point, it is almost primarily that the doctor offers an oversight of the machine's decision. Also there is the factor that humans are just more comfortable dealing with other humans. Who knows how long that will hold true, but it is a factor to consider.

Aa that says, automation is not just robots. The human niche is about though. Automation is more than computers controlling machines and requires more. Perhaps the largest piece of automation and the greatest facilitator of it is the Internet. As usual, that shows that there is more than one side to the issue and it is not simple.

Basically, not only can almost all human labor be replaced by a machine (or will be), but it also will be more efficient. That produces some interesting problems, not the least of which is that it is not compatible with our economic system. It is time to think more basically, perhaps back to a time before civilization to see what human needs are.

Consider Maslow's "hierarchy of needs", starting with air, food, water, sleep, etc. What were the needs of a tribal human to survive? This question is raised to ask what a human needs other than what we see as requirements in the current "civilization". Currently, most of our needs are met based on the workings of an economic system. You have a job to get money to trade for our physical needs. Well, what if there are no jobs, because machines are more efficient at doing them than humans are? What do we need from machines? You need food, manufactured goods and a home. In terms of survival, why? Maslow's work tends to focus on the individual's needs for individual survival, but this is about survival in a broader sense. It is about the survival of the society and family. In those terms what needs to be added to those requirements, is that these are not just for the individual, one must say that these needs are for a the continuation to the family. What a person needs then is the needs of their survival, plus the needs to allow their children to survive the same way. Currently that means food, resources of living (medicine, manufactured goods, recreation etc.), a home, an education and retirement. We currently call that "middle class". Those have been provided by the cooperative frame of the economy where people work together as specialists to jointly and efficiently provide all these requirements. Well, what if these are all provided by machines? Again, we need a new economic form. Karl Marx pointed out the problem when he said (to paraphrase) that whoever controls the means of production, controls the society. Our society, based on real economics inherent inequality, inherent limitations of resources and the effectiveness of capitalism, has meant that wealth and forms of power get concentrated in individuals or classes. Only the protests of groups of People, often labor unions supported by the population, have mitigated this. Natural capitalism promotes and gives the power to create class systems that amount to slavery. That is not going to work in a system where artificial genetic selection has removed most inequality. Already around the world, people want to be part of the "middle class" That is to live lives not dominated by ignorance, insecurity and want.

There are reasons capitalism and class has existed. Remove those reasons, both inherent inequality and competition for resources, and you will need a new system of economics. We have come from a time of kings where people have often aspired to wealth and power. We need to aspire to security, survival and a degree of comfort. Notice that in Maslow's hierarchy, nowhere is mentioned "power". Notice that Christianity offers all power to God and that Earthly power is rejected. It is not (or will not be) necessary to survival. Power is the unstated goal of most of the motivations of modern society. We need a system that does not enshrine those. In political terms it has been called "democracy". In economic terms it has been called "socialism". We know the problems of both and according to how we are developing, the problems of both can be removed or made minor enough at to be unimportant. If everyone is healthy and intelligent; if resources are unlimited (for a limited population) and produced by machines; if all can have an education, particularly in moral terms; then we can have a society that we have aspired to. (Let the anti-utopian novels be penned).

This is a novel idea. I have tried to explain why it is possible and makes sense. At the same time it has taken a lot of complicated projection to describe it. There are caveats, such as that this only applies if humans control their population, but elsewhere I have described why I think that to be likely and I have also said that we will not be in a new ecology if we have not done that. Also, at some point, I think that the traditional power brokers will resist this as they always have. I will directly address some other critiques of this concept. Criticism of socialism has usually been emotional based coming from vested interests as well as well reasoned, experience based arguments. I will address those as best I can.

Frankly, I like Robert Heinlein's defence of the present system the best. I understood it as a basic expression of conservative principles that the system we have had for thousands of years of civilization, has worked quite well. He unabashedly said it was based on self interest and greed. It has worked and should be perpetuated. I think that it would not apply in a situation of relatively unlimited resources and the relative equality of artificial selection making that form of competition unnecessary. There is great cost to it, but that is the cost exacted by natural selection of nature and capitalism. Natural selection will continue, but it will be different and will not be based on the same forms of competition that have built this civilization. No one said that natural selection was pretty. Our present system of capitalism has made any but the potentially (children) or fully productive worker, irrelevant except as consumers. Also note that Mr. Heinlein always focused on the conservative principles of family and survival, something I do emphasize.

The second argument I will describe is when socialism is critiqued, it is usually referred to as "Communism". I will use the position of Ayn Rand, a brilliant modern philosopher and foremost opponent of communism (though one that did not talk much about children). At the time, the main criticism of communism was the incredible authoritarianism of its leaders. It was not a surprise as in Russia and China they had violently replaced the existing power structure. There was a power vacuum. As is somewhat expected, that power vacuum initially got filled by the most ruthless. In both cases, the system developed into a more pluralistic, democratic system. Russia in particular seems to have had bumps, but that is understandable since nothing else superior has been proposed. Democracy is a great thing, but it is difficult to accomplish, because it is not a well developed institution and we are not well adapted to it. Also, they have had powerful interests fighting to consolidate their personal and group power. China seems a better example of a transition to a real democracy. Do not be surprised if power works to hide its abuses. It happens in the United States as well.
Another criticism of communism by Ayn Rand that expressed many things well was the term "from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs". I do not think it was original to her, but she described the problem so well. If I recall her example correctly, The Tramp's Speech, a girl needed braces. In another family, the father's only joy was his music. By the theory and abuse of power (democratic power I will mention), the girl got her braces as a medical need, but the music was deemed a luxury and so there was no allowance voted for it. It ruined him. It was a discussion of the unfairness of the collectivism. I understand it, but it was a pretty extreme example, very emotionally based and as much a critique of the abuse of democracy as collectivism. Democracy can be as bad a system as collectivism is done wrong. It was about morality and it was about ignorant, but well meaning people. I do not think it applies here. She described a win lose situation. The gain of one was always at the cost to another. She described that a person would necessarily be punished for hard work and innovation. I do not think it was realistic, nor does the system I have described end up as a win lose situation, unless it is dominated by greed. The system automation provides to a limited population of healthy people should supply all the requirements of "middle class" survival. Creativity and innovation will have to be rewarded, but looking at it historically the reality is that greed has robbed inventors and innovators far more often than collectivism has. Her model for her main hero, a great inventor and innovator called John Galt was remarkably similar to Nicola Tesla, often considered the greatest inventor of all time. The reality is that most of his inventions were either stolen or targeted for destruction by the greedy whose interests were threatened by changes from his innovations.

Another critique of communism has been its centralized control that notoriously worked poorly. Elsewhere is a discussion of centeralized versus distributed control, but this is to discuss it as it was in communist societies. Basically, it occurred for a number of reasons. It failed for a number of reasons including that it was too difficult. It occurred because a new power group was trying to consolidate power and at a time when war had destroyed most productive capability of Europe and Asia. Starvation, let alone privation was a fact of life. Production had to be increased at any cost at the end of costly and exhausitve wars. Another reason centrol control developed was that the theory of their ideology claimed that it was how a society needed to be run. Another reason was that the communist nations, particularly in the case of the Soviet Union, were trying to bring together one society from nations and peoples that were not only quite different, but also historically had often been enemies. Before mechanized warfare, it was a smaller, more isolated world. That isolation was gone. A theory of centralized control was that is two cities traditionally fight, have one of them make broom heads and the other make broom handles. There would be peace based on mutual interdependence.
As I said, centralized control will be discussed more elsewhere, but do not bother thinking it is inherently evil because it worked so badly for the communists. They had other problems as well. The idea of centralized control is to balance, needs, production and consumption. The Soviet Union made enormous efforts to manage the system using state of the art data processing techniques, that were certainly not up to the task, whether it is a good idea or not. This is not a facet of just communism though. Modern Information Technology companies market themselves as able to match producers to their market capacity through the cloud. Order makes sense and works. It just never has been achievable. It will be soon, which will bring another whole set of problems considered elsewhere.

The other prime critique of communism is that there is little incentive or motivation, particularly to work hard or innovate. In the future, that is going to be a problem of balance. Right now, people innovate and work hard for a number of reasons. The first is not to starve. The second is to support a family, survival in the larger sense. The third is to provide for hobbies, recreation and leisure, features of the "middle class". A fourth is for the status driven wealth and power. Another is just genetic drive. We do have genes that push us to work hard, be creative and to be active. Another reason I will offer is self expression, art. This can take many forms including that most (not all) of the people I have known personally that were successful business people, built their businesses, because that is what they liked building. It was part of their nature. The best artists and inventors create not for money, but for the joy of creating their art as an expression of their creativity. Particularly in recent times, there has been a dynamic between commercial and government supported labs to facilitate and exploit this creativity. Think of Bell Labs and Xerox or DARPA and NASA. Their creativity and productivity has been unparalleled and was not about individuals trying to get rich. It was about scientists given problems and the resources to solve them. Another reason that people work and innovate, is what would be called altruism, to help others and their society. Historically in biology, the only theory considered to account for this is inclusive fitness based on genetic relatedness, but recent work on cooperation shows that it does not have to be based on the win lose condition of genetic competition. Society can provide a win win playing field where cooperation and working with others can help both parties as well as the society. This is part of our instincts. Their are many people that spend their lives trying to help society. I think I largely wrote this book, because of my instinct for leadership when I recognized the danger humanity was in. I have met others on the exact same path. Socialism and communism inspired great accomplishment by idealists trying to create a better society. Monetary reward is not the only or even the greatest inspiration to creativity. I will leave it to parents of the future to decide if they will choose to select for traits in their children that promote hard work, creativity and idealism towards a better society. Those traits already exist and are common.

The topic of Automation may seem an odd place for a discussion of Socialism, but just as the creation of the ideal called Democracy was a result of the excesses of Monarchy created by the great success of military rule, Socialism will be the result of the success and problems of Automation more than due to any ideal of its fairness. Automation represents a great power and it competes directly with people. It is a power that cannot be left in the hands of individuals or a small group. It must be an investment of the people, for the people. How a balance of all this is to be achieved will be a challenge. Government (the People) enterprises have not tended to be efficient. It is a question of how the present system of private enterprise, that works so well, can still either be accommodated or replaced.

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10. Artificial Genetic Selection
I did not see any alternative but to use Artificial Genetic Selection to replace the removal of natural selection that we call human progress. It is moral for many reasons. The potentials are amazing, not just for solving the problems we already face from the past, but also for creating and adapting to a new niche that humans could survive in far into the future. The human and monetary value is incalculable. It is also our only chance for survival of the species is more than an animal. It can provide health, beauty and brains to everyone on earth, something that will take some adapting to. It must be kept in the balance though.

While it offers the potentials for many things, including critical disease resistance and an ability to compete with machines, in ways its greatest significance is unavoidably going to be a great increase in the general intelligence level of humanity. Intelligence is the ability to understand. In biological terms, it has been the ability to understand and influence the social group the individual is a member of. In humans, it has become far more than that. I have seen the potentials and insight available to highly intelligent people. It is extraordinary and extraordinarily valuable. The greatest level of intelligence that I am familiar with would probably be considered an IQ of perhaps 170 or 180. These are remarkable people. I think using artificial selection, it would not be difficult for everyone to have a comparable IQ. It is not just that though. Humans also have more specialized intellectual predispositions and talents. Artificial selection would allow the enhancement of genetics based technical skills, mechanical skills, mathematical, spatial, artistic, linguistic and other potentials. It should allow us to increase the range and complexity of our meme development and processing abilities. Humans have a short-term memory it seems limited to about seven items. We really have not needed much more than that. It appears that short-term memory is a fundamental element of intelligence. I see no reason that could not be significantly increased. In ways it would be comparable to raising the amount of RAM in a computer. That is what is prescribed first when someone wants to raise the performance of any computer. Maybe we will develop intellectually to allow true multiprocessing and multitasking instead of just time slicing that we are capable of now. A question arises about just how much intelligence would be good for survival. I think for the niche I expect to develop, then an IQ of around 200 would probably suffice. I see little hazard to that, particularly if you intelligence is balanced with faith. I think the potential is far greater than that. I will leave it to the future to decide its utility and safety, but I suspect we will find much of our future in our perceptual and intellectual potentials.

As mentioned before, there will be emotional potential associated with intelligence. I think this will add a richness to humanity. At the same time, I think that our understanding of emotion to clearly limited to be able to predict much of its potential.

Artificial selection is a powerful tool that could be misused. That is one reason to leave it in the hands of the parents. Mistakes at that level will tend to be self correcting. As stated before, the only rule I can see as enforcing absolutely is that a parent cannot choose to have their child inherit a broken or defective gene that they them self did not inherit. Society has different interests than individuals and due to the inherent power of what a society is, in this case the decision should remain with the parents to preserve the balance of power.

Keep in mind about artificial selection, is about the need to replace natural selection. This does not mean that natural selection will cease or go away. Evolutionary theory states that natural selection will always occur. It occurs at many different levels from gametic selection where sperm compete and eggs select different sperm all the way up to grand parental assistance with raising children.

I will offer a couple of examples that hopefully will illustrate issues of artificial selection. This will touch on something that could be a bit controversial, so I hope it does not offend. I will mention Japan as a very genetically contrasting situation to that the United States of America.
Japan is a very genetically homogeneous nation that does not allow immigration. Anyone that does not respect the Japanese is not paying attention. From strength though, can come weakness. Japan is suffering from a declining birthrate. While in ways this is a moral issue, I also see it as a genetic issue. Perhaps they should intentionally work to increase the hybridization of their population. If anyone was silly enough to ask, I would say that they should try to attract approximately 10% of the population as immigrants. Perhaps a number of Chinese, another very respectable race, which is relatively closely related and would hybridize in quite well. Also they might want to include a number of Filipinos, a race that has frequently impressed me, that seem to commonly be a high quality Asian-Spanish hybrid. Then they might want a number of Argentines who are hybrids of Celtic Saxons, Spanish and Meso-Americans. They might also want to include some Indians to represent the final main genetic civil population. They could also invite African Americans to provide a high quality hybrid that includes genes from a variety of European sources as well as the other major world race. Possibly throw in some Greeks, because they always seem to surprise me. In a few generations, these groups could become highly hybridized with the body of the Japanese people. It would provide a great additional genetic wealth. At the same time, according to this whole theory, their declining birth rate seems to be due great opportunity and a reduced survival instinct. In other words, weak faith. Maybe they should get some Irish.
The United States is a very different situation where the tribal and racial diversity is beyond any precedence. Hybridization would have been constant and would have included many tribes of Native Americans, Europeans, Africans, Asians and others. In this case the problems of hybridization were likely to evidence themselves. I have tried to find out something about what the typical mortality rate before reproduction was since the time of the early colonies and during the gold rush, but have found very little information. I expect it was very high. At the same time the advantages of hybridization should be evident and Americans have shown themselves to be a very dynamic, creative people. In general though, it would be expected that they could use a bit of back crossing to better fix traits. Also, there should be a high level of load from recombination errors.

In a more general sense of using artificial selection to provide greater potentials through hybridization, each caste could use what the others have. Herders could use to have the patience and perseverance of the farmers. All castes have to some degree absorbed the ability to fight of the herder and descended military castes, based on their historic reproductive advantage and because of its necessity as a strategy. Both could use the technical potentials of the scribes and craft castes. A hybrid scribe and craftsman would be an engineer. Traditionally scribes and priests were related castes . The hereditary ruling caste was a well developed hybrid of the military and priestly caste, which also provided the talents of the scribes.

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This seems like a good place to look at artificial selection in terms of religion. There is very limited direction there. Obviously there is going to be some subjective element here, but it seems it can be minimized. I have to restrict this to "Western" religions both because they are all I can really speak of and for other reasons as well. These religions have been called the "Religions of the Book". That is Judaism, Christianity and Islam which all descend from the beliefs common to the Old Testament of the Bible. The trouble is that there is little to work with in the Old Testemant and even the honest translations of detail are suspect. Different Bibles have important different details. The languages being translated were far less precise than English. The Bible was written over time and about events occurring over time. Over those times, words often had different meanings. The same was true of cultures using the words. It can make it very hard to find details of truth in the Bible. In ways it ends up more restricted than that, because I will add the New Testament to the examination. The Old Testament was for an older people and its laws were supposed to be largely replaced by the New Testament. The New Testament was a new law for a new people, presumably at a new developmental stage. Just to make it worse or maybe better, I tend to look at the Bible sort of like Thomas Jefferson and some theologians do. It is suspect. Many things were misunderstood or miscommunicated by the writers that wrote it sometimes long after Jesus' death. Often personal agendas were included. So as Thomas Jefferson did, I tend to look most at what Jesus said. Unfortunately he did not say much that can be used as direction so other available Biblical references will be considered. The message of Jesus was one of love, forgiveness and personal redemption, all of which seem to me to be great foundations for a healthy individual and society. However, past that, direction by Jesus about how to survive on Earth is limited. Jesus stood aside from society. His message seems to be more along the lines of Saint Francis of Assisi. One of a monastery. It seems far less about survival than is the message of the Old Testament. One absolutely must remember at this point that if Jesus did relay a message from a God, that is some non-human life that had a geologic period long understanding of moral strategies, do not be so sure that you or I can understand it. His messages of Love and Forgiveness do seem a critical part of survival as do his comments about family, but these have already been applied to this book in terms of common Western morality that does derive from Christianity. So except for one important point coming from Jesus, most consideration of Biblical details about the morality of artificial selection is going to have to come from the Old Testament.

Anyway you look at it, the idea of artificial genetic selection is a huge moral issue. Currently it is paralleled by two moral debates in society, stem cell research and abortion. In what has been called the "culture wars" of the society trying to resolve what moral strategies to follow, these have been largely joined together as the "abortion debate". Some groups want it legally available and some groups, particularly religious groups, want it highly regulated or banned. The emotional reactions are easy to understand. This is about human life. If that is not considered important, then we are saying that we are no different than animals. We will not survive with that attitude. The problem is just what does that mean. According to some groups, personhood starts at conception, the meeting of the egg and sperm. The actual interpretation is that that is when God endows the "person" with a soul. Any termination of the fetus is to "kill" God or to interfere with "God's will". In the middle is the view that a fetus becomes a person at the time of "quickening" or when a fetus starts to move around and look like a baby. The middle ground may also be interpreted as when a fetus might be able to survive if prematurely delivered. At the other end of the spectrum is late term abortion any time before birth. It is a difficult, emotional controversy because of its moral importance.

This description of artificial genetic selection recognizes that emotional and moral dilemma and avoids it by being formed around prenatal in-vivo fertilization. That is fertilization in a "petri-dish" and selection based on genetic analysis before implantation. Right off, this avoids most of the abortion debate. This does not avoid the idea that personhood starts at conception, so that will be addressed here. I do not think it does and this explains why, in both the context of religion and moral instinct. It does not change that I doubt humans have any choice about using artificial selection if they want to survive (an overriding moral issue in the context of this book), but it does address the moral issues directly. First will be an examination in the context of the Bible, the authority most cited by those opposed to abortion, then it will be considered from the view of reason and moral instinct.

There just is not much in the Bible describing artificial genetic selection. I think that is quite understandable since it was written thousands of years before the genetic basis of heredity was known. There are some references to work with though. The following is copied directly from an article by Tom Head.

Likewise, Exodus 21 draws a clear demarcation between the killing of a person and the killing of a fetus. Exodus 21:12, for example, reads:
Whoever strikes a person mortally shall be put to death. If it was not premeditated, but came about by an act of God, then I will appoint for you a place to which the killer may flee. But Exodus 21:22 reads: When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine.
In other words: Killing a person outside of the womb warrants the death penalty or exile, but killing a fetus is punishable only by a fine--and that's in a circumstance where the killing of a fetus takes place against the woman's will. Exodus describes no penalty of any kind for women who choose to terminate their own pregnancies, nor does any other passage in the Bible.
But the Bible certainly suggests that human life begins prior to birth. While Rebekah is pregnant with the twins Esau and Jacob, for example, Genesis 25:22 states that "the children struggled together within her." Likewise, when Elizabeth (pregnant with John the Baptist) meets the Virgin Mary, "the child leaped in her womb" (Luke 1:41). One of the most frequently cited passages in the abortion debate is Psalm 139:13, which addresses God with the statement that "you knit me together in my mother's womb."

So the Bible's position on abortion, like its position on so many other issues, can be described as extremely ambiguous. It treats the death of a fetus as a non-homicide and makes no attempt to punish women who have abortions, nor does it mention the widely-practiced abortion that was contemporaneous to the period during which the relevant texts were written. On the other hand, it does not suggest or imply that personhood begins at the moment of birth. This is why the Judeo-Christian tradition has long struggled with the question of abortion. A theological approach to abortion, if it is to be found at all, cannot explicitly be found in the text of the Bible.

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There is another comment that I found based on the Bible that seems pertinent. This was also used as an argument for allowing embryonic stem cell research. In the Bible, life was often equated with blood such as Genesis 9:6 "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed...". How this has been interpreted is that "life" begins not at the time of fertilization or conception but when blood first appears in the embryo, at about 20 days following conception. Frankly it seems like a colloquialism anyway, but it certainly does not condemn stem cell research or in-vivo fertilization.

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I take away a few things from what I found while researching this in the context of the Bible. The first is that nowhere was abortion mentioned by Jesus or otherwise in the New Testament, though it was well known and widely practiced at the time. It is not a matter of ambiguity of translation of phrasing. There is simply no mention of it by Jesus, the criteria of Thomas Jefferson and many others. As such, I think then that Jesus made no condemnation of the means of stem cell research or artificial genetic selection. Almost everything else related, all from the Old Testament, is potentially more ambiguous, but again in no way can I see it being interpreted to forbid stem cell treatment or in-vivo fertilization. That is even though the verses I quoted, change some depending on the version of the Bible as well as how the ancient words are translated.

When I was starting to take more advanced biology classes in about my second year at the university, I was doing pretty good, but some of my friends were having problems. These were smart people used to easily getting A's in all their high school classes. Here, they were getting overwhelmed. They got A's, because they could effortlessly give back anything their teacher presented to them. It was more complicated in upper division biology courses where your teachers all tended to have their names somewhere in your textbooks. In his Plant Ecology class, Dr. Moldenke would put out an incredible amount of biological principles that had to be understood in depth. In high school you get A's for repeating back what you learned. If you give back your own understanding of a subject, you only get B's. College was different. I told my friends that they had to pay attention to the meanings, not the words. Understand it first. Words could be filled in later. They had to listen for the meanings during the lectures. (This coming from the guy with the microfine pen that would copy lectures verbatim.) So beyond the literal statements of the Bible not condemning artificial selection any in the New Testament, there was no suggestion of it to be understood. Quite the contrary. In the Old Testament, the applicable discussion seems to say that the processes of in-vivo fertilization would not violate any prohibitions. In that context, there does not appear to be any condemnation of artificial genetic selection.

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Aside from the Bible, I took a brief look at the beliefs coming from Catholicism itself, since it historically was and continues to be the doctrinal base of Christianity. There was comment ascribed to Thomas Aquinas that seems pertinent here, because he is credited with much of the intellectual foundation of Catholic Doctrine. Thomas Aquinas made the point that God would not impart a soul until there was a mental aspect. That develops at the third trimester. Another Pope said that God would not impart a soul until there was a formed body. Actually though, those were just a couple of positions of many that the Catholic Church held over time about when the soul enters the body. It is hard to use as an authority as it has changed so much. Now it teaches that the soul is imparted at conception.

     *

OK, to continue past an examination of what the Bible and religion has to offer in the way of guidance. On to reason, practicality and instinct.

Researching this, I do not think I am going to change anyone's mind. Clearly the anti-abortion camp will manipulate anything needed to support their position. I am not so sure about the pro-abortion camp. In any case, some versions of the Bible seem to clearly say that at least for the first 20 days, much longer than the time frame of artificial selection, that the embryo is not a human being. It can also be interpreted as a longer period as well.

I think trying to understand this is going to require a different path. Why is the anti-abortion camp so adamantly against stem cell research where fertilization occurs outside of the womb and never progresses beyond two weeks? I think it is because they recognize that you must consider human life to be something special. I understand that, but I also understand that difficult moral decisions must be made and they must include reason, not just feelings. Those feelings come from moral instincts, but instinct is the mark of an animal. Humans must do more. They must reason and decide. Check into the moral decisions required for survival by the Inuit if you want to see extreme requirements of moral decisions for survival. Condemn them if you have the courage. You may feel lucky if you are never called upon to make a difficult moral decision, but that is what makes us human and more than animals. It is far easier to condemn a person for abortion than to make the moral commitment that life requires.

I will bring up a point that relates to current events. There is the "Personhood" movement, which is another attempt by the anti-abortion camp to ban any form of abortion and many forms of birth control. It is the by defining a fertilized egg as a legal person. It has been pointed out that this would open up all kinds of problems, because it would ask many questions such as if there is a miscarriage, might it need to be investigated as a murder. Or if there is a tubal pregnancy that will be fatal to the mother and child, can there be an abortion to at least save the mother's life. If one were to take 100 eggs in a petri dish and fertilize them, then destroy them, did you just kill 100 humans? Can a mother be charged with murder if she did not follow someone's standard of correct nutrition? Realistically, a large percentage of natural fertilizations in women are naturally terminated for a variety of reasons, particularly during early development. This "Personhood" effort has so far failed because of the extreme interpretation and that is part of the point. Generally and quite simply, human moral instinct does not prompt one to think that way. We do not think of a fertilized egg as a person. We do not feel it is so and it also makes no rational sense.

There is also the issue that there has traditionally been a huge infant mortality rate. In America as in many other cultures, sometimes babies were actually not named until their first year, because there was such a high chance that they would die shortly after birth. Partly it was to avoid the pain of attachment and loss. It is interesting how religion handles this. Christianity is big on names and early rituals. They do work for the dignity and specialness of humans.

Human life must be considered very special if we are to survive, but realistically, it can be of limited value and often has been rather cheap. To put an unlimited value on it is to abrogate moral decision and responsibility. That is to be less than human and lessen the value of human life. Blaming it on God is to avoid responsibility that is part of being human. One must ask if a mother supposed to die so that an abortion is avoided, not just respond to one's feelings. There is so much pain and suffering in this world due to overpopulation and unwanted children. Is there no reason that counts against some extreme law supported only by feelings? There are no perfect laws, human or otherwise. Thou shalt not kill... except in war or self defense, ...etc. Because there are no perfect laws, we have judges, a position revered in the Bible. One thing of what humans are becoming is that we all need to be judges. Even the Catholic Church recognises this and says that a person must follow their conscience.

In terms of artificial selection, I say it is moral, because we cannot survive without using it. Simple, unavoidable. I see no moral objection to it indicated anywhere in the Bible. Interestingly, part of this section is to prove that a God could very well exist, based on artificial selection. We live in a world of reason and causality. We never see magic that could not be explained by that path. If that is the path of God, then artificial selection is quite moral. Otherwise we are pets, never meant to be more than animals.

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11. Economics
There have been many economic systems, all of which would have to be considered primitive until the advent of money. Even today though, barter is used and sometimes in very advanced forms such as how currently oil is used as a monetary device. Barter though tends to be clumsy and limited compared to money. Like political systems, there are many names used for economic systems, though the meanings may not be clear from the name or what they really are in practice. In history we have had a few main economic systems and many other theories. We have long had Capitalism, the concept of using capital as a tool of productivity, but really based on the principle of private ownership. Socialism and Communism are based on joint ownership by the community or society. No current economic system should be considered advanced, because they all have so many obvious weaknesses, but that may be the people in them. Maybe artificial selection and moral development can help that. At the same time, no current economic theory can be called advanced, because economic events tend to come as surprises. Improved data modeling may help that. There are numerous economic theories available and some seem quite reasonable. Unfortunately though it can be seen that the present economic order supports research that supports the present economic order. With the apparent weakness of current economic theory, we need to know more including alternatives to the present conventional wisdom.

I certainly do not claim any great expertise in economics, but I do know the energetic equations of biology and it is such an important topic to human habit and survival that I have to discuss it some. It is a complicated subject with a lot of factors and parts. Part of the problem is that we do not have any good economic theories as indicated by that the economic future of booms and busts never seems to be accurately predicted by economic theory. This could be for a number of reasons, but the result is the same.

There are a few things I think I can say that will be important factors and they will lay out part of the playing field where humans will have to solve their problems if they want to survive in a relatively stable niche. That is part of the problem though. Economics has never been about survival. It has almost always been about wealth. It has usually been motivated by greed and has often been used for the purpose of supporting war. A large part of economics is asking what you want to accomplish with it. For most people in history it has been about having food to eat, but that has been most of what survival has been about. Things have changed. Most people want what has been referred to as middle class affluence. That is, a job, a home, good food, medical care, a bit of vacation and the ability to provide what their children will need to continue in that niche, particularly education. The main theories about how to achieve this are related to what are called free market capitalism and socialism. Really though, those labels are very vague in practice, so you need descriptions to communicate rather than labels.

In ways, current free market Capitalistic economic systems reflect the natural evolutionary process of competition and survival of the fittest. It is based on individual private ownership. This seems to work pretty well, but certainly has some drawbacks in the long run. As an economic system, it seems to function the best, largely because it depends on self interest, distributed control and the balance provided by supply and demand. It is supposed to be a practice based on using capital as a tool of production and providing rewards for creativity, efficiency, natural ability and hard work. Unfortunately it also rewards manipulation such as using capital as a bludgeon to remove competition. It does foster greed. It can be that when there is a great deal of wealth produced, more profit can be made by manipulating existing wealth, than by creating new wealth. It can lead to parasitism. It is said that most fortunes in the United States were made on real estate, a more speculative endeavor than productive enterprise. Marketing has often been a more monetarily rewarding than production and it has created a very materialistic society. Often it has been based on the instinctive desire for status, but it has also defined status as based on wealth. It is fair in ways, but much of the present economic state is based on inequality. This comes in two forms, positional and personal. There is the power of position such as the example of the farmer and the miller. The miller usually just naturally sits in a better economic position than the farmer. The other difference is personal in that some people just have better health, beauty and brains than others. It fosters a class society, inequality and exploitation. Its logical extension is a slave society. Perhaps its greatest problem is that it is often based on growth for no benefit to the society.

Ayn Rand was a brilliant modern philosopher that considered wealth, capitalism and collectivism. She spoke of the creativity that created wealth, but she also spoke of the problems of it. Her extreme individualism with no balance ended in apocalypse and notice that there were no children in her stories. It was not about survival.

Socialism or collectivism is generally a more recent system, commonly considered the opposite of Capitalism. It has been more of a political system than economic system. One extreme example was the collectivism of Communism. It was largely a response to the excesses of capitalism as exemplified by the monarchies or oligarchies as they would be called now. This has been called class warfare. The problem has been a political one of ownership. It has been based on collective ownership, particularly by the state. Communism in particular was almost a buzzword for any ownership system that did not follow the traditional rules of private ownership. Its tenant was probably best described as "to each according to their need and from each according to their ability". That could also easily become a slave society, because of the natural inequality of people. It also fatally took away personal responsibility and motivation. Hard work, creativity and efficiency were not rewarded, because you were just expected to provide the society whatever your ability allowed and your reward was the same. Socialism also requires a centralized planning and control as opposed the individualistic distributed control mechanism of the individual and market of capitalism. As things go, it also initially tended to allow psychopathic leadership to rise, because the centralization of planning centralized power and because it swept away the traditional power establishment. In those times, psychopathic demogogs flourish. Note that that phase may pass as in China.

As is often the case, a balance seems best and there are opposing forces. The United States is considered the bastion of Capitalism, but the American Constitution starts out with "We The People" and describes what must be done to create a better society for all people. It has created great social institutions to collectively address problems of need, security and education. Communist China is known for its ideological embrace of extreme collectivism, but it has recently embraced Capitalism to harness the power of the individual. In both cases, the pendulum swings.

Now this book uses a premise based on the ideology expressed in the American Constitution and ideals that go back to the root of Western thought expressed in philosophy and religion. It also follows the ideals expressed by individuals. That is of equality, fairness and freedom. Those are our aspirations and the basic tenets of Christianity, a major foundation of current Western Civilization. The problem is that humans are not equal, life is not always fair and freedom must be cherished as well as protected against those that want power over others.

Artificial Selection will be a profound factor in the equation of the society and economy. What has been called human capital is considered one of the greatest components of the wealth of a company or a nation. Artificial selection should cause that to increase enormously. The more technology advances, the more the drag by people that are not healthy or talented enough to participate in the modern economy. Artificial selection would remove weakness and increase talent. The monetary value of artificial selection would be incalculable. In the future, artificial selection should mean that people are going to be far more equal in terms of health, beauty, brains, ability and potentially, motivation.

A peculiarity of economics is that how it works can be very counter intuitive. Marketing a product may be far more profitable than producing it. It is not simple and currently, economic theory seems flawed. Mainstream economists generally fail to predict economic events such as recession events. Of course that might be hubris, as the person on the street may well know what is going to happen when terms like "liar loans" come into common usage. We need better economic theories than we have, but for what? Remember, this book is about survival and aspiration. Frequently economic interests are quite short term and occasionally they have been as devastating as any war. Capitalism particularly has produced an individualism that can be dangerous to society. Then again, it has been capitalism that has driven and enabled much of the progress that has led to the modern world. It may well be a transient strategy like many other current practices.

On a more micro level, wealth can be hazardous to one's survival. There is the term "sudden wealth syndrome" when a person suddenly acquires wealth without the discipline and training that it usually takes to amass wealth. It can ruin their lives. It can kill them. It is a larger problem of a strategy or morality. It is also that it distracts from the necessities of survival. It is a very corruptive world out there. In college I met a number of people from a small affluent town. Over the years I met more of them. It seemed like everyone from the area was an alcoholic. I used to make jokes about it, but it was a result of wealth. The thing is that in many cases, a person is wealthy because that is their first love. It is what their moral strategy is based on, rather than survival and their children paid the price. We see it in the children of entertainment stars. Their time is focused on career and personal fame, not children. Children must be the main focus or survival is at risk. It is hard to teach children many critical lessons of survival when wealth insulates them from important lessons of life. Much of human social development has been based on mutual dependencies. Wealth removes those and can be damaging to the cohesiveness needed by a society.

I cannot describe an economic system that will allow for a stable ecology other than to say that I am sure it will take balance. To achieve the ideals of our moral instincts it will have to be fair. To allow development, it will have to broadly supply the resources of survival as we require them today, including health care and education. (Though health care should become less of an expense due to artificial selection.) There are also some large unknowns, some of which I can list. I can describe critical factors that are required for survival, in biological terms that translate to economic terms, particularly resources. Factors that seem the most important to consider are resources, the foundation of survival and automation, the new factor.

For survival in any world we aspire to, it seems humans need food, clothing, shelter, recreation and education. Our civilization is based on the energy of fossil fuels, which besides being limited, seem to carry a larger environmental danger from pollution, particularly greenhouse gasses. Farming is the other foundation and it has long term problems that are starting to appear such as limits on the fertilizers that modern agriculture depends on. Assuming we can avoid larger disasters occurring too soon for human civilization to develop a bit more technology, we should be able to overcome those problems. Between the potentials of thorium, solar, perhaps fusion and other technologies to provide power, we should have almost limitless power available to provide all needed raw materials of survival. That is in the context of some population control, because there will be some limiting resource in that sense, but that just means we have not achieved a stable ecology in its most basic form. Besides, theory suggests that we are due for a major population adjustment by disease.

Western culture and the world at large has been progressing towards various forms of democracy. Our economic system has been trending towards and away from class society. A person does not need to be wealthy in the modern sense. With the physical resources available from technology and the genetic wealth available from artificial selection, we should be able to provide the necessities of a comfortable life for all.

The biggest unknown from my view, aside from population, is machines and automation. A corporation qualifies as a machine. It is a piece of software. The computer imitates the human mind, what it is to be human. The recent invention, the internet, is the biggest machine and biggest piece of automation ever created. It is machines that have changed the economic limitation from production to marketing. It is hard to beat efficiency and machines are efficient. We end up with humans competing with machines. They may be more efficient at the "jobs" humans do that are part of our identity. It is unknown whether machines will have limitations that inherently allow humans to compete with them, particularly based on artificial selection. If we build computers based on the design of the human brain, it seems likely that computers and machines will surpass human ability. Because of the nature of the development of machines, they could make humans basically obsolete, particularly in the short term. In terms of survival, that presents a number of problems. We may very well have to restrict the usage and development of machines, not because they may be dangerous, but because they may be too useful. This almost seems like a paradox as all of human history has been a struggle to use tools to acquire the resources to survive, but it is not hard to envision at the moment. Maybe they could be restricted to dangerous or boring jobs. Maybe they could be restricted to environmental cleanup or infrastructure maintenance, but I doubt we can leave it to natural forces any more than we can ignore population growth or a disease.

Economics has served survival, but largely by tangent. It has been based on a philosophy of wealth. It must be based on a philosophy of survival. The philosophy of wealth will not bring us to our aspirations and can work against it.

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12. Politics
In history we have had a few basic government systems and many other theories. The commonest form of governments have been kings who could just have well been called warlords or military strongmen. Of those that lasted much time at all, all were based on ruling families. This is largely because of the problem that most political systems have had, which is transmission of power from one generation to the next. The Greeks are famous for having experimented with Democracy, the rule by the citizens of the nation. They also used a republican form of government at times which is like a democracy in that the leader was selected by some part of the citizenry. The Romans had kings and later emperors, but also a well developed republic at times, particularly before the emperors. After the Romans, the West largely had kings that were part of an oligarchy or ruling families. After the Romans, was a period commonly called the Dark Ages, which actually was a time of ongoing development and which repeatedly had beginnings of what would be called Renaissance when new artistic, social, legal and political ideas emerged. The European Renaissance is considered to have started in Florence in the 14th century and spread quite unevenly through Europe roughly to the 17th century. Ultimately it led to the fall of the monarchy and the rise of present day democracies. The same forces that led to Democracy also led to what has been called Communism. Communism is a poor word to use as a term for government, because the communism of Eastern Europe was more of a military dictatorship. While Communism was a system of resource distribution in a society, it was almost a buzz word to mean not following the traditional customs of ownership of the Western world. A Western king might steal property, but they usually made sure to go through the formalities of ownership transfer to protect their own ownership claims. Communism was largely just about saying "we own it now". Russia and Eastern Europe now has what is called Democracy and even has elections, but may be closer to dictatorships and oligarchies. The United States has is a Constitutional Democracy with a raucous history. It is really a republic in that it is not direct democracy, but instead representatives elect the president. The Founding Fathers did not so strongly trust the people in that. It has always been based on political parties which have often added another layer in that it was party leaders that decided who were going to be presented for election. China calls itself democratic, but is much more a republican form because all politics are controlled by the one Communist Party. It turns out that in Democracies, that same control is exerted by the multiple political parties. It adds the element of the activity of people and their desires into the political system over just the individual leaders that ultimately are elected. A multi-party system would inherently be representative of more views than a single party system. If it still allows a cooperative form of government it would almost certainly be less prone to error due to check and balance, so a better survival strategy.

In terms of this discussion, the differences must be considered the word "people". At one time, there were kings and there were people. Only the kings really had any rights. As time and political systems progressed, usually the changes reflected the inclusion of more people in the group that had rights, particularly of ownership and law. This reflected new forms of power such as merchants and often religion. This is why though the West might not like it, Communism and Socialism can very well be Democracies. Just in practice those forms were usually born in war and maintained by violence, because they were trying to replace existing power. That chaos allows the dominance by demigogs. The biggest difference though is related to laws, particularly about ownership.

Politics is one place where balance is so important and that is one thing democracy can provide. Politics is about power. Any political power will try to forward its agenda and will get more effective over time. The pendulum must be allowed to swing.

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Many factors developed and co-developed with Western civilization, particularly law, particularly ownership law. Kings and emperors were notorious for taking what they wanted, particularly when an individual or family was extremely successful at developing wealth. Often law was used for the purpose. I have read an enormous amount and repeatedly found discussions about the importance of ownership laws to the development of the wealth of a society. The same is said of capitalism, by others than Ayn Rand. There are a number of problems with capitalism. While its ideal is to use capital as a tool of productivity, its implementation is often different. Using monopolies to remove competition is a great way to make profit. Manipulation of law using lobbyists and competition by lawyer is frequently a good strategy too. In this day and age, master mathematicians are employed to make predictions of tiny fluctuations in the overall stock market that can be exploited for small but significant monetary gains that add up. This is not about the productivity ascribed to capitalism. It is wonderful to talk about the wealth created by an industrialist or scientist, but as they say "most fortunes in America came from real estate". I do not always see that as very inherently productive. Right now the world economy is trying to recover from the effects of financiers making huge bets with the wealth of Nations, particularly speculating financially or with real estate. The profits became private; the losses were so massive that they had to be made public. As the economy starts to recover we have to hope that energy prices do not rise to absorb all the liquidity produced and stifle any recovery. A huge part of that cost is from speculators who have no intention of producing a product or even accepting the product. They are just using existing wealth to control supply and manipulate the price to their advantage. Wealth can be its own problem for individuals and societies. When there is enough wealth that it is easier to make money by manipulating existing wealth rather than creating new wealth, the downside of capitalism becomes apparent. It is questioned if the, recently greatly expanded, financial sector actually really produces anything. Power attracts the corrupt and wealth is a very attractive form of power. It shows a competition between the society and individuals that is quite important and must be kept in a balance. Part of social progress has been that there has been an implicit social contract between the wealthy and the rest of society that the wealthy would get their rewards, but they were responsible for husbanding the wealth of the society for the benefit of all. Communism rose because of the lack of that agreement. Recently the wealthy have denied that agreement. Really though, contrary to some people's claims, wealth is created by the society, not just by individuals.

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13. Society
Society is the most complex social structure of humans and before the cities, did not exist as it is today in its multicultural and multinational form. We are still trying to work out its operation. Society is a support system for the individual and community. It is for survival and the benefit of the people that make it up. Perhaps best statement of its purpose would be the United States Constitution, starting with "We The People, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America". I cannot think of a better goal or way to express it. It is a revolutionary break from the older social, political and economic system. It is the widely emulated by many nations of the world. It is a description of one of the common trends that this book is to project. So how does this look in terms of biology and survival? Note two points that this makes. The one that is well discussed, that this is by the people, not the king, gods or anyone else, but the people. The second point is that it is a written charter of purpose, not a story. It is a charter of an institution. It is an agreement in the form of a contract. That charter is important, because it sets a standard to evaluate and judge against.

Humans are social. They like each others company, generally. They have numerous social behaviors such as empathy, fraternity, friendships, communities, associations and their reproductive behavior is oriented around the institution of marriage that is about creating social bonds. People can get sick from loneliness. People very willingly have given their lives for their society. In common moral teachings it is expected of an individual that they place the society above their very life and if they must, they are celebrated by the society. People have moral instincts that will judge a moral system and if it is lacking in its value of the society, whatever it is defined by, the person will look for another.

Social instincts bring out the best in people. It is a form of love. It is shown by that individuals will do for their society, but it is more important what a person will do to preserve and build their society. One of the most important things that all people can do is to preserve the integrity and honesty of the society. They should try to help each other and brings great personal satisfaction. If it does not, they are not social and a society is unlikely to endure. A society based on authority rather than cooperation is unlikely to last. Talk about a Jack In The Box waiting to explode.

A society and its constituent associations can do what individuals cannot. The society must promote this and not discourage associations, particularly in terms of shifting powers. We are trying to produce stability and the benefits it brings, but stagnation is deadly. People have different interests and motivations. Those must be not only made room for, but also encouraged. Social engineering is always dicey, as are all the best intentions. Conformity has huge risks.

A society is interconnected and interdependent. That is necessary, but can be a critical problem. A healthy ecology has a diversity that offers a great resilience. A society needs the same diversity for the same reason. That is for resilience. Monoculture and ecologies with low diversity are subject to sustaining a great deal more damage from changes in the environment. This is one reason why it would be nice if our future energy production technologies are more distributed. Damage in one place, does not affect a wider section of the society. The military is quite aware of this problem in that they rely on highly specialized technologies. They try to ensure that they have another source if one supplier fails. Recently many computer companies had problems, because the main supplier of hard drives had their facilities damaged by regional floods. Large can make economic sense, but be very hazardous due to lack of resilience and redundancy. That is very bad design systems and more critically for societies due to their life-support function. One part of redundancy would be multiple societies. Technology and laws of scale pushes us towards one society, but that has risks as a single society may develop a fatal flaw. The risk of multiple societies is that in conflict we have the ability to be overwhelmingly destructive. Avoidance of that will require great social development and the efforts of individuals.

The society should promote technological innovation. There is the problem that there are disruptive technologies, but if the society does not have enough flexibility to adapt to those, there may be a problem. Authors have considered technologies that would have to be suppressed. I have not seen such. As I have mentioned, the social form will be shaped by things like the distribution of power supply. If it turns out that we use huge fusion power plants that are mostly only economical in regional scale, that will form a different society than if the energy production is distributed. It seems a shame that the way economics have shaped society, the manager of a fast food restaurant is paid better than a teacher or researcher. With the rise in wealth of the society though, it seems that much accumulated wealth is being channeled to art and science. That is a good thing.

Society should help during disasters. It is its purpose and is a good strategy. Society is cooperative and mutually supportive. That is its essence. We must be more than a collection of individuals. With the rise in natural disasters and people unavoidably occupying hazardous areas, disasters are becoming more common. The effects are larger and we are more dependent as our society becomes more interconnected. It is not for humans to desert areas because of their challenge. On the other hand, thoughtful discretion and preparedness is critical. It is in the interest of the society. All parts do contribute. A lost part is lost from the society. A specie that has a large investment and re-colonizes slowly, loses a huge investment in a disaster. Rebuilding always pays. The best balance is for the society to re-invest, particularly because we are likely to lose many areas where humans have been able to live historically. For us to achieve our aspirations, helping one another, particularly in time of disaster, must be part of the common social contract.

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14. Sloth
Sloth is listed as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I have a little trouble writing about it, partly because I do not suffer from it and I know few that do. At the same time, it is considered one of the major problems of this society. It is said many people would rather not work and survive on handouts they feel they deserve from the society. It can be true, particularly people that are used to following the path of least resistance. Also something I have seen when studying the problem of population, I saw places where population has exploded along with the attendant social problems. I wondered what have these people traditionally done to support themselves. I found that not only did they not really have a traditional occupation, they looked down on those that did as slavish.

There is another reason I have trouble writing about it. I try to keep this book as minimally speculative as possible. I make assumptions like we will need to use artificial selection based on needs of survival and genetics. I stretch it a bit further by saying that social trends seem to clearly show an ongoing movement from kings to democracy of some form. I could call this progress, but I would rather keep it objective and call it trends. Sloth is not so direct and as I explain further on, sloth may be appropriate at times. Still, lazy people are simply sluggish and ineffective usually. Sloth does not lead to Self Actualization or for that matter, anything. Some work must be done to accomplish anything. Also an assumption is made that we will continue to use technology. Technology takes work and learning. The military is an interesting example of an institution that has transformed into a constant learning exercise due to the importance of technology. In any case, an assumption is made here. Not only will humans use artificial selection for increasing health, beauty and brains, but also industriousness, the opposite of sloth. We do not want to overdo it as I explain below, but everyone should have the ability to be comfortable being active and industrious. We do not want to use it as a primary strategy to compete with machines, but it will be part of keeping up with them. It is not just that people need downtime and vacations, that is part of what we aspire to. It is in free time that we socialize, talk to our children and expand our personal horizons. Still, an assumption made here, for these reasons, is that a life of sloth is a bad thing that will not lead us to our aspirations.

At the same time, I guess I should get a bit more direct and say that lazy people tend to be messy and do no clean up after themselves. They tend to have other annoying habits as well.

I have told young people in a crisis of youth, "first get a job and many of your problems will go away". I tell my children that work is how one accomplishes anything. Without work, there is no accomplishment. Your peers that are lazy will never effect anything, particularly accomplishing what they desire. I like the Protestant Work Ethic that says "work for what you want". So much of a person's identity, particularly in men, is determined by their work.
At the same time I find myself conflicted a little. Scientists find that by manipulating the genes that control dopamine production in monkeys, they can turn them into workaholics. That is scary. Sloth is an appropriate part of the herder's survival strategy. They are like predators. Most of the time, they should not be expending energy. Just when the occasion of danger arises, they should then be able to quickly respond at a level of high arousal and response.
While I have generally said that humans should not model themselves on machines and that they should enjoy time off and vacations, my problem is this. What if we develop more widespread automation? Efficiency is hard to stop. We are not talking just welders. We are talking doctors, lawyers, architects and others that we do not think of in terms of robot automation, but can be challenged by the massive data management capabilities of machines. Modern manufacturing does not require many welders, but it does require trained people to operate ... computer controlled machines. Even if "Moravec's Paradox" holds true, that computers are good where humans are weak, and vice versa, we may still take on a niche similar to herders and need the potential for sloth. We will have to be able to relax, but be ready to respond when the machine fails. Yes, we can time structure and devote ourselves to self development, education, sports, entertainment and child raising, but the traditional work ethic that built the "civilized technological world" could be a problem if that is where we take our identity from.
It may be a dynamic matter anyway. It may be like the generation that through moral toughness and work creates great wealth, that their children cannot master, because they were raised in a promiscuous environment of wealth that did not foster moral toughness. It may be a matter of moral education that can be achieved with the help of virtual reality.
It also might be dynamic in a real way. If we are using artificial selection widely in 100 years, the challenge of climate change might be so much that we need workaholics to overcome it. After that, we might then select for more sloth. Then the human race might decide that we want to make a faster than light drive and it will take a concerted effort requiring that humans mostly be workaholics for 5 generations. Then we might go back to a strategy of sloth, except for some extreme workaholics that will be needed to make an interstellar journey and maintain their ship. This is a good example of situations that humans really will face of having to decide what they want to be in the future.

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15. Psychopaths
Our social instincts are the most evolved of all humanizing behaviors and make society possible. The problem is that some people seem to lack them. We call them psychopaths and they apparently make up from 1% to 2% of the general population. It is characterized by lack of empathy or remorse, lack of shame, false emotions, selfishness, grandiosity or deceptiveness and self destructiveness. It is far more common to males than females and there is a far higher incidence of it in the prison population. The problem is that it is deceptive and easy for a psychopath to deceive, because most people assume that any person we meet is social. There is no agreed diagnosis and it is not known if can be cured. In Hervey Cleckley's book The Mask of Sanity, he describes them as Likeable, Charming, Intelligent, Alert, Impressive, Confidence-inspiring, and A great success with the ladies. Their methodology though is to lie and their goal is manipulation. The cheater has great advantage in a society. They are predators. They particularly prey on the weak, the old, the needy and the damaged. In ways, their victims seem to enable them and do not want to admit that they were fooled. They tend to be fascinating and perhaps invoke envy of their freedom to do anything they desire. These people are dangerous to individuals and society. How to recognize psychopaths should be part of everyone's education. They are dangerous at the individual level, but particularly when they are associated with a power religion, politics or wealth. A psychopath with an ideology is extremely dangerous, because instead of just working for their own goals, they have an objective that they will justify anything to achieve. They are also particularly dangerous when guided by a person with normal motivations like love, patriotism or greed.

Psychopaths are particularly dangerous when associated with institutions, but are also drawn to them and can have great success within their power structures due to their nature. Religions have often attracted them, but the higher levels tend to recognize them and prevent their promotion. Note that the charters and codes of ethics of many corporations seem to be written to be able to penalize psychopaths. As we have seen recently though, they can wreck havoc at lower levels. They can be valuable to the military, but they are recognized there as dangerous. Police departments often fail to recognize them, but eventually find out. They are often the main business for police and make great con artists. It is good for a criminal to never feel remorse. Financial institutions are aware of them and generally have policies to restrict them. Most financial institutions start out quite idealistic and attract the best people, but the worst as well. Unfortunately greed is an aspect of finance and so not only can they thrive there functionally, but sometimes are seen as effective tools. A recent study found a very high incidence of psychopaths in Wall Street. Politics is about power and so attracts psychopaths that seem to have all the talents for the job. Fortunately politics too attracts the best people oriented to service to their society, so they tend to limit the advancement of psychopaths if possible. Unfortunately there are basically no rules to politics and no charter to it either, so it can be hard to stop them. In times of chaos, psychopaths can do quite well in politics, particularly due to their ruthlessness, ie. Stalin. That is one reason we need an educated electorate, so that the people are not so easily fooled by the psychopath. That applies to far more than politics.

In terms of genetics, there does seem to be a genetic foundation to psychopathy. There seems to be something missing. They lack the ability to make certain associations. Their EEGs a quite different from a normal person's. It is hard to say how hard something like that would be to use artificial selection to prevent. Some researchers think that there is definitely a genetic basis. It seems like a flaw, something missing, rather than a behavior to be mitigated, say with increased empathy. Like certain other behaviors that might be considered antisocial though, it needs to be better understood. It may be related to a critical balance between the individual and society. It does seem to be the source of many of the ills of the world though.

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15. Possibilities
Consider the possibility that humans could use artificial selection to cause humans to become sexually mature at a later age. Because of the overwhelming importance of avoiding overpopulation and the greater knowledge that humans need to learn, it seems like a good idea in terms of the society. The problem is that it at the individual level it would very likely make those people at a disadvantage to people that reproduced earlier. That is the point, you have to be careful about selecting for things that might be good for the society, but bad for the individual because an element of fairness must be introduced or it is not going to work. This is described to lead to the next point.

There is a far more profound situation. There are strong genetic foundations to many moral characteristics. Below, it is considered under the topic of truth that you almost certainly would not want to select to decrease the level of truthfulness based on genetics. It would endanger the society and community. It would also be unlikely to have any real reproductive advantage for the individual either. Selecting to increase a person's natural disposition towards truthfulness would likely be good for both the society and the individual (though social lies may always be necessary). More importantly it raises the question of if artificial selection should be used to raise the moral inclination of humanity. My first reaction would be no because there does not seem to be a compelling reason and it seems like a very dangerous area to meddle in until we are far wiser. Further consideration led to another view. The goal is to adapt to a new ecology. A major difference of the new ecology will be the need for an improved morality and moral nature. If we need to adapt genetically to new patterns of behavior, it simply may be unavoidable to direct the genetic development related to our moral nature in order to adapt to the new ecology,

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17. Space
This book is not about space. It is about solving problems on Earth. Then again, some problems on Earth might have their solutions in space. Some problems in space might also effect the Earth.

The closest "space" issue would be to watch out that we do not get hit by a big meteor. It is not something that you think about every day, but scientists noticed that it is a real statistical issue and so have started looking for dangerous objects that could hit the Earth. They have also worked to come up with plans of what to do if they detect a dangerous rock. Soon, with the developing technology and strategies, we should be relatively safe. If we do get hit, hopefully the damage is limited enough and our systems resilient enough that we can get on with the business of civilization quickly.

There are a couple other relevant issues in that there are proposals to get energy from orbiting solar arrays and beam it to Earth. It sounds nice, but it does seem to me to also be the dandiest weapon imaginable. Maybe not if it is vulnerable.
There are practical plans to try to exploit metallic asteroids. That sounds interesting, but might be more of a contribution to development in space, due to the gravitational issues.

There are a few problems when considering space from the point of view of human survival. Mostly it is that space is not important. We have long survived with no space capability. Still, much current technological development has come from technology developed for space exploration, particularly the Apollo missions. That will always be a reason to develop space capability and perhaps the most important to the human population represented by Earth. A problem is a target. It is hard to do anything without a problem to solve or a goal. Space is a hostile place full of challenges. Space offers all kinds of problems to be solved that we do not encounter on Earth. The solutions though can be used on Earth. Space exploration leads to innovation and solutions on Earth. That may be the greatest importance of space to humanity. War has been the main driver of that in the past. It is not the best way. Survival is the ultimate form of conservatism and biological systems tend to be very conservative. I have described what and how humans need to survive. There are many suggestions from history that when we reach a stable ecology, we will become quite conservative and static due to nature and vested interests. Innovation may come to be seen as simply disruptive and undesirable. There is a great potential danger to that. There will have to be a balance between stability and the development that is inherent to survival. Space will contribute to that.

Beyond that, what is now the population represented by Earth, may well come to be a population represented by humans in the solar system. There are a couple of pretty big limitations for humans in space. We seem to need gravity to live and space is just too vast. Technological progress is largely unpredictable though. We may solve the gravity problem with new techniques or we will always just be visitors to space. We may be able eventually to get around in the solar system somewhat practically or even perhaps terraform Mars, but right now we have no proposed solution to interstellar travel for humans. It is just too big. I am not going to worry about it much. Then again, if we develop the ability to live in virtual reality as I expect, space travel might be more about sending information than bodies. Send out a small space ship with a virtual reality world of "people" or an intelligent machine and explore. If you want to colonize a nice looking planet, send out some frozen bacteria, fungus, seeds, fertilized eggs, etc. of all kinds of species, to develop there...

I could go on, but there is no point. The possibilities are limitless. The point of space is it is a great part of how humans can become more than they are, but a lot of speculation is more fun than productive. I just hope I can inspire more science fiction novels than dystopian ones.

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18. Gaia
The Gaia hypothesis was first scientifically formulated in the 1960s by Dr. James Lovelock. Loosely speaking it describes the earth and its biosphere as a single self adjusting organism. In terms of morality and moral understanding, not only should it be understood, but also the same concept should be applied to humans. Humans are in many ways like a single organism and we are going to need to consciously regulate ourselves as well as protect our greater environment. The ecological principle of Group Selection is what applies here. Because we live and die as individuals, there supposedly cannot be Group Selection. Selection applies only to the individual. Disputing this point in evolutionary terms is not recommended. In moral terms it may be very necessary to consider. It may also be somewhat valid. It does apply to social insects because their genetics are different. In many cases, all members of a hive of social insect, like bees or ants, are descended from on individual queen. In many ways, this high degree of genetic relatedness makes them evolutionarily like a single organism. Human physical and informational integration has a similar effect. The populations are very interconnected and will become more so. Technology gives individuals so much power. Farming practices in one region may foster diseases that effect the entire world. Pollution recognizes no borders. Humans are going to have to recognize their connectedness and act on it. Information flow, resource flow, genetic flow and environmental changes are going to make us more similar. Eventually this is likely to lead to a single worldwide culture. This concept is probably a key element of any future development of any future morality. Humans are going to have to work together to survive. Traditional elements of morality such as honesty, loyalty, perseverance, fairness and such will be needed for cooperation as they always have been, but these are going to have to operate in a larger context than the communities that they have generally applied to in the past. We are never likely to be like insects genetically or temperamentally, but we are going to become far less tribally oriented. We need to adjust our moral attitudes to this.

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Conclusions

Human Questions and Aspirations

"The longest road is from the head to the heart". S & C

There is so much we do not know. Maybe if people were more intelligent, we could make democracy work better. Hopefully we can understand economics well enough that everything does not come as such a surprise. The physicists are finishing up on their "Standard Theory" that explains everything from gravity to electromagnetism to matter and light. Unfortunately it has some known minor holes in it and one hole big enough to drive a dark matter galaxy through. This description about artificial selection is largely cautionary. Still, we are learning fast. We need to. We have limited resources, unlimited population, genetic based problems, social problems and danger from disease. Our agriculture is unsustainable as it is. Climate change is one thing, acidification of the ocean is another. A little while ago scientists started planning what to do if they thought a large meteor was going to strike the earth. Nobody has any real idea what to do if there is a large coronal ejection aimed at the Earth from the sun. I think that if anything can save humanity it will be artificial selection and a reasoned moral strategy that appeals to our instincts to survive. It will take great faith to do what it will take.

I wanted to describe humans in a new niche. I figured that using artificial selection it would take 10,000 years to take advantage of the genetic potentials we have. It will take far less time than that to greatly increase the genetic potentials of all members of the specie. I intentionally did not include the creation of engineered genes both because of the hazards and because of the unpredictability. I could see that just with the genes available to us now, we could become a beautiful, strong, intelligent, wise specie that could survive indefinitely. It would have the potential to develop an intelligence and wisdom that could take it far past the limited scenario I wanted to describe. Engineered genes would just add to that.

Then my friend challenged me and made me look past that. I saw something of human aspirations. These are the highest aspirations of humanity. They are expressed as Gods and their religions. What was the most amazing is not that these aspirations might be possible, but that they were very achievable. They might be the only possibility. We would just have to continue on the path we seem already on. Only now using genetic husbandry and logical moral strategy.
Michael Polanyi said it, though I do not know his exact reasoning. It may be the same. Humans will evolve into what we call Gods. At the time I objected and said that evolution is from something, not to it, but that is not always true. Once started down a strategic path, evolution will continue in that direction to exploit the strategy. Once you start using artificial selection, your destination may be fairly set. That applies to all species and all technology using species will have to use artificial selection. After that, all it takes is some technology and you will almost inevitably end up with a God as vast and powerful as any that humans have imagined or been told of. Has it already happened sometime in the vast cosmos? Are they watching us, maybe helping us some? No matter what, do not rely on it any.

In a more Earthly perspective humans want health, brains, beauty, prosperity, equality and all those good things. Many of those things can be achieved with technology, reason and work, but humans have asked for more than that. They have asked far harder questions such as why do we exist and what is our purpose? Really, in the context of this book, the answers are easy. This whole book is a moral philosophy based on survival. It is what humans have been designed for by billions of years of evolution. If that is the basis of our psychology, we can survive and be satisfied. This book is about how humans can survive. That is it. It is our purpose and design. With our current knowledge, that is all there is to it. I did mention though that our current understanding is quite limited. Evolution will include the ability to process memes and develop understandings that we currently have few hints of.

A question is whether we need more. You could argue that we do not. It seems simply clear to me that our genes and beliefs could adjust to that and we could achieve long term survival in a stable ecology, but I am not completely positive. That is a description of a machine. Humans have aspired to more. Wisdom says that it is unlikely that there is not more. A lot more. People have told me of some amazing experiences. I have seen strong hints that there is indeed much more. I think what I have described here is part of a path to things we have very little inkling of. Remember, evolution tends to accelerate.

Well, that is it. I hope you enjoyed it and found reading it near as interesting as I have writing it. This is not meant to be complete. It is meant to be a complete start though. Really, I see that this is only an end in that it is still sort of turns out to be a beginning. A new beginning for humans. What is described so far is probably a transitory ecology. This is a very basic framework of what it would take for humans to survive. The description of genetics and morality, 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. Consider the known unknowns in science and technology. Consider the source, method and short time frame of development of those systems. It cannot be called advanced. Still, this is a careful ecological analysis and reveals a fair amount of important points. Many of the underlying principles are still being discovered. As this has matured, it has allowed my understanding to accelerate. My best observations are the most recent.

The examinations in this book are meant to be used as the raw materials used both to describe any species survival characteristics as well as to create, validate or invalidate any hypothesis presented about human survival. It is pretty basic though and there is a lot of room for science and reason to be applied to develop it. Science and reason are such powerful tools for humans. Hopefully, applied to human survival strategies, they will be enough to get us to the future. Feelings are similarly powerful, just harder to communicate, understand and validate.

Many times, life is going to just be about unexamined survival, but it will help if we have goals to work with. In the long run, goals will be important, if not completely necessary. The goals we will need will be survival, growth, happiness and perhaps even an understanding of what God is to humans. Every generation is a step in evolution. That is change. In the future, as it is now, just surviving generation to generation is a step in the right direction. Still, that is no easy thing and we will have to do more.
Humans are going to have to develop some degree of awareness that is very distinct from what is now common. Humans tend to be responsive to their environment without questioning it any. They are easily seduced by distractions. They often ignore what they do not want to think about. We can not continue to do that. We will develop new understandings about nature, human nature and human consciousness. We will develop new concepts of what humans are, that is what our identity is and how our brain really works. I think we can develop those with intellectual and technological potentials we have.

Can we see human goals from history and culture? What aspirations do humans commonly have? Most people want a peaceful life where they can raise their children. In history, that has been asking for a lot. Still, it seems that war is becoming uneconomical. Many of the ethnic reasons for war will vanish with a new understanding of genetics. Perhaps peace will break out.
In history have had to focus mostly to the needs of survival. Already, many humans have a material wealth that would have amazed Solomon. The use of technology can provide a material plenty that is beyond most aspiration. There is so much material wealth available that it is very easy for people to forget which of it is important. We can achieve survival, then we can try to achieve much more.

We have the aspirations represented by Gods. Immortality is a common one and probably of limited use to humans, though a longer life span does seem like a good idea. The Gods were free of hunger. That seems achievable. They were also free of disease. I think that will be more of a challenge. Gods have beauty. I think humans can achieve that. A few Gods were said to possess wisdom. I think humans had better achieve that if we are to survive. Gods have great power over the nature. Only time will tell the relation between humans and nature, but I am optimistic.

So if we can fulfill all our human aspirations and the aspirations we place so distant that they are in the realm of the Gods, then what else can we discover to aspire to? That is called the future.

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I tend to be very theoretical in my thinking and writing, but occasionally I get a little more concrete. This float to the surface and I thought it was worth including. ... At the moment it is a rough draft, but I will put it in...

I have always said that I do not want to predict the future, as I will probably end up so wrong. Still, it seems necessary to offer some conclusion to make sense of this vast discussion. As such, I will try to point out the major factors and how they seem to me they will play out. They are pretty big effects so i do not need to be extremely detailed.

The future will be considered in two contexts, because I think it may actually describe two different ecologies.

The first context will be based on artificial genetic selection and automation. What is not clear is how intelligent machines will be. I almost have to assume that we will reverse engineer the human brain and so will end up with very intelligent machines.

I do not think we will be able to bar machines from being used for production of food, products or resources as well as building and maintaining the environment. Efficiency is hard to beat. I do think they may be barred from autonomously creating design and art. That should be reserved for humans. We should not create robots that are human like.

The second context will include the potential of visiting and living in virtual reality. It is not imagination that this requires. It is understanding. Consider once again the question of how would a bunch of chimpanzees design the next model? Yes, I know we are not descended from chimps, but it makes the point so much better. Would they decide to lose strength, get smaller teeth, lose most of their hair and move into a very odd new ecology? Well, in that context it makes it more imaginable for me to consider things I see that seem so unlikely.

For various reasons to be considered more further on, I expect not only for the family to stay (relatively) similar to what it is now, but also because it will be a choice we consciously choose. It offers so many useful benefits and has the potential for so much happiness.

To start with the effects of artificial intelligence, basically everyone would have superior health, beauty and brains. Natural selection has already focused on health particularly, so though that should improve, we should see a greater development in beauty as well as an even a comparatively greater increase in intelligence of many forms. Psychological pathology should be rare, but it is hard to say just what superior mental health would look like. We do not currently know what that means.

One of the biggest changes and seemingly strange to me has to do with "work". I have talked about the importance of occupational castes and how humans clearly seem to be genetically adapted to have occupational skills. It is just not hard to see where automation and robots are developing though and it seems clear that what we call work, will be rare. Do animals work in nature? In a sense I can only compare it to retirement or childhood. At the same time, we do not want to just exist. To be healthy as individuals and as a specie, we want to be active. I have recommended using artificial selection to increase both curiosity and "work ethic". I see people as occupied by entertainment, socializing, education, art and child raising. The newness and novelty that children bring will be considered uniquely valuable.

Humans are designed for socializing and history as well as the potentials of the internet have shown how much humans enjoy that as an activity. Sports a similar case. They will promote physical development, a good goal. I am not sure where social sex may fit into this picture, but it may offer a rich, positive activity.

"Writing" or creating any medium of entertainment, a broader form of art, may become an important pastime. Already I have seen such beauty created in the limited virtual realities that exist presently. In the future, you may visit your friends ina beautiful exciting virtual world that they have worked years to create. It would be more than a Zen garden.

We promote education to create citizens informed enough to rule themselves. In the future it would be to create personal development and wisdom. It would also be a great way to spend one's time.

I cannot guess the place of religion in the future. It has always been about moral education, a critical need of the future. There are drawbacks to it, so perhaps it will be replaced in that function by virtual reality. Still, it has other functions, including important social aspects. Art would offer a great way to spend time. I see virtual reality as a great opportunity for creating art requiring minimal resources and much of what would be created in virtual workshops could be translated into reality if desired. This also applies to science. Virtual laboratories could provide great tools to for anyone with the desire to explore.

That brings up a point. Already science can seemingly only be advanced by a small minority of people who devote their lives to mastering a specialized part of a subject. We will have better tools of education, but choosing to advance science will be a personal decision demanding great devotion and inspiration. You may ask why. We see that people unemployed by the changing world have trouble finding purpose. This is why I have always said that faith is and will be so important. It is the irrational survival instinct that drives us. Survive and be happy. With my limited abilities, I can offer little more than that and those without faith will have a hard time surviving in any future I envision. This is based on my knowledge of biology and humans. At the same time, I see humans developing far greater wisdom than we presently have. I have no idea what will be found in the future. What motivations, goals and aspirations will be discovered, but I do see the potential for humans to survive for geological time periods as many other species have. It would give us time to evolve greatly, certainly into what would be defined as other species. Still, when I started this I mentioned it was based on Dr. Huchinson's work, Homage to Santa Rosalia, that presented the point that no specie lasts forever. Humans will not, but perhaps species that descend from them will last a very long time.

     *     *

In another context, I do see something else. I already mentioned virtual immortality. I do not see it as extremely technically difficult. That would create an ecology different from the one I just described in the first context. It is so novel, that I can only give a very limited speculation on the topic, but I think that will be plenty.

In a sense, it would just be an overlay on the previously described ecology. It would present dangers to the living, particularly to those of less faith. It must not endanger the living human specie. It might offer a new form of governance. Ultimately, perhaps we will decide that that is where humans should live and that means both birth and death. It may cause a split into two species, one biological and one virtual.

Then there is the potential mentioned in the Aspirations section. We might become a plurality form of life that is not a product of evolution.

I think that is plenty of speculation. I see a bright future potential for humanity. I think we should not just aspire to it, I think we should aspire to achieve it.

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    Acknowledgments

There are so many people I am grateful to that have helped me riddle out this difficult puzzle. I would like particularly to thank Helen Krilly for opening doors that had been closed and Lynn Ikoma for the bright light behind that door. I will list a few that particularly helped me though some did not know it; Richard Richard, John Vogelsang, Hyman Lubman, Andrew Moldenky, Kenneth Norris, John Pearse and William Doyle. I would like to thank so many other of my instructors for their help and patience. So many others have helped me. I am grateful to my kids and my wife Debbie for making everything new. I am also so grateful to my friends for their patience and support, particularly to the one who provided me with so much inspiration.

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    About This Book

This book is not as complicated as it is novel. With something of a background in biology and logic, all the parts are easy enough to understand. It is just that there are a lot of new parts, all of which have to be internalized to see what this shows. It will require concentration for that though. Perhaps the hardest part is adjusting to the time frame that reflects generations. It is a longer time frame than most people think of, but human survival must be measured in terms of a few generations to the thousands or millions of generations that human survival will be measured in. Originally, it was to look at a time period of thousands of years when humans would be fairly well genetically adapted into a new ecology. Really though it is about what we can do and need to do right now. It is about technology that this generation can use and strategies we can use now. At the end, I see potentials that will take a very long time to realize. I meant to describe human survival now, but I also found the highest human aspirations that can only be in the future.

This book is very unusual by any standard and not just because of its topic and content. It is very difficult to write. This describes one large idea, but with numerous parts that are very different. It must describe the parts and how they all go together to make something qualitatively more than the parts. It is like describing an modern car to a person from the 19th century when an automobile was more novel than stem cell therapy. The infant technology was there, but all the parts still had to be developed. The vehicles were primitive and there is no way to envision the roads, superhiways, parking lots, drive-ins, auto parts stores, custom shops, service stations, trucks, busses, race cars of all kinds and entire culture that would develop surrounding the auto. The automobile and the mechanical technology it represented was transformational. The genetic and strategic methods I describe here are transformational as well. There are differences though. The auto developed as and in response to economic forces. The auto did not have profound implications to human survival (in that ecology) and was not created to respond to great dangers. Human genetic technology described here has to be a response to an overwhelming danger that is already upon us and because of its importance to survival will have a huge moral dimension to it. It will have great economic impact, but the form of wealth it generates will be health, beauty, brains and survival strategies more than an economic product to be marketed. Indeed, it seems very unlikely that any standard business model will apply. Automobiles generally had few direct implications to religion and our deepest moral instincts. Genetic technologies do. That is why genetic technologies cannot just develop in response to economic forces. They must develop in response to careful thought out moral implications. Since this is about human survival, it is emotional and filled with preconceptions. Mistakes made in the development of automobiles had limited consequences. Mistakes with genetic technologies could be more problematic. Automobiles were not developed with a destination in mind. This is about developing genetic and moral technologies to let humans transition to a new niche where they can escape the danger of their old niche disappaearing behind them. Human development has tended to be incremental. This is a description of a human development that is rather transformational. We have instincts against that. That is why this entire complicated picture must be painted up front of what genetic technologies and moral strategies could look like. It is to provide a description of why we need to make this change. It is partly to model what things will look like in consequence, but more it is a tool to make other models and figure out other consequences. Thinking things through more carefully is going to be a hallmark of how we survive in the future. Another reason this must offer a robust description of the future is to show a vision that is positive enough and familiar enough to avoid setting off fears based on moral instincts. It is not easy.
As a hobby, I write about a very non-verbal topic, scuba diving. I am practiced and have no trouble communicating it. This has presented a different problem. I have no idea how any book like this ever gets completed. You write it, then write it, then you do it again. It is not just information. It is a tool to discover more information. Once you learn more about one part, you can figure out something new and important about other parts.
Frankly, I think parts of this book are a difficult read and not that exciting. Sorry, but I see why and it was unavoidable. Almost every single topic considered here, must be examined from numerous points of view including the individual, society, genetics, past, present, future and then cross referenced. It all must be considered. Take almost any single topic, perhaps "love" or "hate". These are important to human survival, particularly in terms of moral strategies. For this to describe those topics (and many others) they must be considered in terms of how an individual is taught in their society as well as how they feel, prompted by their genes. Love, an individual behavior, relates to cooperation and child raising all the way up to the character of a society. Hate relates to fear and can develop in a person due to fear. Hate can be a feature of a society, leading to war. This is not simple, but then neither are humans or human society. These all must be described and they are all related, so unavoidably there is going be repetition as the topic appears in different contexts of the individual, genes, society, morality, past, future, etc. Really, everything in the genetics section is supposed to be reconsidered in the morality section, just from a different point of view. Most things that apply to individuals must be described in terms of the society. It can be repetitive. It is supposed to make links between things, so they are mentioned repeatedly. It does not make for the greatest reading. I am truly sorry and I did work against it all I could. It is fantastically difficult. At the same time, There is some great stuff in this book that I do not think will be found anywhere else, including answers to questions that have been asked for a long time.
I look at this and wonder if I could have done a better job or at least removed some repetition. I keep suspecting (hoping) it is not just a weakness, but is necessary for successful communication of this novel and complicated idea. If not I can only hope that the content makes up for any weakness of the writing. Hopefully, this form will communicate a beautiful and important, but complicated idea. It is about how humans can survive into the uncertain future. It also says a good deal about why we should. Though it is based on a great deal of accumulated knowledge and science, it is meant to be very accessible, because it is about issues that are very common, important parts of everyone's daily life. The conclusions are amazing and very positive. Most of what humanity has dreamed of is achievable. Indeed, to survive, humans will have to achieve their dreams.

This book is necessarily a somewhat schematic view to allow communication. Otherwise it would simply be too long and verbose... or more so than it already is. In many parts, to understand it well will require a fair amount of thought by the reader, because a few of the separate threads must be brought together. There is far more detail on the associated website and there you can see the history of how this was created. I know this is not perfectly written and there may be flaws, but it should do the job. I am limited and my time has been limited. It is the work of many years and some things that were just possibilities at the beginning are now common knowledge and technology, especially in the field of genetics. In that time, the main point of the genetics in the book has gone from being a theory to being fairly established. The ultimate conclusions are still certainly a ways off, but the potentials described are amazing.

Modern software development is based on what is called Object Principles. Programming is done by creating Objects. It is a powerful programming paradyme, but has a well known weakness. It is hard for someone learning it to develop an understanding starting at nothing and going to an understanding of the Objects, because the path of their development is missing. It is like seeing a bridge and wondering how it could possibly have been made. If you had watched it being made, it would be obvious, but lacking that, you cannot even guess. This book avoids that, but at the cost of describing the path to the conclusions, which can be tedious.

There are some other oddities to how this is written, but they serve well. In that it was written over a period longer than three decades, my points of view and understandings changed over time. Many of those views are still there as steps up to the next understanding. That is that path and I wanted to leave it for others to follow. This book is a tool of understanding and as it has developed, my understanding has grown. It has been written in layers over time. The goal was to find a path of human survival. That cannot be seen from where we are. I had to start with data and premises, but after making the conclusions from that, I had to go on and on until I reached a level where survival looked possible. That was the basic skeleton that had to be created. Most books that have data and premises about a topic that lead to a conclusion and understanding. Humans face a large number of problems, all at the same time. This has to consider together many different problems that humans face and consider them over a dimension of time. Solutions to one problem effects other problems. Each conclusion requires new conclusions to be developed for other problems. This also must go past conclusions to a solution of how humans can survive. It is not a great way to write a book, but it is in response to great danger. It now has enough parts developed to basically solve the minimum of the problems I saw that humans must solve to survive. It is also a tool to solve the rest. Only now with the current level of completion is it revealing some of the most interesting and important understandings. I have to go back then and backfill those understandings where appropriate in each of the individual topics. Long ago I wrote the questions. Now I can write the answers. Originally I did not want to speculate much about the future and most of the book was written that way. I did not think I could find more than a few solutions. I wanted this to be as composed of science and its suggestions as much as possible and speculation about the future does not usually seem that useful. The original concept of this book was about what we could do to survive the more immediate biological problems we faced with only minimal suggestion of what we would or should do in the future. Most of the book was and is written that way. It was after over thirty years of thought that I stumbled into the Aspirations section that described something of what humans seem to want and what the possibilities might really be. Also it was only after a great deal of data collection and long thought that I felt I could make valid judgments about various moral topics. Later those speculations and judgements were added like a layer across everything that preceded it. Only towards the completion could I use it as a tool to reach some of its best conclusions on topics from beginning to end. In a way, this book has an object design like is used in the modern software that I write. Items are added without modifying what underlies them. Most of the topics were developed as standalone, so they must contain their own foundations. This isolation (or encapsulation as it is called in software) is good because it allows each part to be examined separately and its development understood. So the integration of the book is limited intentionally (loosely coupled in software parlance), which is good because if parts are interchangeable and there is new information or errors, they tend to be isolated and can be replaced or updated as new knowledge is developed. Maybe that is just a nice way of saying that this book is written like a collection of essays and then had to all be arranged together to make the point. It is not one new idea, it is many, but they are all must be tied together into a bigger one.

At one time, I wondered what the nature of this book was. Is it science or philosophy or what? It is based on science, but is only on nodding terms at this point. It is philosophy, that which is beyond science, but that is not it. I finally figured out that it is morality. That is a human survival strategy. A more complicated subject. In ways, it is to tell person what they already know, but do not have the words for. This is because survival is a problem everyone is aware of.

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 is written to convince both. That is another reason that individual topics must be considered from multiple points of view. Different people need different explanations.

At this point, this book is complete, because the skeleton is has been assembled. It will not be finished until humans have entered their new niche where they can survive long term.

Transition To A New Human Ecology

Human Genetic and Moral Adaptation for Long Term Survival

Conclusions

Human Questions and Aspirations