Thank you for the long and thoughful post. It provoked a thought or two that are largely off topic. Sorry. I'm thinking about election policy, but this had to come out.Originally Posted by Nessus
1. Biology vs. Culture. Laying aside the specifics of this one discussion, there are a whole class of problems that result from biologically urged behavior that evolved under certain conditions, helped us to survive those conditions in fact, but conditions which neverlethese no longer exist. These problems are potentially a survival issue and our species, which has apparently always utilized some extent of external, learned dna, aka culture, struggles to deal with them via our culture rather than letting natural selection do it.
Obesity is the best example we struggle with today. Violence and competition another, and one which is arguably the best adapted to our modern culture (or vice versa). As for breeding, we all can agree we need to limit it (how many children a couple have and when they have them). But alas, we are obsessively preoccupied with the act, for obvious reasons. And we are insanely defensive of it, for equally obvious reasons.
2. Everchanging Humanity. So humanity has two forms of dna. Our internal, biological dna that builds and maintains the machine and influences behavior, and the external dna, the rules and knowledge of our culture, that vastly influence behavior, have lightly helped us preserve the innner (rules against inbreeding for example) and just lately is providing the tools to literally engineer it. (It may be the two will merge - our knowledge allowing us to fully shape and control our internal dna).
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You're piece above is largely about how this external dna of our culture changes, either by brute force, light force, or natural evolution. From the ground up - within society - or the top down, via our culturally annointed leadership. Today the rate of change is vast compared to any time in our history. And its apparently accelerating, to what end we can only guess.
The changes in breeding are interesting - more children survive their first 5 years than ever, fewer people need be childless than ever , the number of children per breeding pair is on a rapid decline. And soon, as I said, we'll know how to guide, then control, then engineer the results of our breeding. And people are going to freak every step of the way. That's the pangs of cultural evolution, as our understanding of ethics changes to suit what we can and/or must do. Two steps forward, one back, a half back, or three back, then more forward.
Or not. I wonder if this trend of increasing complexity and rate of change can hold, or must hold. Or will it slow? Biological evolution doesn't go at any particular rate or in any particular direction as a rule. Is cultural evolution goaless as well? Is there an intent? Why not - it is at least in part a product of sentience, why can't it be guided? But human policy - top down cultural rules - seems to be having trouble keeping up with our capabilities, and our capabilities seem to be largely un-guided. As we've seen, if they get too divergent, you end up with dirty environment, very high body counts, way too many fat people, etc.
Now we face extinction at our capable hands. So leaders start thinking about how to speed things up, adjust the rules to fit the abilities before the abilities do away with us. This is easy to do quickly when disaster strikes. Take off your shoes in line at the airport, as an example. Nobody seriously complains about airport security. MAD changed the nature of warfare to fit the ability to murder everyone. So far so good.
What's next? Temporary sterility for young people? Global Jihad? The Matrix? Gray goo? Post-human homo-superior? Or simple, reasonable election reform?
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