Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on December 23, 2019
Our Genetic Timebomb
Every few days or weeks, Rob Mielcarski posts to his Un-Denial blog some or another nuance to the Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory of Varki and Brower (2013). If you are not aware of MORT, the idea in a nutshell is that somewhere in the evolution of human neurobiology there came a moment when we were so freaked out by recognition of our own mortality (after ritualistically consuming a paranoia-inducing mushroom like Amanita muscaria perhaps), that we hard-wired a capacity to deny our own mortality and take on blind faith that every-day-reality is too unreliable to put complete trust in.In the original, unfinished paper, the late Danny Brower explained MORT this way:
“We are polluting the earth and changing the climate in ways that we can’t predict, and likely at some point, can’t easily reverse. If we’re so smart, why do we continue to sow the seeds for our eventual destruction? Because we are saddled with a brain that is designed by selection to cope with the ultimate disaster (death) by denying that it will occur, and so we treat other impending disasters by denying that they will ever happen ……Indeed, it is arguable that we are destined ultimately to destroy ourselves as a species.”
In a recent chapter for Shackelford and Zeigler-Hill (eds.), Evolutionary Perspectives on Death, Evolutionary Psychology (Springer 2019), Ajit Varki riffs on Brower’s idea:
Some aspects of human cognition and behavior appear unusual or exaggerated relative to those of other intelligent, warm-blooded, long-lived social species — including certain mammals (cetaceans, elephants, and great apes) and birds (corvids and passerines). One collection of such related features is our remarkable ability for ignoring or denying reality in the face of clear facts, a high capacity for self-deception and false beliefs, overarching optimism bias, and irrational risk-taking behavior (herein collectively called “reality denial”). Such traits should be maladaptive for reproductive success when they first appear as consistent features in individuals of any species. Meanwhile, available data suggest that self-awareness (knowledge of one’s own personhood) and basic theory of mind (ToM, also termed mind-reading, intentionality, etc.) have evolved independently several times, particularly in the same kinds of species mentioned above. Despite a long-standing opportunity spanning tens of millions of years, only humans appear to have gone on to evolve an extended ToM (multilevel intentionality), a trait required for optimal expression of many other unusual cognitive attributes of our species, such as advanced linguistic communication and cumulative cooperative culture.
***
Most human behaviors exist in other species on a continuum of development, as one would expect from evolution. But religion appears to be a well-established near universal only in human cultures and there are many obvious fitness advantages that have been discussed by others. But most of these advantages should not require a belief in life after death. Nevertheless, almost all religions have at their core some form of such afterlife beliefs, which would serve as another mechanism to blunt the impact of mortality salience. Of course, atheists do not live in constant fear of their mortality, so the underlying reality denial appears to be the primary mechanism.
***
Could the well-known human craving for mind-altering substances also be partly due to the need to escape reality? Could the same be true of the positive value of meditation methods that focus on mindfulness of the present, or the shutting out of irksome reality? Conversely, could episodic panic attacks represent a sudden failure of the neural mechanisms of reality denial?
Mielcarski, following in the footsteps of Brower and Varki, says that it is impossible for high intelligence to exist without reality denial. At the same time, reality denial is a ticking time bomb embedded into the entire human experiment. Reality denial is what stands between our existential climate emergency and the simple, relatively cost-free, natural climate solutions I have been describing here for the past 532 posts or in the prior two decades of publishing the quarterly Natural Rights in hard copy. Reality denial is what crashed the recent COP25 climate conference in Madrid, pushing off a hard deadline imposed by physical reality. Reality denial is what allowed the UK to re-empower Boris Johnson, US to elect Trump, Brazil to elect Bolsonaro, India to elevate Modi, and so forth. All of those nasty tendencies to act counter to our own best interest are programmed into the central processing unit in our genetic mainframe. It is not like we can go in and do a bug-patch. This is not software. The MORT trait passes whole and entire in our mitochondria every time one of our cells divides.If that is not depressing enough, Homo sapiens have a second evolutionary trait that could guarantee our extinction should MORT prove inadequate to the task.
That trait is tribalism.
In most of its manifestations it seems harmless enough. The family gathered around the dinner table. Football rivalries. A neighborhood barbecue. A celebration of ethnic heritage. Kneeling in prayer under stained-glass windows.
ut tribalism is also the street protests over Modi’s Muslim quotas. Babies crying and children dying in cages in Texas. Blue Collar against White Collar. Communist and Capitalist. Catholic against Protestant. Right and Left. Red or Blue. Harvard vs. Yale. Tutsi against Hutu. Crips and Bloods. Crise anglophone in Cameroon. Small differences in skin pigmentation. Different dialects of the same language. Differences in social theory. Us. Them.
In evolutionary biology it is a common strategy: safety in numbers; pack hunting; clustered quarters for protection from night predators. Two-leggeds are no different in this respect from zebras crossing a river of crocodiles, a troop of monkeys filling a tree, a herd of buffalo enclosing their young, or a lion pride circling a lone gazelle.
We tribe.
When we sacrifice for our tribe we are rewarded. When we offend our tribe we are punished. The tribe is order. The tribe is security. The tribe is identity.
The tribe is also an extinction time-bomb. Its benefits are overshadowed by its destructive potential. “USA first” is President Cobblepot’s justification for pulling out of the Paris Agreement. When he appeared at the United Nations and told every nation they should be seeking only their own interests there, he rowed against the current of 70 years of a fragile but expanding multilateralism. Now there are many who feel empowered to pick up oars and row with him. Witness the coming Scottish vote to withdraw from the UK.
In his Christmas blog, Mielcarski draws upon a year-end essay in the Megacancer blog that propounds a notion that humans are just one of many living organisms driven by the need to gather energy, expand population, and gather more energy,
Humans should never think of themselves as smart or intelligent, they’re simply a thermodynamic event maintaining homeostasis through gradient reduction. Their entire mentality serves energy/wealth acquisition, consumption and reproduction. Being a social mammal (obtaining energy as a group) they are hierarchically organized and are constantly striving to improve their social standing by whatever means possible (if they haven’t yet seen the futility in such efforts). Those able to control the most money/energy are admired and envied by their sycophants while those with less success are regularly scorned and often deemed unworthy of reproduction or even living. Just as the human civilization will enslave, consume and/or deprive other species of their ability to live and reproduce, so too wealthy humans will enslave less avaricious humans and use them for self-enrichment.
I confess a jaundiced view towards this analysis because it seems boxed into a particular worldview derived from ancient desert religions engaged in ritual conquest and despoliation. We don’t need to adopt that model any more than we need to keep ready-standby militaries in times of peace. That is just inertia, Mr. Obama.
You can point to acquisitive, expansionist, competitive, wasteful patterns of the white Euroamerican tribe, or you can point to sharing, self-limiting, self-effacing patterns of some indigenous societies that enjoyed thousands of years without hunger or war. The distinction lies between a juvenile r-sere ecosystem and a mature k-sere ecosystem. By fixing on the juvenile stage, you assume there is no later stage of cultural evolution awaiting greater maturity.
If we have any hope to survive, or to save the myriad other species we are now in the process of destroying, we need to somehow overcome these two traits — reality-denial and tribal loyalty — with a stronger counter-program of k-sere culture, elegantly interconnected, complex, and diverse. Before we pack our sons off to Afghanistan or Syria we might first ask whom they are being sent to kill, and why? When we kneel in prayer, we should appeal to the Almighty for guidance in better loving our fellow creatures, of all colors, beliefs, and languages, as well as those with fins, and wings, and roots in the ground.
For our guiding credo, we could do worse than to adopt something approaching the eloquence of Sibelius’ national anthem of Finland:
Finlandia
This is my song, O God of all the nations
A song of peace, for lands afar and mine
This is my home, the country where my heart is
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mineMy country’s skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
Oh hear my song, thou God of all the nations
A song of peace for their land and for mine
— Jean Sibelius, 1899
You encourage me to do more and then tell you about it. Help me get my blog posted every week. All Patreon donations and Blogger subscriptions are needed and welcomed. Those are how we make this happen. PowerUp! donors on Patreon get an autographed book off each first press run. In this season of giving and receiving gratitude, please help if you can.
151 Comments on "Our Genetic Timebomb"
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 5:26 pm
Anon is correct you are Davy deranged, Juan. You have ruined this forum because your feeling got hurt. Think about it Juan, you are trashing a public place for your own personal satisfaction. That is what egotistical assholes do.
Duncan Idaho on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 6:24 pm
“A corporation cannot be ethical; its only responsibility is to turn a profit!”
— Milton Friedman, American rightwing darling, free-market proponent of the magic “trickle-down” your leg theory
I AM THE MOB on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 6:27 pm
Trump’s most fanatical right-wing followers are going ballistic over impeachment — and talking of ‘civil war’
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-most-fanatical-right-wing-followers-are-going-ballistic-over-impeachment-and-talking-of-civil-war/
Duncan Idaho on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 6:29 pm
“The mansion was on a promontory, high over the Pacific. Money could see farther in the 1920s, & one could look out & see whales & the Hawaiian Islands & the Kuomintang in China.”
— Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America
REAL Green on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:07 pm
Were flogging a dead horse Davy. It isn’t going to git anymore dead or alive no matter how much we keep on floggin it. It’s way passed time fer us to move along.
Anonymouse on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:25 pm
Juan, you can ignore Davy and he will ignore your dead horse. That is the best it gets. Davy is not going anywhere.
Anonymouse on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:32 pm
Everyone on the forum knows Davy is an idiot Juan, but that won’t stop him from flogging a dead horse. He’s not real smart like.
Davy on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:41 pm
I hate you REAL Green.
REAL Green on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:43 pm
I hate you to Davy.
We need to see the docter. REAL Soon like.
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:45 pm
Everyone knows you takes identities and warps the conversation, Juan. Everyone knows the mindless muzzle shit is you, juan People hate how you have destroyed a public common area. You are an egotistical asshole, Juan.
Hypocritical Davy takes identities and warps the conversation again. on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:48 pm
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:45 pm
Anonymouse on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:50 pm
Davy will show an assholes like you Juan that you can’t get whatever you want. Egotistical assholes like you require getting what you want. Tough shit asshole. Davy will see you through to the end. Davy comments but you do mindless trolling.
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:52 pm
Juan, we don’t want you here lunatic. We want our forum back. Please leave.
Anonymouse on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 7:56 pm
Davy has been flogging a dead horse for years, but he’s too stupid to figure it out. He likely never will.
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:00 pm
The Missouri mule doesn’t even know why he’s known as the Missouri mule.
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:01 pm
Davy makes comments Juan, you troll, big difference. You were taken down too many times in legitimate debates so you went dirty. Your activity is low IQ and mindless. This is just the type of activity that runs people off.
Hypocritical Davy takes identities and warps the conversation again on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:03 pm
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:01 pm
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:04 pm
I am mentally ill so who cares. I like ruining this place. I do this because I was beaten and that hurt my feelings.
REAL Green on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:04 pm
Can we please go see the docter Davy? This isn’t so much fun anymore.
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:05 pm
My life is empty. I feel something by destroying. I don’t like people anyway.
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:06 pm
I tried therapy once but it didn’t help. I am too far gone
REAL Green on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:08 pm
JuanP is mostly one of our socks. We use our JuanP sock to pretend were projecting are insanity onto other people. Were floggin a dead horse.
Speeder on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:08 pm
Juan, tell us some full woke muzzle stuff so we can laugh at how stupid you have become
Speeder on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:10 pm
Juan, when you were in therapy was it also for sexual perversions. You really have a nasty personality
Davy on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:10 pm
Speeder and full woke muzzie are also are socks. We’re real stupid if we think no body knows.
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:12 pm
Well I like weird sex because it’s Miami Beach. Lots of nasty kinky shit happens here
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:13 pm
Come on Juan do your full woke shit so we can laugh at how stupid you have become
Davy on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:14 pm
We’re real jealous about that Juan. All we gots is goats and relatifs.
Anonymouse on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:14 pm
Yea Juan. Tell us some muzzle nonsense so we can laugh at you not with you. Lol
Hypocritical Davy takes identities and warps the conversation again on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:15 pm
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:13 pm
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:15 pm
Quit talking bad about me it reminds me of kindergarten when kids laughed at me
Davy on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:16 pm
I’m starting to drewall uncontrollably agin.
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:17 pm
Juan, just give it up. You lost and Davy won. You have spent 3 years trying to run him off and he is still here. In the process you ruined this forum.
Hypocritical Davy takes identities and warps the conversation again on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:18 pm
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:15 pm
Anonymouse on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:19 pm
Yea Juan. You run off your friends and smart people by being a dumb troll
Hypocritical Davy takes identities and warps the conversation again on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:19 pm
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:17 pm
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:20 pm
I want my mommy
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:21 pm
Juan, your mommy does not want you. Your family sent you to Miami for a reason
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:22 pm
Why does everyone hate me
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:37 pm
Interesting insanity by Davy spewed here for all to see. His delusions are just getting worse. I see a rubber room in his future. So be it. Well deserved. LOL
REAL Green on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:37 pm
OK y’all. Its gittin bout time fer us to tuck widdle geriatric Davy in for the nite. He gets real tuckered out early now a days.
I bet even makato stays up passed 10 o’clock.
Nite y’all.
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:47 pm
Interesting insanity by Juan spewed here for all to see. His delusions are just getting worse. I see a rubber room in his future. So be it. Well deserved. LOL
Anonymouse on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:50 pm
Juan, you lost. You can’t get rid of Davy. You wasted 3 years of your life on nonsense. You really are a Failure
makati1 on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:52 pm
Yea Juan, you look worse than I do. I have an excuse I am almost 80 and senile
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 8:53 pm
I hate myself
REAL Green on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 9:00 pm
Were having troubles deciding between depends and grampers. We like the ease of depends but hurd grampers mite have better retention.
Anyone have any advise?
Speeder on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 9:05 pm
JuanP is so mindless and stupid he is easy to piss off. He is mad as hell because he has failed miserably. Davy kicked his widdle ass.
JuanP on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 9:06 pm
I hate myself. I am so depressed
The Board on Fri, 27th Dec 2019 9:10 pm
We hate you too Juan. I hope your depression is painful
Davy on Sat, 28th Dec 2019 12:43 am
Tell me about it juanp. I have been struggling with delusions, anger issues, tantrums and have been projecting my own shitty behavior and actions onto everyone else for years. I am a complete dumbass that is constantly reminding everyone here how friggen brilliant I am. I guess that is how I cope with the fact I am an irreverent failure who likes to talk tough on the internet. I keep telling everyone how messed up you are juanp, but wow, talk about pot calling the kettle an illegal wetback, am I right?