On Society
Darwinism dictates that any species will evolve in the direction that ensures its survival. The largest evolutionary change that led to humans was that of the human brain. Beyond this point, Darwinism can’t explain. Because if it could, humans would just be killing each other and ensuring survival of the fittest. The sick wouldn’t get treated, people with weaker immune systems would die, ensuring that their genes don’t propagate.
Case study- humans went from forming small tribes that fend for themselves (and killing other tribes when necessary), to this complex socio-political structure we have today. In what direction has humanity as a whole moved? Certainly not ensuring longevity, otherwise we wouldn’t be developing nuclear warheads when people are dying of malaria in Uganda. No. It has moved in the direction that gives individuals more time to utilize their minds. Humans went from constantly worrying about the next meal as hunter-gatherers, to having a little more leisure time as farmers, to what they are today.
Humans live in complex societies today. Everyone doesn’t have to worry about what pesticides they should use to ensure the survival of the rice crop for their next meal. Individuals are different, and the purpose of society at large is to foster individual growth, while providing them convenient access to generations of human thought. It’s a delicate system though. If the society allows too much individuality, many human minds will be engaged in crashing airplanes into the WTC, and taking other human life. At the same time, if it allows too little individual growth, the purpose of humanity at large will be lost, and the society will collapse. Initially, laws and social norms were conservative, and with time, they laws become more liberal to accept a larger diversity in individuals. I’m not sure this trade-off argument works: for a significantly lower number of terrorists, thinkers like Socrates had to be put to death. No. Without those laws/ social norms, Socrates would have probably spent more time worrying about being killed by terrorists, and less time thinking about politics. Society constantly revises laws; like the ones on abortion, capital punishment, and gay marriage. Humanity still has a long way to go, and much of the progress depends on fixing things like the morality of stem cell research, for example.
There are no inborn laws or morals in humans, as several religious texts seem to indicate. Morals are defined by society after several experiments. On the right to equality for example, one school of thought gains acceptance, and all the others die out. Right to equality then becomes fundamental to every society, societies start experimenting with other issues, and the process continues. Why not just get someone to write laws of the future (read: big religious book) and enforce them? Consider the thought experiment: Would humans in 30 BC have been able to accept the right to equality? No. Laws are just a reflection of human progress.
October 24th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
/*Beyond this point, Darwinism can’t explain. Because if it could, humans would just be killing each other and ensuring survival of the fittest.*/
Probably we have evolved to a level where we realize that collective existence as in a society, working for its greater good is better for us. A group of people working towards the goal of survival seems much better than survival at the induvidual level. United we stand,…?
October 24th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
@Jaskirat: That is true to some extent, but I don’t think it’s that survival (even at a collective level) is the underlying objective of human existence. Why would humans compose music, develop quantum mechanics, and send rockets to the moon if survival were the ultimate objective? Some, but not all the activities that humans do contribute to this collective survival.
October 24th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Very intriguing article. Makes you think a lot.
The only fault in it is “Time”. Evolution took a long time. We are possibly looking for the next leap too early. Maybe the next leap might not even be human! With 70% of Earth under water, probably some super-being might emerge from there. (Water being “mostly” unaffected from Human pollution).
There is also a thought that the next leap of evolution will have another aspect that is overlooked – Consciousness. When we speak of laws built out of what is considered as “moral”, its basis is always the consciousness. I could go on, but I’m sure you get my drift.
Good thoughts here. Don’t stop it with just one post!
October 24th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
@Sudhamshu: Thanks for the encouragement! Yes, I’m current writing an extension to this post (substantially more controversial) to look at consciousness, righteousness, morality from a more philosophical perspective. Instead of focusing on humanity as a whole, I’ll try to focus on individual behavior.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Why don’t you consider Darwinism in Richard Dawkins’ way (the selfish gene) instead of the conventional interpretation? This explains the fact that the instinct is not completely self-centered, but it’s concerned with preservation of a trait (read ‘a gene’) which leads to the communal behaviour or organism, which is not confined to humans but has been observed in other biological context.
Further, if you consider the evolution of life, the evolution of cell organelles in certain context has been explained as a symbiosis between different ‘organisms’ which used to develop individually. This explains the inherent nature of ‘helping’ and mutual benefit present in a living organism.
Although it’s just a hypothesis, but it explains a lot, if proven to be true, and takes the Darwinian theory to a new height.
As for the idea of paradigm shift of human nature towards utilisation of brain, I think maybe that’s one thing humans are really good at, considering the fact that most of the mammals found in the wild can easily overpower a human physically, and that’s the place where humans evolved. So maybe human race survived simply because we learnt to apply our brains, and now what we see as development is but a glimpse of what evolution has developed.
In conclusion, although I think I diverted too much considering the limits of a ‘comment’, I must add that it’s really nice to see that people still have the ‘tempo’ to think beyond their careers and ambitions into much deeper realms. Keep it up man.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:44 am
@Vatsal: I totally subscribe to the gene selection theory. It has certainly been shown to fit a lot better than Darwin’s “natural selection”. I have argued against “individual selection” and “group selection” (see @Jaskirat’s comment), just as Dawkins has in the book.
Dawkins has done a fantastic job of creating a unified theory to explain the behavior of all creatures. However, I think there’s more to human behavior than an explanation offered by pure evolutionary biology. Complexities arise mainly due to human “consciousness”; their ability to take conscious decisions that cannot be explained by biology. Think of my theory as a version of gene selection, that is tailored specifically to explain just human behavior.
Finally, thanks for the encouragement! I think it’s about having a broader sense of direction/ ambition. More on this later.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I’ll admit any given day I am very lazy to even approach such thinking to be writing such stuff, but I am not pleased with the tone in the “definitive” statements here.
Regardless, I think might want to read this
http://www.fullmoon.nu/articles/art.php?id=tal
October 25th, 2009 at 11:58 am
@Sindhu: Wow, thanks for pointing me to that fantastic read! I agree with your comment about the tone: this is my first attempt at writing even borderline philosophy, so it’ll hopefully improve in future. You should try writing something like this sometime; it’s very challenging to get everything to get everything to fit logically.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
@Ramkumar: I should, I have but it never left my drafts folder – an exercise in futility is what it always seemed, cause its so damn tough to be right about such
toughthings (cause you really don’t want people to point out, argue and say you are wrong).October 25th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
@Sindhu: Actually, I DO want people to point out- I absolutely love it when people argue intelligently; it adds to the richness of the theory. If it helps to know, I always procrastinate posting to give myself more time to correct logical inconsistencies.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:02 am
@Ramkumar
consciousness…Interesting term….Recently I was reading a book called The Mind’s I (Douglas R. Hofstadter) exploring the ’special’ thing called consciousness and what it is supposed to mean. There had been a long discussion regarding whether our brains are merely some advanced computer hardware, or is there something more to it. On a different note, Hofstadter turns this question upside down to ask whether the modern day digital computer can be considered ‘conscious’ in the philosophical sense.
I think you should explain what you refer to when you talk about consciousness. Maybe we can discuss it sometimes.
@Sindhu
Really interesting article. I think the author is quite inspired of Asimov, and maybe also with the Oriental philosophies like Zen and Taoism. In any case, gonna all the articles there.