Of late I have been trying to get through a series of books that have revolutionized genetic thinking and science since the 1990s. Names that I have not heard before -Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, except for Richard Hawkins and his meritorius diatribes against all religions and religious thought. As I began to wade into these books I felt frustrated, stymied and annoyed, which I should register as the first signs that they are worth reading.
The writings of evolutionary psychology are difficult for me to grasp as my mind is not a scientific one. In short, I can’t access the conceptual double helix. However, I can write about what I don’t know, writers do it all the time. I can comment on the path and the brush and briars without having reached home; perhaps it is a Sisyphaean task. Neverthess, allow me to share what I am sensing, feeling about all this, throwing in here and there a shard or two of what I recall from all this reading while spending more time on the consequences for us all as I dimly see and sense it.
As I continue to write here, perhaps I will be clearer about my own feelings and share them with you. And here is the quotation from Dawkins which about says it all for me in Genome by Matt Ridley who has written several books on the new science: “We are survival machines — robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth that still fills me with astonishment.” Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
What I write here requires an imaginative response on your part, with you relinquishing that part which judges. Suspend that part if you will. I am not asking for empathy. I am asking that you go with it, at first.
So I am a body, a canister if you will. As you well understand you have very little control over your internal bodily mechanism. Pumping blood through your heart is out of your hands. And so I conclude we are a sack holding life-giving processes. In that is amazement if we just pause,but like many things we take it for granted, part and parcel of life itself, like breathing oxygen or getting wet by rain. However, let us register something new. We have enough evidence clearly to say that our genes and chromosomes, our complete human genome determines all of our being, from eye color to sex and completely run the human show. And these tiny bits of matter, our genes, molecular dots and dats, determine everything that we are, from consciousness to unconsciousness, that genes replicate us over and over into what is known as a human being regardless of our century or place in the world — ontogeny recapitualates phylogeny.
What the new science teaches us goes beyond Darwin himself; that genes are continually seeking sex in the sense of trying to replicate themselves or adapting to newer situations; they are often at odds with one another, antagonistic, but don’t confuse this with survival of the fittest. And they are not aware nor cognizant of their own existence, and this is critical to grasp — and mind-boggling as well. There is no determinism here nor free will, which are contributions of the conscious mind, or the cultural existence we liv, as I see it. It is as if we are shadow puppets, controlled by forces (genes) that we are unaware of. What is also difficult to grasp or mentally metabolize is that these genetic shakers and makers of our existence are not aware of their controlling attributes nor of their existence. Does a microbe think? So we spin through space in ellipsod orbits, billions of planets doing the same meandering without design, and most definitely without meaning.
Freud introduced us to the unconscious mind which millions still do not subscribe to or choose not to grasp in its consequences, to wit, that consciousness, to use the old cliche, is but the tip of the iceberg; that much of what we do is already decided for us unconsciously. Darwin made the case that we are a product of adaptations over millenia, that we are closer to the chimp than one wants to imagine, that we are animal life continually mutating and adapting. Consequently the greatest revolution of the existence of man has emerged. I am arguing, based upon what I have read , the genetic studies of the last 30 years have created a monumental revolution still unknown to most of us and is no doubt the greatest scientific revelation since man became present on this planet. Yes, that profound!
Essentially genes drive us. The world we live in within our bodies is gene driven, and we have no control over that at all; that there is no fate, no destiny if you will, no free will — a philosophic and often religious canard. When I think about all this I find myself in a reel, trying to conceptualize what it might mean 50 years from now for a student reading a science text explaining the new learnings, what he might make of all this. That we are programmed; that we out of the loop, what sentience we have we know we have as we go through life is only a blade of grass on an elephant’s ass. If there is a change in a worldview, what might that be? I have no idea except thoughts about it now as I read about evolutionary psychology.
We are puppets controlled by other puppets. What do you make of that? What happens to “meaning,” “salvation,” “God,” “religion,” and “intention”? What can we make of our world in which we are not in control, and never have been? Can we give up the illusion and now delusion that we are in charge? It is critical, I think, to attempt to philosophize or to conceptualize such a topsy turvy existence. I am reading more and more of this new science essentially by science reporters of the highest skill, Matt Ridley, for one, and Robert Wright, for another. I have questions about free will, but more importantly what happens if we were to accept these learnings as facts, where does it leave us? To be continued as I learn more.
