CONSERVATIVES VERSES LIBERALS

Ayn Rand is not right but is not wrong either.

This blog concerns the genetics of politics shorn of learned modifications. We are liberals because we believe in liberal principles or we are conservative because we believe in conservative principles with the assertion that these beliefs are not only in our genes but have been there from biological zero. Such a bold statement cannot stand without defining what these principles are in biological terms. We have so modified them during the civilization process that it is necessary to back track even to recognize what the beginning might have been and how we might recognize the traits in their primitive forms and relate them to individual survival or even species survival. Supragenetic influence, a gift of our mentality, shifted attention away from these primitive bestial traits and to social organization, which is where our politics are today.

The controversial author Ayn Rand, with no training in biological sciences and without being humbled by lack of understanding, claimed through use of self-proclaimed superior cleverness that the role of society is to ensure the survival of clever individuals by providing them with all resources and rights afforded by that society. Her position represents the height of egoism. Her premise and that of her followers is that those who are altruistic have all but forfeited their right to survive; the extreme outcome predicted by game theory. Her followers, most of which call themselves libertarians, are gaining power in State and Federal capitals not by force of number but by cleverness and under the guise of the conservative (Republican) label.

The premise here is that her assertion is in our genomes. They (Ms. Rand and her followers) were unknowingly copying an element of bestial greed they could have learned from nature. George C. Williams (Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princeton University Press, Princeton. N.J.1996), relates this point in a very poignant manner albeit in a different textual content. He was watching a film. . .

. . . family life of elephant seals on one of their insular rookeries. Amid the crowed but thriving family groups there was an occasional isolated pup, whose mother had deserted or been killed. These motherless young were manifestly starving and in acute distress. The human audience reacted with horror to the way these unfortunates were rejected by the hundreds of possible foster mothers all around them. It should have been abundantly clear to everyone present that the seals were designed to reproduce themselves, not their species.

Mother’s milk is a precious resource. It should not be used other then to perpetuate ones own kind. This is cruel harsh subhuman mammalian biology. Among animals, there is no sense of cruelty, shame, empathy, etc. Ann Rand completely ignores this fact and makes a case for an “elephant seal” attitude in human society; society should use resources and assets only to perpetuate “her” own kind, which of course she and her followers define as their “moral group”. Thus, she fully embraces social Darwinism: there is no moral justification for the physically unable, the sick and infirm, the low IQ, and other wise unfortunate to live. This is no more than greed in political clothing. Apparently, they feel that we (society as a whole) should ignore centuries of altruistic cultural development and turn back the evolutionary clock to unadorned greed. In the beginning, greed undoubtedly contributed to survival; the ones with the most survive but those with the least die. The fact that she has followers forcefully illustrates that primitive animal instincts are still part of our fundamental genetic being, hence part of our social being. However, all evidence would suggest that we as human beings have learned better than this, which explains the audience reaction to the baby elephant seal’s dilemma. In our current society, the baby seal could have been a quadriplegic, a hungry mother, a person without a job, a student who wants to go to school, etc, the human reaction of horror will still be there. It is part of our humanness. I do not think anyone should willingly return to this primitive state as an objective of political organizations without carefully considering the human cost.

Nevertheless, the extreme behavior Ayn Rand advocates appears to be compatible with the beliefs of a small but vocal segment of modern American society. The point here is these sociopath groups are conglomerations of sociopath individuals who identify themselves as individualists. As individualists, they don’t need anyone, by belonging to a group they create a paradox they conveniently ignored. In addition, small groups of sociopaths join larger legitimate and principled groups of non or at least mildly sociopaths; in this case they merge with the Republican Party. The truth is that the extreme group is the tip of the iceberg, the part that gives the radical view voting importance, while the greater portion of that iceberg remains submerged within the conservative segment of our population. I hope this blog calls attention to the nature of the tip while preserving the more modern and humanitarian but submerged part of that iceberg.

Individualists at the tip could not accept the logic of helping someone. Thus, the positions taken by the radical group is diametrically opposed to what one would expect in an altruistic society, which suggests that we are not yet a caring society. What we cannot forget is that the submerged portion of the iceberg is what keeps the tip above water. This understanding should not only be surprising but also shocking to the great majority of the population once they realize that an innate conservative voting pattern is what gives power to a few radical people. Although, they do not have a majority in congress, they have the controlling swing vote—we recognize that radical fraction as the Tea Party.

Thus, Ayn Rand’s divisive philosophy frames (conserves) bestial “greed” in a political context. There can be little doubt that this biologically illiterate person based her philosophy on greed and not on what she learned in ethics class. She suggests the objective of life is to survive no matter the cost to the environment or to their fellow men. As cold and cruel as it sounds what we all should realize is that this is exactly what survival of the fittest means.