GENETICS AND POLITICS: A DIFFERENT VIEW

It is a biological truth; extremes are not tolerated. The term canalization could apply in the sense that we are like all other biological systems; we gravitate to what is average.  Height, weight, and body structure among other physical things but also personality. Some geneticists refer to the average as the wild type. By carefully selecting for traits we thought were desirable, we “created” over 350 breeds of dogs. In a giant “thought experiment”, put all these breeds together and let them do what they do naturally. After several generations, it would actually take surprisingly few generations; distinctive breeds would no longer exist.  The offspring would not only look alike but would act like dogs. Although they would, on the average, look and act alike, there would be variability.

Perhaps we should use the same logic and look at the American political system as a way to achieve our wild type—the ultimate step in our evolution. I arrived at this premise by accepting two basic but controversial ideas about humankind. First, we are a biological system subject to evolution. Second, genetic synergy gives rise to our behavior. Our genes work together to produce traits composed of notions, beliefs, emotions, likes and dislikes, among many, many other things, which coalesce to form a personality phenotype  In part, we have done this by selection of alleles and combinations of alleles just like dog breeders “created” giant as well as toy breeds. Because there are so many combinations and because various combinations work differently, the result is that there are as many phenotypes as there are people—the biological equivalent of genetic makeup going from digital to analogue.

The dog breed analogy suggests the United States of America should be gravitating toward a “wild” but variable personality type. As a biologist, I personally think the resulting personality might not be one all inclusive personality type as we might expect. Our elections and political parties are giving us a hint of the direction we are taking to arrive at that “wild type”. I personally think the surprise will be there really two “wild” personality types existing in Nash equilibrium; individualist verses altruists, hawks verses doves, leaders verses followers. Returning to the dog analogy, we talk about how they look but when we investigate the variability of behavior of dogs, there seems to be two types. Put it this way, I pick a puppy with a type “A” personality for the lead sled dog but the rest should be followers. Don’t jump to the conclusion that the type “A” personality will be out of control, we have something called “moralistic punishment”; the dog team will keep the lead dog on his or her good behavior or they won’t follow. Comments to Firetreeblogspot are invited.