CULTURES BLIND ALLEY

Evolutionary theorists describe a situation they call a “blind alley”. The examples they allude to are almost invariable related to physical features. A common one is a blind cave fish. These fish inherit residual non-functioning eyes.  The eye evolved has an extremely complex inheritance pattern, which involves many genes as well as their synergistic effects. Failure to inherit or the inheritance of one or more faulty genes related to sight does not matter because eyesight in a dark cave does not contribute to survival. The cave is a cul-de-sac or box canyon, which means there must have been a way in for fish with eyes that evolved through natural selection but no way out either physically or evolutionarily. A fish would probably never re-evolve eyes by adaptation if there were not light or even if there was. Jared Diamond in his books described such changes at the cultural level that led to extinction of human beings in geographically restricted areas; Ester Islands for example. There appears to be another sort of  “blind alley” we are creating for our selves with our morality: a cul-de-sac of psychology—equivalent to fashioning a rod for our own backs.

Read the following passage taken from Stephen Pinker’s book, Blank Slate, and then ask yourself, “What is the solution to the obvious problem this situation presents?” We have some people he describes in our society in fact we may have them in our families. We can identify some of them with a high degree of certainty. Nevertheless, because of the complexity of personalities and the fact that they do not constantly display these traits, we cannot indentify all of them. We see some version of them portrayed on TV and read about them in books but never do we associate them with pleasant endings.  Our morality prevents us from finding an agreeable solution.

Psychologists find that individuals prone to violence have a distinctive personality profile. They tend to be impulsive, low in intelligence, hyperactive, and attention deficient. They are described as having an “oppositional temperament”: the are vindictive, easily angered, resistant to control, deliberatively annoying, and likely to blame everything on other people. The most callous among them are psychopaths, people who lack a conscience, and they make up a substantial percentage of murderers. These traits emerge in early childhood, persist through the lifespan, and are largely inheritable though nowhere near completely so.

The terminators played by Arnold Schwarzenegger on TV tell us to terminate them. The tough guys, the Sheriff Arapios, tell us to put them in prison before they harm anyone. However, our legal system built on cultural norms tells us they are not guilty until they commit a crime. Councilor tell us we should council them; however, evolutionary theorists tell us these traits evolved as part of a complex personality thus are a complex mosaic or unique personality pattern; therefore, these tendencies may be diminished but not eliminated. We could not allow them to have children, but society considers eugenics immoral; these people can have children that will not behave as the parent does.

This is a cultural blind ally we created when we shed our bestiality (Schwarzenegger and Arapio aside) by our sense of fairness and altruism, in other words our humanity; to kill them, to imprison them, or to the sterilize them is immoral. Counseling them may be ineffective. We are left with one option. We know we can identify some of them with a fair degree of certainty but still we do all we can “morally” do; we live with them and hope they do no harm. We live in a blind cave we created by our morality—even though we are not perfect, I would want it no other way, perhaps because I can have it no other way.

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