CLUBS, GUNS, AND GENES

For me it is axiomatic, if human behavior doesn’t make sense look at the genome.

The gun control debate at its most fundamental level is a debate that has been going on for years in the biological community. In the simplest terms, adaptations to the environment, including the social environment, in evolutionary terms, are the results of selection of slowing occurring but beneficial mutations. Sexual reproductions in living things result in the loss of harmful mutations and perpetuation of beneficial changes in the genome. Most of us learned this in biology class. Biologists have maintained that genetic adaptations were something that happened to individuals and not to groups. Nonetheless, as we arose out of our foggy bestial beginnings and entered the current phase of enlightened humanization, we developed culture, many aspects of which suggest we adapted as a species by group adaptation. The reference here is to cultural universals, which means humans everywhere have many identical cultural traits in common. Evolutionary psychologists hold “universal” as evidence for group adaption to environment. A scientist named Dr. Daniel Brown wrote a book about all of this some time ago.

 I look at the raging gun debate in those terms. It seems so illogical to me that a person living in modern society would feel somehow compelled to own a huge gun. We have layer protections. However, tt didn’t start out that way. We are the products of individuals, kin groups, or tribes who lived in isolated environment; they had the responsibility of protecting themselves. Self-protection is something we refer to as ‘self preservation’, the prime animal instinct or sense of “survival of the fittest”. We live together so everyone protects everyone else. As we organized and developed culture, we learned ways to reinforce this strongly held sense. We have laws and the police, the well-regulated militia, and the army to protect us as well.

In modern terms, within society, this protection results in a plethora of shapes and formats: sheriffs, police, militias, FBI, CIA, etc. With complex social organizations, such as nations, we organize what we call armies. In some animal societies that have yet to develop culture, scientist have observed that individuals may gather groups within kin groups to form coalitions to protect themselves or to obtain something they as individuals desire within the kin group, tribe or whatever. Commonly, what they desire is protection, but for some it is a power structure within the group. In the sense of the origin of culture, this is obviously something similar to what happens to individuals also happens between groups but on a grossly more sophisticated scale.

I sense a primitive mind set exists among the people gathers in Huston at the NRA convention.  They act as if they have an instinctual sensation, feel, or sense that they have to protect themselves from dangers and see the gun as the weapon of choice; an instinctual “inalienable right” based not on a club but on a modern high caliber weapon. I am sure they really do not know from what they are protecting them selves: in modern society, they invoke all kinds of imaginary dangers such as their own government or the police but for the lack of concrete evidence, they settle on “bad guys with guns”. Thus, the danger in our culture is in part our own making, which paradoxically is another person with a gun. Just as our ancestors felt, they were protecting themselves from all danger, whatever that means, modern man is a version of cave dwellers. They see guns and not clubs and spears as a means to that end and the NRA as a tribe or like-minded kin group.  They don’t seem to realize that myriad bestial dangers are diminishing with the passage of time, perhaps in direct relation to police, militia, and army protection. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of people know this is the case i.e. poll results for gun regulations. Stephen Pinker made this point in a different context, in his outstanding book The Better Angels of our Nature (Amazon Kindle.com) he documented how violence has been decreasing generation after generation for centuries.  I have made the point in this blog site (firetreepub.blogspot.com) that we are shifting from individual selfishness or caring only about ourselves to altruism, which is caring for others; it is our humanization and what is happening in Houston at the NRA convention is part of it. It is the shrinking residue. We have to realize there will always be a residue of violence because of human variability. We will always need police but police protection is getting better and better and there is a shift in law enforcement moves it from force to psychology, which is progress but may take another century.  

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