My argument starts from with the idea that behavior is
genetically controlled. Chickens look and behave like chicken, dogs look and behave
like dogs and people look and behave like people, which is irrefutable. The first
implication of this is that our behavior, like our physical form, results from
adaptive evolution. Scientists recognize the existence of cultural universals,
which evolution has shaped by adaptation and buried in our genes, just as they
recognize common physical features are genetic.
Cultural universals are behaviors common to all people in the
world. It is enlightening to recognize there are geographical physical as well
as cultural differences in people. There is a lack of understanding about how
adaption by natural selection tested by survival of the fittest could shape
sophisticated culture. This implies we somehow genetically embed behavior we “learned”
about survival and quality of life as culture but also recognize there are
things we learn that we have not embedded in our genomes. The Eskimo culture
and Inuit appearance is not the same as the culture and appearance of an
indigenous Amazonian, yet indisputably, people look like and act like people.
We can layer short term learning on top of this cultural hierarchy;
the idea that we know our mother’s face as well as the way to the local grocery
store, and our way to work. We also remember that we read a newspaper yesterday
but have forgotten what it was we read. All of this falls under the rubric of
behavior. Clearly, somewhere between cultural universal and short-term memory
we switch from accumulated memory, as written in our DNA/RNA, and the ability
to learn and remember things. Memory and learning (the desire to learn) are
also genetic. To make the point concerning the interface between accumulated
genetic knowledge (DNA/RNA), the genetic directed ability to learn and actually
learning, we can take college courses about how to learn. Thus, we commonly
recognize that we as individuals can modify our genetic ability to learn and
remember things but do not know how to modify our children’s ability to learn
and remember things; however, there must be a way, which seems the only rational
explanation for cultural universals.
What is in our genes and what we learn, is not always good
and beneficial. We know what we learn is not always good but in contrast there
seems to be a commonly held fallacy, which is that if we established something
in our DNA/RNA be natural selection (adaptive learning) it is all good when it
clearly is not. Obviously, to a biologist, the course of survival is paved with
mutations that benefit survival, which I assume sets the stage for this kind of
thinking. If a mutation is damages to our survival it is sooner or later lost in
the trial and error battle for survival but also if the mutation does no harm
it may exist in our DNA/RNA that is trans-generational. The blow back is that if
either good or bad behavior is our genome, under some circumstances it is there
forever, and we cannot change it short of some modern laboratory manipulation
of DNA/RNA. Scientists are working to be able to modify genomes of people genetically
with disease including mental disease. Some people are advocating eugenics to
better the human race through learned selection—people make mating decisions from
what they have learned—encouraging people with the best “genes” to have
children. In one sense, this has been going on for several millions years. In
extreme examples, from the past, such decisions were under State control with
disastrous consequences.
The irrefutable lesson we can learn from all of this is that
genetically determined behavior is the responsibility of that individual who
carries the gene(s), just like learned behavior. It is yours and no one else’s:
an awesome responsibility. This is becoming more and more precise: because of
the scientific unraveling of the human genome, a specific cluster of genes can
be accurately associated with an anatomic or metabolic change, disease or
behavior: cause and effect. If we have a genetic disease, and there are more
and more of them identified every year, we suffer the consequences; some may be
lethal some not so much. The same consideration holds for what we learned, meaning
what we learn can be lethal—suicide, war, or a man being caught with the wrong
woman—by her husband. We just established that behavior is: 1) learned, 2)
genetic but modifiable by learning, or 3) genetic and un-modifiable. At least
with the current state of knowledge, it is un-modifiable. What do we do about
ill effects of genetic origin on survival and quality of life? Do we step back
and allow natural selection to take place; let the sick die; thus, let the
fittest live. The choice we have made as a species seems obvious; we treat
disease and transplant failed organs everyday. We keep the infirm alive for
years, we do genetic counseling; in contrast, we abhor eugenics, use the death
penalty, and we fight wars. In addition, everyday we modify not only our own behavior
but also the behavior of others.
We often deny genetic determinism because our egos don’t
allow us to believe we do not have free will. We do have limited free will, but
it does not extend to all behavior; it is not all or nothing. I refer the
reader to the concept of cultural universals (on the internet) and encourage
them to digest the implications of each item on the long list in terms of you
own personal behavior. Thus, the only conclusion possible seems that we do much
more in common than just react to a biota wide sense of self-preservation:
fear, fight, flight, to hot and cold, thirst and hunger. We also react to
genetically embedded feelings such as sympathy, empathy, shame, and pride woven
into complex relationship: hate, love, gregariousness, hierarchy dominance, and
an arm long string of etceteras including marriage and burial rituals all of
which mold society into sophisticated culture. Among other things, we act like
men act or we act like women act in families, we fall into an ordered religious,
political, and business hierarchy as leaders or followers in society, and blend
into what I consider as the broad sweep of instinctual behavior embedded in our
genome, which is guided by but not controlled by current “learned behavior”. In
other word, we are using our current learning to molding our species genes. Scientists
are not sure how this happens, but molding genomes by changing gene frequency
by allele selection seems to be the currently popular mechanism.
Learning blends into instincts just as geographic learning
blends into cultural universals. There is an interface, even if it is
ill-define. Racism, politics, male dominance, greed and selfishness,
persistence, aggression, hierarchy dominance, kin selection are just an unordered
smattering of examples related to determinism. The premise here is that we can
learn to modify genomes; hence, our deterministic behavior. The hypothesis is that genetic behavior may be deterministic but it is
modifiable. There is great hope in that. To make the point in a mind
numbing way, I will use a horrifying example, cannibalism. For early knuckle
dragging Homo sapiens, bestial cannibalism was a common practice. To day, we find
the practice reprehensible even in rare and extreme circumstances. I see
evidence every day we are learning how to avoid and even how to shun completely
reprehensible deterministic behaviors, equally horrific in its day as cannibalism
was: racism, male dominance, war, homicide, and violence in general, which is
the road to our humanization we started as early as two million years ago but
certainly by 100,000 years ago. We will not lift ourselves completely out of
our bestial past in the near future but once we triumph over greed, we will
have succeeded. We will not have conquered our genome but we will have learned
how to live with it the best way we can.
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