I get your parallelism between evolutionary strategies and human lifestyles.
But I don’t think it works out in fact. Any evolutionary or genetic issue based on differential reproductive success would take at minimum many, many generations to show up in a population.
Our present socio/economic/political environment is at most only a few generations old.
I find it extremely odd that you seem to be proposing that the historical expansion into new territories and other risk-taking was primarily by those we would today call liberals. The opposite seems a lot more likely to me.
Finally, “survival of the fittest,” which of course really means survival of the genes of the fittest, is totally turned on its head in modern societies. In every “advanced” society those who are most likely to pass on their genes are those who are least socially and economically successful by the terms of that society. There is a direct inverse relationship between economic success and reproduction. See the movie Idiocracy.
Hi Sherman,
My biggest problem in putting this stuff forward is in getting people to look at the whole body of work, which is what addresses all of this.
Let me go point by point.
“Any evolutionary or genetic issue based on differential reproductive success would take at minimum many, many generations to show up in a population.”
Actually, what I propose is a little more complex. There is a genetic foundation. Overlaid over this is an environmental effect. The neurochemical aspect of this, which molds the strategies, is dopamine sensitivity. This variation in dopamine sensitivity can vary in strength, based on use, allowing an individual to change their strategy (or more accurately see it changed for them by the enironment they face). In other words, make resources freely available, and you will flood your brain with pleasurable dopamine. Your brain, sensing the high dopamine signaling will downregulate dopamine receptor density, to bring signaling back in line, making you need more dopamine to feel normal, and become more hedonistic (and more Liberal). (It’s like how you need more and more steroids, once you start using them).
I show where the research describes how dopamine controls every facet of r/K in the paper at the site. A dopamine mutation is responsible for ideological predisposition. There is post at my site describing all of this, from a while back. Look in the sidebar at Fleshing out Dopamine’s Role. It links to Dennis Mangan’s brilliant speech on that, as well, if I recall.
By contrast, be put in a less resource rich environment, and dopamine is released less commonly, and you brain will up-regulate receptor transcription, and you will become more sesnitive to dopamine, making you more driven, focused, competitive, and task oriented, and this will even be seen on brain scans as you perform tasks.
So note, in humans, r/K is variable even in individuals over short periods, though there is also evidence for an epigentic effect based on maternal rearing, as well as genetic underpinnings as well. Think about today’s dopamine saturated enironment, and how we would go more K-Conservative, if all the reosurces and wealth dried up suddenly.
“Our present socio/economic/political environment is at most only a few generations old.”
Note, I am pointing out r and K are strategies for dealing with resource availability in nature. We have two psychologies in our political world which match identically. My case is that these ideologies are modern out-growths of these primitive strategies. That is it. I do NOT maintain these strategies are well adapted to our modern circumstance, or that this is all genetic. Only that one can see where these psychologies came from in our primitive history, if we look. We are still adapting.
“I find it extremely odd that you seem to be proposing that the historical expansion into new territories and other risk-taking was primarily by those we would today call liberals. The opposite seems a lot more likely to me.”
Again, this expansion initially was a choice between an overpopulated home territory with exhausted food supplies, where people were killing each other violently, and a similar territory nearby where there were no people, and greater amounts of food, since it was unpopulated. It wasn’t a choice between modern agriculture-based civilization, with all it’s legal protections, and a violent natural world where there was no “Whole Foods.” It was a choice between being in an environment where gangs Conservaties were free to kill you for being defective (and would), or heading to an empty area identical to the one you were in, but without the violence.
“Finally, “survival of the fittest,” which of course really means survival of the genes of the fittest, is totally turned on its head in modern societies. In every “advanced” society those who are most likely to pass on their genes are those who are least socially and economically successful by the terms of that society. There is a direct inverse relationship between economic success and reproduction. See the movie Idiocracy.”
Yes, again, free resource availability, and limited reosurce availability. r vs K. I maintain the Idiocracy is a result of the difference of an r-selected environment. In r-selection, once resources are freely available, it is all about producing “quantity over quality” in offspring, since every offspring can get resources, and doesn’t need to be fit, beyond being able to breed. We produce enough resources today to allow for generous welfare, EBT, Obama phones, etc. Free resources means the only selective pressure is how many kids you pop out. Idiocracy. r-selection.
Cut the resources (as will happen – these things are cyclic), and once welfare is gone, K-selection will return, favoring all the traits of Conservatism. Those who can function in groups, address threat, and compete in whatever competitions are going on for resources will succeed, and the welfarites, will gradually get killed back, no matter how many offspring they spawn.
The dude in Idiocracy, by getting the plants to grow using water, is what kept the whole Idiocracy alive. Had he not done that, competition would have ensued, favoring the more able, and those who won, would have been intelligent, capable individuals focused on producing a few offspring who were highly fit.
Of course, in reality, when everyone is having twenty kids, at some point, there would not have been enough resources, K-selection would have returned, and most of those idiots would have been killed, as they were gradually culled back by having to compete. It is inevitable.
Oh, I just understood one criticism you are making. It went over my head before.
I’m not saying we just evolved Conservatism and Liberalism in the last few hundred years. That would be impossible.
I’m saying millions of years ago, we evolved the genetic foundations of our r/K psychologies (and their adaptable natures), which became deeply entrenched in our psyches and guided our behaviors back then, before language, philosophy, even before we were human - when we were just monkeys in the bush.
As we developed intellects, and political theories, and governments, our r’s began to apply their intellects to promulgating the r-selective environment they were designed for (and most comfortable in), and the K-intellects began with suppositions that competition was OK, losers needed to accept responsibility for bad decisions, and high-investment families were good. They were designed for a K-environment, and liked it, and felt everyone should like it as well.
Yeah, I can see how this would have looked like a mightly stupid idea, without that little nugget.