There were many life forms in the primary ocean that were as alien to us as another planet life forms. We are not likely to learn about them in a forseeble future because majority of them are gone forever whether due to competition or because of the everchanging environment. We know only about tiny faction of the ancient life forms and species. Primary ocean was a hot place, there was no ice on the planet, so all the fresh water was in the ocean with resulting diluted salt concentration about 0.9%, and since then all the life forms on Earth, whether living in the 24% salt solution or on the Everest mountain, still have the same 0.9% in their blood. Life is very conservative, it almost never re-shuffles the existing structures preferring rather building another "store" on the multi-story building. That's why "social engineering" of human being will never work– we are what we are: the end result of 4.5 billion year natural selection. We share with gorillas 98% of genes, but majority of them are inactive ones that just like uninhabited ground floors with only the upper floor, built on the top, in use. When you compare only working, expressed genes, then the difference between us is significantly bigger. Those of our genes that code for gills, tails, scales or sea worm eyes and brittles normally are repressed.
Almost 100% of the archaic life forms and species are gone, and this process of disappearence of the old species and evolving new ones keeps going on now. Therefore, whining about species going extinct is not always justified– it may be just a part of the natural process. Some of the oldest bacteria are thermoacidophilic Archeobacter, that nowdays can live only deep under water close to volcanos, enjoying hot bath with several hudnred degrees temperatures. Majority of them were competing and destroying each other. Some life forms formed successful symbiosis combining best of both worlds. For example, absorbing the main source of energy on Earth chloroplasts very likely originally were a separate life form. Ancestors of today's plants (and some protozoa-single cell animals like Euglena) incorporated them into their cells providing shelter and substrates while chloroplasts provided with Sun's energy. Another similar example of successful symbiosis is our ancestors' cell that incorporated mitochondria. Our cell provided, again, shelter and material substrates while mitochondria generated our main source of energy– ATP (adeno-tri-phosphate). Since then our cells have 2 sets of genetics: our famous double helix DNA and mitochondria's circular DNA that has different altogether coding sequences. Male sperm cell, just like original cell, has no incorporated mitochondria. Thus, when the sperm cell uses up all its ATP energy store (typically in 3 days), then it dies. That is why mitochondrial mutations and diseases are passed along only via maternal line, since the ovum has incorporated mitochondria, and genetic studies of our maternal ancestors are also based on the mitochondrial DNA analysis. Paternal studies are based on the short Y-chromosome, and that's how scientists learned that 18% of males in Asia carry genes of Mongolian Genghis Khan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan). Each night he had a different woman, and if the female offspring was also about 18%, then 36% of Asians are his descendants. As the story goes, he was stabbed to death in the middle of the night by Tibetian princess after he raped her too. Since for such a great warrier was a shame to be killed by a woman, so his court officially announced that he died due to a hunting accident.
Another life form that has survived is a mycoplasma, which unlike us doesn't have a firm cell membrane but rather a thin layer. This life form causes atypical pneumonia and STD with PID, possible infertility and premature births. Slime mold is also pecular life form that can be seen as a single cell organism, as a fungus-like form, and as a multicellular slowly moving slime.
Existing life forms broken down to Kingdoms, Subkingdoms, Classes, Orders, Family and Genus. I personally see natural selection working by 2 mechanisms: evolution and revolution.
Evolution of life forms is slow process of changin existing species, and it is capable of creating other species, but, probably, not other classes.
Revolution of life forms is a rapid change typically due to the catastrophic events such as a huge asteroid hit that unearths radioactive Uranium to the Earth surface. First it kills majority of the life forms with greatly reduced diversity, then it causes massive mutations. Under normal circumstances majority of mutations are detrimental or lethal, while very few are beneficial, and they are relatively rare, so the chance of 2 beneficial mutants meeting each other and starting new Class or Order is exceedingly low. However, when the catastrophe causes massive mutations then the beneficial mutants do have a chance to meet each other and start a new Class or a species with drastic changes. That's how the feathers and the spines have evolved.
Competition exerts a natural selection pressure, frequently selecting the most adapted to the current environment and conditions individuals. They may be the fittest, but under scarce food conditions they might be the smallest, or the slowest metabolism-wise, or the strongest, or with highest indurance : whatever it takes to survive better in this particular and everchanging environment. Seemingly the same piranha fish schools in one part of the Amazon river might devour an animal in a matter of seconds, and in another part they are peaceful herbivours, nibbling immersed into the water berries. On one of 2 isolated by the ocean corall islands the same fish can be edible, but on another one deadly poisonous. About "most adapted ones": it is true frequently, but not always, because there are 2 different goals of survival: individual survival and species survival. These might be conflicting goals. Mating selection also might lead to the improved or worsened chances of individual survival: huge antlers might be beneficial during mating, but in densely forrested area the antlers might get stuck during chase by the predator. The same is true for the "peak shift" factor, when exaggerated features of the desired kind might attract more mating behavior than it is worth by survival needs. This "conflict of interests" also can be seen in any multicell organism where the individual cell and the whole organism survival might be at odds in the situation like cancer: one cell rebels against the body and whether gets killed by the body defense mechanism or kills the body and then dies too. Of course, if the cancer is caused by a virus then the virus doesn't care– it still spreads around, infecting other organisms. It's like totalitarian ideology (socialism or islamofascism, for instance) affects a bunch of people,who then try to ruin their own country, and it is also lose-lose situation for everybody, except the virus of the totalitarian ideology that spreads further when it kills the infected ones or the body.
Society is analogous to the whole body, the individual cell is analogous to a person, and the rule of law coordinates the survival of the society, while minimally interfering with the self-regulation at the cell and other levels. The government is analogous to the self-consiousness tiny spot in the left frontal lobe of the brain which is aware of only tiny faction (like 0.00000001%) of the total self-regulated processes, going on in the body at any given time, but it is very arrogant and overconfident, just like Obama is. Remember French king who declared "I am the state!"? Majority of our body is regulated by the old mechanisms, build-in in each cell, in the organ/tissue self-regulation, in the hormonal and autonomous nervous system, in the subcortilal structures of the brain and in the subconcious centers of the cortex. Our conscious ego, "I", a sentinel in the middle of the brain camp on the watch tower, is like a tiny spot of light that glides on the surface of the brain cortex from a watch tower light projector. It can focus only on a one spot in the time, while the rest of the developments are in the dark even in the most superficial cortex, not mentioning deeped sub-cortex structures, autonomous nervous system, organ/tissue self-regulation and cellular metabolism. When the brain gets mad, affected by psychiatric disiease (like todays Washington, DC, is affected by the "progressive" totalitarian mental disorder), then it interferes with everything it can reach, hurts and ruins anything it can, and it can push the whole body of the cliff in the national suicide. That's today's course of action of American enemies in Washington, DC. Obama and his leftist "progressives" in the Congress push really hard the whole nation to the path of national suicide, on the railroad to serfdom, where the next station is Eurosocialism like in Greece, and the final destination is Islamofascism like in Sudan. Ideally there is a check and balance system that mainly leaves the cells (Americans) alone with some tissue/organ (municipalities, communities associations, churches, ) self-regulation, autonomous nervous system self-regulation (state level) and minimal interference, just general coordination at the cortex level (the feds). The problem in all the countries, even in America, that mental illness ot totalitarianism is spreading to the head of the nation, to the government, and we must take care of that in November,2010 reducing size, budget and powers of the feds to about 1% of what it is it now. Can you imagine when the head is half-size of the body? But it is exactly the case with the feds now– feds expanded to the more than 50% of the country, forming huge-headed squid with its tenticles everywhere, in every pocket. We must remove the federal squid from Washington, DC and restore the humane essence of the government, chained to its place by the American Constitution. Normal head surface area in humans, as anyone in the burn center will tell you, is about 9%, which means that all levels of government (municipal, state and the feds) must not exceed that 9% size in their total combined budget and decision making powers. 91% of the power to the people – that's the goal in November !
We tend to have an antropocentric view on the nature, which frequently fails us. A female canguroo being chased by the dogs throws them her cub in order to escape while they are chewing on her cub. The nature's rationale is that the canguroo cubs are born just 1 cm long, and for a very long time they cannot survive on their own. If she will sucrifice herself then both will die. Meanwhile the mom can have another cub to assure the species survival. Female spiders and scorpios eat their male mates in the end of the honey moon, and the males actively provoke this outcome because well fed female is more likely to nurture successfully their offspring. If the food is scarce, then female spider might let her offspring to eat her. Whatever it takes to survive– that's the mother nature's moral code. That's how self-regulated processes with the feed back loop work in the natural selection.
III. The biological paradigm of humaniti
For those of my readers who don't believe in the evolution I suggest skeeping this chapter.
We are the end-product of 4.5 billion year of evolution, of the natural selection, and we must accept ourlseves for what we are and deal with that. No crap like "We should be.. we ought to be.. we will be" doesn't change a thing: we are what we are. Deal with this, all kinds of totalitarian "sheppards", "social engineers", "behavior modificators", "new humans builders" and all kinds of crooks, that want us to be and to do what they want. No way.
Human evolution is a puzzle that is not complete yet although we do know already the key points of the evolution with reasonable probability. As I mentioned, our single cell ancestors formed a very successful symbiosis with mitochondria life form that still give us the energy source. Our eyes gene is almost identical copy of the seaworm eye gene that "invented" eyes about 200 million year ago. Asteroid catastrophe gave the spines structure to the descendant life forms. From the remote lemur-like ancestors we have left the dreams about falling from the hights. 8 million years ago our ancestor apes in East Africa had a tooth for the nuts that had realtively high calories content, which allowed more free time allocation for the thinking and inventions such as tools. About 1.6 million year ago drier climate forced our ancestors from the woods into savannahs with consequent evolutional pressure for longer limbs. Bipedal locomotion increased horizon, improved energy efficiency and speed, although caused low back pain (just like saber-tooth tigers suffered from low back pain) as we started having bigger impact on our spines ; accelerated osteoarthritis and chronic sinus problem: the sinus draining opening is in the middle of the anterior wall, which in the quadripod face-down position is the lowest point that drains the whole sinus, while in the vertical position it drains only upper half of the sinus. If you have maxillar sinusitis, you can lie face down, which allows the whole sinus to be drained, but if it is not enough then ENT surgeon might make a hole in the lower wall because in the vertical position it is the lowest point. Again, the nature doesn't takes us apart and re-builds a new man– no, it is very conservative, it finds compromise and builds new floors on top of the existing ones.
First they used stone tools to break bones of the carcasses of the stronger predator's kill in order to obtain the bone marrow. which, again, due to its nigh nutritional value allowed to have much more for the creative purposes.
Gradually about 1.6 million years ago pro-humans started hunting big game themselves although they had to do so under the scorching sun when respected predators had a nap since the humans were no match against serious predators: number 15 amongst predators as runners, lousy smell sense, week nails and jaws, bad night vision. Noon hunting under scorching African sun exerted natural selection pressure towards several adjustments: 1) Longer limbs to run faster and longer; 2) curly hair to protect the brain against over-heat; 3) larger brain that had a lot of spare neurons to function when the rate of neuronal loss increased (normally we lose a thousand neurons a second out of 5 billion of them in the cortex, but in the heat the loss rate is much higher). Larger brain meant more axon-dendrite synapses, more elaborated neuronal information net, which resulted in a smarter brain. So, our mental capabilities are accidental byproduct of hunting during the hot time.
4) loss of body fur that eased the cooling during the hunt by removing excessive insulation; 5) increse in the amount of eccrine sweating glands to cool down the body during motion.
Unintended conseqences were: 1) decreased tolerance to cold (which later was compensated by using the clothing and by discovery of fire); 2) minimized opportunities for previous communication ways such as rising fur, which exerted selection pressure to develop other means of communication, such as facial mimic musculature development, speech and skin coloring/tatooing; 3) risk of skin cancer due to the loss of protection by fur, which was compensated about 1.2 mln y.a. by dark skin MC1R mutation. 4) loss of camouflage function of the fur => skin painting/cloth use.
Originally the skin under the fur was gray and pink, after the skin mutation it became dark, when some humans migrated to Asia it got lighter, when some migrated to Europe it became white to absorb UV ray to produce vitamin D. The problem in Africa was too much sun, so the pigment melanin in upper layers of the skin shielded deeper skin. The problem in cold Europe was the lack of sun: cloudy days, warm clothing, long time in a shelter. Children during growth spurt need vitamin D for the bone and skin growth, so the selection pressure was to have very fair skin during 1st 2 years of life (unless drinking vitamin D fortified milk, Europeans need 10 minutes a day sunbathing to produce enough vit. D while blacks need 2 hours. If there would be no vit. D in milk, Afro-Americans in some time would become fair skinned too). When Arian tribes migrated to India from Europe, the natural selection started working in reverse– Hindus have darker skin because those from offspring with darker skin due to natural variability were more likely to avoid skin cancer. Right now Australians have highest in the world skin cancer rate because Europeans came to the tropics. In several generations Australians will have darker skin.
Of course, we retained the hair where it was beneficial for survival to protect large blood vessels: neck, armpits, groin, and possibly to produce pheramons during fertile period and for sexual arousal.
Discovery of fire played huge role in our history because it in significant degree protected humans from the regulation by mother nature. If any other species multiply too much, then ecological self-regulation with feed-back kicks in, resulting in growth of enemies of that species: germs, viruses, parasites. Sterilization of the food on the fire prevented many epidemics that would decimate humans otherwise. That's why majority of us like the thermically processed foods better than the raw ones. Other mechanism of self-regulating the population overgrowth is increased agression and violence which has 2 results: the over-populated species whether kill each other or run away, populating new areas. This mechanism still works alright. Suicide tendency plays insignificant in humans, unlike lemmings and "progressive" liberalism.
Another important period was 195,000 y.a. Our ancestors evolved after the Neandertal men, about 270,000 y.a., and due to the climate change (possible after huge Indonesian volcuno eruption) had to migrate to the shores. During that period selection pressure produced several features: 1) We are the only apes that can hold breath and dive; 2) we are the only apes that are born with swimming skills although if the infant doesn't swim during 1st 6 month of life, then he forgets it; 3) our body biochemistry benefits from the sea food diet: fish, sea weeds, clams (Okinawa diet). (Our 3 features show that humans are not vegetarians but omnivours: we have fangs; both of our eyes focused on the same target in the same direction; we cannot synthesize all necessary nutrients – for example, Vitamin B12 that can be obtained only from animal sources).
During that critical period the food shortage, climate changes and other hardships reduced the first human horde to just 5,000 with significant risk of going extinct, just like many other parallel ancestor lines. However, it was a toss, because with such low number of individuals any mutation, whether detrimental or beneficial, would spread really fast amongst those 5,000 (just compare with todays 6 billions). So, we could whether go under really fast, or adapt to the bad times really fast. We were lucky, we adapted. When the situation with demographics improved, then the horde became too crowded, the tensions started rising and the horde split to several groups. Then some of our ancestors started migrating to Asia and Europe. Europe by then was already populated by another human race– Neandertal men, who were short, sturdy, strong,with thick cold-scratch resistent skin, bigger than ours brain and strong skull, and probably ambidextrous, which is handy in a fight. They had a language, used tools, discovered fire and according to the cave pictures even had some religious beliefs while our ancestors still were apes yet. So, they had a big head up, but in the end they went extinct not long ago. In a fight we would be no match, they could take on rhinos and bears, but we had many other advantages:
1) We had much less ambidexteriority, which means we had asymmetrical brains with well developed and highly efficient specialized speech center, usually in the left lobe and less chance of ADHD/linguistic difficulties, associated with ambidexteriority; 2) We had much ligher skull with big resonating sinuses/cavities, which allowed us to generate many more different sounds to enrich our language; 3) Better speech allowed us to communicate and distribute social functions, especially during the hunt: only men were allowed to hunt, and they had more coordinated efforts due to the better speech, which decreased risk of hunting accidental deaths. Meanwhile Neandertal men were hunting altogether– men, women and children, which understandably lead to frequent deaths of children and women.
4) Our race is better in monkeying than monkeys. During experiment on apes and human children of the same development level, apes were better in finding a solution, but each of them acted alone, they "kept inventing the wheel" again and again, while as soon as one human child made a breakthrough, the rest of them quickly learned the trick. 5) Combined with rapidly developing language, it resulted in much faster information avalanch, in accumulation and passing along to the next generation knowledge, skills and tools. 6) In addition, our strength was in universality and adaptability. Europe then was undergoing 3 successive periods of rapid climate change, from warming to ice age and back. This resulted in many changes in the ecology– Neandertal's favorite hairy rhinos, bears and mammoths became less available, and with poor communication skills they had hard time coordinating efforts and changing hunting practices. Besides, their brown hydes were suited to blend in in a woody areas while during ice age the woods became rare, which added diffuculties to their abilities to hunt small game in open. Finally, the glaciers divided Europe's Neandertals into 3 separate groups, which resulted in inbreeding, reduced genetic diversity and adaptability, and finally in extinction. Last ones died in a Gibraltar cave when our race has already started building huts. It looks like they were much less aggressive, adventurous and resourseful, than our ancestors: from Gibraltar they could easily swim on a log to Africa, away from the ice age, but they didn't. Probably, genetically they were far enough from us to lose ability to breed with our ancestors, so they disappear completely.
Our brains as a product of natural selection have several important features:
1) We are prone to pseudo-pattern recognition. Let's say, there's a log on a trail, or a sun spots on a bush, but we might see a tiger or a panther where there is none. If there is no predator, and we combine in our imagination all these spots as a pieces of puzzle into a predator, then we don't lose our lives. On other hand, if we miss a real predator– we're dead. So, the natural selection pushes towards "hyperdiagnosis"– stuff like "you can't be too cautious" and "better to be safe than sorry". Probably, it is the psychophysiological basis for establishing a religion– we see a pattern where it doesn't exist. However, religion apparently offers societal advantages too, so it has to have societal basis too, otherwise we wouldn't see the appearance of religions in every society since the stone ages. Similar trend is called by other scientists "a grouping", or "obsessive desire to make whole object from fragmentary evidence", as Ramachandran and Rogers put it. These property are planted in our brain by the evolution since they had some survival benefits. We'll discuss some aspects of the role of religion in society in later chapters, although within a very narrow scope just as applicable to our topic.
2) Physiologically we see desired objects nearer than they are, when we judge the distance.So, our emotions interfere with our judgement. No surprises then that even seemingly smart people can become delusional "progressives" or any other totalitarian in a state of permanent denial of facts and reality. The "gull chick principle" and "idiosyncatic preference" also might subconsciously affect our reconstruction of the sensory input, our "subconsciously digitally remastered" perception of the reality.
3) A specific gene is linked to the reckless spending and indebtness, namely MAO A gene (Monoamine oxidase A) with 15.9% incidence. I'd love to check the genetic profile of the Washington, DC politicians– may be, they are just mutants, and that's why they push the country into fiscal abyss? On top of that, the Democrats possibly also have a "progressive" totalitarian Democrat disorder which is expressed by shopping sprees using someone else's money, narcissism and need for approval just like entertainers on stage, delusions, blinding political correctness, denial of reality and facts, wishful thinking, non-existing utopian goals, being pathological liars, full of "noble intentions" that somehow always destroy their own country, and most important– by readiness to send the whole world to hell just to feel good about themselves as" the white knights on a noble quest" . It's their totalitarian "sacred values", and if those "values" ruin the world– they don't care, they are blind to reality! The same mental illness affects all other totalitarians: statists, socialists, national socialists (fascists), communists, islamofascists and the like.
4) Another confirmation that our visual perception is not fixed, it is affected by our emotions: if we are fearfull, then hill steepness is badly overestimated from 31 to 50 degrees. It is based on interaction of our 2 vision systems– one for perception (which IS affected by emotions), and another one for visually guided actions (which is NOT).
Evolution pressures push simultaneously in very different directions, and the "goals" might be antagonistic ones. In these instances the evolution tries to find a compromise, a new point of equilibrium, of a fine balance between conflicting goals in this particular time and environment. As usually, nature finds it easier to preserve the existing "floors" and just to build another floor on the top. For example, when our remote ancestors advanced from cold-blooded reptiles into warm-blooded mammals, the question was where to keep the testicles. If you keep it inside, which is safer, then high temperature will affect the metabolically highly active spermcell production, which will result in several thousand fold increase of the testicle cancer. If you keep it outside, then any accident might render the male useless from the natural selection and advancement of the species point of view. We already are disadvantaged comparably to some germs that reproduce every 20 minutes and can improve themselves that fast, while our cycle takes 20 years until the next generation can be improved. Judging by the result, the balance was served better by keeping the testicles outside, but to place it in a least vulnerable location in the groin, to protect it with the pubic hair, with the local high resistance against infections and with the use of cremaster muscle when we need temporarily to hide it within the body (in a cold environment, during sexual intercourse and the like). So, you can see that when there is an extremely complex system in the dynamic balance, formed by trillions of interactions of billions of factors and conflicting goals, then the only way to optimize the outcome is a self-regulation with the tightest possible feed-back. That's why any attempts of the government to regulate these self-regulated processes inevitably harm them, cause imbalances, distortions, inner pressure build up, and unintended consequences always make government "cure" much worse than the ill it supposed "to cure". The government has much less feed-back to make the necessary adjustments as we go, and the government consist of very few politicians and "experts", that know nothing about how complicated these process are, but still they have audacity to interfere under pretext of "solving" created mainly by the governemnt itself problems. In reality all they want is to get more power, more money and to ruin our lives. Only self-regulation with tight feed-back loop and high degree of freedom (in another words– free market in both economics and society) can optimize the outcome. So, don't let the Washington, DC bureaucrats regulate your testicle movements– use your cremaster muscle instead. Seriously, just keep in memory the simple fact that whatever government does– it does it wrong. Any government action is doomed to cause more harm than good, and that's why T. Jefferson said "the good government is the one that governs as less as possible". If government hurts anything it touches– don't let our enemy government touch American people, let it touch only our enemies abroad and inside (criminals, terrorists and the like).
Our present action affect our future. There are many technology and science advances but everything has a risk/benefit ratio, all the successes have some drawbacks and unintended consequences. Many millions underwent organ transplants that is folowed by the immunosuppressive therapy. Many more millions have HIV/AIDS immunity deficiency. Humans have natural total or partial immunity to many germs that are specialized on other living creatures. For example, human TB is caused mainly by human form of TB bacteria while about 10% caused by bovine (cows) and 1% avis (birds) bacteria. Those millions of immunocompromized patients represent a window of opportunities to many germs that can break through the "weak link", and then to specialize on human metabolism good enough to pass on to the healthy individuals as well, which creates a potential for more and more new diseases. Fast growing world's population and extensive communications turn the world into an an ideal exprerimentation lab where the germs conduct experiments on our bodies, thus, perfecting themselves. We figth back with antibiotics and the like, but the fast turnover rate (some germs multiply every 20 minutes) gives them an edge of advantage in the natural selection process. New and new disiease (such as already evolved HIV, Ebola virus, FSM, bird flu and the like) will keep emerging with the increasing speed as the successes of medicine increase the percentage of these "weak links" and bad genes in the genetic fund. Severe genetic disorders patients (congenital heart conditions, cystic fibrosis and so forth) used to be doomed to die before they could produce the offspring with the bad genes, but now they are saved and can do so. Lack of sunlight during childhood causes shortsightedness. Chemicals in our food and envorinment, increasing incidence of obesity, diabetes and many other unintended consequences of the civilization– all these factors give a worrysome prognosis for the future. Any forced measure by the governments (such as forced sterilization, forced use of "healthy products and practices") are doomed to make things even worse, giving more powers to the governments and, thus, accelerating the destruction of society by the Nanny State. A government can provide us with the advisory so we can make an informed decisions but our enemy government must not mandate anything. All we can do is to provide everyone with the pertinent information and hope that people will do right decisions. If not– Mother Nature will eventually use its powers of self-regulation to balance things out.
Let me throw in some random facts to illustrate how to err is human, and how every "well intended" interference with the self-regulation with 100% guarantee resulsts in the unintended consequences. Say, H. pylori bacteria are know to cause stomach ulcers and cancer. OK, antibitic therapy in the US eradicated the H. pylori in 95% of polutation. Great news, right? Well, not so fast. Turns out, the bacteria was part of our system for over 20,000 years, and became part of the balance. It served as a target for our immune system to keep it busy, and after eradication the idling ummune system attacks our own body instead, causing autoummine disieases like asthma. H. pylori also decreases our appetite, so now we want to eat more, which leads to the at least 2 chains of unfortunate events: 1) obesity => diabetes, hypertention=> heart disease with billions, kidney failure with $ billions on hemodyalisis, blindness, arthritis and so forth; 2) GERD (gastro-esophageal refluz disease) => esophageal cancer, aspiration pneumonia and asthma, COPD and the like. Got it? Any intervention in the self-regulated processes has unintended consequences, and that's why the government-thing cannot possibly work because it's against the laws of nature. Some people can resist the urge, they are focused on the "short term pain for long term gain", and they become winners. Some people have lazy souls, they just go with the flow, with their animal instincts, preferring "progressives'" logo "short term gain for long term pain" – they get fat, they become losers. And then they blame others for their own faults.
IV. What we are in a social sense
The wisdom of ages reflected in the Roman proverb "Homo homini lupus est", which means human-to-human is a wolf. For majority of us it holds true although the nature's demand for the variability, variety of selection choices, the genetic diversity creates some of us more resembling tigers while some other dolphins. Let's say for the sake of discussion that 90% of us wolves, 5% tigers and 5% dolphins. Wolf is also a social creature with certain non-genetic skills and knowledge passed along by learning "wisdom of ages", by learnin from other pack members. It also has elaborated social hierarchy, some law system (both instinctive and established by their "society"). For example, they don't attack females (what the gentlemen they are!), and if during the conflict one in a display of submission exposes his bare neck– another just physically prevented by his instincts to bite . Some youngsters abuse this instinct– time after time they steal the stronger wolf's meal, and when attacked in response– just expose their neck in the "I surrender!" move, and 5 minutes later repeat that trick again. Wolves, like human, express different patterns of behaviour during good and bad weather times. In a summer, when the food is abundant, the grass is green, and the life is easy– they split into families or lone wolves. When the times are tough, like winter season, then they stick together in packs because it is easier for the species to survive that way: the pack can take on a moose, and even if a wolf gets killed, the pack will survive. So, yes, majority of us do resemble wolves, we do prioritize our own interests, self-preservation, our family over others though we do take care of others when it's beneficial to our wellbeing and survival.
Tiger (and I don't mean the cheatta' ;-) is selfish, egoistic, egocentric, territorial-and rightly so– because they consume so much meat in the food chain that they wouldn't survive in packs or even big families. Mom teches her offspring how to hunt, and when they are 6 months old or so– she kicks them our out. Since now on they are competitors for the individual survival. If you don't like giving to their human analogs such a noble name "tigers"– oh,well, you can call them "hamsters" that kill each other if they get closer than 100 meters or call them any other solitary animal, for that matter. Mother nature doesn't take it as an offense– whatever it takes for the species to survive.
Dolphins , penguins, whales, who live in a very hostile environment and depend on each other to survive. That would be an ideal material to build utopian society, so I suggest we collect all communists, "progressive" Democrats and other totalitarians and send them to the ocean to realize over there their day dreams rather than ruining our real human world, populated mainly by wolves. Of course, the totalitarian "social engineers" keep trying to make "new men" = dolphins out of us, and of course they fail, creating another blood bath– French Revolutionary terror, Stalin's, Hitler's, Ayatolla Homeini's, Mao's and Pol Pot's "noble intended" attempts to create "new men" zombies and robots. If you let them– they will keep trying to change your nature until the very last of you is dead, using the coercive powers of the Big Government. So, minimize the powers of any government to minimize the inevitable abuse and try to prevent totalitarians' power grabs. All totalitarians are the same, they all are criminals against their own people, just committing different crimes.
Other things to aware of ourselves: We need mythology, we want our leaders /ideologues to explain us why we are better than others. American exceptionalism does have a true base because it is based on the popular sovereignty and the un-alienated rights (at least until totalitarian "progressives" started eroding the Rupiblic since 1913), which made it the freest coutnry in the world, though Obama wants to destroy it. Others don't have these grounds, but still want the sheppards to explain them, why they got a feeling that they are the best in the world.
Humans also need scapegoats, they need some image to hate and to blame all their fault on someone else. That's a perfect and easy explanation for all their ills. Whatever is wrong– blame the scapegoat. When statists, "progressives" and other totalitarians hurt America– they blame free market for their own fault of overregulating. How much is too much, how much is "over"-regulating? Well, actually, ANY regulation is OVER regulation by definition of the FREE (means, unregulated) market. As more they regulate-as more they hurt the country. How to find a scapegoat? Use your sense of envy, be jealous, pick the more successful ones and preferably helpless.
Chineese serve as scapegoats in the South-East Asia because they are successful. Muslim government in Malaysia officially discriminates against Chineese, favoring local Muslims instead, and as usually it fires back, insulating the Muslims from the healthy competition and rendering them more and more useless losers. Losers hate winners, and blame them for their own failures.The same comes true about all "Civil RIghts " and "Antidiscrimination" Acts of the 1960-s: all their effects were negative for the "opressed ones", all they did is stopping the trend of narrowing gap between majority and minorities, ruined minorities families, insulated them from healthy competition of the free market, thus, rendering them forever poor losers. Usual paradox of life– all those "civil right activists" only destroy human rights, all self-appointed "minority rights" activists such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton serve only themselves, while doing everything they can to prevent the full integration of minorities (because it would be the end of their lucrative political career).
Yeah, right, all their Big Government-style "fixes" fixed nothing, just making it worse, as expected, and all these "good wishers" were full of sh.. Oi, I mean, full of noble intentions. Noble intentions always pave road to hell. The actual goal of the Democ-rats is to turn as many American into their voters: lazy losers and immoral freaks, so the Dems can grab more power and money.
French hated Germans and Britts and vice versa, Muslims hated Armeniansm and the most universal scapegoat of all times and places are Jews for their successes in every intellectual field. Right now the logics tells the Muslims to realize that their problem is a lack of freedom, caused by their own governments and ideologues, that Israel's successes are due to the greater degree of freedom, so the Muslims should come to learn from Israelis how to make their countries freer, thus, more prosperous. Instead, Muslim leaders want to destroy Israel as "a bad example" for their people– what a freer society can accomplish.
Another important feature: just like anything else in the nature, we go by the path of least resistance. The fluid and electrical current flow the path of least resistance, and so do we. If I need to work to make living, then I will. If I am on a welfare for the 3rd generation and someone else pays for me, then I won't. So, if you want to help poor– don't let the government help them, otherwise it will perpetuate the misery. Do us a favor, Mr. Fed– don't do us favors.
Naturally, frequently there is discrepancies or even antagonisms between different drives– biological, social, economic, ethical, customs, psychilogical, idndividual and so forth. Biologically a woman is supposed to start her child bearing when she's about 18 and to finish her child bearing by the time she is 35 y.o.: each pregnancy until that cut off point decreases breast cancer risk ofr 7.5%, after that each pregnancy increases this risk for the same 7.5%, not mentioning increasing risk of genetic mutations and other helath problems in mom and child alike. However, the social drive says : don't even start until you get your education and establish yourself at your work. Well, the best time to have kids is when you retire– you have time, money, home, wisdom and so forth.. But…well, you get it....
Diversity– is it good or bad?Just like anything else– if it is a result of the natural selection, governed by the laws of mother nature– it is good (it gives more options to choose from for betterment). If it is imposed by the instruments of coercion (government) and by driven by totalitarian ideology propaganda machine (96% "progressive" MSM) then it is bad because we, the people must pay for inevitable consequences of interference. When totalitarian monkeys ("progressives" in America's case) "reform" economy and "engineer" society by sticking a stick of the legislation into self-regulated free market mechanisms– it malfunctions, the outcome worsens, and we all pay for totalitarian redistributionists experiments (like peoples of Russia, Zimbabwe, Kampuchia and many others). If there should be a ban on experimenting– it should be ban prohibiting totalitarian experimentation on human beings.
Biological drive tells men: "Get every woman you see to pass along your genes!!",and it tells women:"Pick all the best mates to improve your offspring" (major function of majority of sperm cells is to fight and to immobilize in vagina sperm cells of other men, which means majority of human history promiscuity was the way of life), but the society and economic drives say:"Wait, wait, there so many benefits of family life and monogamy– consider it". The only true monogamy is in one gut worm species with the "love at the first sight"– they get entangles for the rest of their lives. Even swans have social monogamy, but not a sexual monogamy, as genetic studies show.
Our language (as our society, our body and our biosystems) is also the end-product of self-regulated process with feed-back loop. Society gradually accumulates customs, traditions, "the wisdom of ages", frequently accumulated in proverbs, that help stabilize sociaty, establish some "rules of engagement" to minimize negative consequences of confrontations, engrave some rule of law in the society to have predictable interactions and predictable results of those. In a mature society those rules, established by the "wisdom of ages" and free market, will suffice to optimize the society life, so there is no need for a government regulation. Government can only serve as 911 service, to comprehend unruly criminals to keep the rule of law. It's not government's business to regulate our language, society, economy, psychology and life. Government is our enemy by definition, we compete with the government for the power and money, so let's keep our necessary evil, our enemy at bay. Just say no to Obamunism.
V. Self-regulated systems with feedback loop
The easiest way to understand this concept is to look at ourselves. Our body has hudnreds of patameters influenced by millions of factors interacting in real time and pushing in different, frequently in oposite directions. What is good for one parameter, bad for another. And the window of dynamic stability, compatible with our health and even with the very staying alive is extremely narrow. You can say that in order to live we must stay alive all the time, while in order to die is enough to die only once;-). One thing went wrong (i.e. heart attack) and we are dear, even though 99,9% of the rest of our body was functioning just fine. How they sing "All we are is dust in the wind"? We walk over the razor blade all our life, and to stay alive we must keep all thousands of the parameters withing extremely narrow range, fluctuating slightly around the ideal axis as the sinusoid graph. The smaller the amplitude of fluctuations is– the finer the tuning of the organism is, the healthier it is, the better chances for survival, longevity and passing on a successful combination of the genes are. And there are thousands of the "razor blades" in our body. Meanwhile in order to die all we need is just one peremeter to go wrong. That's why they say that medicine is half-art and half-science, because the medicine is never going to be a pure science: we try to help body help itself, and if it doesn't– there's nothing we can do.
Tightly coordinated task of keeping all these parameters within the desired range is called homeostasis. Lets pick one of the parameters we're more familiar with: the blood sugar level. Ideally it fluctuates like sinusoidal graph around 4 mM/L = 73 mg/dL, and as smaller the amplitude of the fluctuation– the healthier we are. As soon as the blood level exceeds that level– the self-regulation mechanisms that drive it down kick in. As soon as it drops below that– the opposite mechanism kick in. It's just amazing to know how precise this regulation is, how smart our body is– the total sugar content at any given moment is only 5 gm (0.2 oz), and this amount suffices to feed the brain, the muscles and the rest of the body, promptly replenishing this 5 gm as soon as it's consumed. What drives blood sugar up? Food (especially bad empty calories of the sweets), stress, trauma, pain, infarction, heat, alcohol initially and certain drugs. Internally the blood sugar increasing forces are catabolic hormones such as catecholamines (including adrenalin), steroids (especially glucocorticoids), growth hormone, hypothalamus/pituitary system, and many-many others. What drives blood sugar down? Consumption by the body, storage in the liver as starch (glycogen) or as a fat in adipose tissues, starvation, some drugs, and ultimately anabolic hormones such as insulin. Low insulin level might result in dysphoria, clamminess, shaking, paranoid or aggressive mentality, fainting, death and so forth. High sugar level slowly ruins all our organs and systems (heart, kidneys, vessels, joints, retina– you name it). That is why so important to treat diabetes before it ruins the whole body. The sugar level is mutually influenced by the electrolite levels, acid-base and water balance, temperature regulation and so forth. Those have their own self-regulation systems with the feed-back loop, and as tighter the feed-back loop is– the healthier the body is. Acid-base buffers include but not limited to bicarbonate-CO2 with hyper– or hypoventilation as needed, protein buffer, hemoglobin, phosphate, behavioral adaptations, dialysis by kidney and many others. Sure, mother nature had 4.5 billion years to tune up our body, but it is still amazes me what a wonderwul job she did. And that's just one human body. Can you imagine how much more complex is the whole society and the entire economy of the US that involves 300 mln Americans and the rest of the world with trillions and trillions interactions with the amount of possible outcomes that impossible to imagine? That is why self-regulated free market with feed-back loop is the only way to optimize the life and economics in any society, while any subjective intervention such as government interference inevitably disrupts the self-regulation, causes imbalances, dusproportion, inner tensions and other disturbances, irregularities inevitably worsens the outcome. As more government's interference– as worse the outcome is. Government is like a monkey that pushes a stick into computer or a wall clock and trying to fix it. Then one wonders why goverment never works. Because it cannot– that would be against the laws of nature. The probability that goverment coercive actions without significant feedback would actually work with favorable risk/benefit ratio is about the same as if 6 gorillas from the jungle would sit behind computer desk and start printing Encyclopedia Britannica, which means zero chance. Why even try? Unless one is a delusional totalitarian....
Some random examples of self-regularion in nature. Our obesity: majority of humankind history we were starving, so our appetite tends to require more food than we actually need now in order to have some spare calories. When a starvation starts then our metabolism slows down to increase our chances to survive. In a chronic starvation the response is to increase longevity so the species has a chance to go throuhg "7 leans years" and to survive individually (as you know, there are some antagonistic goals between individual survival and survival of a species as a whole). Another reaction to starvation or excessive exercising in females is stopping menstrual cycles (until the better times when a woman has a good enough nutrition to bear a child). When a female partner is much older than a male then a chance of having a daughter is higher to compensate for the assumed shortage of females, and vice versa– if a male is much older then the chance to have a son is higher. Similar sense makes the fact that if the child is conceived after prolonged period of abstinence, then the nature assumes females are in shortage and there is higher chance to conceive a girl. By the same token, if a child conceived during unprotected sex after several intercourses with condoms, then the exhausted man more likely to father a son. We can't be sure of the ways Mother Nature self-regulates such things, but the possible explanation is that even at the stage of spermatozoa female ones have a higher chances of survival due to the presense of 2 X-chromosomes with a backup if one is defective, so after a period of abstinence higher %% of sperm cells will be females. Humans typically prefer a thermally processed food over the raw because those who liked it raw had a higher chance to perish from parasites and germs. Humans get somnolent when the conditions endanger them during their potential reids: when it's dark and stronger and better equipped predators are hunting; when the stomach is full and we can't run fast enough; when we are ill, thus, less likely to escape the predators; when there's bad wheather and we can get pneumonia or slip over the slippery surface while trying to avoid a predator or chasing a prey. Social events might also affect the process of natural selection. For example, after the French Revolution when totalitarian lefties in the name of brotherhood and freedom set up fire of the wars all around of Europe, then the average height of French dropped for almost 10 inches. The similar effect had a Left communist government in North Korea: due to chronic starvation North Koreans now are almost 10 inches shorter than South Koreans. The lefties are always enemies of their own countries and their own people. Some germs replicate every 20 minutes, hence, human's life is programmed to last until our children grow enough to reproduced themselves in the eternal competition of species for survival: the germs adapt to our changing biology, we adapt our defense systems to their ever-changing ways of perfecting their offense and assault means. If we live too long then we already don't participate in the natural selection and survival improvement of the species while we still consume the limited resources that would be available to the next self-improving generation.