(46) In BIOL350, we discussed a principal domain of ‘legacy delusion’ in terms of ‘belief / membership in something larger than self’. Describe what this means/involves, its evolutionary roots, and examples of how this is represented in contemporary culture.
A principal domain of legacy delusion is belief/membership in something larger than self. This involves ‘fusion identity’, a sense of oneness with a group and its individual members, thus linking one’s identity to the larger group identity. This is rooted in our ancestral fitness advantage from socialization and cooperative alliances, which is why we have evolved the capacity for such interactions and derive pleasure from them. The group’s identity is larger than the individual, and its existence started before and is expected to continue after individual existence. As a result, a sense of oneness with the group provides an effective delusion for thinking that one’s mental self can endure beyond mortal existence.
Examples of larger-than-self group identities in contemporary culture include religion, ethnicity, patriotism, political ideology, career culture, military groups, and sport teams. For instance, religion allows for a sense of legacy with promise of existence of mental self in the after life, regardless of what happens to your physical self. This idea of spiritual existence satisfies our legacy drive for symbolic immortality. Membership in a group of worshipers also strengthens belief in the facets of religion, increases self esteem and status, and promotes prosocial behaviours. In addition, there is evidence that there may be a genetic basis that has predisposed our attraction to religion. Overall, these contemporary manifestations of larger-than-self identity satisfy our desire to belong to something greater and more enduring than an individual human, such that we may also in some way transcend and endure by becoming a part of this identity.
(47) Religion has both a ‘vertical component’ and a ‘horizontal component’. Explain what this means, and describe the hypotheses that we considered in BIOL350 that propose how each of these components could be interpreted as products of biological evolution.
• vertical components: it is the notion of salvation and promise of everlasting life, through activities such as worship or prayer
o It is a product of biological evolution: b/c provides reassurance for the faithful that the “self” need not be impermanent even while knowing your body is
• Horizontal components: is the attraction to religion as an institution based on a series of additional motivations through rewards • Provides significant benefits for genetic fitness:
o By reinforcing one’s confidence in the ‘vertical’ component (i.e. ‘our God and his promises of salvation must be real if there are so many fellow believers’)
• As a vehicle for bolstering self-esteem (in terms of membership within a ‘larger than self’ cultural world-view), and a sense of memetic legacy
• By serving as an incentive to behave in ways that promote prosocial reciprocal exchange benefits of group membership because the threatened consequences of transgression involve not only shaming by the group against the perpetrator, but also banishment of the soul to eternity in a bad place
(48) According to Pulitzer Prize winning author Phyllis McGinley (1956): “Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality …”. How then can we account for the growing popularity of the ‘childfree culture’? Describe the evolutionary hypothesis that we discussed to address this question in BIOL350.
· May be understood more directly from the male perspective. In other words, it is men who, because of paternal uncertainty , have been the unfulfilled sex — accounting for their “ charging off ” in pursuit of other forms of symbolic immortality
o To minimize this uncertainty, men took control of female fertility throughout most of recorded history, which leads us to an interesting hypothesis…
· Failed disfavouring selection hypothesis
o Many female ancestors, under patriarchal subjugation, were forced to bear offspring, often many, regardless of whether they really wanted any
§ Result: Any genetic basis for a weak preference for motherhood was NOT strongly selected against
§ Fast forward to the present day: Many females with this inherited trait are now empowered more than ever to take control over their own fertility.
· This combination of lower preference for children (inherited from coerced ancestors) + empowerment = childfree culture
· Women can now satisfy their legacy drive through other domains like accomplishment
o They can now earn more money and spend it (increased social status) or get higher education.
o Now that ‘childfree’ culture has become visible to selection there is a chance that in a few decades it could be eradicated from the population
§ Reasoning: without gene transmission from these individuals, the genetic basis for preferences against having children will not be passed down
· The question is, will culture play a bigger role here (over genes) and pass down childfree behaviour memetically instead.
(49) In BIOL350 we considered some ideas for the evolutionary roots of the culture of ‘cool’. Describe these.
- Cool → commonly regarded in common culture as someone with distinctive attitude that evokes demeanor of composure, self-confidence, nonchalance towards situations where excitement or vulnerability would be expected
o Choices that signify being impervious to conventions of “common people”
Evolutionary Roots of Cool - signified defiance of mortality → apparent indifference regarding conscious awareness of impermanence of one’s life
o delusion of coolness portrays/signals a talent for dismissing/buffering crippling anxiety of mortality salience – thus allows better focus on things that end up in reproductive success → we have intrinsic attraction to anything that points to potential for defying death
o admire coolness and want to be like cool people because characteristics signal constitution/talent that could be deployed in dismissing normally crippling private anxiety of mortality salience - ancestors wanted to be around cool people because thought this talent might rub off on them
- in ancestors, potential mates that were ‘cool’ were truthfully signaling that they were equipped to care for offspring and effectively protect from rivals (superiority)
o signal of high fitness → “my skills/talents are so great that nothing phases me”
o could respond effectively to universal terror about self-impermanence
o these mates were not socially popular but rather sexually attractive and were perceived (correctly) as good bet for being equipped to provide for offspring (resulted in gene transmission success) - selection likely to have favored dispositions/presentations of many sorts that portray that it’s possible to be confident/calm/collected despite knowing that one’s life is impermanent
- signal was “honest” – actually was associated with traits that confer advantage in trial/tribulations
(50) Define the ‘blank slate’ view of the human mind, and describe, based on material considered in BIOL350, how this might be interpreted as a product of biological evolution.
Blank slate view:
- the mind is a blank slate, tabula rasa, and is shaped solely by social learning, experiences in life
- Standard social science model: culture and the gene pool do not interact
Biological evolution of this view:
- humans have for a long time recognized their ability for: social learning, cultural evolution, and their control over earthly beings, both living and non-living
- we therefore also want to be the sole arbiters of our mind
- genes shaping our mind would imply losing some of that control
- therefore it has been a long-standing view that genes do not impact culture
(51) In BIOL350 we considered how some human motivations / goals can be interpreted in terms of ‘blended drives’ that involve ‘purposeful toil and mundane routine’. Describe what this means, and illustrate with two examples that we discussed in the course
• Consumerism, sports and parenting combine all four drives
• Blended drives combine leisure and legacy drives
o Preoccupying your time with hard work that is meaningful to distract from worrisome or depressing thoughts
• Distracting pleasure obtained from staying busy
• Doing something purposeful can evoke a sense of legacy and can make you happy because it keeps you busy (leisure)
• Helping others feels good (leisure), remembered by others (legacy)
• Parenting -
o An intrinsic attraction (informed in part by genetic inheritance) to memetic legacy
Memetic legacy (has influence on offspring), copy of self by shaping offspring, gene transmission (legacy)
o Pleasure of purposeful work, distraction (leisure)
o Preoccupation with hard work (especially when purposeful) leaves little time for worry or depressing thoughts, including those rooted in self-impermanence anxiety
o A distracting pleasure
Like that of leisure
Obtained from just staying busy and the busy work of parenting is available in greater abundances, with increasing family size
• Consumerism
o Legacy: keep buying and buying in the hope that one thing you buy will be ever-lasting/ leave a piece of yourself for the future (buy something that you can pass down to your kids, etc.)
o Leisure: provides distraction from self-impermanence, as well as pleasure and happiness
• Blended drives involve mundane tasks of purposeful toil (i.e. cooking can bring a sense of meaning)
o Doing something purposeful can evoke a sense of legacy but it can also feel good because it keeps you busy/leisure
• Helping Others
o Feel Good (Leisure) Remembered by others (Legacy)
(52) Evolutionary theory predicts that the traits of a species that are common tomorrow will include those of its predecessors, alive today, who are leaving the most descendants. If this is true, who, can we predict, will be the parents of the future? In other words, what basic drives or motivations might we expect them to have? Discuss the answer to this question that we considered in BIOL350.
- Rising culture of childlessness:
o Product of failed disfavoring selection - Many of female ancestors under patriarchal subjugation – forced to bear offspring (often many) regardless of whether they wanted any
- i.e. weak preference for motherhood not strongly selected against
- descendants with inheritance of weak preference and empowerment of women (control over own fertility) – now free to choose “childfree”
- childlessness depends on income
o men with higher income less likely to be childless
o women with higher income more likely to be childless - historically
o many women who became mothers did so because: - men wanted sex/men wanted to leave legacy …OR… they wanted sex, they wanted legacy; they have strong parenting drive
- Natural selection didn’t have freedom to select against preference = some traits today consequence of not being disfavored by natural selection → both weak/strong parenting drives transmitted down
o many men who became fathers did so because: - they wanted sex or they wanted to leave legacy
- men who had low fertility preferences always had freedom to express those preferences so there was opportunity for selection to disfavor genes that might influence those preferences
- today
o female weak parenting drive disfavored (freedom to express preference)
o parents of future will have stronger parenting drive as selection occurs
o strong parenting drive is correlated with fitness when females are empowered and contraceptives are widely available/effective
o may result in larger families with more numerous offspring – contemporary pronatalist cultures likely to displace childfree/few cultures → resulting in rising birth rates in coming decades
(53) In BIOL350, we considered how “Overpopulation is an inevitable product of natural selection”. Explain what this means in terms of ‘laws of population’.
· Laws of Population
o 1) Resources are limited and population size can increase only to a finite maximum (Carrying capacity)
o 2) Carrying capacity for the human population increases with increasing technological advancement, also, only to a finite maximum
o 3) There will always be some individuals able to produce more than 1 reproducing offspring, even at carrying capacity
o 4) The relative number of impoverished individuals increases as carrying capacity is approached
o 5) Natural selection will always favour those individuals with traits that promote high fecundity (i.e. produce many offspring) relative to neighbors, even among impoverished individuals that are already crowded at carrying capacity
§ By having many kids you are effectively increasing your fitness. This results in a tragedy of the commons → If everyone were to reproduce as to maintain the population at carrying capacity, the entire human species would have enough resources to go around. However, since it is possible and evolutionarily profitable (confers higher fitness) for some individuals to have more than 1 offspring, there is an incentive for them to do so. As a result everyone would rationally want to have >1 child, but in doing so they exceed carrying capacity.
(54) In all successful species — including humans prior to the start of the Anthropocene — birth rate and death rate have always been relatively high, because evolution by natural selection always maximizes gene transmission, usually associated with maximizing fecundity, thus keeping populations at ‘carrying capacity’ (defined by the resource–supplying power available from natural ecosystem services), where deaths balance births. Describe how this situation for humans has changed since the start of the Anthropocene, and also discuss the prospects that we considered in BIOL350 regarding where birth ates and death rates, and population size, may be headed in the future.
Technologies in agriculture and medicine have advanced to the point where people can avoid malnutrition/starvation, stay healthier and recover from injury, illness and infection
o Consequently:
death rates declined while birth rates remained high
People lived longer, increasing the population and also reached reproductive maturity which increased the amount of kids, increasing birth rate
• Oil-fueled technologies have allowed more and more people to be fed in each generation
o We continue to feed them due to our evolved moral traits
• More recently, birth rates have declined because there has been more female empowerment, and they have more control over their fertility
o They pursue domains for legacy and leisure drive through accomplishments that were declined from their ancestors, who developed a weak parenting drive which was passed on (results in child free culture)
• Death rates have started to plateau due to rising limitation on overharvesting and increased crowding of the planet, slowdown in rates of agricultural and medical advancements
• The future is in the hands of 2 million youth yet to reach reproductive maturity, population size will continue to rise and the childfree culture will not last
• The overpopulation issue will correct itself abruptly by crashing, a rapid rise in death rate appears to be within the near future
• Before Anthropocene
o Natural selection maximized gene transmission
o Successful species used resources to the fullest extent because there were limited resources and their death rate was higher (avg. death rate much lower than it is now)
• Change over time
o Industrial revolution → advancements in technology and medicine → decrease death rate → more people reach reproductive age → population skyrocketed
• Future
o Death rates stabilizing but birth rates decreasing
• Demographic momentum
o People had a strong parenting drive in the mid-late 1900s, which lead to such a massive increase in the population
o Today, the birth rate is slowing down as many are adopting the child-free lifestyle for more “selfish” distribution of resources
• Control
o 1 child per person
o Average age of women giving birth is 30
• Stabilization or increase due to change from child-free culture to a stronger parenting drive in the next decade or so
(55) Over the past century or so, human societies have responded to the problem of world hunger using solutions that serve inevitably to create more problems. Describe the main points in support of this view that we considered in BIOL350, and also describe the so-called ‘risk-free’ solutions that are currently being promoted.
• After the industrial revolution, technologies for agriculture and medicine increased to allow people to avoid malnutrition, starvation, stay healthier and avoid illness and infectious disease
o Death rate dropped and birth rate stayed relatively high
• Energy from fossil fuels meant that more people could be fed
o Population growth sky-rocketed
o New technologies (enabled by oil) kick-started the ‘great acceleration’
o Too many people and too much stuff
• In order to address world hunger/famine/nutrition, we must increase crop yields within limited agricultural land available with a growing population
o This means the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and genetically modified crops
o Leads to environmental degradation, which leads to more and more land that is not able to support agriculture, as well as genetically modified agriculture that reduced genetic diversity, leading crops to be susceptible to mass loss from adapted disease
• We produce more and more people with each generation, but we continue to feed them because of naturally selected moral traits
o Risk-free solutions
Agro-Ecology Evolution –> Solutions lie not in feeding the world, but allowing the world to feed itself with sustainable, ecologically sound systems combined with equitable food distribution
Population-Ecology revolution –> Solutions lie not in feeding more people, but controlling the number of people that need feeding
(56) Paul and Anne Ehrlich (2008) wrote, with regard to our imperiled civilization, that “The problem is simple: too many people; too much stuff”. In BIOL350 we considered how both of these problems may be at least partially rooted in the intrinsic self-impermanence anxiety of humans. Describe the main arguments behind this interpretation.
• Too many people, too much stuff fosters a culture of addiction in society and is a continuous cycle that is very hard to break
o Feeding the insatiable human drives of leisure and legacy
• Our legacy and leisure drives help distract us from our self-impermanence anxiety but it also feeds the cycle
o Worried about our fate as humans (death) → legacy/leisure drive → consumer culture → the economy (need a job to make money and buy more stuff) → trashed planet
• Our legacy and leisure drives have pushed us to accomplish more and enjoy more stuff in our life (work hard, play hard)
o This drive has pushed us to find joy in material goods rather than in people/travel/etc.
o This consistent need for the “newest and best” stuff has lead to huge amounts of pollution in landfills and in the environment (factories, transportation, etc.)
• Too many people
o Legacy (fame/recognition) and leisure (discovery and invention) drive
o Lead to population explosion
• Too much stuff
o Leisure (buy stuff) and legacy (buy stuff that bolsters self-esteem - fitness signal) drives
(57) Describe, based on our discussion in BIOL350, how several products of cultural evolution, involving ‘sacred human beliefs’ can be interpreted as causing about a 300-year delay in the public acceptance of science.
This long delay could be a result of legacy drive. Legacy drive is the drive that aims to find meaning in our lives (convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd). So to go against our sacred beliefs would be like admitting our lives are absurd.
Ex:
- earth at center of galaxy
- god makes us sick to punish us
- god - earth was made for humans and belongs to us
(58) In BIOL350 we considered that if cultural evolution is to ‘come to our rescue’, it will probably require what we might call ‘biosocial management’— and that one of the challenges for this is our disposition for ‘self-deception’. Describe what ‘self-deception’ means in this context, its evolutionary roots, and its main implications that we discussed in the course.
· Self-deception is the tendency for individuals to:
o See opposing facts as undermining their sense of identity
§ For topics important to one’s own identity, preferences for information consistent with their worldview is understandable.
· It can fulfill psychological needs (aside from the truth) by protecting core values or avoiding uncertainty
o Be overconfident in how much they understand
o Stop seeking out further relevant information when we believe our opinions are superior to others
§ This prevents our ability to achieve our 2nd biosocial management goal of maintaining a sustainable, environmentally friendly, prosocial model for civilization.
· Evolutionary Roots
o Susceptibility to distractions and delusions were in the best interest of our ancestor’s genes
o Provides a self-impermanence anxiety buffer by providing protection from our consciousness, and in doing so promoted fitness benefits.
o This may have initially been selected for because it makes us better at deceiving others (a liar who believes their lies is the most convincing)
· Implications
o Results in denial
§ Discounting the expertise associated with any opinion one would rather not hear
· Ex. Our modern culture is to deny that both population and economic growth are the causes of environmental degradation
o This is because we need economic growth to fuel our addiction to consumerism and need population growth in order to feed economic growth (IT’S CYCLICAL).
§ Stopping this economic growth would effectively reduce resource consumption and in turn help preserve biodiversity on the global scale.
· Ex. Many discount the expertise of many climate scientists who say that climate change is real
(59) In BIOL350 we considered that if cultural evolution is to ‘come to our rescue’, it will probably require what might be called ‘moral enhancement’. Describe the main argument for why this might be needed, and discuss the main components that might be deployed for promoting moral enhancement in the future that we discussed in the course.
Why is moral enhancement needed to rescue us from the catastrophes we face?
· Currently through leisure drive, we are blind to the damage we are causing to our planet and are locked firmly in the present. By enhancing our own morality (i.e. being more caring and empathetic) as a species, humans can acquire the capacity to look in the future and as a result become more involved in taking action against the converging catastrophes we face
Main components that might be deployed for promoting moral enhancement in the future
· Moral education
o Teaching kids at a young age about the evolutionary roots of human motivations, its limitations/deficiencies, and their role in causing the impending collapse of civilization.
§ History shows that young children are easily brainwashed
· Parents should raise caring kids over successful ones
o Parents often raise their kids to be successful individuals over caring
o If this can change, we will see moral enhancement
· Institutional redesign using incentives
o Setting things in place that are encourage pro-environmental behaviours
§ Ex. carbon tax, ‘green’ imaging, shaming
· Emphasizing the bad (social pressure)
o Social pressure had been shown to provide strong incentive to change behaviour
o It is our greatest hope in preventing a global tragedy of the commons
Extra components
· Pharmaceuticals/supplements
o Alter chemicals in the brain to improve our morality
· Transhumanism
o Rewiring our brains to be more empathetic and caring
· Genetic engineering/CRISPR
o Editing our genome and/or creating designer babies that have greater moral tendencies
(60) In BIOL350, we considered the possibility that the modern human mind has been affected by ‘runaway selection’. Describe what this means and its proposed consequences.
· Runaway selection - when something that once provided a fitness benefit now acts in a contradictory manner, such that the costs begin to outweigh the accrued benefit.
o Ex. The Irish Elk → Had 3.5m horn span which allowed them to fight for access to females
o Runaway selection for larger antler size, increased the mating success of males, but eventually the increasing size became too costly for survival and contributed to their extinction
· In humans, runaway selection may be occurring through self-impermanence anxiety buffers such as leisure and legacy drive
o Self-impermanence anxiety creates a demand for domains that help ease it (blue line)
o By reducing self-impermanence anxiety through the generation or supply of leisure and legacy domains (red line) we can effectively INCREASE gene transmission
§ This effectively confers a fitness benefit
o There is also a fitness cost here (green line): from generating an increasing supply of domains (ex.) for distractions and delusions we are effectively causing irreversible damage to our planet.
o Similarly to the Irish Elk example, runaway selection for increasing strength of leisure and legacy drives will eventually lead to a net fitness loss which could have catastrophic effects on the human race.
• Run out of resources = global famine
• Loss of habitable land (and biodiversity)
• etc.
