Future of Human Species: Hybrid Plant:Animal?

The small animal in the photograph is Mesodinium chamaeleon, a ciliate that incorporates algae into itself to become a hybrid plant :: animal, capable of producing its own food.

M. chamaeleon is a ciliate – a kind of single-celled animal covered in hundreds of tiny "hairs" called cilia. It was discovered in Nivå bay in Denmark by Øjvind Moestrup of the University of Copenhagen, also in Denmark, and his team. Other specimens have since been found off the coasts of Finland and Rhode Island.

Ciliates using their hair-like cilia to motor around rapidly in water. Most get their food by eating other organisms, rather than by synthesising the nutrients themselves. This marks them as quite animal-like.

Some Mesodinium species are different, though. They engulf other microorganisms, generally algae called cryptomonads. The two then form a partnership: the algae produce sugars by photosynthesis, while the Mesodinium protects them and carries them around.

Such hybrid organisms are animals and plants at the same time. _NewScientist

Imagine green or blue-skinned humans who carry the machinery of photosynthesis with them wherever they go? Constantly fueled by glucose whenever the sun is shining or when under UV light, these humans never need to go hungry, or to carry bulky food rations with them on a trek. Their photosynthetic bio-machines could even be programmed to produce proteins, essential fats, and other nutrients.

What would happen to the human digestive apparatus, should human skin be given the function of nourishing the organism? Best not to do away with it altogether, since humans appreciate the sense of taste, and enjoy the social lubrication of eating and drinking together.

It is a simple modification, but one with enormous ramifications, should it prove easy to do on a large scale. Growing functional gills for breathing underwater is likely to be more difficult to achieve. But don't despair. Al Fin evolutionary engineers are working on the problem as we speak.

Novel Approach to Architecture Without an Architect: How to Seed the Universe in Preparation for the Human Epoch

The initial key to a successful out-migration of humans into the solar system and the larger universe, is to develop the ability to prepare the ground ahead of human colonists. When human settlers arrive on Luna, Mars, Titan, and other potential colonies, they should find working habitats and vital infrastructure waiting for them.

Here are a few basic ideas on complex systems and autopoetic self-organisation which will likely form the foundation for more advanced techniques of seeding complex systems in hostile environments. The slides come from Rene Doursat, who lectures at Ecole Polytechnique and specialises in complex systems and morphogenetic engineering.

Complex systems and networks possess some interesting properties which distinguish them from most human-made systems and networks. It is the goal of morphogenetic engineers such as Rene Doursat, to learn to incorporate many of the more desirable properties of complex systems into systems which could be co-created by humans.

Complex systems can arise on multiple levels, all the way from subatomic particles up to the very universe itself. These systems tend to be decentralised, emerging from a more disordered substrate by the means of self-organising principles.

The individual agents vary between complex systems, depending upon the level on which they operate. Low level complex systems can act as agents themselves, of higher level complex systems.

Complex systems can display an intricate and highly functional architecture -- without having had the "benefit" of an intelligent architect. This self-organising architecture of complex systems acts as an inspiration for possible architectures of future complex systems which might be evolved and co-created for use by humans.

Such novel complex systems could serve to allow the survival and prospering of humans in locations which would ordinarily not support such complex animals which evolved in a much more suitable location (Earth) for their needs. In other words, the "seeds" of human-enabling complex systems could be delivered to hostile -- but strategically important -- locations, where they will proceed to build human-friendly micro-environments, habitats, and infrastructures.

Such intricate yet robust systems would necessarily need to be evolved and grown in a self-organised fashion, using the materials on hand. And yet these "system seeds" must be designed to serve their specialised function.

Naturally, there is the opposite approach which must be considered: A re-designed human animal more suited for the hostile environments likely to be met in space and on other space bodies.

Rene Doursat has looked at biological design (PDF) in ways which might be applied to such a project, in the future.

Such concepts can be applied to biological bodies AND biological brains, as well. In fact, the functioning of the human brain itself is a good example of decentralisation, emergence, and self-organisation -- a prototypical complex network.

So while human designs up until now have tended to possess rather simple and straightforward architectures, at the same time humans are capable of comprehending the nature of complex, evolved systems. The idea of incorporating the properties of complex systems into human designs is not so far-fetched, perhaps in part because of the way our brains work.

The understanding and harnessing of complex systems to human purposes, is a grand project. It is worth spending a good deal of time on, in the future.

We Are Marching to Utopia! A Holiday Encore

...optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries....instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we [should] focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts. _OUP Review of "Uses of Pessimism"

Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. _Captain Malcolm Reynolds

There is something deep in human nature which has resisted change -- despite the best efforts of crusaders, utopians, religionists, and wishful thinkers -- for many [tens of?] thousands of years. After countless failures to reform the human spirit, most utopians are unfazed. If they can only grab enough power and control over how resources are distributed, they are sure that they can bring perfection to the land, under their own benevolent leadership. "The land will heal, the sea levels will begin to subside, and every man will say to every other man, you are my brother." And so on.

Philosopher Roger Scruton -- author of The Uses of Pessimism -- takes a somewhat more reluctant view:

The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt.

...In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. _GloomMerchant

In another piece, Scruton presents a paradoxical recommendation for how to teach children to think for themselves, logically and clearly:

...children are drawn to magic...they spontaneously animate their world with spirits and spells...they find relief and excitement in stories in which the heroes can summon supernatural forces to their aid and vanquish untold enemies – these facts reflect layers of deep settlement in the human psyche. But they also remind us that, in the life of the child, belief and imagination are not to be clearly distinguished, and that both serve other functions than the pursuit of truth.

...humanists should wake up to this point, and be careful when they seek to deprive their children of enchantment, or to replace their spontaneous fantasies with the cold hard facts of empirical science. It could well be that religion is a better discipline than pop science, when it comes to shaping the rational intellect, and that [we can offer our] children more in the way of a solid foundation, by anchoring their imagination in sacred stories and religious doctrines, than they are likely to be offered by those “Darwinian fairy tales’” as David Stove has called them, which have gained such currency in the wake of Dawkins and Hitchens.

In response to a child’s metaphysical curiosity grown-ups can say that everything has a scientific explanation. But they will know that this is a lie. The proposition that everything has a scientific explanation does not have a scientific explanation – it describes an amazing fact about our universe, a point where reasoning falls silent. There are many such points, as anyone who has children knows: why is there anything? Why should I be good? What existed before the Big Bang? What is consciousness? You can wrestle with these questions through philosophy, but science won’t answer them.

Children have an inkling of this. They also recognise that behind these questions lies a huge void – an emptiness which must be filled with love and reassurance, if their existence is not to seem like an accident. _Art_of_Certainty

Utopians try so hard to purge their children's minds of falsehood and "error", to create the perfect children of rational thought, capable of seeing through all the corrupt fables of the past. Except...children will be who they will be. You cannot make boys into girls or girls into boys without destroying who they are. And you cannot make humans into angels without ruining the essence of what they are. And still the utopians continue to try -- until they finally throw their hands up in complete exasperation at and condemnation of the utter evil of those who do not think along the same lines as themselves, the utopians.

The disgusted dismissal of homo rapiens and all his works that we find spelled out by John Gray in Straw Dogs is not a form of pessimism. It is an attempt to dismiss humanity entirely, as a kind of plague on the face of the earth. That kind of misanthropic nihilism is of no use to us. It removes the ground from all our values, and puts nothing in their place. _GloomMerchant

At that point, they often begin to plot and fantasize the great dieoff, to cleanse the otherwise pristine Earth of the incorrigible human demons who infest the lands and oceans. Fortunately, utopians are as incompetent in planning the great dieoff as they are in most other aspects of their lives.

The point is not to resist all change or improvement of humans. But any lasting change for the better is likely to happen from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Nothing illustrates the different approaches to a better world than the contrast between the French and American revolutions of the late 19th century.

The primary difference in causes that led to the American Revolution and the French Revolution was based in the world view of the innate goodness or innate evil of man. _Hyperhistory

Not all utopians believe in the innate goodness of men -- sometimes they only believe in the innate perfectibility of men. But utopias born of such ideas all come to a bitter end.

Every child has to learn to think for himself, from the beginning. But he must have a beginning from which to start.

The need for foundations is quite clearly an adaptation, and these foundations must provide the promise of protection and love, if they are to fit the new organism for its brief time in the world. If that is so, you are not going to eliminate the need for faith: the best you can do is to withhold all objects of faith, so that a child goes hungry into the life to which he or she is destined. More often than not, a humanist education will leave a child exposed to massive and mind-clogging superstitions of the Harry Potter and Star Wars kind. But these superstitions contain far less in the way of insight than is contained in the first chapter of Genesis.

Religious stories are also the result of natural selection – though selection at another level: they have come down to us because they have fulfilled a moral need. They have survived refutation because they contain, beneath their superficial falsehood, the moral truths that people need, when they must order their lives by good examples. _The Art of Certainty

This is true not only of religious stories, but of all the mythology and lasting moral fables from antiquity. Children must have some kind of foundation that transcends deductive logic, because that is how minds begin. Then, later, when they choose to either reshape or reaffirm their beliefs, they will have a sense of having decided for themselves, and feel stronger for it.

Yes, humans can make choices that make them better. Improved nutrition of mother and child can make humans stronger, smarter, taller, and sometimes capable of clearer thought. But a power structure that attempts to legislate morality, to engineer the moral and ideological purity of the human souls of its citizens -- that power structure is morally bankrupt, and deserves to die quickly. If it is allowed to continue, its leaders will eventually decide that the recalcitrant citizens do not deserve the benefit of the leaders' great wisdom. Then, beware.

This question has been acquiring an ever greater urgency over the past century -- even longer. It is now coming to a head in the demographic and economic crises of many of the world's most advanced nations. A culture that has rested on its own laurels, that has comforted itself with mental images of its own progressive improvement, is soon to be reawakened to a coarse and unruly history.

Originally published at Al Fin blog. Subsequently posted here at Al Fin the Next Level on 16 July 2010, it is being re-published here in honour of the coming 2011 - 2012 holiday season in the hopes that readers will face the future with an optimism built upon a solid foundation of gritty realism and competent preparation.

Coevolution of Species: Microbes and Vertebrates (Including Humans)

...in the June 13, 1997, issue of Science [a report] by Frederico J. Gueiros-Filho and Stephen M. Beverley of Harvard describes the "Trans-kingdom Transposition" of a gene-size piece of DNA known as a transposable element (19). The particular transposable element they studied, called mariner, has already been found in planaria, nematodes, centipedes, many insects, and humans (20). Until recently, transposable elements were considered to be functionless, or "junk DNA." But John McDonald, a professor in the department of genetics at the University of Georgia, concludes, "It now appears that at least some transposable elements may be essential to the organisms in which they reside. Even more interesting is the growing likelihood that transposable elements have played an essential role in the evolution of higher organisms, including humans" (21).

... viruses could easily provide a way for new genes never before encountered by a species to become part of its genome. That viruses install new genes into their hosts is not speculative — it is a well known fact. That transferred genes are important in evolution is becoming well established. _Panspermia

Bacteria and parasites also play roles in evolution and speciation. This trans-species gene transfer phenomenon is easiest to see in bacteria :: bacteriophage interations, but has also been seen in vertebrates, with evidence of having occurred in humans.

Such evolutionary interactions between humans and microbes is not likely to have ended. The particularly high infection and infestation rates in tropical parts of the globe suggest that intense evolutionary pressures are being applied. The extremely high STD infection rates among particular population groups suggests that the interaction between genes, behaviour, and evolution is more complex than generally admitted.

Each individual human is actually a vast interacting colony of microbial and microscopic creatures. We have only barely begun to understand all the gene transfers and transformations which are occurring continuously.

Evolving New Species of Humans

...one of [Enriquez'] most revolutionary ideas, which he discuses in the book New Human Species, is the expected evolution of a new hominid species in near future. The homo evolutis, which he said he speculates will be the most adapted hominid, endowed with tremendous mental capabilities, he said, “Twenty thousand species have gone around and become extinct,” Enriquez said. “I believe that we’re going to move into a homo evolutis, and our grandchildren will begin to live it.”

What will set apart this hominid from us, he said, is what he labeled “the ultimate reboot.”

“This hominid could take direct control of his species, this species and other species, and that of course, would be the ultimate reboot,” he said. _globalist

Evolution of Man
Juan Enriquez is an author visionary of life technologies, and a venture capitalist. He founded Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project, and has worked with Craig Venter on a number of projects. So when Juan Enriquez says that humans are evolving a new species, he is likely to have good reason for saying so.

What does it take to make a new species?

We're beginning to see that it's an accumulation of small changes. Scientists have recently been able to compare the genomes of Neandertals and modern humans, which reveals just a .004 percent difference. Most of those changes lie in genes involved in sperm, testes, smell, and skin.

Engineering microbes alone might speciate us. When you apply sequencing technology to the microbes inhabiting the human body, it turns out to be fascinating. All of us are symbionts; we have 1,000 times more microbial cells in our bodies than human cells. You couldn't possible digest or live without the microbial cells inside your stomach. Some people have microbes that are better at absorbing calories. Diabetics have a slightly sweeter skin, which changes the microbial fauna and makes it harder for them to cauterize wounds.

One concern about human enhancement is that only some people will have access, creating an even greater economic divide. Do you think this will be the case?

In the industrial revolution, it took a lifetime to build enough industry to double the wealth of a country. In the knowledge revolution, you can build billion-dollar companies with 20 people very quickly. The implication is that you can double the wealth of a country very quickly. In Korea in 1975, people had one-fifth of the income of Mexicans, and today they have five times more. Even the poorest places can generate wealth quickly. You see this in Bangalore, China. On the flip side, you can also become irrelevant very quickly.

Scientists are on the verge of sequencing 10,000 human genomes. You point out this might highlight significant variation among our species, and that this requires some ethical consideration. Why?

The issue of [genetic variation] is a really uncomfortable question, one that for good reason, we have been avoiding since the 1930s and '40s. A lot of the research behind the eugenics movement came out of elite universities in the U.S. It was disastrously misapplied. But you do have to ask, if there are fundamental differences in species like dogs and horses and birds, is it true that there are no significant differences between humans? We are going to have an answer to that question very quickly. If we do, we need to think through an ethical, moral framework to think about questions that go way beyond science. _TechnologyReview_Juan Enriquez

The video above gives you an idea of how Enriquez expresses his ideas to the public, and reveals some of the things that he thinks about.

His ideas about the evolution of a new human species -- and the great need for humans to face the important genetic differences between different populations of humans -- sets him apart from ivory tower academics, politicians, and media skanks. In his day job, he has to think clearly and make good decisions -- unlike academics, politicians, and journalists, who rarely have to pay for their own mistaken thought processes.

When a venture capitalist makes decisions involving large sums of money, he cannot afford to wallow in political correctness, affirmative action, groupthink, or other modern dysfunctional aberrations of thought. He must be honest with himself and with his backers. In this case, it is likely that Enriquez is being honest with the public, based upon his intimate association with advanced biotechnological projects.

But something that not even Enriquez may be willing to say publicly, is that not all humans population groups will evolve in what is seen as a favourable direction. New genes are evolving and affecting the human brain, but not all population groups are sharing equally in the benefits of these changes.

The evolutionary history of Ashkenazi Jews is a useful, small-scale illustration of what is happening. These Jews of European descent possess the highest average IQ of any distinct population group known. This difference can be seen in terms of accomplishment at the highest levels of science, math, and other areas of scholarship and life achievement. This group has paid a price for this advantage, in terms of inherited disease. But for the group as a whole, the tradeoff appears to have been worth it.

As humans get better at tweaking the genome and epigenome, they should learn better how to acquire more of the advantages of superior adaptation without too many of the disadvantages. Then slowly, but surely, perhaps over dozens, or even hundreds of years, new human species will diverge from older human species.

To many people, this idea of diverging coexisting human species is a new one. To others, not so much. Anyone who has deliberated over the difference between the accomplishments of Australian aboriginals and the descendants of the English transportees to Australia, must have considered the possibility of divergent evolution.

As Enriquez points out, it is critical for humans at this juncture in time to be honest about our broad genetic heritage -- and what this breadth means in terms of aptitudes and behaviours. And what it means for our future selves.

Previously published on Al Fin blog and subsequently published at Al Fin Potpourri

Extinction Events, Anoxic Oceans, and the Quest for Ancient Oil

Expansion to Extinction Over Last 540 Million Years
Mass extinctions have played an important role in the evolution of Terrestrial life. With each mass extinction, the way is cleared for the spread and adaptation of surviving species, and for the emergence of new species. But that is not what we will talk about today.

Recent findings in geochemistry have called into doubt some of the pet theories of climate scientologists scientists concerning acid oceans and mass ocean extinctions. Here is the abstract from the paper in PNAS:

Periods of oceanic anoxia have had a major influence on the evolutionary history of Earth and are often contemporaneous with mass extinction events. Changes in global (as opposed to local) redox conditions can be potentially evaluated using U system proxies. The intensity and timing of oceanic redox changes associated with the end-Permian extinction horizon (EH) were assessed from variations in 238U/235U (δ238U) and Th/U ratios in a carbonate section at Dawen in southern China. The EH is characterized by shifts toward lower δ238U values (from -0.37‰ to -0.65‰), indicative of an expansion of oceanic anoxia, and higher Th/U ratios (from 0.06 to 0.42), indicative of drawdown of U concentrations in seawater. Using a mass balance model, we estimate that this isotopic shift represents a sixfold increase in the flux of U to anoxic facies, implying a corresponding increase in the extent of oceanic anoxia. The intensification of oceanic anoxia coincided with, or slightly preceded, the EH and persisted for an interval of at least 40,000 to 50,000 y following the EH. These findings challenge previous hypotheses of an extended period of whole-ocean anoxia prior to the end-Permian extinction. _PNAS

More information on the study

The suggestion is that the ocean anoxia was secondary to the main extinction event, rather than being the cause. More study will be necessary to validate the isotopic techniques utilised. But this finding cannot but be a disappointment to the politically correct denizens of deep climate scientology science.

But what interests Al Fin know-it-all-o-tologists about this information, is how it may relate to the topic of the production and sequestration of ancient oil. Deep ocean anoxia is not only related to mass extinction events, it is also a component of oil formation in the deep seabed.

Sea bottom anoxia occurs routinely at the mouths of large rivers, where massive sediment routinely buries dead sealife that is constantly deposited on the seafloor. That is why rich oil fields are often found offshore of large river deltas -- either where the deltas are now, or where they were hundreds of millions of years ago.

An ancient oil sleuth must be able to backward-trace the movements of continents and great river valleys, in order to know where to look for such sediment-buried deposits.

Another cause of mass sediment burial of seafloor organic material, is massive volcanic activity. This would be particularly important to an ancient oil sleuth when a group of volcanoes might stay active for millions of years, in the same general vicinity upwind of river deltas or rich upwelling currents.

But in cases of mass extinctions, the large scale deep ocean anoxia occurring at the same time as massive deposition of organic material onto the seafloor, might be a particularly rich time for the initiation of large scale oil production.

When this process occurs over continental crust, the oil can be preserved for a very long time. If it occurs over oceanic crust, the oil may be subducted with the crust into the mantle, where it will likely be converted into short chain hydrocarbons, CO2, CO, and other forms of carbon. The short chain hydrocarbons may return to the crust, and may eventually be recovered economically. Diamond and graphite may also return to depths which allows humans to recover them economically.

Regardless, it is the ancient oil we are interested in. The challenge is to connect the extinction events, the ocean anoxia, and the ancient geographic patterns together, to provide the best guess for the locations of giant oil deposits which might conceivably still exist in an undiscovered, but ultimately recoverable state.

Humans have become accustomed to utilising the easy oil, and are just now getting good at recovering oil from the harsh, deep ocean environments. That is a good thing, because the Earth is 70% ocean-covered.

Still, some the planet which was once covered by oceans is now dry land, and such places -- if they fit the criteria above -- might be some of the first locations to check out.

We Are Marching to Utopia, Heaven Help Us!

...optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries....instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we [should] focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts. _OUP Review of "Uses of Pessimism"

Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. _Captain Malcolm Reynolds

There is something deep in human nature which has resisted change -- despite the best efforts of crusaders, utopians, religionists, and wishful thinkers -- for many [tens of?] thousands of years. After countless failures to reform the human spirit, most utopians are unfazed. If they can only grab enough power and control over how resources are distributed, they are sure that they can bring perfection to the land, under their own benevolent leadership. "The land will heal, the sea levels will begin to subside, and every man will say to every other man, you are my brother." And so on.

Philosopher Roger Scruton -- author of The Uses of Pessimism -- takes a somewhat more reluctant view:

The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt.

...In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. _GloomMerchant

In another piece, Scruton presents a paradoxical recommendation for how to teach children to think for themselves, logically and clearly:

...children are drawn to magic...they spontaneously animate their world with spirits and spells...they find relief and excitement in stories in which the heroes can summon supernatural forces to their aid and vanquish untold enemies – these facts reflect layers of deep settlement in the human psyche. But they also remind us that, in the life of the child, belief and imagination are not to be clearly distinguished, and that both serve other functions than the pursuit of truth.

...humanists should wake up to this point, and be careful when they seek to deprive their children of enchantment, or to replace their spontaneous fantasies with the cold hard facts of empirical science. It could well be that religion is a better discipline than pop science, when it comes to shaping the rational intellect, and that [we can offer our] children more in the way of a solid foundation, by anchoring their imagination in sacred stories and religious doctrines, than they are likely to be offered by those “Darwinian fairy tales’” as David Stove has called them, which have gained such currency in the wake of Dawkins and Hitchens.

In response to a child’s metaphysical curiosity grown-ups can say that everything has a scientific explanation. But they will know that this is a lie. The proposition that everything has a scientific explanation does not have a scientific explanation – it describes an amazing fact about our universe, a point where reasoning falls silent. There are many such points, as anyone who has children knows: why is there anything? Why should I be good? What existed before the Big Bang? What is consciousness? You can wrestle with these questions through philosophy, but science won’t answer them.

Children have an inkling of this. They also recognise that behind these questions lies a huge void – an emptiness which must be filled with love and reassurance, if their existence is not to seem like an accident. _Art_of_Certainty

Utopians try so hard to purge their children's minds of falsehood and "error", to create the perfect children of rational thought, capable of seeing through all the corrupt fables of the past. Except...children will be who they will be. You cannot make boys into girls or girls into boys without destroying who they are. And you cannot make humans into angels without ruining the essence of what they are. And still the utopians continue to try -- until they finally throw their hands up in complete exasperation at and condemnation of the utter evil of those who do not think along the same lines as themselves, the utopians.

The disgusted dismissal of homo rapiens and all his works that we find spelled out by John Gray in Straw Dogs is not a form of pessimism. It is an attempt to dismiss humanity entirely, as a kind of plague on the face of the earth. That kind of misanthropic nihilism is of no use to us. It removes the ground from all our values, and puts nothing in their place. _GloomMerchant

At that point, they often begin to plot and fantasize the great dieoff, to cleanse the otherwise pristine Earth of the incorrigible human demons who infest the lands and oceans. Fortunately, utopians are as incompetent in planning the great dieoff as they are in most other aspects of their lives.

The point is not to resist all change or improvement of humans. But any lasting change for the better is likely to happen from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Nothing illustrates the different approaches to a better world than the contrast between the French and American revolutions of the late 19th century.

The primary difference in causes that led to the American Revolution and the French Revolution was based in the world view of the innate goodness or innate evil of man. _Hyperhistory

Not all utopians believe in the innate goodness of men -- sometimes they only believe in the innate perfectibility of men. But utopias born of such ideas all come to a bitter end.

Every child has to learn to think for himself, from the beginning. But he must have a beginning from which to start.

The need for foundations is quite clearly an adaptation, and these foundations must provide the promise of protection and love, if they are to fit the new organism for its brief time in the world. If that is so, you are not going to eliminate the need for faith: the best you can do is to withhold all objects of faith, so that a child goes hungry into the life to which he or she is destined. More often than not, a humanist education will leave a child exposed to massive and mind-clogging superstitions of the Harry Potter and Star Wars kind. But these superstitions contain far less in the way of insight than is contained in the first chapter of Genesis.

Religious stories are also the result of natural selection – though selection at another level: they have come down to us because they have fulfilled a moral need. They have survived refutation because they contain, beneath their superficial falsehood, the moral truths that people need, when they must order their lives by good examples. _The Art of Certainty

This is true not only of religious stories, but of all the mythology and lasting moral fables from antiquity. Children must have some kind of foundation that transcends deductive logic, because that is how minds begin. Then, later, when they choose to either reshape or reaffirm their beliefs, they will have a sense of having decided for themselves, and feel stronger for it.

Yes, humans can make choices that make them better. Improved nutrition of mother and child can make humans stronger, smarter, taller, and sometimes capable of clearer thought. But a power structure that attempts to legislate morality, to engineer the moral and ideological purity of the human souls of its citizens -- that power structure is morally bankrupt, and deserves to die quickly. If it is allowed to continue, its leaders will eventually decide that the recalcitrant citizens do not deserve the benefit of the leaders' great wisdom. Then, beware.

This question has been acquiring an ever greater urgency over the past century -- even longer. It is now coming to a head in the demographic and economic crises of many of the world's most advanced nations. A culture that has rested on its own laurels, that has comforted itself with mental images of its own progressive improvement, is soon to be reawakened to a coarse and unruly history.

Previously published at Al Fin blog.

Announcing a New Species of Human: Homo SubMarinari

Homo Submarinari is a species of human that is at home under the water. Submarinari will be born, raised, and make its life under the sea. Living in seafloor habitats, and traveling across oceans via high speed nuclear submarines, Submarinari feels more comfortable under the sea.

It is important that Submarinari be born into the water, and learn to dive and swim from the earliest days of life. Early training allows for rapid development of competence, confidence, and comfort in the full immersion environment.

External air supplies and re-breathers will be necessary in the earliest stages of Submarinari evolution, but simple genetic engineering of "neo-gills" will eventually allow Submarinari to dispose of technological breathing apparatus.

Homo Sapiens has already evolved into sub-species that are adapted to particular terrestrial environments -- the Innuit, the Andeans, Himalayans, various tropical strains . . . So there is nothing different about Submarinari in that regard -- except perhaps in the use of genetic engineering to solve problems unique to the undersea environment.

Expect similar speciation and subspeciation phenomena to occur as humans move permanently into outer space.

H/T ImpactLab