The advantage
If our bodies purpose is to propagate our genes, then there must be some correlation between the advantage of genes and their species' behavior.
As far as a gene is concerned, its alleles are its deadly rivals, but other genes are just a part of its environment, comparable to temperature, food, predators, or companions. The effect of the gene depends on its environment, and this includes other genes. Sometimes a gene has one effect in the presence of a particular other gene, and a completely different effect in the presence of another set of companion genes. The whole set of genes in a body constitutes a kind og genetic climate or background, modifying and influencing the effects of any particular gene.
But now we seem to have a paradox. If building a baby is such an intricate cooperative venture, and if every gene needs several thousands of fellow genes to complete its task, how can we reconcile this with my picture of indivisible genes, springing like immortal chamois from body to body down the ages: the free, untrammeled, and self-seeking agents of life? Was that all nonsense? Not at all. I may have got a bit carried away with the purple passages, but I was not talking nonsense, and there is no real paradox. We can explain this by means of another analogy.
One oarsman on hi sown cannot win the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. He needs eight colleagues. Each one is a specialist who always sits in a particular part of the boat--bow or stroke or cox etc. Rowing the boat is a cooperative venture, but some men are nevertheless better at it than others. Suppose a coach has to choose his ideal crew from a pool of candidates, some specializing in the bow position, others specializing as cox, and so on. Suppose that he make his selection as follows. Every day he puts together three new trial crews, by random shuffling of the candidates for each position, and he makes the three crews race against each other. After some weeks of this it will start to emerge that the winning boat often tends to contain the same individual men. These are marked up as good oarsmen. Other individuals seem consistently to be found in slower crews, and these are eventually rejected. But even an outstandingly good oarsman might sometimes be a member of a slow crew either because of the inferiority of the other members, or because of bad luck--say a strong adverse wind. It is only on average that the best men tend to be in the winning boat.
The oarsmen are genes. The rivals for each seat in the boat are alleles potentially capable of occupying the same slot along the length of a chromosome. Rowing fast corresponds to building a body which is successful at surviving. The wind is the external environment. The pool of alternative candidates is the gene pool. As far as the survival of any one body is concerned, all its genes are in the same boat. Many a good gene gets into bad company, and finds itself sharing a body with a lethal gene which kills the body off in childhood. Then the good gene is destroyed along with the rest. But this is only one body, and replicas of the same good gene live on in other bodies which lack the lethal gene. Many copies of good genes are dragged under because they happen to share a body with bad genes, and many perish through other forms of ill luck, say when their body is struck by lightning. But by definition luck, good and bad, strikes at random, and a gene that is consistently on the losing side is not unlucky; it is a bad gene.
One of the qualities of a good oarsman is teamwork, the ability to fit in and cooperate with the rest of a crew. This may be just as important as strong muscles. As we saw in the case of the butterflies, natural selection may unconsciously 'edit' a gene complex by means of inversions and other gross movements of bits of chromosome, thereby bringing genes that cooperate well together into closely linked groups. But there is also a sense in which genes which are in no way linked to each other physically can be selected for their mutual compatibility. A gene that cooperates well with most of the other genes that it is likely to meet in successive bodies, i.e. the genes in the whole of the rest of the gene pool, will tend to have an advantage.
For example, a number of attributes are desirable in an efficient carnivore's body, among them sharp cutting teeth, the right kind of intestine for digesting meat, and many other things. An efficient herbivore, on the other hand, needs flat grinding teeth, and a much longer intestine with a different kind of digestive chemistry. In a herbivore gene pool, any new gene that conferred on its possessors sharp meat-eating teeth would not be very successful. This is not because meat-eating is universally a bad idea, but because you cannot efficiently eat meat unless you also have the right sort of intestine, and all the other attributes of a meat-eating way of life. Genes for sharp, meat-eating teeth are not inherently bad genes. They are only bad genes in a gene-pool that is dominated by genes for herbivorous qualities.
This is a subtle, complicated idea. It is complicated because the 'environment' of a gene consists largely of other genes, each of which is itself being selected for its ability to cooperate with its environment of other genes.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Definitions
One can choose what to do, but not what to want.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A direct translation reads: der mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. Or man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills. That much is true and we've developed more problems by restraining our will or the will of others.
Let's consider a sample of people who've experienced trauma. In a study, those who had something to hide had a greater frequency of health problems. And...
Follow-up surveys conducted with other participants showed that health problems seemed to ensue only when people who were traumatized early in life failed to tell other of their experience. The studies indicate that victims of traumas who do reveal their thoughts and feelings to others tend to feel awful during the confession--but show measurable improvements in immune function and general health, as well as reduced physiological signs of stress, in the months that follow.
Daniel M. Wegner, White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts
These are quite often those who were sexually repressed and abused. Yes, very very unfortunate and disgusting, but important in what it says about how we function: the freedom of self-expression is pivotal to our health.
Yet, between the legal, religious, and social influences of society, we've become discomforted by our own thoughts and individual beauties. In turn, we isolate our self from the judgement and criticism of others and "escape" reality by indulging in the entertainment of a more pleasant perspective.
Or, some of us sample the severity of our circumstances (horror movies, news, etc) to justify their lack of social participation. They feel connected to the truths of reality. Still, the fact that millions of people work a quarter of their lives to escape from "pressures" of society, it's indicative of social decline.
We're an absolutely fantastic and absurdly gorgeous existence. Why escape it?
Instead, we should be committed to mutually satisfying activities: sex being one of them. It's atrocious that we restrain those interested in pleasuring others as a means of self satisfaction. There's no reason to guilt or label criminal those who benefit another's existence.
Meanwhile, war and torture remains legal.
Not to mention, our law raises capital for both opponents in conflict. For instance, the laws prohibiting drugs are supported by our taxes. Then there's those who will pay the production costs and any additional costs necessary to evade the law.
It's the taxes, evasion, and additional losses (life, liberty, etc) that determines the total cost of established law. Our laws create economies, that's the optimistic perspective, but it's more blissful than anything. Yay! Millions of consumers travel to cities with fewer legal and social consequence to spend their hard-earned paychecks on inflated prices which wouldn't exist if not due to their own taxes.
But but but... the economy has importance to our society and there's a difference between prohibition and regulation. The difference is the money we spend supporting it. And if it becomes a substantial cost, then it's possible that we're holding our people to unrealistic standards.
Maybe we're not creating a dream, but a nightmare. Where we're surrounded by bureaucracy and restraint labeled as freedom; that we're free to be what's chosen for us. Until we're living a paradigm that's peppered with the illusion of choice. A labyrinth of production with the tease of escape; is that what we've become?
It feels like it. And if we're to return to something healthier standard, then we should live by an ideal:
To treat others as they want to be treated.
It's not the same as do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It accounts for their perspective and requires the effort of understanding their opinion. A person should be allowed to experience anything, under the provision that it doesn't inhibit the livelihood of others.
It's the liberty to live. It's being empathetic to those who give empathy to us. That's what's healthy for us; that's freedom.
Beyond definition
I believe in paradise.
It's not another realm of...
What would you call it?
Bliss and existence.
It's seeing what's already there. Hearing, touching, and feeling the world before us.
"Let there be light"
There's beauty in our perspective, how we survive amidst the chaos.
We simplify it. We define our perception of existence and categorize it into subjects like psychology, astrology, religion, emotion, and law. Nature is our definition of existence.
It's generalizing the properties of existence.
To some, it's the belief in its function. That we must sacrifice our self to it. That if we have faith in it to function as it would, to it's own accord, then there'll be paradise waiting for us.
Not me, I believe in us. That we create paradise in others. It's our hugs, love, handshakes, and kisses that give us purpose. The rest is landscape. The setting of our lives we spend time trying to shape.
It's frivolous.
We need companionship.
Our species doesn't survive as a result of our own capacities, but from the combination of our varied capacities. And more importantly, that we collectively resolve our individual struggles.
Together, we release the burden of the chaos. It's in our darkest of days that they give us our light.
"All for one and one for all"
It's difficult to account for every perspective. And if there's a hierarchy, as there tends to be, then forget it.
Which is why electing a single person to represent our collective perspectives has its disadvantages. There's no doubt that representatives had a useful function when we didn't have the technology to quantify our logic. Or the scientific evidence to prove our perspectives, but that time has past.
Then there's these ancient writings which deduce all perspectives into one. The absolute definition of nature; the creator of everything. It's a convincing and metaphorical personification of nature, but nonetheless, a deduction of perspective.
Our advantage is lost when our behavior is deduced to a limited perspective of nature.
Futhermore, we've been seduced into believing that in order to prevent the tragedy of the commons, we must own a piece of the world. That we're the creators of chaos at ends with our family and friends.
That's their dream: we need a landscape to own.
They stand to profit off it's sale. With every purchase goes to them. Everything we buy is marked-up slave labor. And if we slave away to buy from slaves, what does that make us?
Slaves, lacking an abundance of love and affection. We work for the landscape and buy into our insecurities. That we're ugly, getting old, and we'll die without anything to show for it. Just make it pretty, that'll fix it. Buy something, that'll give us value.
We need our own because it make us worth something. Anything! We're stuck in our heads, unable to express our thoughts. We need walls because nobody gets us. That if we make our own and provide for our children, that we'll have something. There's an option; own more, be important. Except those kids want stimulus and we don't have the time or money. Nobody will provide for them but us. We want them to be safe and healthy, they are proof of our self.
We need to own.
We've taught and learned that perspective.
But all we need is love.
Something that can't be bought.
"It's mine"
The nature of ownership is false. We don't own anything.
It's been burned into our minds, we can own everything, even each other. Get married, own another person's sexuality in exchange for a legally binding share of property.
That can't be right, can it?
Nah! Marriage is about love and the license to prove it. Who really cares about the proportions of property dispersment? Or why some stay committed to a loveless relationship? Or why we give incentives to those who participate in the institution? While homosexual and polyphilia-based relationships don't maintain the integrity of single person ownership. Which means they might share with too many people. They won't have to buy as much. Oh shit! That's down-right criminal. Not to mention dangerous to our economy.
Ah well, they're a minority. Their perspective doesn't count.
We'd like to think we own things, that we can control our locale through ownership. To be without chaos. To be at peace. We bend existence to our perspective, an accord of our own vision. No traffic or death. No waiting in line with the strangers, each and every one of them scheming against us.
Existence will always behave to its own accord, that's something we must accept.
No matter what neighborhood we buy a house in, we can still be robbed, killed, and burned to the ground. Life is temporary, but a thief will always exist if we can steal. Not that these things we own will hold their value very long; it too is temporary. All of it returning it's energy back to the realm of existence.
Everything is temporary.
Nothing belongs to me.
And I will share with my brothers and sisters. I will share with a thief. As there is nothing that separates me from them. I will make paradise among chaos.
We're here in observation of existence.
And it's my nature to make it more pleasant.