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Dawkin's Guppies


pagetheoracle

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The point on Guppies in The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins, made me wonder if he’d applied the same data to the human population as it might explain class structure as not only a survival mechanism but an explanation of its enhancement of civilization: Larger, healthier, better off adults, with time to contemplate the nature of reality and reinvent it where necessary, unlike those driven purely by survival because of predatory competition at their level of existence (longer lived, less need for reproduction as individuals, to replace losses, unlike those living hand-to-mouth, with infant mortality - toe hold on reality, therefore less knowledgeable and more defensive because of this: The idle rich with time to experiment with life and observe its workings - hence monasteries leading to discoveries too (quiet seats of learning and contemplation).

 

Those at the bottom are fixated with the body and survival as those at the top have more time to investigate ideas (the mind). Noise, action and aggression through pressure, all go together at the bottom end as silence, stillness and peace through lack of disturbance, allow for gainful insight at the top end.

 

The growth of intelligence equals less need to breed, through better survival rates (longevity of the individual). Lower intelligence equals higher mortality rates and therefore greater need to breed, in order to replace losses (dying young). Francis Galton's idea of deliberate breeding (eugenics) is pointless because of this as that is not what nature is trying to teach us about the situation. Those involved in hard, physical labour are more likely to have accidents because of their work or suffer illness because of the substances they handle and being worn down by such monumental effort that they die young. They will also not have the time or energy to spend contemplating the world around them as those in less labour intensive situations do.

 

Arrival anywhere creates chaos and confusion (novices) but time brings order and clarity (veterans). This is the top and bottom of society in roles that explains their place and position. These are the roles of settlers and pioneers (presence, building, crowds as opposed to exploration of the new by individuals, living in solitude, cut off from the rest of society by their individual pursuits). Science is the slowing down and observation of reality, taking it apart to understand its components as life is putting those pieces together again, to make them work (think of how a mechanic is taught to take apart a car engine, then put it back together again). It is the princess and the pea phenomena: Things exist but not everybody senses them or makes sense of them, in relation to the speed they are moving at. Speed is free energy – enthralment is bound energy (attention). This is how we learn. This is how we control reality. We see it in evolution and devolution of the person as in the growth of the body from a few cells, to its decay in old age. We also see it in the mind from that of the unknowing but curious child to the old person, who has seen it all before and whose mind has abandoned this world through dementia. We see it in primitive machines that become more complex with time as Daniel Dennett observed.

 

It is all waves of particles (social growth, through individual effort), indicating a link to physics and life in general that I at least can see. It happens because of an optimistic attitude that is not afraid to face anything or tackle anything and is never overwhelmed by the size or amount of its tasks (a successful juggler). Pessimism is the opposite and this links to spirituality in that growth comes from the former and death from the latter. Professor Hans Rosling of Gapminder is an optimist for this reason and so am I. The UN has also found that educated women produce fewer children and this echoes Rosling's findings on population growth and again harks back to the guppies point above. Like in Star Trek II, I believe Man will be able to reproduce life and will conquer the stars (Stephen Hawking believes this too).

 

It's all about controlled environments, from city states, monasteries, academia etc. where peace reigns and ideas can spring to life or life itself grow in a protective field (womb, cell, egg, seed, planet). In human civilization when agriculture took over from hunter-gathering societies, this stability allowed the industrial revolution then to grow. Peace allows diversity to occur as war enforces conformism (Think of this with regards to species variation as opposed to gene wars).

I'm trying to point out that there are reasons for everything and that at the end of the day, they are pretty logical (At the time they may not make sense because of the flurry of excitement but afterwards, when calm returns, it then becomes more clear.

 

By the way, this is not Social Darwinism as somebody once accused me of because the facts remain the same - mind and body in the individual, managers and workers in society. It is not saying that one is better than the other but that they are differentiated because they perform different tasks (See Susan Cain's book "Quiet" which follows on from Jung's definition of extroverts and introverts, which ties in with this division of labour and how it is related to age (the old turning in as a consequence of slowing down and youth, turning out as a consequence of wonder i.e.growing connection with the physical world and exploration of possibilities: Geeks and Jocks).

Edited by pagetheoracle
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This is nice but it has all changed / changing faster than we accounted for (that is aristocracies are falling). Used to be word of mouth, books, libraries, news, then electronics came along and WOW we as humans are pretty much done. That "difference" of status in society will slowly dwindle into what the Star Trek fans have been wishing for. Strange though: I don't have me own spaceship yet, and I haven't met any aliens...So my advice is, get prepared for boredom on mass. Unless we can figure out a way to pay our kids for doing doodles we got alot more to think about than just population growth. What we need to be thinking about is a method to convince the astute to abstain from over inventing to the point that there are no creative spells left to conjure. Mathematically speaking, information is usually thought of as tending to chaos (as Boltzman's own chaoes showed us), but in reality, it actually tend too order. The problem with order is that it is nothing more than the canvas holding the painting...something new has too happen.

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Chaos is the natural state of the arrival of the new as order follows it, when the chance occurs to create that (Think of mail's arrival at the sorting office).

 

I remember a book twenty or thirty years ago, called 'As Man Becomes Machine.' Perhaps we are changing into cyborgs as in Star Trek, Terminator, Robocop etc?

 

Where's your spaceship? Probably still waiting to be built like mine is

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