SURVIVAL OF THE SPECIES
THE BASIS FOR A SUSTAINABLE MORAL CODE
The search for a universal
God is as old as humanity. Ethnic, geographic, and ideological loyalties have
frustrated that effort. Inevitably, the creation of a religion evolves a
theology that fractures into sects. The WORD acquires multiple meanings. I
believe that Darwin offers a solution, now clarified by genetics: Survival of
the species provides the sustainable basis for ethics and morality that all
may, indeed must, embrace.
Two domains direct behavior:
biological and intellectual. Each influences the other. Genome define biology
and the nervous system hosts the intellect that various biological
relationships induce. The genome developed through natural selection and the
genes promulgate the result of that competition. What succeeds is passed on to
the next generation. Some scientists quip that the competition is in the gene
pool. The body merely provides the host for the genes. The altered genes must
reproduce themselves.
Darwin's critical discovery
in this context does not often appear in discussions of natural selection.
Inter-species competition may reduce the ability of the species to adapt. The
most prominent examples are arms races. Male animals that compete for harems
evolve things like huge antlers that weigh them down and get tangled in brush.
If antler size was restricted, the competition would not change and the species
would be better off.
Given the critical role of
the genome, biological behavior must embrace survival of the species, the
ability to adapt to an environment. Had the intellect drawn that conclusion,
technology would not be employed in ways that damage the earth's ability to
provide the environment our genome requires. Natural selection takes huge
amounts of time to alter the genes. Technology moves too quickly.
Arms races do not foster
biological or social evolution. They usually resorts to murder or exploitation.
Natural selection does not follow a philosophy or moral ethic outside of
efficiency. Critically, it cannot distinguish a short-term from a long-term
adaptation in the short term. If the short-term adaptation uses up the
resources needed for the long term, the species disappears. The intellect
provides the ability to distinguish long-term from short-term adaptations. It
will not make that effort absent a moral imperative based on survival of the
species.
Treating the genome as God,
the commandment that we must obey, reflects more than a metaphor. The intellect
carries the burden of identifying what serves survival. Under that commandment,
we would employ technology differently. The short-term solutions favored by
most technologies result in adaptations to the wrong thing, like making money.
If Darwin proved anything, it was that those who adapt to the wrong thing do
not survive. The most dramatic example is the use of water, the most critical
resource now in danger of exhaustion. No technology can replace it.
Before technology we could
only use rainfall stored in rivers and lakes and shallow wells. Modern pumps go
down miles and, at great costs, bring up water stored for centuries. We now
mine instead of harvest. We adapt to the pump instead of the rainfall. When the
aquifers have been sucked dry, the problem of adapting to a world without water
will prove beyond the scope of the intellect.
See, Natural Selection's
Paradox: The Outlaw Gene, the Religion of Money, and the Origin of Evil , by Carter Stroud, for the
bases of these assertions and related matters.
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