Fascists, Left, Right, and Muslim al share a hatred and fear of "The People." The Left wants to control the masses by controlling and micro-managing every aspect of society so people are slotted into a tightly controlled enviornment in which they will re-act according to the social engineering feats of the enlightened, i.e. those who are at the top of the Left hierarchy, the party or some such. And the Right, they demand more police surveillance, more prisons, more churches, stricker schools, more disciplinary parenting, more military and paramilitary force. The Islamic fascists want to impose shari'a laws on the entire world, the law that regulates every aspect of ones behaviour, right down to the number of times one must shave around ones anus before prayers.

We see an alliance between the Left fascists who act as self-willed dhimmis to the fascist Molsem movement in the West, not only paying jizya, the protection money in the form of foreign aid and such but the Left go so far as to actively promote the fascist Islamic agenda by progagating Islam as a viable ideology in the West, working for Islamic rule and the imposition of Islamic laws in the West, as witnessed by the struggles on-going in canada to create shari'a courts in Ontario. We see massive protests against Western intervention in fascist enclaves such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and if there are more interventios we will see more protests.

But it's not simply the Left who act as agents of the fascist Moslems, it is also the Right, like George W. Bush who keeps insisting against all empirical and rational evidence to the contrary, evidence one has to be willfully blind to ignore, that Islam is not interested in anything other than world domination, as it has been since its inception. Maybe it's a matter of oil profits, though that seems incredibly stupid to agrue given that the wars against Islam aren't producing any oil, and that if the West wanted the oil in the Middle Eat it could easily take it for basically for free. More likely is that the powers of the Right feel an affinity for the fascist religiousity of Moslems, confusing Islamic religious fervour with religious fervour of Buddista and Baptists, thinking all religions are alike, and not recognizing that islam is not a religion but a poigion, and a fascist poligion at that.
\r\n \r\nBut wherever it comes from, dhimmitude in the West stems from a hatred of the mass of people being independent in themselves. The fascist urge to control those who they hate and fear, the majority, the masses, the rabble, the demos, is permanent in the lives of men. We must constantly battle for freedom and individual libverties against those who wish to impose one or another style of fascist control on those "below" them.\r\n\r\n \r\nIn the two articles below we\'ll look at a book review on E.O Wilson\'s Consilience, which we\'ve written about here before, and a counter to that thesis by a socialist who argues that total control by the socialist Left is a good thing, and that more control is better.\r\n\r\n \r\nWe might want to examine our intuitions in light of real, biological conditions of people, not simply dismiss them as Social Darwinist or Nazi eugenic pseudo-science that we hubristically replace with post-modernist nihilism and moral and cultural relativity. some times one can assume that science has some insights we actually benefit from morally. sometimes, to control ones mind rationally leads to brilliant intuitive insights that in turn make science even more vreative than it is already. The problem with the fascist micro-management and fear of the people is that they cannot accept the independence ot the masses. all of our current fascist forces are in alliance today to control and destroy rational inquiries, to turn back the progress of Humanity to the pre-revolutionary times of the feudal ages. If we look at the world as it is we will see the forces of fascism working diligently to destroy Human freedom wherever they can.\r\n\r\n \r\nIt is a dhimmi project, especially in Europe today, to recreate the feudal era. To do so society must be made irrational. Here is some insight into the world of scientific reason, and also a step that could, if left unchecked by cautious people, lead to a fascism of its own sort.\r\n",1]
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But wherever it comes from, dhimmitude in the West stems from a hatred of the mass of people being independent in themselves. The fascist urge to control those who they hate and fear, the majority, the masses, the rabble, the demos, is permanent in the lives of men. We must constantly battle for freedom and individual libverties against those who wish to impose one or another style of fascist control on those "below" them.

In the two articles below we'll look at a book review on E.O Wilson's Consilience, which we've written about here before, and a counter to that thesis by a socialist who argues that total control by the socialist Left is a good thing, and that more control is better.

We might want to examine our intuitions in light of real, biological conditions of people, not simply dismiss them as Social Darwinist or Nazi eugenic pseudo-science that we hubristically replace with post-modernist nihilism and moral and cultural relativity. some times one can assume that science has some insights we actually benefit from morally. sometimes, to control ones mind rationally leads to brilliant intuitive insights that in turn make science even more vreative than it is already. The problem with the fascist micro-management and fear of the people is that they cannot accept the independence ot the masses. all of our current fascist forces are in alliance today to control and destroy rational inquiries, to turn back the progress of Humanity to the pre-revolutionary times of the feudal ages. If we look at the world as it is we will see the forces of fascism working diligently to destroy Human freedom wherever they can.

It is a dhimmi project, especially in Europe today, to recreate the feudal era. To do so society must be made irrational. Here is some insight into the world of scientific reason, and also a step that could, if left unchecked by cautious people, lead to a fascism of its own sort.
\r\n***\r\n \r\nEdward Wilson - Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge\r\n Edward O. Wilson is used to stirring up controversy. A world-famous biologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, named by Time magazine as one of America\'s 25 most influential people of the 20th century, this mild-mannered, courtly southerner has been raising hackles for much of his career. With \r\nConsilience, in which he proposes a bold explanation of the nature of the world and everything in it, the author of Sociobiology\r\n will once again arouse passionate debate. \r\nWilson\'s premise in Consilience is that a common body of inherent principles underlies the entire human endeavor. "I believe that the Enlightenment thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries got it mostly right the first time," he says. They assumed a lawful, perfectible material world in which knowledge is unified across the sciences and the humanities. Wilson calls this common groundwork of explanation that crosses all the great branches of learning "consilience," and he argues that we can indeed explain everything in the world through an understanding of a handful of natural laws. \r\nThe world he envisions is a material world that is organized by laws of physics and evolves according to the laws of evolution. \r\nWilson makes his point through a fascinating tour through the Enlightenment and the age of scientific specialization. Among his bugaboos are "professional atomization," which works against the unification of knowledge, and cultural relativism ("what counts most in the long haul of history is seminality, not sentiment"). In examining how a few underlying physical principles can explain everything from the \r\n",1]
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***

Edward Wilson - Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge Edward O. Wilson is used to stirring up controversy. A world-famous biologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, named by Time magazine as one of America's 25 most influential people of the 20th century, this mild-mannered, courtly southerner has been raising hackles for much of his career. With Consilience, in which he proposes a bold explanation of the nature of the world and everything in it, the author of Sociobiology will once again arouse passionate debate.
Wilson's premise in Consilience is that a common body of inherent principles underlies the entire human endeavor. "I believe that the Enlightenment thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries got it mostly right the first time," he says. They assumed a lawful, perfectible material world in which knowledge is unified across the sciences and the humanities. Wilson calls this common groundwork of explanation that crosses all the great branches of learning "consilience," and he argues that we can indeed explain everything in the world through an understanding of a handful of natural laws.
The world he envisions is a material world that is organized by laws of physics and evolves according to the laws of evolution.
Wilson makes his point through a fascinating tour through the Enlightenment and the age of scientific specialization. Among his bugaboos are "professional atomization," which works against the unification of knowledge, and cultural relativism ("what counts most in the long haul of history is seminality, not sentiment"). In examining how a few underlying physical principles can explain everything from the
Thoughtful readers with an interest in the future should consider Wilson\'s plea. This consilience of the natural sciences and the social sciences could equip future humankind with the analytical and predictive capacity to deal with the many changes wrought by humanity\'s recent global hegemony and, thereby, help "preserve the Creation." -- Harry E. Demarest \r\nThe San Francisco Chronicle \r\n\r\n\r\nDivisive Ideas on \'Unification\'Los Angeles Times, Thursday, July 9, 1998 \r\nWhen Edward O. Wilson has a new idea, people listen--and then start fighting. A distinguished professor emeritus of biology at Harvard University and recognized as perhaps the world\'s leading authority on ants, Wilson opened a new field of science in the 1970s with his book \r\nSociobiology. It argued that social animals, including humans, behave largely according to rules written in their very genes. The theory sparked controversy because it not only appeared to contradict cherished beliefs about free will, but also, according to critics, harked back to racist ideologies charging that some human groups were biologically superior to others. Harvard students called for his ouster and protesters once soaked him with a pitcher of water at a symposium. Wilson and others have defended and refined sociobiology over the years to such a point that it is now a dictionary word, and a new generation of so-called evolutionary psychologists accept it as given. Now 69, Wilson has a new, potentially path-breaking book, \r\nConsilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which has placed him at the center of debate and controversy once again. Some scholars have praised it as "bold" and "provocative," while others have lambasted it as intellectually shaky and a right-wing treatise disguised as science. A rather strange word--it does not appear in \r\n",1]
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birth of stars to the workings of social institutions to a Mondrian painting, he offers fresh insight into what it means to be human.
Thoughtful readers with an interest in the future should consider Wilson's plea. This consilience of the natural sciences and the social sciences could equip future humankind with the analytical and predictive capacity to deal with the many changes wrought by humanity's recent global hegemony and, thereby, help "preserve the Creation." -- Harry E. Demarest The San Francisco Chronicle
Divisive Ideas on 'Unification'Los Angeles Times, Thursday, July 9, 1998
When Edward O. Wilson has a new idea, people listen--and then start fighting. A distinguished professor emeritus of biology at Harvard University and recognized as perhaps the world's leading authority on ants, Wilson opened a new field of science in the 1970s with his book Sociobiology. It argued that social animals, including humans, behave largely according to rules written in their very genes. The theory sparked controversy because it not only appeared to contradict cherished beliefs about free will, but also, according to critics, harked back to racist ideologies charging that some human groups were biologically superior to others. Harvard students called for his ouster and protesters once soaked him with a pitcher of water at a symposium. Wilson and others have defended and refined sociobiology over the years to such a point that it is now a dictionary word, and a new generation of so-called evolutionary psychologists accept it as given. Now 69, Wilson has a new, potentially path-breaking book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which has placed him at the center of debate and controversy once again. Some scholars have praised it as "bold" and "provocative," while others have lambasted it as intellectually shaky and a right-wing treatise disguised as science. A rather strange word--it does not appear in
Webster\'s New World Dictionary--"consilience" was coined in the last century and refers to long-separated fields of inquiry that come together and create new insights. For instance, the marriage of chemistry and genetics this century created the powerful new science of molecular biology, the basis of genetic engineering. The controversy surrounds Wilson\'s belief that all human endeavor, from religious feeling to financial markets to fine arts, is ripe for explaining by hard science. Philosophers and artists bristle at what Wilson calls his "unification agenda"--his attempt to show, as he put it, that "the greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of science and the humanities." Here are excerpts of his conversation with Times medical writer Terence Monmaney. \r\nQUESTION: Would you point to a concrete example of consilience in action? \r\nANSWER: The one that I would cite is incest avoidance in human beings. I believe the evidence shows persuasively that the original Freudian view of the origin of the incest taboo is incorrect--that some people have an overpowering urge to commit incest and cultures have created this taboo in response. It turns out to be just the reverse of that. The evidence indicates that it is due to the innate aversion to sex that arises from the so-called Westermarck effect--namely, individuals who are intimately associated during the first 30 months of life are desensitized to later close sexual bonding. All of the nonhuman primate species that have been examined for development of sexual preference also show this Westermarck effect. . . . It also explains the interactions of what we presume are genes underlying this rule of inhibition or desensitization. Note that if children are reared apart during the first 30 months or more of their lives and then brought back together again, they would have no barrier to forming sexual bonds, except being told that this is prohibited by custom and law. And then this fits very well with what we know in exact detail about the deleterious effects of inbreeding. When you marry or when you have a child with someone who\'s very closely related, then the chances are greatly increased that you will bring into juxtaposition rare genes in the population that cause genetic disease. So here we have an example of an understanding of what\'s going on at the level of the gene in human genetics, and leading up to and explaining how a certain psychological mechanism developed in the brain, which in turn provides an explanation to a wide range of phenomena concerning sexual preference, incest avoidance and all of the various myths and laws and religious prohibitions connected thereto. \r\n",1]
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Webster's New World Dictionary--"consilience" was coined in the last century and refers to long-separated fields of inquiry that come together and create new insights. For instance, the marriage of chemistry and genetics this century created the powerful new science of molecular biology, the basis of genetic engineering. The controversy surrounds Wilson's belief that all human endeavor, from religious feeling to financial markets to fine arts, is ripe for explaining by hard science. Philosophers and artists bristle at what Wilson calls his "unification agenda"--his attempt to show, as he put it, that "the greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of science and the humanities." Here are excerpts of his conversation with Times medical writer Terence Monmaney.
QUESTION: Would you point to a concrete example of consilience in action?
ANSWER: The one that I would cite is incest avoidance in human beings. I believe the evidence shows persuasively that the original Freudian view of the origin of the incest taboo is incorrect--that some people have an overpowering urge to commit incest and cultures have created this taboo in response. It turns out to be just the reverse of that. The evidence indicates that it is due to the innate aversion to sex that arises from the so-called Westermarck effect--namely, individuals who are intimately associated during the first 30 months of life are desensitized to later close sexual bonding. All of the nonhuman primate species that have been examined for development of sexual preference also show this Westermarck effect. . . . It also explains the interactions of what we presume are genes underlying this rule of inhibition or desensitization. Note that if children are reared apart during the first 30 months or more of their lives and then brought back together again, they would have no barrier to forming sexual bonds, except being told that this is prohibited by custom and law. And then this fits very well with what we know in exact detail about the deleterious effects of inbreeding. When you marry or when you have a child with someone who's very closely related, then the chances are greatly increased that you will bring into juxtaposition rare genes in the population that cause genetic disease. So here we have an example of an understanding of what's going on at the level of the gene in human genetics, and leading up to and explaining how a certain psychological mechanism developed in the brain, which in turn provides an explanation to a wide range of phenomena concerning sexual preference, incest avoidance and all of the various myths and laws and religious prohibitions connected thereto.
Q: You say in your book that ethics is everything. Can science not only shed light on existing ethics, but also create new ethics? \r\nA: The best example of that is the development of the environmental ethic. When we talk about the physical environment we now know with increasing precision what it is that we\'re doing to it. And we also have ways mathematically of projecting population trends so we\'ll know roughly what the population will be around the world, and what the impacts are on the environment country by country, region by region. I\'m reminded of what \r\nBertrand Russell once said about people\'s unwillingness to think about population growth. He said people would rather commit suicide than learn arithmetic. \r\nQ: In the past, when political leaders tried to engineer a society using their own understanding of scientific principles, the results were disastrous. So, many cultural historians and historians have a kind of natural reaction against people who try to harness science to public policy or to culture. \r\nA: They\'ve got the wrong target. It\'s not the science but the pseudoscience that political leaders and ideologues draw out of it. In the 20th century, the most awful case of pseudoscience, of course, was Nazi eugenics. And that was not a consequence of science being brought to bear honestly and squarely but rather a complete perversion of ideas about heredity that were false. So what we need is not to avoid more scientific research and understanding. What we need is more of it and to learn from the lessons of history how not to allow it to be perverted by ideologues to disastrous result. \r\nQ: Is there a way of saying, in a word, what you hope to accomplish with this theory of consilience? \r\n",1]
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Q: You say in your book that ethics is everything. Can science not only shed light on existing ethics, but also create new ethics?
A: The best example of that is the development of the environmental ethic. When we talk about the physical environment we now know with increasing precision what it is that we're doing to it. And we also have ways mathematically of projecting population trends so we'll know roughly what the population will be around the world, and what the impacts are on the environment country by country, region by region. I'm reminded of what Bertrand Russell once said about people's unwillingness to think about population growth. He said people would rather commit suicide than learn arithmetic.
Q: In the past, when political leaders tried to engineer a society using their own understanding of scientific principles, the results were disastrous. So, many cultural historians and historians have a kind of natural reaction against people who try to harness science to public policy or to culture.
A: They've got the wrong target. It's not the science but the pseudoscience that political leaders and ideologues draw out of it. In the 20th century, the most awful case of pseudoscience, of course, was Nazi eugenics. And that was not a consequence of science being brought to bear honestly and squarely but rather a complete perversion of ideas about heredity that were false. So what we need is not to avoid more scientific research and understanding. What we need is more of it and to learn from the lessons of history how not to allow it to be perverted by ideologues to disastrous result.
Q: Is there a way of saying, in a word, what you hope to accomplish with this theory of consilience?
A: Well, let me say it\'s not a theory. What I\'ve done is simply point out what the trends are in the increasing [blending] of the scientific disciplines. . . . We\'ve seen everything that we conventionally call biology and the natural sciences now linked with a web-work of cause-and-effect explanation running from particle physics all the way to ecosystem studies and the brain sciences. The idea of consilience, then, is simply an observation that this is what is happening, and a projection into the future that this will continue. It has a certain logic to it because now we are inclined to believe that the mind does have a material basis, that cultures are the result of large numbers of individuals who make decisions by means mediated through the activity of the brain. And that leads up to the most sublime human thinking and forms of creative art. Frankly I\'m rather surprised that this idea--or shall we say prophecy or projection--has met so much resistance. \r\nQ: You talk in your book about "volitional evolution" [or human genetic engineering] being perhaps one of the truly monumental things facing humanity in the very near future. What is your main concern? \r\nA: That people would, if they were allowed to engineer their own normal genes, rush ahead with disastrous decisions to do so. And here the key concept is pleiotropy, which means a gene having more than one effect. So-called normal genes might be identified only on the basis of one or two effects they have--the effect on, say, some kind of cognitive test or performance in sports or whatever. There might be a temptation to modify a gene like that to improve performance in one category, or even starting to put together combinations of genes so as to get a superior-type person--a math genius who was also a potential Olympic athlete. That sounds good on the surface, but then we don\'t know all the effects of those [genetic] changes. And until we do it would be dangerous to go ahead with gene engineering or volitional evolution in individual cases. Another problem with genetic engineering or volitional evolution of normal genes is that you\'re at risk of mucking around with the very essence of human nature. It might sound nice to start diminishing aggressive drive in young males, but what else are you taking out? Maybe the whole species\' innovative drive, the ability to rebel intellectually. Until we know more about [such phenomena] it would be dangerous to go ahead with gene engineering. \r\n",1]
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A: Well, let me say it's not a theory. What I've done is simply point out what the trends are in the increasing [blending] of the scientific disciplines. . . . We've seen everything that we conventionally call biology and the natural sciences now linked with a web-work of cause-and-effect explanation running from particle physics all the way to ecosystem studies and the brain sciences. The idea of consilience, then, is simply an observation that this is what is happening, and a projection into the future that this will continue. It has a certain logic to it because now we are inclined to believe that the mind does have a material basis, that cultures are the result of large numbers of individuals who make decisions by means mediated through the activity of the brain. And that leads up to the most sublime human thinking and forms of creative art. Frankly I'm rather surprised that this idea--or shall we say prophecy or projection--has met so much resistance.
Q: You talk in your book about "volitional evolution" [or human genetic engineering] being perhaps one of the truly monumental things facing humanity in the very near future. What is your main concern?
A: That people would, if they were allowed to engineer their own normal genes, rush ahead with disastrous decisions to do so. And here the key concept is pleiotropy, which means a gene having more than one effect. So-called normal genes might be identified only on the basis of one or two effects they have--the effect on, say, some kind of cognitive test or performance in sports or whatever. There might be a temptation to modify a gene like that to improve performance in one category, or even starting to put together combinations of genes so as to get a superior-type person--a math genius who was also a potential Olympic athlete. That sounds good on the surface, but then we don't know all the effects of those [genetic] changes. And until we do it would be dangerous to go ahead with gene engineering or volitional evolution in individual cases. Another problem with genetic engineering or volitional evolution of normal genes is that you're at risk of mucking around with the very essence of human nature. It might sound nice to start diminishing aggressive drive in young males, but what else are you taking out? Maybe the whole species' innovative drive, the ability to rebel intellectually. Until we know more about [such phenomena] it would be dangerous to go ahead with gene engineering.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nhttp://www.2think.org/hii/wilson.shtml \r\n \r\n***\r\nBelow we have a socialist rebuttal to some of the ideas above. The following thesis argues that man is a blank slate that social engineers can make perfect if only they are allowed to work their magic on the world population, after which time we will acheive paradise on Earth. \r\n\r\n \r\nWe face a civil war in the West between the adherents of neo-feudalist reaction from the Left, as below, the Right, and Islam. If we don\'t begin to grasp the nature of fascism and fight against it we might think it\'s a good thing after all, as the ignorant and moralistic dhimmis of Europe do, those who scream about American injustice and yet who have reinstituted capital punishment for "crimes" such as sodomy and adultery.\r\n\r\n \r\nBelow is a socialist ctirique that ties in with the ideas from Wislon above, and of Western Rationality in general.\r\n*** \r\nGenes for everything?\r\nPart I\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 biological determinism became a state ideology. This was to be its undoing, at least temporarily, as with the defeat of Germany more accurate views on human biology and behaviour came to the fore. Racism and eugenics were repudiated and it came to be recognised that human behaviour was socially and culturally, not biologically, determined. This was based on solid scientific research and was well expressed (apart from the then prevailing confusion of "human" and "man") by Kenneth Boulding in 1966: \r\n",1]
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http://www.2think.org/hii/wilson.shtml

***
Below we have a socialist rebuttal to some of the ideas above. The following thesis argues that man is a blank slate that social engineers can make perfect if only they are allowed to work their magic on the world population, after which time we will acheive paradise on Earth.

We face a civil war in the West between the adherents of neo-feudalist reaction from the Left, as below, the Right, and Islam. If we don't begin to grasp the nature of fascism and fight against it we might think it's a good thing after all, as the ignorant and moralistic dhimmis of Europe do, those who scream about American injustice and yet who have reinstituted capital punishment for "crimes" such as sodomy and adultery.

Below is a socialist ctirique that ties in with the ideas from Wislon above, and of Western Rationality in general.
***
Genes for everything?
Part I
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 biological determinism became a state ideology. This was to be its undoing, at least temporarily, as with the defeat of Germany more accurate views on human biology and behaviour came to the fore. Racism and eugenics were repudiated and it came to be recognised that human behaviour was socially and culturally, not biologically, determined. This was based on solid scientific research and was well expressed (apart from the then prevailing confusion of "human" and "man") by Kenneth Boulding in 1966:
\r\nIt is the great peculiarity of man, however, differentiating him from all the other animals, that what his genes endow him with is an enormous nervous system of some 10 billion components, the informational content of which is derived almost wholly from the environment, that is, from inputs into the organism from outside. The genetic contribution to man\'s nervous system is virtually complete at birth. Almost everything that happens thereafter is learned. It is this consideration which inspires the modern anthropologist to declare that man has virtually no instincts and that virtually everything he knows has to be learned from his environment, which consists both of the physical world in which he lives and moves and the social world into which he is born (in \r\nMan and Aggression, edited by MF Ashley Montagu, OUP, 1968, pp 86-87) .\r\nAnd endorsed by the anthropologist Ashley Montagu:\r\nThe notable thing about human behaviour is that it is learned. Everything a human being does as such he has had to learn from other human beings. From any dominance of biologically or inherited predetermined reactions that may prevail in the behaviour of other animals, man has moved into a zone of adaptation in which his behaviour is dominated by learned responses. It is within the dimension of culture, the learned, the man-made part of the environment that man grows, develops, and has his being as a behaving organism (p. xii, his emphasis). \r\n\r\nThis finding was never popular with those who supported class rule and capitalist privilege. It had implications which were too democratic, let alone too socialist, for them. In fact, it confirmed up to the hilt that the so-called "human nature objection" to socialism was completely unfounded: people could adapt to living in socialism, just as they had adapted to living in primitive tribal communism, ancient slave society, feudalism and capitalism. \r\n",1]
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It is the great peculiarity of man, however, differentiating him from all the other animals, that what his genes endow him with is an enormous nervous system of some 10 billion components, the informational content of which is derived almost wholly from the environment, that is, from inputs into the organism from outside. The genetic contribution to man's nervous system is virtually complete at birth. Almost everything that happens thereafter is learned. It is this consideration which inspires the modern anthropologist to declare that man has virtually no instincts and that virtually everything he knows has to be learned from his environment, which consists both of the physical world in which he lives and moves and the social world into which he is born (in Man and Aggression, edited by MF Ashley Montagu, OUP, 1968, pp 86-87) .
And endorsed by the anthropologist Ashley Montagu:
The notable thing about human behaviour is that it is learned. Everything a human being does as such he has had to learn from other human beings. From any dominance of biologically or inherited predetermined reactions that may prevail in the behaviour of other animals, man has moved into a zone of adaptation in which his behaviour is dominated by learned responses. It is within the dimension of culture, the learned, the man-made part of the environment that man grows, develops, and has his being as a behaving organism (p. xii, his emphasis).
This finding was never popular with those who supported class rule and capitalist privilege. It had implications which were too democratic, let alone too socialist, for them. In fact, it confirmed up to the hilt that the so-called "human nature objection" to socialism was completely unfounded: people could adapt to living in socialism, just as they had adapted to living in primitive tribal communism, ancient slave society, feudalism and capitalism.
\r\nSo, after leaving a respectable time for people\'s memories of Nazism to dim a little, the defenders of a muscular biological determinism began to make a reappearance. One of the first was the Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz,. A book he had written in German in 1963 was translated into English and published in 1966 under the title \r\nOn Aggression. In it he argued that humans were naturally aggressive, or, as he put it, that they were "phylogenetically programmed" for aggressive behaviour.\r\nIn a chapter entitled "The Spontaneity of Aggression", Lorenz claimed that aggression in humans was an internally-generated "drive" that was part of their genetically-inherited physiology: \r\n\r\nKnowing of the fact that the aggression drive is a true, primarily species-preserving instinct enables us to recognise its full danger: it is the spontaneity of the instinct that makes it so dangerous. If it were merely a reaction to certain external factors, as many sociologists and psychologists maintain, the state of mankind would not be so perilous as it really is, for, in that case, the reaction-eliciting factors could be eliminated with some hope of success ( \r\nOn Aggression, Methuen, 1969, p. 40).\r\nThis assertion was based on his own studies of non-human animals, mainly birds and fishes, and on his personal belief in Freud\'s view that "we are still driven by the same instincts as our prehuman ancestors". \r\n\r\nHis fellow scientists were highly critical of the book. They pointed out that in talking about "instincts" in humans he was having recourse to a notion long since discarded as unhelpful; that his view that there were "phylogenetically evolved patterns of social behaviour" in humans went against the evidence of anthropology and history; that it by no means followed that what applied to other animals therefore applied to humans; that in any event the behaviour he described as aggressive didn\'t apply to all animals; that even in those to which it did apply it was not always clear that it might not be learned. Some were cruel enough to remind him that he had disastrously misinterpreted the facts once before when in Nazi times had published a paper defending eugenics and "the racial idea as the basis of the state". \r\n",1]
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So, after leaving a respectable time for people's memories of Nazism to dim a little, the defenders of a muscular biological determinism began to make a reappearance. One of the first was the Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz,. A book he had written in German in 1963 was translated into English and published in 1966 under the title On Aggression. In it he argued that humans were naturally aggressive, or, as he put it, that they were "phylogenetically programmed" for aggressive behaviour.
In a chapter entitled "The Spontaneity of Aggression", Lorenz claimed that aggression in humans was an internally-generated "drive" that was part of their genetically-inherited physiology:
Knowing of the fact that the aggression drive is a true, primarily species-preserving instinct enables us to recognise its full danger: it is the spontaneity of the instinct that makes it so dangerous. If it were merely a reaction to certain external factors, as many sociologists and psychologists maintain, the state of mankind would not be so perilous as it really is, for, in that case, the reaction-eliciting factors could be eliminated with some hope of success ( On Aggression, Methuen, 1969, p. 40).
This assertion was based on his own studies of non-human animals, mainly birds and fishes, and on his personal belief in Freud's view that "we are still driven by the same instincts as our prehuman ancestors".
His fellow scientists were highly critical of the book. They pointed out that in talking about "instincts" in humans he was having recourse to a notion long since discarded as unhelpful; that his view that there were "phylogenetically evolved patterns of social behaviour" in humans went against the evidence of anthropology and history; that it by no means followed that what applied to other animals therefore applied to humans; that in any event the behaviour he described as aggressive didn't apply to all animals; that even in those to which it did apply it was not always clear that it might not be learned. Some were cruel enough to remind him that he had disastrously misinterpreted the facts once before when in Nazi times had published a paper defending eugenics and "the racial idea as the basis of the state".
\r\nOn the key issue of whether aggressive behaviour in humans was triggered in response to external factors or, as Lorenz asserted, in response to some internal "drive" that had to be "discharged", opinion (apart from a few die-hard Freudians) was unanimous: Lorenz had drawn the wrong conclusions from the facts. There was no "fighting instinct" or "aggression drive" in humans; aggressive behaviour in humans was triggered by external causes. This being so, the situation was not as dangerous as Lorenz had imagined since, on his own admission, this meant that these external aggression-eliciting factors could be eliminated "with some hope of success". \r\n\r\nAnother pioneer of this revival of Social Darwinism was the playwright and Hollywood scriptwriter Robert Ardrey whose The Territorial Imperative also appeared in 1966. He was followed by Desmond Morris in 1967 with his \r\nThe Naked Ape. Ardrey was writing explicitly as an anti-socialist, subtitling his book "A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations". His argument was that private property and the division of the world into competing states was natural. "The territorial nature of man is genetic and ineradicable", he wrote. The level of his argumentation can be judged from the following reply to those who said he was wrong about humans\' being genetically territorial: \r\n\r\nEither fence-lizards, Canadian beavers, prairie dogs, three-spined stickleback fish, howling monkeys, defiant wildebeest bulls, intolerant female cameleons, warblers in variety, and gulls in variety were wrong-or Karl Marx was wrong ( \r\nThe Hunting Hypothesis, Collins, 1976, p. 111).\r\nHe just took it for granted that what might be valid for the animals he trotted out to support his contention must therefore automatically be valid for humans too. In fact, it wasn\'t, as a key distinguishing factor of humans is that virtually all our behaviour is acquired and not governed by our genes. So, if humans did sometimes behave in a possessive or territorial or aggressive way--as undeniably they did and do--this was not because this was in their genes but because they had acquired it from the society in which they lived and its culture. In a different society, with a different culture, humans could adapt to behaving in non-possessive, non-territorial and non-aggressive ways. \r\n",1]
);
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On the key issue of whether aggressive behaviour in humans was triggered in response to external factors or, as Lorenz asserted, in response to some internal "drive" that had to be "discharged", opinion (apart from a few die-hard Freudians) was unanimous: Lorenz had drawn the wrong conclusions from the facts. There was no "fighting instinct" or "aggression drive" in humans; aggressive behaviour in humans was triggered by external causes. This being so, the situation was not as dangerous as Lorenz had imagined since, on his own admission, this meant that these external aggression-eliciting factors could be eliminated "with some hope of success".
Another pioneer of this revival of Social Darwinism was the playwright and Hollywood scriptwriter Robert Ardrey whose The Territorial Imperative also appeared in 1966. He was followed by Desmond Morris in 1967 with his The Naked Ape. Ardrey was writing explicitly as an anti-socialist, subtitling his book "A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations". His argument was that private property and the division of the world into competing states was natural. "The territorial nature of man is genetic and ineradicable", he wrote. The level of his argumentation can be judged from the following reply to those who said he was wrong about humans' being genetically territorial:
Either fence-lizards, Canadian beavers, prairie dogs, three-spined stickleback fish, howling monkeys, defiant wildebeest bulls, intolerant female cameleons, warblers in variety, and gulls in variety were wrong-or Karl Marx was wrong ( The Hunting Hypothesis, Collins, 1976, p. 111).
He just took it for granted that what might be valid for the animals he trotted out to support his contention must therefore automatically be valid for humans too. In fact, it wasn't, as a key distinguishing factor of humans is that virtually all our behaviour is acquired and not governed by our genes. So, if humans did sometimes behave in a possessive or territorial or aggressive way--as undeniably they did and do--this was not because this was in their genes but because they had acquired it from the society in which they lived and its culture. In a different society, with a different culture, humans could adapt to behaving in non-possessive, non-territorial and non-aggressive ways.
\r\nArdrey had already written a book African Genesis in 1961 in which he publicised the views of the anthropologist Raymond Dart, who had argued that humans were descended from a species of ape which, unlike apes up till then and unlike today\'s surviving apes, hunted other animals for meat in order to survive. Although Dart overstated his case, this view is now generally accepted. Ardrey returned to this theme in another book \r\nThe Hunting Hypothesis and proclaimed not only that we were descended from "killer apes" but that this was basically what we still were.\r\nThis was based on another fallacy. Just because we had evolved from animals which had been hunters didn\'t mean that this had become embedded in our genes; the end result of the evolution through such animals was another animal, one with a brain capable of allowing it, through abstract thinking and culture-acquisition, to adopt new behaviours and so to adapt its behaviour to a great variety of different ways of surviving. At the beginning we had indeed been hunters (and gatherers) but later were able to adapt to becoming farmers and herders and, today, to living and working in a society relying on industrial methods of production. \r\n\r\nContinued\r\n \r\n \r\nGenes for Everything\r\nPart II \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn describing humans as "naked apes" Desmond Morris completely missed the point. The first thing any zoologist studying us from the outside as just another animal (which was Morris\'s starting point) would have noticed is that most of the time we were not naked but clothed. The zoologist would then have had to investigate why, and would have discovered that we were an "ape" (or a "third chimpanzee" as another writer has put it) that was capable of fashioning parts of the rest of nature to provide an artificial substitute for the fur and hairs that nature had left us without. Once started down this road, the zoologist would have discovered that it wasn\'t just clothes that we were able to produce, but also most of the other things we needed, by having recourse to tools we had made to substitute for other biological features nature had left us without. The zoologist would have had to conclude that we were "clothed, toolmaking apes" and that this made such a difference that maybe we shouldn\'t be classified as apes at all but as an animal in our own right. This wasn\'t Morris\'s conclusion of course. His was that we were genetically still primitive hunters ill-adapted for living in modern society. \r\n",1]
);
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Ardrey had already written a book African Genesis in 1961 in which he publicised the views of the anthropologist Raymond Dart, who had argued that humans were descended from a species of ape which, unlike apes up till then and unlike today's surviving apes, hunted other animals for meat in order to survive. Although Dart overstated his case, this view is now generally accepted. Ardrey returned to this theme in another book The Hunting Hypothesis and proclaimed not only that we were descended from "killer apes" but that this was basically what we still were.
This was based on another fallacy. Just because we had evolved from animals which had been hunters didn't mean that this had become embedded in our genes; the end result of the evolution through such animals was another animal, one with a brain capable of allowing it, through abstract thinking and culture-acquisition, to adopt new behaviours and so to adapt its behaviour to a great variety of different ways of surviving. At the beginning we had indeed been hunters (and gatherers) but later were able to adapt to becoming farmers and herders and, today, to living and working in a society relying on industrial methods of production.
Continued


Genes for Everything
Part II
In describing humans as "naked apes" Desmond Morris completely missed the point. The first thing any zoologist studying us from the outside as just another animal (which was Morris's starting point) would have noticed is that most of the time we were not naked but clothed. The zoologist would then have had to investigate why, and would have discovered that we were an "ape" (or a "third chimpanzee" as another writer has put it) that was capable of fashioning parts of the rest of nature to provide an artificial substitute for the fur and hairs that nature had left us without. Once started down this road, the zoologist would have discovered that it wasn't just clothes that we were able to produce, but also most of the other things we needed, by having recourse to tools we had made to substitute for other biological features nature had left us without. The zoologist would have had to conclude that we were "clothed, toolmaking apes" and that this made such a difference that maybe we shouldn't be classified as apes at all but as an animal in our own right. This wasn't Morris's conclusion of course. His was that we were genetically still primitive hunters ill-adapted for living in modern society.
The Naked Ape was a huge commercial success selling over 8 million copies and launched Morris on a long and financially rewarding career as a purveyor of unscientific notions about humans to the general public.\r\n \r\nMorris\'s method was to seek out a constant behaviour pattern or psychological trait ("assembled by simple, direct observation of the most basic and widely shared behaviour patterns of the successful mainstream specimens from the major contemporary cultures") and to declare this to be part of humans\' inherited biological nature. However, just because one particular behaviour pattern could be identified as a constant of human behaviour in different times and places does not mean that it is therefore biologically determined. It could equally be the result of similar environmental conditions producing similar learned behaviours as a response. Not that it was easy for Morris to find behaviours that have been common to all humans at all times, so great has been the variety of human behaviour at different times and in different places. In the event, he had to resort to dismissing some forms of behaviour-such as the non-aggressive or non-possessive behaviour or equality between the sexes practised by some tribal societies-as eccentric or that of losers whose societies were failures. As he put it, such societies were "cultural backwaters" which "revealed just how far from the normal our behaviour can stray without a complete social collapse". Talk about assuming what you are setting out to try to prove. \r\n\r\nOnce started, this pandering to the popular prejudices reflected by the likes of Ardrey and Morris began to infect scientists too, and what can only be described as a regression in the understanding of many of them occurred. In 1971 a specialist in the study of ants, E. O. Wilson, outlined a grandiose scheme called "sociobiology" whose objective was to attempt to explain human social behaviour in terms of the influence of our genes, to reduce sociology to biology. In a later book, \r\n",1]
);
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The Naked Ape was a huge commercial success selling over 8 million copies and launched Morris on a long and financially rewarding career as a purveyor of unscientific notions about humans to the general public.
Morris's method was to seek out a constant behaviour pattern or psychological trait ("assembled by simple, direct observation of the most basic and widely shared behaviour patterns of the successful mainstream specimens from the major contemporary cultures") and to declare this to be part of humans' inherited biological nature. However, just because one particular behaviour pattern could be identified as a constant of human behaviour in different times and places does not mean that it is therefore biologically determined. It could equally be the result of similar environmental conditions producing similar learned behaviours as a response. Not that it was easy for Morris to find behaviours that have been common to all humans at all times, so great has been the variety of human behaviour at different times and in different places. In the event, he had to resort to dismissing some forms of behaviour-such as the non-aggressive or non-possessive behaviour or equality between the sexes practised by some tribal societies-as eccentric or that of losers whose societies were failures. As he put it, such societies were "cultural backwaters" which "revealed just how far from the normal our behaviour can stray without a complete social collapse". Talk about assuming what you are setting out to try to prove.
Once started, this pandering to the popular prejudices reflected by the likes of Ardrey and Morris began to infect scientists too, and what can only be described as a regression in the understanding of many of them occurred. In 1971 a specialist in the study of ants, E. O. Wilson, outlined a grandiose scheme called "sociobiology" whose objective was to attempt to explain human social behaviour in terms of the influence of our genes, to reduce sociology to biology. In a later book,
On Human Nature that first came out in 1978, he declared that socialists had misunderstood human nature:\r\nThe perception of history as an inevitable class struggle proceeding to the emergence of a lightly governed egalitarian society with production in control of the workers is ( . . . ) based on an inaccurate interpretation of human nature ( \r\nOn Human Nature, Penguin, 1995, p. 190).\r\nWilson denied that the human brain that had evolved through natural selection was "an all-purpose device, adaptable through learning to any mode of social existence", and asserted that, on the contrary, genes inherited from the time humans first evolved, and adapted for life in that environment, strongly predisposed humans to behave in society in particular ways. \r\n\r\nThe technique was easy: you examined human behaviour to try and find something constant; you then assumed that this was determined by biology, by the genetic make-up of humans; the final step was to work out a more or less plausible theory as to why and how this might have become fixed in our genes during the period when anthropoid apes and earlier forms of \r\nHomo were evolving into Homo sapiens.\r\nThus, for instance, religion might be identified as a constant of human behaviour and a gene for a belief in religion assumed and a theory developed as to how a gene for believing in something greater than the individual might have had a survival value for the ancestors of \r\nHomo sapiens, which the working of Darwinian natural selection would have incorporated into our genetic make-up. Or, the dependence of women on men; this would be said to have become genetically determined because during the period we evolved men went off hunting while the women stayed at home looking after the children, etc, etc, etc. It was a game anyone could play, and which feature writers and TV producers played to the full. Amusing perhaps, but totally unscientific. \r\n",1]
);
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On Human Nature that first came out in 1978, he declared that socialists had misunderstood human nature:
The perception of history as an inevitable class struggle proceeding to the emergence of a lightly governed egalitarian society with production in control of the workers is ( . . . ) based on an inaccurate interpretation of human nature ( On Human Nature, Penguin, 1995, p. 190).
Wilson denied that the human brain that had evolved through natural selection was "an all-purpose device, adaptable through learning to any mode of social existence", and asserted that, on the contrary, genes inherited from the time humans first evolved, and adapted for life in that environment, strongly predisposed humans to behave in society in particular ways.
The technique was easy: you examined human behaviour to try and find something constant; you then assumed that this was determined by biology, by the genetic make-up of humans; the final step was to work out a more or less plausible theory as to why and how this might have become fixed in our genes during the period when anthropoid apes and earlier forms of Homo were evolving into Homo sapiens.
Thus, for instance, religion might be identified as a constant of human behaviour and a gene for a belief in religion assumed and a theory developed as to how a gene for believing in something greater than the individual might have had a survival value for the ancestors of Homo sapiens, which the working of Darwinian natural selection would have incorporated into our genetic make-up. Or, the dependence of women on men; this would be said to have become genetically determined because during the period we evolved men went off hunting while the women stayed at home looking after the children, etc, etc, etc. It was a game anyone could play, and which feature writers and TV producers played to the full. Amusing perhaps, but totally unscientific.
\r\nWilson was a biologist but the game was so easy that others wanted to get in on the act. So was born "Evolutionary Psychology", whose slogan is "our modern skulls house a stone age mind", which allowed psychologists to play the game too, choosing some psychological trait and subjecting it to the same treatment. Like Ardrey and Wilson, one of their leading lights, American university professor Steven Pinker, wrote as an explicit critic of socialist ideas: \r\n\r\nOne of the fondest beliefs of many intellectuals is that there are cultures out there where everyone shares freely. Marx and Engels thought that preliterate peoples represented a first stage in the evolution of civilization called primitive communism, whose maxim was \'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs\' ( \r\nHow the Mind Works, Penguin, 1998, p. 504).\r\nFor him as for Wilson, this would not have been biologically possible because such free sharing would not have had any survival value and so brains capable of practising it would not have evolved. It followed that such a society is still biologically impossible today, as we still have the brains appropriate to the hunting and gathering life we led on the African savannah during the period when our genetic make-up was fixed: \r\n\r\nFor ninety-nine percent of human existence, people lived as foragers in small nomadic bands. Our brains are adapted to that long-vanished way of life, not to brand-new agricultural and industrial civilizations. They are not wired to cope with anonymous crowds, schooling, written language, government, police, courts, formal social institutions, high technology, and other newcomers to the human experience ( \r\nHow the Mind Works, p. 42).\r\nPinker argued that the human mind is a "neural computer" that was "designed" by natural selection acting as a "blind programmer". This is perhaps one way of putting it, but "designed" for what? Pinker jumped from the assumption that the human mind must be "wired" for symbolic language and stereoscopic vision (a not unreasonable conclusion since, as we have seen, these are two features of human biological nature) to the highly dubious proposition that it must be similarly "wired" for reacting to conditions as they were during the Stone Age. \r\n",1]
);
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Wilson was a biologist but the game was so easy that others wanted to get in on the act. So was born "Evolutionary Psychology", whose slogan is "our modern skulls house a stone age mind", which allowed psychologists to play the game too, choosing some psychological trait and subjecting it to the same treatment. Like Ardrey and Wilson, one of their leading lights, American university professor Steven Pinker, wrote as an explicit critic of socialist ideas:
One of the fondest beliefs of many intellectuals is that there are cultures out there where everyone shares freely. Marx and Engels thought that preliterate peoples represented a first stage in the evolution of civilization called primitive communism, whose maxim was 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs' ( How the Mind Works, Penguin, 1998, p. 504).
For him as for Wilson, this would not have been biologically possible because such free sharing would not have had any survival value and so brains capable of practising it would not have evolved. It followed that such a society is still biologically impossible today, as we still have the brains appropriate to the hunting and gathering life we led on the African savannah during the period when our genetic make-up was fixed:
For ninety-nine percent of human existence, people lived as foragers in small nomadic bands. Our brains are adapted to that long-vanished way of life, not to brand-new agricultural and industrial civilizations. They are not wired to cope with anonymous crowds, schooling, written language, government, police, courts, formal social institutions, high technology, and other newcomers to the human experience ( How the Mind Works, p. 42).
Pinker argued that the human mind is a "neural computer" that was "designed" by natural selection acting as a "blind programmer". This is perhaps one way of putting it, but "designed" for what? Pinker jumped from the assumption that the human mind must be "wired" for symbolic language and stereoscopic vision (a not unreasonable conclusion since, as we have seen, these are two features of human biological nature) to the highly dubious proposition that it must be similarly "wired" for reacting to conditions as they were during the Stone Age.
\r\nThis argument that we still have a "stone age mind" cuts both ways. Another evolutionary psychologist, Andrew Whiten, professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, has pointed out that for Pinker\'s "ninety-nine percent of human existence" people lived in a state of "primitive communism": \r\n\r\nHumans are the most social species on Earth and our ancestors formed hunter-gatherer groups which pulled together to adapt to their new lifestyle. Unlike every other species, they had an egalitarian culture where everything was shared out equally: no other animal does that. There was also no hierarchy in the society or tribal chiefs, as anyone who tried to lead was pushed back down by the others. Everyone was considered to be equal and they lived in a culture of primitive communism. We might expect as the products of evolution our ancestors would be selfish, but it was their ability to work together and support each other which made them more successful than any other. This supportive culture allowed technology and skills to be passed down and improved with each generation. Although this egalitarian lifestyle is not present in most of the world today, it may be resting dormant within us waiting to be reawakened (Paper delivered to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, see \r\nThe Times, 19 August 2000).\r\nIn other words, if we really were "hard wired" or "designed" by natural selection for living in any particular kind of society it would be for socialism rather than capitalism! \r\n\r\nMuch as we would like to believe that humans are genetically programmed for living in a non-hierarchical, sharing, co-operative society, there is no evidence that any of our social behaviour patterns are genetically programmed or could be. What our genes govern is how our bodies function and how they renew themselves, not the sort of complex behaviour patterns that the biological determinists have in mind. \r\n",1]
);
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This argument that we still have a "stone age mind" cuts both ways. Another evolutionary psychologist, Andrew Whiten, professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, has pointed out that for Pinker's "ninety-nine percent of human existence" people lived in a state of "primitive communism":
Humans are the most social species on Earth and our ancestors formed hunter-gatherer groups which pulled together to adapt to their new lifestyle. Unlike every other species, they had an egalitarian culture where everything was shared out equally: no other animal does that. There was also no hierarchy in the society or tribal chiefs, as anyone who tried to lead was pushed back down by the others. Everyone was considered to be equal and they lived in a culture of primitive communism. We might expect as the products of evolution our ancestors would be selfish, but it was their ability to work together and support each other which made them more successful than any other. This supportive culture allowed technology and skills to be passed down and improved with each generation. Although this egalitarian lifestyle is not present in most of the world today, it may be resting dormant within us waiting to be reawakened (Paper delivered to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, see The Times, 19 August 2000).
In other words, if we really were "hard wired" or "designed" by natural selection for living in any particular kind of society it would be for socialism rather than capitalism!
Much as we would like to believe that humans are genetically programmed for living in a non-hierarchical, sharing, co-operative society, there is no evidence that any of our social behaviour patterns are genetically programmed or could be. What our genes govern is how our bodies function and how they renew themselves, not the sort of complex behaviour patterns that the biological determinists have in mind.
\r\nThe first analyses of the Human Genome Project, published in February 2001, confirm that we are not "hard wired" by our genes to behave in society in any particular way, but that how we behave depends crucially on what we have learned from our environment rather than on what we have inherited from our genes. In the words of Craig Venter, head of one of the two teams working on the project, "the wonderful diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code. Our environments are crucial" ( \r\nObserver, 11 February).\r\nVenter explained the more of the science behind this conclusion in the official press release issued by the journal Science which published his team\'s results in its 16 February issue:\r\n \r\nThere are many surprises from this first look at our genetic code that have important implications for humanity. Since the June 26, 2000 announcement our understanding of the human genome has changed in the most fundamental ways. The small number of genes-30,000 instead of 140,000-supports the notion that we are not hard wired. We now know that the notion that one gene leads to one protein and perhaps one disease is false. One gene leads to many different products and those products-proteins-can change dramatically after they are produced. We know that regions of the genome that are not genes may be the key to the complexity we see in humans. We now know that the environment acting on these biological steps may be key in making us what we are. Likewise the remarkably small number of genetic variations that occur in genes again suggest a significant role for environmental influences in developing each of our uniqueness. \r\n\r\nIronically, but fittingly, it is the science of genetics itself that is undermining the speculations and prejudices of the biological determinists. Its advances are discovering that the parts of the brain involved in human social behaviour are "wired" after birth, depending on the social environment in which the human child grows up. It is this biological capacity to get wired after birth that is gene-governed, not the content of the wiring. In other words, the findings of genetics are confirming those of anthropology that the main biological characteristic of humans that distinguishes us from non-human animals is the capacity, as a species, to engage in a great variety of social behaviours. \r\n",1]
);
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The first analyses of the Human Genome Project, published in February 2001, confirm that we are not "hard wired" by our genes to behave in society in any particular way, but that how we behave depends crucially on what we have learned from our environment rather than on what we have inherited from our genes. In the words of Craig Venter, head of one of the two teams working on the project, "the wonderful diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code. Our environments are crucial" ( Observer, 11 February).
Venter explained the more of the science behind this conclusion in the official press release issued by the journal Science which published his team's results in its 16 February issue:
There are many surprises from this first look at our genetic code that have important implications for humanity. Since the June 26, 2000 announcement our understanding of the human genome has changed in the most fundamental ways. The small number of genes-30,000 instead of 140,000-supports the notion that we are not hard wired. We now know that the notion that one gene leads to one protein and perhaps one disease is false. One gene leads to many different products and those products-proteins-can change dramatically after they are produced. We know that regions of the genome that are not genes may be the key to the complexity we see in humans. We now know that the environment acting on these biological steps may be key in making us what we are. Likewise the remarkably small number of genetic variations that occur in genes again suggest a significant role for environmental influences in developing each of our uniqueness.
Ironically, but fittingly, it is the science of genetics itself that is undermining the speculations and prejudices of the biological determinists. Its advances are discovering that the parts of the brain involved in human social behaviour are "wired" after birth, depending on the social environment in which the human child grows up. It is this biological capacity to get wired after birth that is gene-governed, not the content of the wiring. In other words, the findings of genetics are confirming those of anthropology that the main biological characteristic of humans that distinguishes us from non-human animals is the capacity, as a species, to engage in a great variety of social behaviours.
\r\nhttp://groups.msn.com/WorldSocialismNow/yourwebpage6.msnw\r\n***\r\nThe split between the nature and nurture camps in the West isn\'t simply a coktail party chat but a defining dialogue that will tear our nations to peices. The irrationalists of the fascist camps will continue trying to control people, and the rationalists will continue trying to solve the mysteries of the universe until such time as we are so far apart that the fascist primitives of islam, having gained a foot-hold already, will run up the middle and take the world by default. We must know ourselves well enough to tell if we approve of controlling the population for their own good. Do we want philosopher kings? Do we want a dictator? Do we want total control imposed in the form of sharia? Do we feel that people are infants, adult men and women infantalized to be tended from the cradle to the grave by police, religious leaders, or social engineers? We hgave to know if we are rational and responsible or if we are the masses to be managed.\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n",0]
);
D(["ce"]);
D(["ms","f0f"]
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http://groups.msn.com/WorldSocialismNow/yourwebpage6.msnw
***
The split between the nature and nurture camps in the West isn't simply a coktail party chat but a defining dialogue that will tear our nations to peices. The irrationalists of the fascist camps will continue trying to control people, and the rationalists will continue trying to solve the mysteries of the universe until such time as we are so far apart that the fascist primitives of islam, having gained a foot-hold already, will run up the middle and take the world by default. We must know ourselves well enough to tell if we approve of controlling the population for their own good. Do we want philosopher kings? Do we want a dictator? Do we want total control imposed in the form of sharia? Do we feel that people are infants, adult men and women infantalized to be tended from the cradle to the grave by police, religious leaders, or social engineers? We hgave to know if we are rational and responsible or if we are the masses to be managed.