We can’t understand human nature without understanding the forces of evolution that made us who we are. We are the happiest if we design our lives/societies around the human nature, like a glove is designed around a hand. Failed philosophies like Marxism and Objectivism are results of failing to design our societies around what evolution has made us to be.
In a series of future posts, we will dissect the impact that evolution has on our nature. In this post, let us make sure that we have a clear understanding of how evolution works.
Take a look at the image above. Let’s start with an animal called ‘Grey Circle’. Due to genetic mutation, the babies of Grey Circle, shown below the horizontal line, are likely to be slightly different from the original (parent). Of the three babies, the White Circle has a mutation gives it a survival/propagation disadvantage (e.g. being born without limbs). The genes of Black Circle were mutated in such a way that it has some special advantages over others (e.g. ability to run faster). And the baby Grey Circle has no advantage or disadvantage over its parent.
Over the subsequent generations, White Circle population dies out. But the number of Black Circles in the population increases.
With every passing generation, there are more Black Circles in the population for every Grey Circle.
Of course, Grey Circles and Black Circles may end up inter-breeding. But for the purpose of this discussion, let’s ignore it.
Eventually, the Black Circles dominate the entire population as they successfully out-compete the Grey Circles. Thus, a new population is born with a new trait.
Here is an important takeaway: If a trait is found in all animals, it must have offered a significant advantage in the evolutionary past. After all, all animals without the trait were wiped out across generations.
For example, take human population. Wherever in the world they are found, humans are always intelligent (when compared with other animals), don’t have body fur, have language, etc. Intelligence and language skills must have been so important at some point in our evolutionary past that all proto-humans without these traits were wiped off from the gene pool
Let’s look beyond humans. Every animal in the planet has a strong drive to self-preserve. In the case of sexually reproducing animals, all of them seek mate. We can then conclude that the animals that didn’t bother about self-preservation or mate selection got wiped out from the gene pool.
Of course, mutation is a messy business. It is never just Black or Grey. Mutations keep happening all the time, in million different forms. Some of the mutations/traits end up dominating the entire population (e.g. intelligence in humans) . Some of the mutations/traits persist in the population, but they never fully dominates the population (e.g. skin color, super-intelligence, schizophrenia). Some mutations/traits get wiped off from the population immediately (e.g. anencephaly) or eventually.
Evolution carries forward that traits that eventually dominate the population. Period. Evolution doesn’t care for good, bad, virtuous, evil, etc. When we hear the phrase “survival of the fittest”, we tend to confuse it with “survival of the superior”, however one likes to define superior. Evolution is blind to anything other than population explosion.
In the next post, we’ll look into three sub-types of evolutionary forces.