'Undoing Darwin' by Dick Frost

I HAVE written “Ten thousand years of Tyranny” to examine beliefs about evolution which are leading humanity to disaster. My aim was to show why the future of humanity depends on anarchism; this meant confronting Darwin's theory of evolution and that led me to speculate on the origins of civilisation and sin, the myth of scarcity, social power and much more.

My arguments depend on a claim that the world is rich in resources due to the energy arriving every day from the sun, which is far greater than all earth's creatures need, plus the fact that all species adapt to live together in their chosen environments. Scarcity is a myth; affluence is normal.

Because resources are not scarce life is not constant struggle; it is rather constrained and/or ritual conflict as individuals play out their evolved patterns of behaviour according to their species nature within the limits which eco-systems and the world as a whole impose on them.

Individuals do not live at the extreme. Each seeks to survive and reproduce as much as it can but through systemic interactions they evolve viable compromises at levels below their capacity: each gets the best it can. Behaviour, including conflict, is finely ritualised, exemplified by the swallows which fly to South Africa every year and return to the barn in which they were born.

Eco-systems are self-regulating wholes which produce balance and stability out of the complex interactions of their components. Systems stability ensures reliable behaviour and controlled populations: nothing could evolve or survive if everything around were in a state of flux.

Nature is not red in tooth and claw. Individuals evolve to live within the opportunities and limits of their environments according to their species nature; they adapt to and are adapted by what they need. They take what they must have: if they are sheep , then grass; if lions, then gazelles. None kills for fun; they kill for food or to defend themselves, a territory or their group. Hunting is often brutal and the prey, cuddly. Some ways of life look dreadful to human beings in soft-hearted mode but it is evolved behaviour; it's never personal.

The dense interactivity of individual behaviour in eco-systems inhibits change. It often seems to me that the eco-system is the key determinant of both stability and change: communalism,rather than the individualism of the selfish gene, shapes evolution.

Evolution is driven by random genetic mutation and environmental pressure to which individuals respond. Genetic variation is constant but mostly harmful and quickly rejected. Viable variations lie dormant until environmental change makes them useful; then they are “naturally selected”. Most evolutionary change outside crises is gradual and minor but can make a huge difference over the millennia; in any case each step has to be minimally disruptive in order to be acceptable to an eco-system. A dramatic event such as a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, an asteroid hit, climatic disruption etc. will destroy eco-systems and many species; then niches open for major selection and speciation.

Free from the (imagined) risks arising from (imagined) scarcity, life is a confusion of individuals each capable of variation. Variations which survive and prosper are not “fittest”: they are fit enough. They seldom struggle but survive because they fit a changed environment and universal affluence ensures them the energy they need.

Affluence makes possible the amazing variety of life and explains the profusion of behaviour and characteristics which are far from “fit” and do not help a a species to survive: the panda's diet is clearly a problem; as are the extravagant plumage of birds of paradise, the obsessive fighting of males for a mate; the bower bird's gardening, the wren's excessive nest building, the puffer fish's sand sculpture.

Affluence is the dominant factor in evolution; in h sapiens culture is also important. H sapiens is a culturally variable social species with the freedom to modify its way of life. It developed cultures by evolution and in response to the different environments into which groups moved, confronting new climates, food resources,natural conditions, hostile animals etc.

Like all social animals it evolved behaviours essential to the integrity of groups - the social virtues. All social animals are peaceful and egalitarian within their groups. Living in affluence, they do not need economic hierarchy. H sapiens was “the first affluent society” according to anthropologist Marshall Sahlins because everything it needed was freely available in its environments – but that is the same with all social animals – probably all life.

Individuals were benign and “good” in the sense of behaving in ways which sustained the group, family or clan. The forms culture took satisfied the social virtues: conformity, tolerance of hierarchy, mutual aid and hostility to “the other”. H sapiens did not know sin.

This “state of nature” and freedom in affluence lasted for more than a million years (including h erectus)and ended in the Neolithic revolution (after c11,000BCE} when chiefs or some form of elite power destroyed community cohesion and imposed oppressive exploitation on, eventually, the whole world.

Elite power arose from some conjunction of wealth, population pressure,climate change, resource depletion, war, mental instability and chance and the sad fact that the social virtues function as well in oppressive as in free societies. We are genetically programmed to conform to the mores of the group we are born into. Elite power is a mutation which throws off the normal limits of the species and uses the strength and ability of millions to ludicrous ends.

The outcome is the tyranny of civilisation, all its wonders built on ten thousand years of blood, sweat, toil and the tears of the masses. All civilised societies are controlled by elite power; all property,abuse,exploitation and war are manifestations of power. Sin is inevitable.

The book tries to show that anarchism is the genetic social organisation of h sapiens and makes the case for a return to small,voluntary, egalitarian groups enjoying the affluence of the commons.

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Richard Dawkins & 'Gut Methodology'

LAST week, Professor Richard Dawkins, formerly the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science, argued on Radio Four's Today program that humans should apply rational thought when trying to solve the world's problems to which the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby responded on Monday that acting out of love and through emotion is an important part of what makes us humans.

Speaking on the on the TODAY program last week, Dawkins had said people should avoid voting with their gut and adopt a more scientific approach.  'Of course, we all think with our gut a lot of the time.  But when we’re making important decisions, like when we’re voting [or] when we’re taking important business decisions, don’t think with your gut, think rationally.  Look for the evidence one way or the other; weigh it up.'

Dawkins said the scientific method should be applied beyond the lab, adding that 'evidence is the only reason to believe anything about the real world'.

However, responding to the good Professor Dawkins, the Archbishop of Canterbury, JustinWelby has said that the scientific method alone could not answer all of the big questions:
'The world is not entirely materialism.  It’s not entirely made up of what you can experiment with. There are things we deal with every day – emotions around love, around the value of people, around how we treat those who are weaker and stronger – where mere rationality, even evidence-based rationality, which I hold to as a really important thing, does not answer the whole question adequately.'

The archbishop of Canterbury has spoken of his deep sympathy for the family of Charlie Gard, the 11-month-old boy who died last week after a long legal battle, as well as the medics who treated him and the judges who presided over his case.

Justin Welby evoked the memory of his own daughter, Johanna, who died when she was less than a year old as he said the world could not be explained by rationality alone.

Welby was commenting on Prof Richard Dawkins' insistence last week on the primacy of evidence and reason, not emotion, when making big decisions.

'It’s quite well known that one of our own children died and we had to stand by the bed and they died when the life support was withdrawn. And I think that, in a case like that, I’m not going to say anything except that my heart breaks for the parents,' Welby told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday.

While he said evidence-based decision-making was important to him, he cited the Gard case as an example of where it could only be a part of the right approach.

Speaking on the same programme last week, Dawkins said people should avoid voting with their gut and adopt a more scientific approach.  'Of course, we all think with our gut a lot of the time. But when we’re making important decisions, like when we’re voting [or] when we’re taking important business decisions, don’t think with your gut, think rationally.  Look for the evidence one way or the other; weigh it up.'

Dawkins said the scientific method should be applied beyond the lab, adding that 'evidence is the only reason to believe anything about the real world'.

However, Welby has said it alone could not answer all of the big questions.
'The world is not entirely materialism. It’s not entirely made up of what you can experiment with. There are things we deal with every day – emotions around love, around the value of people, around how we treat those who are weaker and stronger – where mere rationality, even evidence-based rationality, which I hold to as a really important thing, does not answer the whole question adequately.'

Referring to the Gard case, which was at the centre of a long-running legal battle over the child’s care, Welby said any parent would 'fight for the life of their child as long as they could', adding: 'We know what that’s like.'

The judges and doctors who were treating Charlie at Great Ormond Street hospital came in for abuse as the case progressed through the courts, but the archbishop said that each person involved was worthy of sympathy because they wanted the best for Charlie.
'I’m sure they cared to the depth of their being about doing the right thing and it’s a very good example of where sometimes rational, evidence-based thinking is not the whole story.  The medics weren’t operating on that. They grieve when they lose a patient and particularly a child.
'I just feel deeply sorrowed by the whole thing and feel deeply, deeply, deeply for Charlie Gard’s parents and for all the rest of the people involved in the most tragic case. Sometimes, we want to come to clean, quick conclusions and it’s right just to pause and grieve.'

It must be extremely irritating for a passionate rationalist Professor like Professor Dawkins to cope with current political developments and the nature of human behaviour as it is being played out in the real world.  The scientific method of decision making is clearly not uppermost in most people's minds. 

In a study published today on the 2017 General election by Prof Ed Fieldhouse & Dr Chris Prosser of the University of Manchester, found:
'Despite Mrs May's claim that her reason for calling an early election was to get a mandate for the Brexit negotiations, the issue of Brexit itself had a relatively low profile during campaigning.
For much of the campaign, both the Conservatives and Labour focused on other issues.
But in the minds of the voters at least, the 2017 election was - as it promised to be ever since the referendum of June 2016 - the Brexit election'

The report says 'in the minds of the voters' but in the answer to the question:  'As far as you're concerned, what is the single most important issue facing the country at the present time?'
This research shows that more than one in three people chose Brexit or the EU, compared with fewer than one in 10 who mentioned the NHS or one in 20 who suggested the economy.

 It would seem that the driving force here as so often elsewhere in political decision-making is gut reactions rather than the ponderings of the scientific method as recommended by Prof. Dawkins.