733
As soon as we lend full phenotypic significance to the one over the many, various
imaginative possibilities are engaged. If the individual is to become the true bellwether of evolution, not the species, then every prospect of redemption comes into
focus. At least it does so on a neutral surface, ignoring sociobiology, geopolitics,
and all of the power, suasion, fascisms, and mob rule which, in the case of humans,
have intervened successfully to not bifurcate but bolster the taxon. But its backstory
will pit the loner against the mass, stacking the odds against morality and dignity
and ultimate physical survival, in favor of blind rule and quantitative firing squads.
Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti’s earlier referenced work, incisively delineated the
societal priorities from those of personhood, eliciting the rogue elements of any
civilization as the equivalent of perverted proxy, an impossible dream.
Were natural selection, with high frequency, to favor a dream, then all would be
possible. But that invokes the problem of belief. Don Quixote was the true believer.
Science has long acknowledged developmental bias, environmental factors affecting natural selection.
37
With bias, environmental modification perpetuates the folkloric natural selection paradigm as a central premise of all those precursors, known
and unknown. Multiplying the subject deficit, it were as if the continuation of the
Self is the pivotal premise of population ecology. As if the life force itself is a species issue, the individual merely worth the extent of its random mutations adding to
population realizability, and the deconstruction of an individual. But what if the
selection process were unbiased, the individual exerting as much traction on ecodynamics as any population? Can we even envision such a choreography? (Fig. 80.4).
80.5 Real People, Fictional Populations, and a Semblance
of Hope
Time has always ordained mutability down to the sub-atomic particle. By the state
of molecules, the aggregate impulses of life have made necessary the complementary space in which occupants might move and reside. But on the large vertebrate
scales, the question of ethics, as well as aesthetics, combats natural selection at the
level of a bias that transcends the numeric values of science, and may thoroughly
defeat natural selection, a tall order to prove by any subjectivity. Yet, there are parallel natural selections favoring unabashedly those Utopic convictions of non- violence
that discount any God, or theory of knowledge, that necessarily embrace trial and
turmoil as fundamental to evolution, when, just as easily, consciousness could see
37 See, for example “The interaction between developmental bias and natural selection: from centipede segments to a general hypothesis,” by W. Arthur, Heredity, Vol. 89, 239–246, September 19,
2002, https://www.nature.com/articles/6800139; See also, “Natural selection, evolvability and bias
due to environmental covariance in the field in an annual plant,” by A.A. Winn, J Evol Biol. 2004
Sep;17(5):1073–83, PubMed, US National Library of Medicine, PMID:15312079. https://doi.org/
10.1111/j.1420-9101.2004.00740.x, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15312079, Accessed
January 20, 2020.
80.5 Real People, Fictional Populations, and a Semblance of Hope
As soon as we lend full phenotypic significance to the one over the many, various
imaginative possibilities are engaged. If the individual is to become the true bellwether of evolution, not the species, then every prospect of redemption comes into
focus. At least it does so on a neutral surface, ignoring sociobiology, geopolitics,
and all of the power, suasion, fascisms, and mob rule which, in the case of humans,
have intervened successfully to not bifurcate but bolster the taxon. But its backstory
will pit the loner against the mass, stacking the odds against morality and dignity
and ultimate physical survival, in favor of blind rule and quantitative firing squads.
Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti’s earlier referenced work, incisively delineated the
societal priorities from those of personhood, eliciting the rogue elements of any
civilization as the equivalent of perverted proxy, an impossible dream.
Were natural selection, with high frequency, to favor a dream, then all would be
possible. But that invokes the problem of belief. Don Quixote was the true believer.
Science has long acknowledged developmental bias, environmental factors affecting natural selection.
37
With bias, environmental modification perpetuates the folkloric natural selection paradigm as a central premise of all those precursors, known
and unknown. Multiplying the subject deficit, it were as if the continuation of the
Self is the pivotal premise of population ecology. As if the life force itself is a species issue, the individual merely worth the extent of its random mutations adding to
population realizability, and the deconstruction of an individual. But what if the
selection process were unbiased, the individual exerting as much traction on ecodynamics as any population? Can we even envision such a choreography? (Fig. 80.4).
80.5 Real People, Fictional Populations, and a Semblance
of Hope
Time has always ordained mutability down to the sub-atomic particle. By the state
of molecules, the aggregate impulses of life have made necessary the complementary space in which occupants might move and reside. But on the large vertebrate
scales, the question of ethics, as well as aesthetics, combats natural selection at the
level of a bias that transcends the numeric values of science, and may thoroughly
defeat natural selection, a tall order to prove by any subjectivity. Yet, there are parallel natural selections favoring unabashedly those Utopic convictions of non- violence
that discount any God, or theory of knowledge, that necessarily embrace trial and
turmoil as fundamental to evolution, when, just as easily, consciousness could see
37 See, for example “The interaction between developmental bias and natural selection: from centipede segments to a general hypothesis,” by W. Arthur, Heredity, Vol. 89, 239–246, September 19,
2002, https://www.nature.com/articles/6800139; See also, “Natural selection, evolvability and bias
due to environmental covariance in the field in an annual plant,” by A.A. Winn, J Evol Biol. 2004
Sep;17(5):1073–83, PubMed, US National Library of Medicine, PMID:15312079. https://doi.org/
10.1111/j.1420-9101.2004.00740.x, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15312079, Accessed
January 20, 2020.
80.5 Real People, Fictional Populations, and a Semblance of Hope