738
The natural selection of an individual, when it occurs, must always pose the ultimate challenge: The individual remains irrepressible, in spite of the biological odds
favoring his/her species over any one personage. Natural selection is at once reduced
to a mere expression, lacking a credible record in the annals of either ethics or personality. Its greatest achievement, if one might be singled out, would be what the authors
have elsewhere named “the Reciprocity Potential” between individuals and species,
namely, that intention and behavior that “is equal to the square root of compassion,
times the square root of the population mean divided by the sum of the entire group,
in this case, Homo sapiens”
3
. From the obscurity of non-being, to the limelight of
being-as-defined-through-compassion, the individual, as concept, breaks with natural
selection at the moment such choices are made outside of what might be deemed
human possibility; love that outweighs the cumulative burden of so many genetic
dead-ends, and bad ideas. The proxy for such individualism might, theoretically, be
anything: the obscurity described in the previous chapter, a moment in time, an artful
impulse, a volition dating back millions of years that managed to shoulder along the
way some remarkable recessive gene, or eukaryotic gene redundancy
4
(Fig. 81.1).
3 See the Authors’ work, Anthrozoology: Embracing Co-Existence in the Anthropocene, Springer
Publishers New York, 2017, p. 320.
4 See “Genes duplicated by polyploidy show unequal contributions to the transcriptome and organspecific reciprocal silencing,” Keith L. Adams, Richard Cronn, Ryan Percifield, and Jonathan
F. Wendel, PNAS April 15, 2003 100 (8) 4649–4654; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0630618100,
https://www.pnas.org/content/100/8/4649PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America, https://www.pnas.org/content/100/8/4649, Accessed
January 23, 2020.
Fig. 81.1 A Joyous “Jeevynila,” A member of the Toda Kerrir Patrician (Clan), the Nilgiris, Tamil
Nadu State, India. (Photo © M.C.Tobias)
81 Biological Proxies for the Individual
The natural selection of an individual, when it occurs, must always pose the ultimate challenge: The individual remains irrepressible, in spite of the biological odds
favoring his/her species over any one personage. Natural selection is at once reduced
to a mere expression, lacking a credible record in the annals of either ethics or personality. Its greatest achievement, if one might be singled out, would be what the authors
have elsewhere named “the Reciprocity Potential” between individuals and species,
namely, that intention and behavior that “is equal to the square root of compassion,
times the square root of the population mean divided by the sum of the entire group,
in this case, Homo sapiens”
3
. From the obscurity of non-being, to the limelight of
being-as-defined-through-compassion, the individual, as concept, breaks with natural
selection at the moment such choices are made outside of what might be deemed
human possibility; love that outweighs the cumulative burden of so many genetic
dead-ends, and bad ideas. The proxy for such individualism might, theoretically, be
anything: the obscurity described in the previous chapter, a moment in time, an artful
impulse, a volition dating back millions of years that managed to shoulder along the
way some remarkable recessive gene, or eukaryotic gene redundancy
4
(Fig. 81.1).
3 See the Authors’ work, Anthrozoology: Embracing Co-Existence in the Anthropocene, Springer
Publishers New York, 2017, p. 320.
4 See “Genes duplicated by polyploidy show unequal contributions to the transcriptome and organspecific reciprocal silencing,” Keith L. Adams, Richard Cronn, Ryan Percifield, and Jonathan
F. Wendel, PNAS April 15, 2003 100 (8) 4649–4654; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0630618100,
https://www.pnas.org/content/100/8/4649PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America, https://www.pnas.org/content/100/8/4649, Accessed
January 23, 2020.
Fig. 81.1 A Joyous “Jeevynila,” A member of the Toda Kerrir Patrician (Clan), the Nilgiris, Tamil
Nadu State, India. (Photo © M.C.Tobias)
81 Biological Proxies for the Individual