David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and other Western politicians are
naive in the extreme if they imagine that countries such as Tunisia,
Egypt and Libya, after their recent 'Arabian Springings', will
acquire anything resembling what we call democracy in their
lifetimes. Quite besides what history tells us about cultural inertia
and the slow pace of significant political change -- generations
rather than years or even decades -- we now have scientific evidence
why this is so.
This comes from the new sub-science of epigenetics. Although
suspected by a handful of evolutionary biologists for two or three
decades, the subject only sprang to life in recent years following
the first draft of the Human Genome Project (HGP) in 2003. This is
telling us that by far the most of our genes doe not act as single
stimulants for this or that physical trait, or propensity to this or
that disease, but only have their effect when orchestrated in large
numbers. This is achieved by other agents, epigenes, which arise from
the regions of our 'junk' DNA that lie in between the gene areas themselves.
This explains why large pharmaceutical corporations have already lost
hundreds of millions of dollars in a fruitless search for single
genes which cause various mid-life killer diseases such as heart
diseases, diabetes, many cancers and mental senility. Yes, in each
case the researchers found a few genes that seem to be specifically
involved but they only contributed something like 5% or 10% to the
likelihood of the disease actually developing. At least scores more,
perhaps hundreds, of other genes were also involved. Furthermore,
some potentially lethal genetic orchestrations also needed to be
tripped off by specific features in the environment of the individual
concerned -- such as diet or daily habits. A person can carry a
lethal predisposition but is lucky (or sensible) enough to avoid the
environment which has a high chance of sparking it off.
Even more astonishing to post-2003 geneticists was the realization
that new epigenetic orchestrations could not only arise in the
lifetime of an individual, according to particular
life-circumstances, but also that those orchestrations could be
inherited by the next generation, and then the succeeding one, and so
on. The reason for this is that the genes that take part in a
particular orchestration actually acquire specific chemical tags and
the complete set of such tags for any particular life-effect can be
passed on just as certainly as genes themselves are passed on.
For the purpose of this morning's piece (I'm endeavouring to make
this as short as possible) two more points about epigenetics need to
be mentioned. One is that, unlike genes themselves, the epigenetic
tags are not quite as permanent as genes. If the same environmental
conditions are not repeated in succeeding generations then the tags
can gradually fall away from their genes. A particular epigenetic
orchestration that has taken several generations to develop (and thus
spread around in a population) can also degrade over further
generations if the environment changes. Finally, that particular
disposition will disappear altogether and the genes that were
involved no longer carry those particular tags.
Secondly, epigenetic orchestrations are not confined to
predispositions to physical effects (such as a particular cancer) but
also to psychological and behavioural effects. For example, a pair of
identical twins (with identical genes and identical epigenetic tags
at birth) might behave quite differently in adult life. One might
become schizophrenic (this is believed to be epigenetic) and the
other, living in a different environment, might not. One might become
a cheerful optimistic person, the other gloomy and pessimistic.
We can now translate these findings into considering cultures. Some
cultures, after living in the same sort of environment for many
generations will have inherited a fairly widespread predisposition to
some particular diseases, while others, not noticeably different in
other ways, will experience quite a low incidence to the same
diseases. On the other hand, the latter are each highly likely to
have an idiosyncratic collection of diseases to which they are
particularly prone. Also, disparate cultures of long-standing will
each have their own blend of psychological and behavioural
predispositions. In both cases, however, even if a particular culture
acquires a brand new environment overnight, then its physical and
psychological predispositions would take generations to disappear and
be replaced by new ones.
The sub-science of epigenetics is still very new, but what has been
discovered so far is fully compatible with what historians tell us.
Thinking about politics and government, modern Russia, for example,
is scarcely any different in many respects (domination by secret
police, lack of sufficient property law) -- despite two immense
make-overs -- than Tsarist Russia was a century ago even though
Russians may know intellectually what they should be doing before
they can approximate to the standard of living of, say, America.
That's just one example of dozens that could be instanced.
Thus, in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, although an educated youthful
minority may know what is desirable by way of becoming Westernized --
which is what the vast majority of their populations want -- the
older culture, dominated by Islamic imams, is already resisting and
taking advantage of the opportunities offered them. In the West, it
took most countries two or three hundred years of civil strife to
bring about our voting procedures. The Islamic countries will be no
different. We now have some scientific evidence to back up one's
intuition that it's going to take more than one or two generations
before the necessary psychological predispositions are in place and
being inherited.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/10/
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