Science has already placed a bomb under present-day polar politics --
between the left-wing and right-wing orientations that preoccupy (as
far as one can see) every country on earth whatever its formal
governmental system.
The essential nature of the bomb is that it is being increasingly
shown that everybody's personality and main skills are laid down
clearly at puberty. There is nothing any of us can do to change this
situation, except to modify this or that aspect from then onwards
according to the accidents and circumstances of life. As far as
left-wingism is concerned, this means that comprehensive attempts at
'fair' equalisation of welfare and opportunities are strictly limited
somewhere along the line. As far as right-wingism is concerned, it
means that gross inequalities of income and wealth are in no way
deserved by the 'entrepreneurial' qualities of those at the top of the heap.
The truth of the matter is that we are automatons, or very largely
so. Each of us is programmed according to factors quite outside our
individual control. In my opinion, freewill must exist -- or else we
couldn't possibly consider its possible existence -- but how or why
or to what extent it operates must remain inexplicable for now, and
perhaps forever. It is a problem of the same complexity as the real
nature of the quantum world, or the unknown 95% mass of the universe
or whether evolution is a random game or is intrinsic to the creation
of the universe (if it was created).
As to the automatic nature of our lives, what are the exterior
programmes which control it? We are born with a specific set of genes
as a random mix from our parents. Many of these genes have
sub-optimal variations within them, and these immediately set the
first outermost range of limits to our subsequent performance in
life. We also inherit an additional, more refined expressibility of
many of our genes. These are our epigenetic settings, and these
derive from the chemical and psychological environment of our
parents. These set a second set of cultural limits to our normal
behaviour. Subsequently the partiality given to some of our natural
aptitudes by the family in which we are raised from our earliest
months and years sets a further inner boundary to our potential
abilities. Lastly, and increasingly up to the age of puberty,
particular aptitudes are developed under the increasing control of
the values of the peer group in which we spend out time.
All the above is carried out by the fashioning of the neuronal
networks of, mainly, the rear crinkly skin of our brains (left and
right). Skills and behaviours which we can't possibly carry out at
the age of puberty -- or do ineptly -- are forever denied us for the
rest of our lives. From then onwards, the favoured aspects of our
personalities and skills are developed further by a surge of millions
of new neurons which grow in the frontal regions of crinkly skin.
This surge tails off by about the age of 30. From then onwards we are
increasingly unlikely to have innovative ideas or to develop new
social skills which can place us much higher in the status ranking
which pervades in all organizations whether they be hobby groups or
large nations or multinational corporations.
The above is what science is now telling us. There may be other
surprises still to come which will affect our personalities and
skills but they're unlikely to be major ones because all of them so
far are already reducible to the workings of our genes and we can't
go further downwards (save to ask existential questions alluded to above).
As evolutionary biology and neuroscience fill in more details in the
years to come, what will this mean politically? It means that in
order for everybody to have some status we will gradually have to
disassemble the vast hierarchical systems that nation-states have
inherited from a couple of centuries of heavy artillery warfare (and
the hierarchies that are necessary to run such events). We will have
to assemble the sort of groups which co-evolved with the more
specific aspects of our personalities for millions of years as primates.
What such a social system would look like -- or, indeed, the
political mechanics of getting there -- is impossible to describe
here and now. We may simply note two things. Firstly, this is what
science is telling us about how to live with maximum social welfare
and efficiency. Secondly, it is already the case that there is a
small power group at the head of every significant function of our
lives which, overtly or covertly, takes the important decisions.
Unless scientific research is snuffed out completely in the coming
years then it will inevitably be the case that the growing political
demand of the future will be that the well-being and satisfactions
already experienced by the small power-groups be translated downwards
to us all.
In a vague way as yet, this is called 'Decentralization'. It is the
growing ineptitude of large governments and the growing cynicism of
electorates towards politicians which is driving it.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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