Gail,
To extract a couple of sentences from your draft (09:02 05/04/03 -0500),
you wrote:
<<<<
On moral and practical grounds there is no question but that peace affairs
should be the core technology and military technology but an arm. The
challenge now is to give peace technology the robust conceptual,
intellectual and legal standing it has lacked.
>>>>
Well, I came across something very fascinating recently which suggests that
there could indeed be a technology for peace. In fact, unbeknownst to
ourselves, a process of engendering peacefulness has probably been
operating in the natural evolution of man for the past 15,000 years.
Perhaps -- who knows? -- it could become a consciously applied technology
in future years.
I'm going to extract some excerpts from a brilliant book by Matt Ridley,
"Nature Via Nurture" (HarperCollins 2003). Before I do so, Can you bear to
read three paragraphs of (simple) molecular biology which will introduce
the quotation?
Firstly, I will have to define a term from molecular biology called a
'promoter'. A promoter is a stretch of DNA on a chromosome which lies
adjacent to a gene and acts as its controller. The promoter acts as a sort
of multiplier. It has a gearing effect. Quite small changes in a promoter
can make large changes in the expression of the gene. By 'expression', this
is meant how long the gene itself is active either when the body plan of an
animal is being laid down in the foetus or in normal everyday life in the
adult animal.
For example, there are genes (almost identical in all animals) which
determine the length of the neck and thorax. There are promoters of these
genes which are also almost identical in all animals, differing only by a
matter of 1 or 2%. Nevertheless these small differences make all the
difference in how active the neck and thorax genes are -- that is, many
vertebrae are laid down in the two regions. In the mouse, the promoter
'turns on' the neck and thorax genes for a sufficiently long period of time
to make 7 neck and 13 thoracic vertebrae, in the chicken the promoter turns
on the same genes to make 14 neck and 7 thorax vertebrae, whereas in the
snake the promoter prevents the neck gene from making any vertebrae at all
but goes all out to cause thorax vertebrae (from which the ribs are made)
to be made repeatedly all down its body.
Promoters themselves are turned on by what are known as 'transcription
factors'. These are proteins which are made by other genes called hox
genes. So, altogether, there is a lot of circularity going on between
genes. However, the important point is that a particular transcription
factor can also act on different promoters simultaneously so that there is
a sort of cascade effect. Mutational changes in some genes can also cause
changes in others willy nilly even though there's no direct connection
between them.
Now then (we are now getting towards the matter of peace!) let me quote
some excerpts from Ridley from page 34 onwards of his book:
<<<<
In the 1960s, a geneticist names Dmitri Belyaev . . . decided to bred tamer
foxes . . . . by selecting as beeding stock those animals that allowed him
closest . . . . After 25 generations, the new breed of foxes not only
behaved like dogs, they looked like dogs; . . . like collies, their tails
turned up at the end, their ears were floppy, their snouts shorter and
their brains smaller than in wild foxes. . . .
The implication is that some promoter change had occurred which affected
not one, but many genes. Indeed, it is fairly obvious that what happened in
both cases was that the timing of development had been altered so that the
adult animals retained many of the features and habits of pups: the floppy
ears, the short snout, the smaller brain and the playful behaviour.
What seems to happen in these cases is that young animals do not yet show
fear or aggression, these developing last through the forward growth of the
limbicd system at the base of the brain. So the most likely way for
evolution to produce a freindly or tame animal is to stop brain development
prematurely. The effect is a smaller brain and especially a smaller 'Area
13', a late-developing part of the limbic system that seems to have the job
of disinhibiting adult emotional reactions such as fear and aggression.
Intriguingly, such a taming process seems to have happened naturally in
bonobos since their separation from the chimpanzee more than two million
years ago. For its size the bonobo not only has a small head, but also
reduced aggressiveness and several juvenile features retained into
adulthood including a white tail tuft, high-pitched calls and unusually
small area 13s.
So do human beings. Surprisingly, the fossil record suggests that there has
been a rather steep decline in human brain size during the past 15,000
years, partly but wholly reflecting a shrinking body size that seems to
have accompanied the arrival of dense and 'civilised' human settlement.
This followed several million years of more or less steady increases in
brain size. Around 50,000 years ago human brains averaged 1,518 cc . . .
today the number has fallen to 1,230 . . . even allowing for some reduction
in body weight, this seems to be a steep decline. Perhaps there has been
some recent taming of the species. If so, how? Richard Wrangham believes
that once human beings became sedentary, living in permanent settlements,
they could no tolerate anti-social behaviour and they began to banish,
imprison or execute especially difficult individuals.
>>>>
Although modern pop music contains a lot of high-pitched calls there
doesn't seem to be any sign of white tail tufts yet.
Seriously, though, I think that if we are to advance the cause of peace, we
not only need to develop appropriate institutions but also start to start
thinking about eugenics again. The latter has been a dirty word for too
long. There are positive aspects to it, too, so long as we understand
genetics in a far more detailed and humane way than we have done so far.
Keith Hudson
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------
Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
