SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO &
VOCAB
I am going to attempt to separate evolutionary
development into five Levels. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species suggested
this idea to me. At the end of Chapter
7, “Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection” he wrote:
“… Abrupt and strongly marked variations occur in our domesticated
productions, singly and at rather long intervals of time. If such occurred under nature, they would be
liable to be lost by accidental causes and by inter-crossing. In order that a new species should suddenly
appear, it is almost necessary to believe, in opposition to all analogy, that
several wonderfully changed individuals appeared simultaneously within the same district, [italics mine].
“Against the belief in abrupt changes, embryology enters a
strong protest. The embryo serves as a
record of the past condition of the species.
Hence existing species during early stages often resemble extinct forms
belonging to the same class. It is
incredible that an animal should have undergone abrupt transformations and yet
should not bear even a trace in its embryonic condition of sudden modification,
every detail being developed by insensibly fine steps.
“He who believes that some ancient form was transformed
suddenly through an internal force or tendency will be compelled to believe
that many structures beautifully adapted
to all the other parts of the same creature and to the surrounding conditions,
have been suddenly produced; and of such complex and wonderful
co-adaptations, he will not be able to assign a shadow of an explanation
[author’s note: except, perhaps, disease].”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Abridged and Edited by
Charlotte and William Irvine, 1978,
Without additional clarification,
1. All species produce offspring in excess of the number that can survive.
2. Adult populations in any region tend to remain constant, and therefore
there is an enormous death rate. (Most
biologists believe the first part of point 2 is wrong, the second part largely
correct.)
3. There must be a struggle for survival which the majority of creatures
lose.
4. The competitors vary in many small characteristics, and these will
affect the chances of survival.
5. The result of the four previous conditions is that the organism best
able to survive the conditions transmits its more adaptive traits to future
generations.
Taken from Fred Warshofsky’s Doomsday:
The Science of Catastrophe, Readers Digest Press,
Gordon Rattray Taylor summarizes
1. The suddenness [sudden, to paleontologists, means happening in a mere
million years] with which major changes in pattern occurred and the virtual
absence of any fossil remains from the period in which they were alleged to be
evolving.
2. The suddenness with which new forms ‘radiated’ into numerous variants.
3. The suddenness of many extinctions and the lack of obvious reasons for
such extinction.
4. The repeated occurrence of changes calling for numerous coordinated
innovations, both at the level of organs and of complete organisms.
5. The variations in speed at which evolution occurred.
6. The fact that subsequently, no new phyla have appeared, and no new
classes and orders. This fact, which has
been much ignored, is perhaps the most powerful of all arguments against
7. The occurrence of parallel and convergent evolution, in which similar
structures evolve in quite different circumstances.
8. The existence of long-term trends (orthogenesis).
9. The appearance of organs before they are needed (pre-adaptation).
10. The
occurrence of ‘overshoot’ or evolutionary momentum (e.g. how organs once useful
became overdeveloped, such as the tusks of the saber-toothed tiger and the
antlers of the Irish Elk).
11. The
puzzle of how organs, once evolved, come to be lost (degeneration).
12. The
failure of some organisms to evolve at all.
Many diseases increase mortality. However, some infections might benefit their
hosts. Did ‘domesticated’ pathogens
introduce immune, digestive, neural, and other specialized cells where none
existed before? Did mutagenic microbes
make new mutations inheritable? Did
successfully adapted tumors become physical mutations?
All these suppositions are heretical today and
pigeonholed under clumsy rubrics like “endosymbiosis” and “horizontal gene
transfer in eukaryotes.” Scientists are
just resuming the study of oncogenes, transposons, plasmids, plasmagenes and
episomes: micro-organic savings banks, post offices and stock exchanges whose
hallways echo with complex DNA intercourse.
Could our bodies be ‘bacterial clouds;’ multi-generation
starships constructed with, by and for microorganisms, to transport their DNA
(so-called “junk DNA”?) in safety and comfort across vast stretches of
space-time—from your armchair to the refrigerator, say, or across the galaxy?
Adaptive mutation through benign disease processes might
reconcile many arguments between evolutionary gradualists and
catastrophists.
Environmental catastrophes would have suppressed the
immune systems of dominant species.
They’d have created pandemics of heightened mortality, within-species
differentiation and genetic drift.
During such disasters, whole herds might have been annihilated or
transformed into viable new species.
Since those transformations would have affected every member of the herd
simultaneously, their descendants would have skipped ‘transitional’
stages. Such an evolutionary process of
selective die-out is modeled in Kropotkin's book, Mutual Cooperation.
It is also interesting to note that many species that
have extremely long histories of genetic stability appear to have been
relatively immune to most diseases -- sharks, mollusks, lichen, fungi, latter
dinosaurs (?). Better qualified
scientists who specialize in such things should take note.
This evolutionary blueprint would have left the
fragmentary fossil record our paleontologists puzzle over today, that doesn’t
contain the ‘missing links” Darwinists keep predicting and failing to
find. That’s a very bad sign for a
theory.
Behavior, however, seems to have evolved under
environmental influences, following a more gradual, Lamarckian path. Given altered circumstances, certain deviants
went crazy in specific ways. This kind
of craziness increased their species’ reproductive success, was learned by
succeeding progeny and thus retained in species memory.
Someone may appear to be acting crazy, but his craziness
may be a survival factor under altered circumstances that mere ‘normals’
couldn’t handle. When Chaos looms,
deviant responses may become more efficient than routine normality.
Species are rarely exterminated as a direct outcome of
predation, endemic disease and selective competition; but more often from some
massive ecological disruption – asteroid strikes, volcanism, ice ages, massive
flooding, long droughts, human encroachment, etc.; followed by lethal pandemics
triggered by lower immunities across the board.
Thereafter, a few survivors replaced the masses that
died. The distinguishing traits they
shared became “Darwinian mutations.”
These traits would not need to “improve fitness.” On the contrary, they would tend to echo and
reinforce that species’ statistical average among a handful of survivors. Rare individuals with superior traits in that
special niche would have died along with the majority. Only continuously unstable (semi-permanently
lethal) environments would promote the survival of radical mutants, in the very
rare cases when they wouldn’t annihilate them entirely.
You might note that the planet has caught a cold and that
we are it.
To understand our proper place in the scheme of things,
think of humanity as an Earth pathogen—not its dominators, lords or even failed
caretakers. Like
most disease organisms, we evolved through progressive relationships with our
host. Any population that fails to reach
the next higher level, drops to a lower one and languishes interminable
obscurity or disappears.
Someone once suggested to me that children pass through
similar stages with respect to their parents.
Since I have never raised children, I won’t go there.
Level One: The organism is frail, simple and not
adaptive. It only survives under optimal
circumstances. Opportunistically, it
establishes precarious toeholds in empty niches and in hosts afflicted with
impaired immunity. Its growth is
sluggish or static. Its simplicity is
its gravest flaw. The slightest disturbance
threatens it with annihilation.
Level Two: A much
tougher organism invades a new host, overwhelms its defenses and kills it
through explosive growth. The invading
organism commits suicide by outgrowing its habitat.
Within decades, the Black Plague killed off half of all
Europeans. Human growth rates flattened
for a century, until some unknown mechanism stopped this rampage cold. After all, no plague survivor became immune
to the Black Death. Perhaps every town
rat died?
The basic difference between Level One and Level Two is
that the actors – host and pathogen – have traded places on the power
scale. In any case, each is diminished
by the disappearance of the other.
Level Three: A
more sophisticated organism controls its growth, accepts casualties from its
host’s defenses and attenuates its harmful signs and symptoms. Host and pathogen survive to reproduce though
neither may flourish as well as before.
Syphilis took this course during the Renaissance; so did
the flu at the end of World War I (and perhaps soon again). Both mutated from subtle plunderers of children,
the weak and the elderly, into runaway killers of strong adults, and back
again. They and others may have done so
again and again since long ago; this does not change these facts today.
Level Four: As an infectious agent evolves, it develops a
symbiotic relationship with its host.
Remaining disease symptoms benefit both the host and the invader. Positive and negative effects achieve
balance.
Sickle cell anemia strengthens its host’s immunity to
malaria, perhaps the deadliest human disease. Actually, malarial infections have cured some
cases of syphilis and they may thwart other diseases.
A constant background count of sturdy but marginally
lethal human diseases, tremendously old, crowds out newer, more deadly and
vulnerable organisms. Without this old
crowd of microscopic competitors, the worst newcomers might kill us off in a
few weeks of mass plague. Everywhere on
Earth, that is, except in military laboratories. There, such organisms are pampered pets
nurtured in sterile environments and taught deadly new tricks. See Levels One and Two, above.
Level Five: A super-sophisticated organism’s cumulative
usefulness to the host overcomes the harm it might inflict. New internal organs appear, like additional
scoops on an ice cream cone. They house
new functions —perhaps as benign tumors.
The infection makes a new home for itself within the
host’s strengthened body. In return for
this survival benefit, the host’s genes reprogram themselves, they mutate. Infection and host merge genetically into
more complex and adaptive spawn.
It’s inter-Kingdom sex!
The result of this sexual act (it can be called nothing else, even
though such ideas are taboo to current science dogma) is a new entity much
stronger than the sum of its original parts.
Take that, you devil-take-the-loser Darwinians. Oppose it as much as you please!
The disease relationship we maintain with the Earth
teeters between Levels Two and Three.
Humanity graduated from Level One to Two by learning the usefulness of
weapons and tools. Level Three would
mark a significant increase in the complexity of our civilization beyond mere
weapon technology.
However, our weapon managers have ignored runaway
population growth, resource depletion and environmental impacts. They've replaced this promising commencement
to Level Three, with technical, societal and moral preparations for omnicide
(“Kill everything!”): the only future their weapon hypnosis allows.
Level Two human overpopulation is a complex Earth
disaster that promises to collapse civilization and annihilate us, just as a
colony of primitive pathogens would destroy itself by irritating its host
beyond the brink of tolerance.
Info elites have evolved through the aforementioned disease
Levels with their proletarian hosts. While
seeming mighty, the rich are at best in transition from Level Three to Level
Four in their relationship with the poor.
Any good they achieve partially offsets their innate clumsiness. The slightest breach of the peace threatens
to drag them and us – our heads banging on the stairs – to lower levels and
annihilation.
Once we rally around Level Four and create an
In the same way, the Community of Dissidence maintains
its Levels Three and Four with Conspiracies of Greed.
Level One persisted until the Time of Prophets, when lone
martyrs to peace (Buddha, Zarathustra, Mani, Jesus, Mohammed and many more who
died nameless) decorated imperial crossroads with broken and poisoned
bodies—their own and/or that of their adherents. During this Level, each info elite
revalidated its weapon mentality by misrepresenting their dying words and
teachings, and passing these distortions down to posterity as sacred truths.
Level Two arose when clueless weapon dissidents KO’d the
decomposing body-politics of royal and imperial weapon technologies. They didn’t know what to do next. They only saw an unfair system that needed to
be overthrown. They mistook mere
symptoms (tyranny, corruption, greed, etc.) for the principal cause of societal
sickness (weapon mentality) and tried to eliminate them blindly. Then they swallowed the same toxin whole and
normalized all its symptoms, institutionalizing, perpetuating and perfecting
them in the process.
Included here are the Jewish, Christian, Islamic,
American, French, Fascist, Communist and Anti-Colonialist Revolutions. In short, all the circular, short-circuit,
positive feedback and negative-outcome revolutions our history bothered to
document.
Flea-like jumps occur today, between Levels Three and
Four. Weapon managers and weapon
dissidents flail at each other without rhyme or reason, while body counts,
environmental destruction, overpopulation and unsustainable industries explode
around us.
Learners will achieve Level Five once we fully understand
the weapon/peace dialectic, subordinate weapon mentality and restore global
peace to its rightful sovereignty. That
would muffle most of those global explosions of their own accord.
The only thing that's stopping us, now, is our collective
fear of peace.
LEARNERS: On the
Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
CONTACT PAGE (under
development)