Nine out of ten new mutations in evolution are unfitting, the development of new and better mutations is slow. This parallels Conservatism and its policy of attempting to alter the more ugly aspects of change, while accepting slow change.
Selection by groups seems to have helped develop the ethical values that are also tied to religion. Ethics which encouraged mutual respect and self-sacrifice by individuals for the group enhanced the group’s survival success. Societies with low ethical standards tended to collapse.
Decline is influenced by luxury, pluralistic ethics and egoistic individualism. American Conservatism struggles against these things but at the same time addresses the danger of sameness. Big bureaucratic states and global business often hurt competition and variation.
The disappearance of all groups but one would be catastrophic. Men like Stalin and Hitler damage the survival and variation of smaller groups by seeking world domination, more or less. Cooperative competition among separate state powers is the essence of Federalism. War is a breakdown of competition, it tends to lose the physically and mentally fit, and the most patriotic among us.
Conservatism and Federalism, as well as religions that affirm subsidiarity and traditional ethics, work in harmony with human nature and evolution. When we sink to imperialism or universalist ambitions we move away from the mutual love and self-sacrifice that has always worked best in smaller communities.
I see these developments in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology as renewing traditional American Conservatism.
Selection by groups seems to have helped develop the ethical values that are also tied to religion. Ethics which encouraged mutual respect and self-sacrifice by individuals for the group enhanced the group’s survival success. Societies with low ethical standards tended to collapse.
Decline is influenced by luxury, pluralistic ethics and egoistic individualism. American Conservatism struggles against these things but at the same time addresses the danger of sameness. Big bureaucratic states and global business often hurt competition and variation.
The disappearance of all groups but one would be catastrophic. Men like Stalin and Hitler damage the survival and variation of smaller groups by seeking world domination, more or less. Cooperative competition among separate state powers is the essence of Federalism. War is a breakdown of competition, it tends to lose the physically and mentally fit, and the most patriotic among us.
Conservatism and Federalism, as well as religions that affirm subsidiarity and traditional ethics, work in harmony with human nature and evolution. When we sink to imperialism or universalist ambitions we move away from the mutual love and self-sacrifice that has always worked best in smaller communities.
I see these developments in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology as renewing traditional American Conservatism.
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I have long believed that the main problem with evolutionary theory, as commonly accepted, is that it only takes into account one basic type of change: gradual evolution. But there is also revolutionary or catastrophic change at play in our chaotic universe. And evolutionary theory, looking at change like rust on steel - gradual over time - seems to ignore what all things must do when faced with total system shifts - tipping points, if one prefers. Whether the sudden arrival of an ice age, with its cascading plethora of interlocking changes in climate, weather, available foods, changing sea levels, etc., or the impact of a major meteorite on earth's surface, these chaotic, changes leave behind revolutionary changes in the shape and form of living things within geologically short time frames. In the twinkling of a geologic eye, whole genera of animals may cease to exist, and, seemingly, new species arrive. Is there a hidden hand behind the relatively sudden appearance of whole new families of species? I dunno. But fundamentally, an outlook based on conserving species (animal and plant, as well as humans), mistrustful of concentrated power and authority (after all, all those eggs in one basket really isn't such a good idea!), isn't a bad survival mechanism in a chaotic world. Tribalism works - and not just for humans alone. And in a rather straightforward fashion, isn't federalism just tribalism writ large?
ReplyDeleteNice blog. Too bad more have not commented. Keep the faith. The remanant, is after all, only a handful by definition!
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