This is Part 1 of the Origins of Blue Pill mega article.
Introduction
Part two
Part three
Orientation
The first puzzle piece we need to dispel the prominence of Social Programming is exactly this: proving that life is not a social convention. We will do so by the concept of Beauty. An objective measure of beauty that arises biologically. It transcends culture and conventions. A concept of beauty related to how organisms use their resources.
Against Darwin
We will use a daring argument. Especially, a daring argument for the Red Pill circles. Evolution is the concept of Heredity with Survival and Replication as the drivers. However, Heredity itself was an old idea, even for Darwin. It was known since the very beginning of animal domestication and breeding. By the time of Darwin, humans had shaped the fate of plants (eg, wheat, apples) and animals alike (eg, dogs, horses). This was Darwin’s innovation: figuring out the hidden drivers of nature in selecting who is worthy to pass on their genes. He transitioned from Heredity to Evolution by assigning a driver: Survival and Replication. We will challenge this step; we will argue against Survival and Replication.
Disclaimer: This is the philosophical version: Does Nature impose the S&R firmware, or is it a total accident? Should S&R dictate life, or is it just a byproduct of life? If all chickens refuse to breed from now on, then of course, chickens will go extinct as a species. Evolution works. But the fact that chickens would go extinct as a species doesn’t mandate that they shouldn’t stop breeding.
Evolution’s Blind Spots
To start off, we address the main pitfall of evolutionary psychology. That is, behaviour by its nature is teleological – from Greek “Telos”, end. Meaning it cannot be analysed by itself, without its purpose. For example, “he fetched the milk” makes no sense by itself; you need “…because he was thirsty” or “… to the customer” to give meaning to the action. In its broadest sense, this proves that there can never be social sciences without philosophy.
Why would this cause an issue for EvoPsych? The reason is that trying to assign a purpose to Evolution only leads to wrong conclusions. This was known even in Darwin’s age. It first appeared in his writings that evolution is blind and has no purpose. However, EvoPsych does exactly this; it claims behavior is there to aid S&R. This is a fundamental blind spot at the very center of EvoPsych’s foundations. We will prove this by showing the sketchiness of the concept of survival of the fittest in humans. The concept doesn’t apply as universally and as accurately as it does on other animals.
Survival and Replication on the Microscope
Let’s re-examine the survival of the fittest concept, then. Fittest individuals have a higher chance to pass on their genes, ill-fitted ones have a lower chance to pass them on. On a long time scale, this would lead to ill-fitted traits to disappear, go extinct. Does this concept stand to scrutiny?
The first part (good genes) is a tautology; we claim that the best genes are the ones that spread quickly, so nothing to do here. The second part, we need to ask ourselves whether the world is naturally scarce to support this argument. Is it really scarce enough to weed out genes that fast to eliminate them from the gene pool? Especially, is it scarce for higher animals, and even more is it scarce for humans?
My personal answer is no. Of course, there is no way of fully proving it, but there is some limited evidence that we have. Homo Ergaster (our ancestor) was already considered an apex predator since 1.6million years ago, and so all human species thereafter. Additionally, contrary to the popular argument, there were many human populations that rejected agriculture altogether at the beginning of history. This was despite knowledge of it [Dawn of Everything – David Graeber]. People decided that staying as foragers and hunter-gatherers was a better life than settling down as farmers. Isn’t that a major contradiction?
Especially, the start of agriculture followed a period with so much wheat and cereal abundance (in nature) that humans would never need to work to get by [Work – James Suzman]. Actually, this by itself is evidence against Evolutionary Bottlenecks. In short, remove the hard limiting factors that weed out genes, and then the generations needed to eliminate them from the pool grow exponentially.
Darwin and Malthus
Remember, Darwin doesn’t work without Malthus. These philosophies work hand in hand. In a sense, we are arguing against Malthus and his idea that organisms will expand to the ecosystem’s carrying capacity.
Malthus’ original assumption was that the population doubles every 25 years based on studies on British Colonial subjects. This was a very smart form of measurement, but affected by advanced agricultural techniques introduced by Britain. This led to his assumption that populations grow exponentially and agriculture grows linearly by extending the cultivatable land. For example, doubling the arable land can at most double production of the best farms (depending on the soil quality). Eventually, this leads to famine and collapse as there is not enough food to go around.
In contrast, modern estimates indicate a population doubling of every 250,000 in our evolutionary past. A fair shot, but way off from Malthus’ calculation. His theory can therefore not be universally applicable. This population doubling was not even limited by environmental resources; it is not indicative of a hard life for the ancient humans. Infant mortality was indeed high until the revolution in medicine and sanitation (pioneered in the West), but discounting infants, life wasn’t that hard for primitives.
Estimates indicate that after a child reaches 15 years of age, then its life expectancy is above 60 in any human society, primitive or not. Historical figures in Greece (start of written history) are known to have lived over 80 years at their death. A number that matches modern levels. Hell, removing agriculture, things only improve. Foragers are rarely malnourished and overall much healthier than agriculturalists. This was the rule until very, very recently. All these point that the whole “Survival of the Fittest” is sketchier than it sounds.
The Darwinian worldview
Darwin describes a specific life: the life at the bottom. The life that forfeits everything just to survive. His theory is incredibly accurate there. We claim that there is life beyond the bottom, life that is thriving. Darwin’s own view of the world was heavily distorted by the historical period. Because this was England during the Industrial Revolution: Slums filled with filthy people. No cleaning and health standards, with people working 16-hour days in terrifying conditions.
Yes, in this setting, Darwin is 100% correct. But saying that this is human nature is quite a stretch. For any person or slice of population, forfeiting all dignity just to get by, Darwin works as a prior assumption and not as a predictive device. These populations have already accepted those Malthusian conditions (that make Darwin work) just from their mode of living. Darwin didn’t force them into it.
Darwin’s horrifying assumptions do exist today and in history. But history is also full of heroic rebellions, last stands of people sacrificing everything to defend their ideals, traditions, and culture. Even at the animal level, there are countless examples of species that refuse to breed in a zoo, famously, the white tigers∗. This is certainly not S&R.
Battle for space
Let’s discuss another framework for explaining life. Hereditary without S&R. Heredity is indisputable and cannot be overlooked in any model respecting itself. The driver of it is up for debate. Let’s start looking at the driver as a Battle for Space [Bronze Age Mindset – BAP].
If there is free “space” (i.e., resources and energy), it will either become more life in the form of organisms, or it will be used by some organism to develop their abilities. Spare resources will either be used in a Malthus-esque way to increase population, think of it like the ecosystem’s carrying capacity. Or the organisms themselves need more resources than their fair share to develop their abilities. Hence, what would be extra “organic life” is used instead as competence in the organism.
This makes sense, assuming learning curves in any obtained skill (i.e., not hardwired behavior). For example, to become an expert shooter and win the Olympics (skill and ability), you need years in training using ammo to shoot at dummies (resources). But the work to make dummies and the ammo could have been used, in theory, to produce food, which is more “life”.
Battle for Space in Humans
The creative step is to claim that these dynamics play out in humans. There are humans who, if you feed them resources, will just expand their populations, achieving nothing. The so-called “life of the yeast” – it just expands amorphously. But some humans will use resources to develop their abilities. The latter part is what we call Beauty.
Therefore, in itself, beauty is a mindset. It is a mindset of using resources to develop one’s own skills. It is the same train of thought that rejects mediocrity. Maybe beauty is the rejection of mediocrity itself. Beauty itself presupposes a non-stressed life. When humans face existential threats, there can be no true Beauty. There is no time or resources for it.
There is a world of difference between life at the bottom and life that is thriving. The reason is biological and exists in nature. Higher animals, like the wolf, use resources to develop their skills. The life of the wolf is not the same as the life of the rabbit or the fly. There is a qualitative difference. Surviving for the sake of surviving is not worth it, as the Ancient Greeks say. Remember this when you stumble into any Blue Pill version that edges you into mediocrity and conformity.
The chicken or the egg
With this definition of Beauty, we achieved something that biological determinism always misses. Our beauty is contextual and relative. It is relative to the available resources and the society’s (resource) context. This matters! Because we avoid the argument that culture builds on top of biology. This is where all evolutionary arguments end up. Biology shapes culture and culture shapes biology. Instead, we are beyond that.
Our beauty is biologically driven; the need to occupy space, but it is not relative to culture. It is relative to the environment and the resources it provides! Both culture and Beauty can take input from the environment and resources, but there is no causation between them. This is a subtle but important difference. In a sense, there are two perpendicular axes intermixing. On one side, we have biology and culture, interlocked and self-propagating deterministically. On the other side, there is Beauty arising from biology and resources. This second axis is perpendicular to the first; it is pulling it away from continuing on a straight line. This is the whole point!
This is Part 1 of the Origins of Blue Pill mega article.
Introduction
Part two
Part three
Orientation
