“Politics can interact with evolution to shape human destiny.”
I mean, considering that the study authors apparently want to talk about something like epigenetics, not industrial strength fascism. 😉
From ScienceDaily:
The researchers said that there is an interaction between political and cultural forces and evolutionary results. Genes can shape culture and political institutions, which in turn can shape biology and physiology, passing on certain traits to future generations.
The environment’s influence on adaptation and how it changes biology is better known and often easier to observe, said Hatemi, but the way culture can affect gene expressions in future generations is often harder to show and may take longer to reveal itself.
…
Hatemi, who worked with Rose McDermott, the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations, Brown University, said this interaction between culture and biology could explain why some troubled hot spots remain troubled over many years. People who are born in aggressive environments may pass on traits that make it more likely that future generations react to certain situations violently, he added.
“These changes, then, may have a long-range effect on children and on who those children become when they grow up,” said Hatemi. “Those who grow up in a violent culture may have more of a tendency to respond with aggression in the future.”
I wrote on something similar last Sunday: Why Canada is less violent than the United States, except sometimes
My point was that when a country’s history doesn’t feature many positive historic changes that involved extensive violence, people will be less likely to see violence as creating a benefit. However, I didn’t argue for a genetic component (unlikely in this case), more for the role of tacit assumptions and learned behaviour.
Although the term “epigenetics” is not used in the story or abstract, that must be the way culture would influence genetics, if it does.
Here’s the abstract:
Biology and culture continually and interactively cocreate. In order to fully understand culture, the biological pathways that co-occur must also be appreciated. And in order to determine how biological influences manifest in social behaviors, culture cannot be discarded. Here we discuss the interaction between genes and culture and show the ways in which each influences and informs the other. We argue that this interaction is profoundly important in shaping a wide variety of political and institutional differences across populations, including critical processes such as cooperation and conflict. We apply a levels-of-analysis approach to the study of individuals, cultures, and populations. In doing so, we discuss the potentially critical role of gene-environment mismatch in precipitating many political and social problems, especially those related to political violence. (paywall)
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Thank God that in Canada there is a principled way to restrict the number of politicians! Canadians don’t need to depend on evolution to do the right thing.
Denyse,
This has the a similar feel to Nicolas Wade’s book, namely that environment and the political system and culture it spawns affects the gene pool.
If violence is rewarded with many wives then those who may have genes that led them to violence will pass them along at a greater frequency. Similarly, other types of genes may affect behavior in different ways that might lead them to success or failure in a certain type of society.
So I am going to disagree with you that the headline is bad let alone the worst that has been generated in recent years.
jerry 2
When it comes to tendencies toward violence, culture reigns. My ancestors, the Irish, came to America in the 1800s with a well-earned reputation for fighting & violence. Indeed, many employers openly advertised that they would not hire Irishmen, even preferring blacks at a time of blatant racism.
Yet through the intervention of the Catholic Church, Irish habits of sloth, violence, and insobriety were changed.
Not their genes. Their culture.
It is interesting to note that cultures that were the most violent in history were atheistic, even Darwinian, in their ‘cultural policy’. The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, and even state sponsored Darwinism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here’s what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of a Government:
It is also interesting to note that people who do not believe in a soul tend to be more psychopathic than people who do believe in a soul. i.e. There are actually studies that show that people who do not believe in a soul are a little bit more anti-social (psychopathic) than people who do believe in a soul:
That people who not believe in a soul should be found to be more psychopathic than people who do should really not be all that surprising,,,
Thus, ignoring the fact that there is no free will in the Darwinian worldview in the first place, if Darwinists really want to choose cultural policies that promote peace and cooperation amonst people then they need to choose policies that folster belief in a soul, not inhibit belief in the soul as they currently do, (at least as they currently do in many of the public schools of America).
It is also interesting to note that, as Dr. Jefferey Schwartz has pointed out, that focused mental attention can change the activity of the brain, i.e. top down brain plasticity.
It is also interesting to note that ‘mental states’ can reach all the way down and change gene expression, i.e. can ‘epigenetically’ control the gene expression of our bodies, thus directly contradicting the Darwinian notion that we are merely helpless victims of our genes.
Whereas conversely, it is found that the positive mental state of happiness, love, caring, and nurturing, have a pronounced positive effect on health,,
Moreover, besides happiness, giving and recieving love has been shown to have a pronounced beneficial effect on health,,,
Moreover, the positive effect of a caring attitude is found to work both ways, in that not only does the person receiving loving care from another person heal more quickly, but it is also found that people of a happy, charitable, loving, nature also receive the tangible benefits of a longer and healthier life in return:
Perhaps this beneficial effect of giving and recieving love on health goes a long way towards explaining why women, who, IMHO, are generally more loving and caring in providing tangible assistance to others than men are, live on average five to 10 years longer than men do.
Of course from a Theistic perspective this beneficial effect of love is to be expected, whereas from a materialistic perspective, well to put it mildly, from a materialistic perspective of survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, it is very counter intuitive that love would be so beneficial:
Verse and music:
supplemental note:
Verse and music:
My great great great father came here because of the famine. I only found out some of my origins recently due to genealogy sites such as 23andme and ancestry.
I am also aware of the horrors some families live through because of genetic influences. Depression runs in one side of my family and this is a genetic disorder. It affects behavior in lots of ways. Autism is a genetic disorder and I have a niece who is autistic and will struggle to make her way in the world.
I think you should read the Wade book. I have and watched people who have not read it reflexively trash it. It really does not say too much but is mostly speculative but there are a couple areas where there is apparently more than speculative results. One is violence. In certain areas of the world and at certain times in history, violence was selected for and rewarded with the ability to procreate.
The Irish were the subjects of a harsh occupation by the British and their reactions were most likely the result of this occupation. Once the Scandinavians were some of the more brutish marauders in the world and now they are held up for their docility. Maybe they exported the most brutish as they became known as the Normans and some of the best fighters in the world in France and Italy and many ended up in Ireland and England.
So in terms of violence and other tendencies, some times it may be the environment but it also for some is probably genetic.
BA,
I agree with you that materialists don’t have an adequate explanation of how changing our thoughts can physically change our brains. If we are manifestations of the chemicals in our brains, what is changing the chemicals? What is making the decision as to how we are going to change those chemicals.
Likewise it has been shown that schizophrenics can cure their own schizophrenia by deciding how they think. So their brain has a problem with thinking, so they use their brain to change their brain. And who exactly is the one deciding to change it.
AND, likewise the converse also has to be true. Our own brains can decide to use thought that destroys our brain.
Did Darwinian evolution cause this?
to re-emphasize: Although biology can have pronounced effect on urges, it is important to, once again, stress that we are not merely helpless victims of our genes. For one thing, it has been impossible to tie human behavior to specific genes. i.e. gay gene, alcoholism gene, God gene, I like ice cream gene,,
The reason that behavior cannot be reduced to genes, or a specific gene, is quite obvious, the genetic reductionism model is grossly overly simplistic in terms of explaining behavior and personality, as even comedian John Cleese humorously realizes,
In fact, the genetic reductionism model, i.e. “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us”, is now known to be wrong,,
In fact, due to the overlapping complexity of single genes in generating multiple protein products, ENCODE has called for a redefinition of the entire concept of a gene.
Thus the genetic reductionism model for behavior is simply overly simplistic
Moreover, to reiterate, mental states, i.e. thoughts of the ‘mind’, can have a pronounced effect gene expression and brain plasticity:
Thus, whilst biology certainly can contribute to our urges, and I wouldn’t argue otherwise, (we obviously all do get hungry don’t we?), I argue that science has advanced to the point of conclusively proving that we are not merely helpless victims of our genes, as is help in the neo-Darwinian view of things, and that our souls/minds can overcome negative urges that are harmful to us.
Of supplemental note to autistic people,,,
In the following videos, although the girl in the videos was written off as hopelessly retarded by everyone who saw her, reveal that there was/is indeed a gentle intelligence, a “me”, a “soul’, within the girl that was/is trapped within her body. And that that “me” was/is unable to express herself properly to others because of her neurological disorder.
Liberal or conservative? Reactions to disgust are a dead giveaway – Oct 29, 2014
Excerpt: Maggot infestations, rotting carcasses, unidentifiable gunk in the kitchen sink – how much your brain responds to disgusting images could predict whether you are liberal or conservative.,,,
In a brain scanner, participants were shown disgusting images, such as dirty toilets or mutilated carcasses, mixed with neutral and pleasant images, such as landscapes and babies.,,,
Conservatives tend to have more magnified responses to disgusting images, but scientists don’t know exactly why, Montague said.,,,
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-l.....eaway.html
Hmmm, why am I not surprised?
bornagain77
keith s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBeRmjDrxXM
A map of the entire human metabolic pathway – interactive map (high resolution)
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~turk.....thways.png