Narrow Roads of Gene Land (Volume 2)

William Hamilton

As I listened in silence I drew one general conclusion: for us to be so passionate about a topic we must be close indeed to that centre of my actual and hoped for expertise --- biological fitness. It must be because of such a proximity to the deepest evolved roots of our psyche that no one seemed able to address the subjects of reproduction and population in a dispassionate way ( I could tell from my own feelings as i listened to some of the points that ready-made passions and lack of objectivity were present i myself). Well, wasn't it indeed a topic in which I should expect our deepest urges to be concealed almost from our very selves only in order that, in our everyday commerce with others, we would avoid being forced to expose ultimate objectives in 'everyday' discussion --- not expose, that is, personal, family, class, or racial ultimate biases, rather to put on view an agreeable and softened version, a general hypocrisy, something to the effect that it doesn't matter who reproduces, that we treat all people ad groups with equal favor? That we all hold, whatever our specific denomination, a pan-religious view to the effect that 'all men are brothers' when we know very well, deep down, it isn't true?

...

At the beginning of one of the sessions there was a discussion about the general course of the group's program for the future --- who we should invite to talk and what about. I suggested it might be useful for us to discuss the psychology of population situations and to give special attention to those where closely placed or intermixed distinct groups had strikingly different rates of increase. In particular, it might be useful to consider what this might do to competitive birth rates and aggressive instincts connected with population perceptions --- in fact, also with the inception of wars. There was silence as I stopped. ...

The silence that came surprised me and unsettled me, so I added something about everyone having pride in his or her family and, perhaps not wanting to see descendants lost in a sea of strangers; ...

In an effort to be more explicit and to be taken more seriously, I then exposed some corner of my actual work, saying something about how we were all expected, as a result of population genetical processes --- natural selection in fact --- to have psychological biases that wouldn't necessarily be easily visible on the surface but whose reality would come to the fore in situations where these rapid changes in a population's composition were imminent. There was a matter of within- and between-group variance involved here, this applied to the very genes that made us. it wasn't necessarily to such ideas, I added, that shortages of land or whatever would be apparent right divisive psychology took effect; it would be in this nature of the group psychology to anticipate what might be about to happen. ... If we really want to understand why population is a difficult issue to discuss and to do anything about it in the world, ... it is very essential that we understand the evolutionary force that have moulded reproductive and territorial psychology in humans. ... If we wanted to recommend policies to affect population trends in any direction today, we perhaps needed to discuss first the underlying motivations that all people possess --- that must be there from the very fact that they themselves came from successful parentage and successful families of the past ... (p. xxxv)

I predict that in two generations the damage being done to the human genome by the ante- and postnatal life-saving efforts of modern medicine will be obvious to all and be a big talking point of science and politics. ... In 40 years civilized countries will have become uncomfortably aware of, for example, the increasing load of the intrinsically unhealthy on health services, the increasing dominance of both sport and everyday health-demanding activities by nations that have enjoyed the worst records of the practice of scientific medicine. the burden imposed by heavily 'mutationally challenged' people on the less challenged and able-bodied will already be more obvious. (p. xlvii)

Scientists study the mechanism of the Universe and, to do so, all use under some generosity or law of their culture parts of a social surplus that others have accumulated. They ought, therefore, to let their providers know of any dangers that they find, in the course of their studies, affecting society. ... with the more social issues whose fundamentals I have actually worked on: if this-and-this policy continues to be done the mechanisms of the Universe I know of show that-and-that will follow. (p. 453)

Audience question: Just how much damage has medicine inflicted on the genetic reserves of humans by its attempt to keep genetically unfit individuals alive and producing children?

Maynard Smith: Speaking as someone who would be blind and useless in a hunter-gatherer society without my spectacles, I'm extremely glad that people are keeping me people like me alive and even allowing us to reproduce.

Hamilton: I'm all in favor of keeping John Maynard Smith alive, or others like him, but I think there is a potential problem in that we get better and better at treating more and more people with genetic defects. I think there is a possibility we might build up a situation where every one of our descendents has several lethal genes which require medication all of the time. If there were to be some breakdown of civilization, an earthquake or other kind of crisis, such that the medication could not be provided, then we might have an unstable, escalating crisis in medical care. If everyone is a diabetic, for example, the operatives in factories making insulin had better not join in any general strike or they may end killing themselves along with the rest of us. In the midst of such crisis, the only survivors would be some lucky people on some South Pacific island that never had medical attention and so were still competent, I do think there is going to be a growing problem along these lines.  (p. 456)

Nothing 'gainst time's scythe can make defense

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

                                                            Shakespeare, Sonnet XII

SONNET 12

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

The existence of such equlibria, however, makes like cases easier to detect and understand; thus perhaps the well-studied examples give an exaggerated impression of their importance. (p. 518)

Comments: So is the equilibrium theory in economics.