Survival Advantages of Mortality and Discord

[Sitaram]

I have been wanting to put these thoughts of mind down in writing for some time now.

I had thought to post this in the Philosophy Section, but I decided that posting here, in General Writing, will be the more prudent choice, making me less exposed as a target for criticisms.


We are all mortal. We all die within 100 years or less. Have you ever noticed that? Why yes, of course you have.

And we can never all agree upon anything of great significance. Have you ever noticed that? Even in democratic nations, there are at least two parties, if not more, in any election. There are Republicans and Democrats, there are Liberals and Conservatives, and perhaps all sorts of shades in between.

I have come to see mortality and discord as distinct survival advantages.

But, how can this be, you ask? How can there be an advantage in the fact that we are all doomed to die? How can there be an advantage to the fact that we can never arrive at unanimous agreement upon important issues?

How wonderful this world of ours would be (you say) if none of us would ever face death, and if all of us could share in one religion, one language, one culture, one nation, one philosophy, one economy and one single set of values and principles.


Allow me to explain:

I see the vanished races of north American Indians, who dwelt for millennia in that continent, as having been very hardy because of natural selection, and kept hardy as a race by the rigors of survival. Modern man, by contrast, becomes a progressively weaker and less robust species because of high tech and increasing dependence on things like antibiotics, surgical procedures, insulin, etc., which in the short run greatly benefit individuals, but in the long run weaken the species.

Amoral nature, with its natural selection and survival of the fittest, seems to have a very different agenda which favors groups and species over individuals. Our society now seems to place the well-being and interest of the individual above the well-being and interests of the group as a whole. In the short run this emphasis on the individual is quite benevolent. But what is long-term benovelence? Does long-term benevolence sometimes wear the mask of cruelty and indifference?

Nature makes it difficult for the weak and defective to pass their genes on to another generation, but medicine and modern technology makes it easy for even the infertile to pass on their genetic traits to future generations. For me, the problem is so patently obvious. Physis and Nomos, Nature and Law, mortal enemies for eternity!

Of course, we may ocassionally discover some temporary cure for a particular disease, but then all those little pathogens turn around and produce thousands of generations in a short time, and evolve a resistant strain, so then we develop a different antibiotic, and so it goes, on and on, in a vicious cycle, a Catch-22. Those pathogens desire immortality just as much as we. Their oeuvres are plagues.

As individuals, certainly we benefit from this medicine and technology, but as a species we were obviously better off under the amoral natural scheme of survival of the fittest. Now, as a species, we are gradually becoming weakened and dependent upon that medicine and technology. "Better Living Through Chemistry."

Mind you, I am not saying whether this increased dependence upon medicine and technology and genetic engineering and this progressive weakening of our species is bad or good in the long run. I am merely pointing it out as an observable phenomenon.

In an odd way, mortality is a survival advantage.

In Ham's Histology (a textbook from the 1960's), generation after generation of mice had their haemopoetic marrow tissue destroyed by radiation, and received a transplant of the same strain of tissue received by the previous generation

In theory, that culture of haemopoetic tissue should be immortal, but in practice, it was not, it became weak (exhibited its mortality.)

Here is why I think the property of immortality is a survival disadvantage for the species. That strain of haemopoetic tissue weakened because it was perpetuated asexually, with no chance for change, modification, evolution.

In theory, there is no reason why a strain of cells could not be asexually immortal (in fact, the hela cell cultures are one example), BUT, from an evolutionary point of view, that very immortality is a survival disadvantage, since it does not permit change and adaptation

http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/video/culture.html

Unlike primary and secondary cells, immortalized cells continue to grow and divide indefinitely in vitro for as long as the correct culture conditions are maintained. Immortalized cell lines are also known as transformed cells - i.e. cells whose growth properties have been altered. This does not necessarily mean that these are "cancer" or "tumour" cells, i.e. able to form a tumour if introduced into an experimental animal, although in some cases they may do this. Transformation is a complex process and can occur by many different routes, e.g. infection by transforming tumour viruses or chromosomal changes.

HeLa cells are the classic example of an immortalized cell line. These are human epithelial cells from a fatal cervical carcinoma transformed by human papillomavirus 18 (HPV18). (Henrietta Lacks, 1951) HeLa cells are adherent cells (they stick to surfaces) which maintain contact inhibition in vitro, i.e. as they spread out across the culture flask, when two adjacent cells touch, this signals them to stop growing. Loss of contact inhibition is a classic sign of oncogenic cells, i.e. cells which form tumours in experimental animals. Such cells not only form a monolayer in culture but also pile up on top of one another in foci. HeLa cells are not oncogenic in animals, but they may become so if further transformed by a virus oncogene:

I have been considering something lately, related to humanity's inability to reach universal consensus in philosophy, theology, politics/government.... as related to the obvious survival advantage inherent in a genetic tendency towards diversity/uniqueness, so that some might be shoemakers, others soldiers, others scholars, others politicians, each happy in their ecological niche of specialization.

We might have evolved as a species capable of high agreement with one another, but that would have been a survival disadvantage.

If what I have said is the case, then that aspect of humanity has every bearing in the world on philosophy.

If everyone saw things the same way, then everyone would want to be a philosophy professor (or movie star) or president.... there would be no diversity... no one to live on mountain tops, no one at the polar circle, no one in the Amazon rain forests.... the diversity which was key to species survival makes unanimous agreement difficult or impossible.

I think of the imaginative faculty of the human mind as a kaleidoscope, constantly churning, changing (almost by chance) , (and how interesting it is that a similar image of "the churning of the oceans" is given in the vedas as the process by which nectar is produced)

Such a kaleidoscopic churning may produce many mathematical models (model theory), but then by an arduous process, we apply those random productions of imagination to reality, until one day someone stumbles upon a "match" between model and noumena, like Archimedes in the tub, shouts Eureka!, and runs naked through the streets

For years, people called "imaginary numbers" imaginary precisely because it was felt they had no reality or analog, but now they are indespensable in treating such phenomena as radio waves

Yet, the products of imagination are a part of reality.

The laws of physics and chemistry do not predict rabbits, but the existence of rabbits in no way defies the laws of physics. If you wanted to learn to play poker, would you study probability and statistics?

Obviously, gambling and gamblers came first, and then the mathematicians like Pascal turned their attention to it

The universe will continue after our sun supernovas in 8 billion years, and humankind are extinct, and this 8 billion year from now doomsday is something which we could be addressing to preserve culture and knowledge, but no one is concerned because that doomsday seems so remote.

There IS no causal connection, I suspect, between the laws of reality, and the activities and products of human imagination, and yet imagination (and the imaginary) is our source for this kalaidescope of models which we heave at reality in a hit or miss fashion.

In a certain sense, imagination is the threshhold of Being.

[baddad]

Sit-meister, your post says, "...allow me to explain", followed by a slew of quotes. Are these your original thoughts on the matter, posted on some other forum under different E-names?

[Sitaram]

These are all my own words, my own thoughts, which I have composed at different times in my life, in the context of various topics.

Well, with the exception of the Henrietta Lacks business about He-La cell cultures:

http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/video/culture.html

since I knew I had to bring something into the mix about those cells which have become immortalized, in order to emphasize that the mortal nature of biological life is not the only possibility, but only one among two or more possibilities, which has become dominant precisely because of the advantage it offers, not to the individual, but to the species.

I am aware, or I intuitively sense, that there is something more fundamental, more underlying with regard to an actual advantage to mortality, an advantage to disunity, not for the individual but for the species, or perhaps, all species in an ecosystem. I finally felt like trying to get something "down on paper" so to speak. Time and energies are limited, unfortunately. These excerpts I have posted so far, to sketch out the direction my thought has taken, are at my website. I could have posted links to them, but some might perceive that as something self-serving.

This entire business of posting on the Internet is sort of like fishing. I throw a line in the water with a worm on the end, or a piece of smelly meat, and hope that I will get lucky and a huge Marlin, or even Moby Dick, will swim along and take a bite at it.

There are some young minds I notice around here that are quite promising. So, I am taking a chance. I do not have much to lose, and I will soon lose everything, won't I, unless I hurry up and write a few things down upon this new-fangled eletronic virtual soap box that has come our way.

I am going to try and let my thoughts flow, because, just sometimes, something useful comes from such a process. And, in so doing, perhaps I can put some more of my "cards on the table," so to speak.

Did you ever notice, in very crowded places, how it precisely those people who most frequently and loudly shout excuse me who are actually the most rude? Did you ever notice how it is those people who often say "I want to know what you think, in your own words" who are the people with little or no original thinking or ideas to their credit.

I find the expression your own words very amusing. How many words are our own? Actually, none of us has any words of our own. If I were to really speak in my own words, it would be a language which no one can understand. Wittgenstein hit on something important when he observed that, for us to be truly subjective, we would have to speak our own, unique, privatelanguage, which no one else could understand.

http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lang/LangKreb.htm

Language is a funny thing. In a crowded waiting room, if you approach a seat which is obviously empty, someone will look at you and say "someone is sitting there." But, if you are very polite and courteous, you will approach that same empty seat, glance about the room and ask "is anyone sitting here?"

A Grasshopper walks into a bar and says....

(do you sense that a joke is coming?)


Atman and Anatman walk into a bar, and sit down at opposite ends.

Atman is the notion of some unique personhood; an immortal soul, (and, who knows, perhaps even a soul which has been saved).

Anatman is the notion that the uniqueness of personhood is an illusion. Self is an illusion.

Atman is fond of binary thinking. Actually, fond is not the word. For Atman, there is only one kind of thinking, and Atman doesn't even give it a name. Atman is found of simple yes or no questions.

Anatman subscribes to a form of thought termed anekantavada or "many-pointedness."

Atman and Anatman are both wearing a coat with big pockets (like Captain Kangaroo). Anatman has a book in one pocket entitled "Multimind" by Robert Ornstein.

http://www.orlingrabbe.com/chaos.htm

Now, we are working our way up to a joke here. Atman and Anatman both order a drink. Oh yes, and there is a bartender, who will react in a certain fashion and make certain comments. We simply need to discover what it is that Atman and Anatman order, and what the bartender says, and we have a good joke. I will tell you when to laugh.

(to be continued...)

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My thoughts are glacial,
Carving canyons.
Nations are my minyan.

The punch line is that good and evil are partners in crime.