pratclif.comHowever, we must take into account the principle of natural selection, which implies that if our goals are incompatible with the conditions necessary for survival, then we will be eliminated from the natural scene. Of course, there is no natural law or absolute moral principle which forbids you to commit suicide, but you must be aware that this means that the world will continue without you, and that it will quickly forget that you ever have been there. If we wish to evade this alternative, this means that we will have to do everything for maximising survival.
A second fallacy to avoid is the naive extrapolation of past evolution into the present or future. The mechanisms of survival and adaptation that were developed during evolution contain a lot of wisdom--about past situations (Campbell, 1978). They are not necessarily adequate for present circumstances. This must be emphasized especially in view of the creativity of evolution: the emergence of new levels of complexity, governed by novel laws.
For example, as shown by the theory of r/K selection in biological evolution, there is a trade-off between fast reproduction (r selection) and long life (K selection): organisms that reproduce quickly (e.g. mice, insects) generally do not live long and therefore do not have the time or the resources to become very large, strong, efficient or intelligent, as K-selected organisms would (e.g. elephants, tortoises, people). Quick reproduction (r) is advantageous in environments where the probability of death is high, but where there are enough resources for a fast growing population. Continuing development (K) is preferable in an environment where the risks of unexpected death are under control, but that is limited in its carrying capacity in terms of available resources. Our present society becomes more and more like a K-environment, and therefore evolutionary theory would admonish us to increasingly focus on the values associated with K selection, i.e. long life and extended development, while suppressing the inherited tendency to produce a lot of offspring.
As a more radical example of a needed change in evolutionary strategies, biological evolution, based on the survival of the genes, has favoured selfishness and nepotism: maximizing one's own profit, with a disregard for others (unless those others carry one's own genes: close family). In a human society, on the other hand, we need moral principles that promote cooperation, curbing too strong selfishness. Once the social interactions have sufficiently developed the appearance of such moral principles (e.g. "thou shalt not steal") becomes advantageous, and hence will be reinforced by natural selection, even though it runs counter to previous "selfish" selection mechanisms (Campbell, 1978). The development of human society is an example of a metasystem transition, which creates a new system evolving through a mechanism which is no longer genetical but cultural (Turchin, 1977).
One of the implications of that transition concerns the interpretation of survival. In biological evolution survival means essentially survival of the genes, not so much survival of the individuals (Dawkins, 1976). With the exception of species extinction, we may say that genes are effectively immortal: it does not matter that an individual dies, as long as his or her genes persist in off-spring. The death of individual organisms can even contribute to genetic fitness, by focusing resources on reproduction rather than individual survival (see the evolutionary causes of death).
Individual death does not benefit cultural evolution, though. In socio-cultural evolution, the role of genes is played by cognitive systems ("memes"), embodied in individual brains or social organizations, or stored in books, computers and other knowledge media. However, most of the knowledge acquired by an individual still disappears at biological death. Only a tiny part of that knowledge is stored outside the brain or transmitted to other individuals. Further evolution would be much more efficient if all knowledge acquired through experience could be maintained, in order to make place only for more adequate knowledge.
This requires an effective immortality of the cognitive systems defining individual and collective minds: what would survive is not the material substrate (body or brain), but its cybernetic organization. This may be called "cybernetic immortality" (Turchin, 1991). We could conceive its realization by means of very advanced man-machine systems, where the border between the organic (brain) and the artificially organic or electronic media (computer) becomes irrelevant. The death of a biological component of the system would no longer imply the death of the whole system.
Cybernetic immortality can be conceived as an ultimate goal or value, capable to motivate long-term human action. It is in this respect similar to metaphysical immortality (Turchin, 1991): the survival of the "soul" in heaven promised by the traditional religions in order to motivate individuals to obey their ethical teachings (Campbell, 1979), and to creative immortality (Turchin, 1991): the driving force behind artists, authors or scientists, who hope to survive in the works they leave to posterity.
Mis à jour le 01/04/2016 pratclif.com