Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto. (Publio Terenzio Afro)
In the last 200 years man seems definitely directed to the overcoming of the classic Prefactors limiting the number of other animal species. Predation hasn’t been a problem any longer for centuries:hearing a human being has been torn to pieces by a big predator is now only a curiosity.
Famine s a terrible reality we can find only in some parts of the world. Obviously people still die of disease, but the great epidemics of the past with a strong demographic effect are only a reminescence. Maybe the last pandemia was flu, the so-called Spanish, during the first world war.[1]
War or generally competition is an active factor limiting human population, but even though it is in a considerable expansion as a psychosocial attitude, hasn’t caused a remarkable decrease of human population in the last sixty years.
At this point man could consider that his everlasting struggle against the Laws of Nature has been won and think he is the absolute master of the Universe and of his own destiny. This illusion comes from another even more dangerous one: the idea that, like a God, man is in the centre of life on the earth.
Both these convinctions are the consequence of that Original Sin owing to which man, after passing from monkey to homo sapiens, thinks he is quite free from every Divine or Natural Law.
In my opinion the reality of human condition is much more complex. According to a great ethologist’s theory[2], man is just a robot, a survival machine of the true constituents life on the earth: genes, the small molecules of DNA (for other species of RNA) which are the genetic heritage, that is to say, the directive brain of any living creature. Therefore genes are, in the scientist’s opinion, “the fundamental elements of life on the planet earth”.
When I say “genes”, I refer to the ones which are present in all living creatures: man, animals, plants but also bacteria and viruses. They cause the behaviour of the machines they are guests of, with only one egoistic purpose: their own survival.
Balance on the planet earth comes from the competition among genes of the different survival machines.
The first consequence of the application of this theory is that man’s genes aren’t superior to the ones of a plant or a virus more than brain molecules aren’t superior to bone and muscle ones as to vital importance. If we imagine the whole living Universe like a human body, where brain molecules represent men (who can think) and the molecules of other organs (skin, bones, muscles, liver) represent other living creatures (animals, plants, but also viruses), all the molecules of human body are necessary to the life of man himself just as any living creature is necessary to universe life.
If brain molecules,considering themselves superior to the ones of all the other organs, should decide to multiply endlessly, that is to all other molecules’ detriment, we will simply have a brain cancer which would inevitably lead the whole body to death.
Man’s genes, being inclined to multiply, exploit the extraordinary survival machines which give genes hospitality and induce them to reproduce unconditionally[3]. They act like that with the egoistic purpose of surviving at the expence of the genes of all other living creatures and this way they behave, more or less, like the cells of a cerebral cancer as to the cells of the tissues of all other organs.
[1]Obviously there are still local pandemias as a recent one (January 2001) of cholera in Austral Africa, but the limited number of the dead and the fact they take place in the countries of the third world make an event one of the so many daily disasters, like an earthquake or a flood, the use of them is mostly to find space in media.
[2]Dawkins R. Il gene egoista( The Selfish gene) . Oscar Mondadori. Milano 1989.
Another scholar, a philosopher, affirmed the same theory in the half 19th century. On studying sexual desire, Schopenhauer concludes that, when a man and a woman feel irresistibly attracted, despite their social, cultural and character differences, is nature to exert all its strength: “It deceives man with an illusion of sensual pleasure, by making him believe he will find in the arms of a woman suitable for him a greater pleasure than in the ones of any other woman. So he deludes himself that he makes efforts and sacifices for his own pleasure while this happens only for the preservation of the species normal type”. It’s explained like that why “love is blind” and why great loves generally originate at first sight:”Who has ever loved, that has never loved at first sight?“- Shakespeare wonders in his comedy” As you like it”.
Obviously Schopenhauer didn’t know the existence of genes, but when he says that Nature uses sexual instinct for the good of species and not for individual, he does nothing but affirm that genes are attracted to one another, even to the detriment of survival machines which give them hospitality. Therefore attraction happens on the basis of genetic characteristics for which the chromosomes of a certain man intended to unite with the ones of a certain woman are suitable, in couple, to a good genetic quality of the unborn and so of the species. Schopenhauer A. Metafisica dell’amore sessuale. BUR. Milano (1993)
Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci
to be continued in:
The genetic feedback mechanism inthe human population . Rebellious Angels 2°
Ferdinando Gargiulo offers you a new perspective on why new viral epidemics, assaults, infanticides, suicide epidemics and even environmental catastrophes. Always engaged in his research decides to create a blog to offer his readers content of high value.