The Watershed of Evolution

"I love mountain rivers," I shout. Nobody hears me through the roar of the river.

The procession continues up to the most spectacular cascades and there, amid the solid white noise of the foaming water we set up base and split up to wander over the glistening black rocks - isolated in our thoughts by the thundering river.

My thoughts turn to evolution and behavior. Human evolution. What role does genetics play in human behavior? What about Character traits, are these genetically determined? An urge to fight, a hot temper, a probing curiosity, a fear of the unknown, a love of territory, strong sexual drives, leadership, followership, faith. What of the ectomorph, endomorph, mesomorph human types? Are these phenotypes of genetic behavior patterns?

I leap from one sun warmed rock to the next, out into the middle of the rapids. Questions tumble through my head to the rumble music of the river. How can we examine or even think about human evolution and behavior on a population basis over geological ages?

I play with geologic time in my mind. The rocks become evolution's canvas and the white rushing water time's paint brush. In the color, symmetry, and balance of the two the story of evolution unfolds.

Inner Voice uses the rainbow to illustrate the concept of populations behaving. Within the rainbowed waters, Inner Voice produces a visual array of super-organisms interacting, forming larger, complex beings. I see bees hiving, ants marching, termites nesting and thousands of humans crystallizing cities - Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, Taipei.

Somewhere in the mesmeric cascade of human industry reflected in the rainbow Voice says something else. I'm not paying attention and only catch the words "compound genetic behavior, the genetics of superorganism behavior."

"What?" I ask, feeling relaxed and sleepy.

Voice is pissed off because I wasn't paying attention. I can feel its frustration as I let my mind simply admire the beauty of the river and watch my friends over there on the shore set up the picnic, get undressed and jump into the cool river.

Robert is climbing the rock face of the cliff right next to the largest, most impressive waterfall. It looks very slippery and he looks very small up there.

Voice ahems at me and I discover myself looking at the river-smoothed boulders and seeing/thinking their evolution. This is a nifty trick so I pay attention again.

Built into the rocks are patterns formed - frozen - at the instant they solidified. I see them molten - gushing out of a flaming Earth - freezing into these wonderful swirls and layers.

Perhaps, once and a great while, during a violent behavioral storm, flood waters carry a larger revolutionary rock bounding down the river and this might crash into some of the traditions and crack them or move them or even block them off so they no longer influence the flow of humanity. But, in general, the massive behavioral rocks of tradition determine the course of human evolution.

There is a moment of stunned inner silence when the two of "us" regard each other. Voice, at that instant, is as real and shocking as if I had suddenly turned around and seen Merlin the Magician pontificating in my ear.

Voice echoes my alarm, as if I'm not supposed to be aware of Voice, just listen. In that same instant, Voice is gone. It does not even say good by.

"Bye, have a good time. Don't forget to write," I say out loud into the river rumble.

Comfortably alone now, I walk the rocks mulling over what happened and wondering if Voice answered my original questions or not. I remember this all started with my asking about how much of human behavior is genetically determined. Strangely, I can't quite remember what Voice just said. Worse, I get the feeling I didn't actually understand what it was trying to say. Like Voice was an order of magnitude smarter that I am and was patiently trying to tell me something important.

On my own, I think of population behavior patterns and genetics. OK. Extrovert-Introvert. There must be a population curve - a gaussian distribution - ranging from super introvert to super extrovert. Most people are in the middle of the large bell-shaped curve. A smaller percentage are very introverted or very extroverted. Introvert-Extrovert behavior is the manifestation of a complex mixture of physical/psychological conditions, many controlled by genes.

The Introvert/Extrovert ratio changes for any particular individual from one time to another and from one set of conditions to another. So there must also be a bell-shaped curve representing individual introvert-extrovert behavior at different times.

There will be times when each person is super introvert or super extrovert but most of the time a person oscillates somewhere in the big bell region. This is controlled by ambient environmental conditions as they interact with genetic predisposition.

I jump to the next river rock.

What about sex? Sex is definitely genetically determined. But sexual behavior varies considerably from super sexy to super unsexy. In animal populations males vary from the alpha-male superstud to the neuter male which never breeds. I can think of lots of examples of similar human behavior.

I clamber up a small stream and come upon a clear pool of water. Freddy is swimming stark naked in it. Evolution recedes rapidly into the distance as I shuck off my bathing suit and leap into the icy water.

It is late at night and Freddy has already gone to bed. I can't help wonder about the odd feelings I had today. Specifically, the sensation of the Inner Voice as something actually different from me.

This is not exactly the glittering image of mental health. On the other hand, those Rudolph Steiner exercises were aimed at developing just this sort of inner voice - a mystical guide - so maybe it's not all that bad. At least I don't have to put up with Steiner's angels and demons lurking around in my gray-matter.

Inner Voice seems to understand the evolutionary process in a way I don't. Even worse, it tries to explain it to me but, to be honest, I don't understand what Inner Voice is trying to say. I also don't really know why the hell it should be trying to tell me anything at all about evolution in the first place.

Why should evolution bug me?

"Because it represents long term control vectors modifying behavioral networks."

There it is again. One part of me asks a question and out pops an answer.

OK, suppose I ask, "What is the key to evolution?"

"Behavior is the key to evolution. Lamarck's much discredited inheritance of acquired characteristics is true - for the population." Along with this answer, I get an illustrated mental example of the process. The image comes complete in visual form. It's going to take time to say it in words.

The image is about Darwin's famous Galapagos finches.

There is a small population of birds on a small island. There is not much for the birds to eat on this small, rocky, volcanic island. Times are tough. The birds arrived from South America, blown to this island during a storm. They are fruit-eaters. There are some fruits and seeds to sustain them at first but as their population increases, the fruits are not enough and the birds eat themselves out of a diet. As pressure to find food increases, the individual birds respond by:

Suppose, of a population of 2000 birds, 1000 keep on searching for fruit until most of them die while another 1000 begin to eat insects as well as fruit and these live. 100 of the surviving birds learn to look for insects under the bark of trees. Birds instruct their young, so at least some of the young of the birds that learned to look for insects under the bark of trees follow their parents hunting example.

This is fortunate because the other birds quickly gobble up visible insects large enough to form a useful diet. Only those insects living under the bark of trees survive the avian attack. So, only the birds which have learned to look under the bark of trees survive.

As this remaining bird population grows, it soon reduces the population of insects which live just under the bark of the trees until only the insects which live actually burrowed in the wood survive. Safe from the birds, these do well and there are many of them since they no longer have much competition of the sub-bark dwelling insects which are under constant attack by the birds.

After a couple of thousand years, some birds learn to peck vigorously at the wood under the bark to dig out the insects. These birds live long and prosper but the majority of the insect eating bird population has a hard time of it and many starve.

In an evolutionary sequence, a change in behavior must precede the resulting physical change in form.

Behavioral changes, mental changes, new ideas come first. Physical evolutionary modifications follow. And behavior, aimed at survival, is not random.

This thought is somehow very exciting. I get up and pace back in forth in Moira's salon, ideas coming fast and furious.

Behavior evolves, too. Faster than form. Genes control animalistic, instinctive behavior, but maybe changing a behavioral gene is easier than changing a physical one. Perhaps behavioral genes are more flexible, have special circumstance overrides, or maybe they are actually a different kind of protein structure than those determining physical form.

Or maybe behavioral genes operating on a whole population are not protein based at all.

No. They are. Think of innate social behavior such as the mating call of the finch or its nest building behavior.

Walter the Cat pounces from under the dinette as I pace by and lands on my foot. He sinks his claws and teeth into my foot hard enough to draw blood. Then, propelled by my surprised scream, he races aft, spins around, crouches and laughs at me.

"Damn," I yell. "You've had it you furry freak."

"What happened" Freddy calls from the aft cabin.

"The little bastard bit me."

"Well, you don't want a drooly stupid cat do you?" her sleepy voice joins Walter, laughing.

"No but I don't want one which is mean, either." I say angrily, heading with deadly malice towards Walter. He's been getting unpredictably vicious - attacking when least expected like Kato in the Pink Panther movies. He's got something against feet.

"Oh leave him alone," Walter leaps up on the bed and Freddy pushes me off. "Go on with your thinking but maybe you shouldn't pace for awhile."

I go forward, sit down, tuck my feet up out of danger.

Species all exhibit different behavior patterns, especially sexual behavior patterns. In fact, sexual behavior patterns are what prevents closely related species from interbreeding. Sexual behavioral segregation in sub populations of a gene pool leads to genetic isolation and thus the creation of a new species.

Behavior - instinctive behavior - is a genetic memory system.

Walter Cat comes back into the main cabin and sits there looking at me. Sending some sort of telepathic message, eyes boring into me. "He wants to play," calls Freddy, more sensitive to Walter's message than I want to be.

"You play with him," I growl. Walter crouches down, then leaps up and swats my arm (softly) and bounces off. "He wants to play predator to my prey," Where was I? Oh right. Genetic systems are memory systems.

I start to correct myself and stop, and think. Well, wait a minute, that's right. Genetic systems are memory systems.

Human genetic systems are memory systems remembering how to construct a human being. The genes are memories of how to make a tooth, a brain, a human eye. And when genes are read, recalled, they direct how humans use their bodies. Humans, when born, have a brain with memory banks as well as a behavioral system for the use of this equipment. We are born with the muscles to make a smile as well as the innate behavior which results in making a smile or frown or sneeze.

How much of our behavior is genetically determined and how much of our behavior is environmentally determined? Culture and tradition are the control systems to construct our genetic format as well as the stage and the circumstance upon which we act out our genetic predisposition.

We inherit our genes and our culture. The question is wrong. The whole argument about genetically determined versus environmentally determined is wrong. It's not like that at all. They are both manifestations of the same process.

I can almost see it. I can almost see something. Something important. Then it is gone, like a cloud passing in front of the moon stops the reflection of sunlight onto the planet.

Just before I go to sleep Voice returns and says one word. I've heard it before but am not exactly sure what it is or what it has to do with Evolution or anything else. 

The word is Mana. I tell Voice to piss off and go to sleep.