FRIDAY, JULY 14, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Mortality Is the Best Thing Ever
After sex
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: THINKING, FROM THE WIRES, SELF-INTEREST, SYSTEMICALLY
Abstract: Our endeavor to exterminate human mortality (reduce rate to zero eventually) may be the death of us (result in extinction of humans). "Drastic reduction of mortality = death of the second death [bodily mortality]” which = human extinction, or worse (e.g. some humans persist as a boot stomping in Gaia’s face forever in an Anthropocene that never ends until Earth is assimilated by Sol as red giant, or worse yet, we merge with AI to become Borg-like expansionists within the Milky Way and beyond).
COOS BAY (A-P) — If all Precambrian organisms potentially lived forever, there would have been no Cambrian Explosion of speciation, of a diversification of life forms. No ecosystem complex enough to have evolved humans (or rats) could exist. Organisms with an illimitable lifespan (death by misadventure would still happen) would minimally evolve as the eons passed. There would be some selection, hence evolution, but the pace of evolutionary change would be glacial compared to what we consider normal.
Life as multicellular organisms know it (e.g. humans) would be vastly different without death, since there wouldn’t be any complex lifeforms. Each species of organism evolves a range of potential lifespans, which selection optimizes so a life is long enough, but no longer (e.g. mayflies/ephemeropterans to tortoises and Greenland sharks with a 400 year lifespan).
All are born to die to enable life as sexually reproducing species know it (only modern humans seem to have difficulty viewing death by aging as natural and normal - we techno-modern artificial lifeforms can believe senescence is abnormal, a disease to be cured, a story that takes cognitive dysfunction to maintain).
Billionaires (all are modern humans who serve the monetary culture) who dream of (and invest in finding) a cure for aging, to ending the disease of mortality, are profoundly anti-life and should be put to death (least they find a "cure") unless they agree to go to a re-education camp (probably for life as few could expect to learn enough to have an opinion, e.g. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, but maybe Bill Gates could understand enough).
To make death really work right and well, it takes sex. Worse than playing solitaire 'til dawn with a deck of 51 cards would be to start each game with a new, unopened deck that is always in the same order (and never, ever shuffling the cards).
Two people playing solitaire with a deck of 26 after splitting the deck, or one with an unshuffled new deck, would mean never winning. It wouldn't be much fun either. Sex is playing with a full deck that is shuffled. It is what works to sometimes win in the form of offspring.
So sex was/is selected for, each game is different, and winning is vastly more likely to sometimes happen. But without death, you're back to playing the same game seemingly without end. You'd wait for centuries for two cards to stick together or some error to occur that enabled a different outcome, one that would almost certainly be maladaptive.
The cost of variation in sexually produced offspring is that most changes in what has worked as the eons pass won't, by chance, work or work as well, i.e. chance shuffling of the arrangements of genes are more likely to not work as well, or at all (e.g. miscarriages, early childhood mortality). Of all conceptions, half will fail to implant in the womb.
Out of those that do implant, half will not be born (will miscarry). In past times, half of children died (a hominin norm for over six million years). Our interference in mortality is a failure to play a game that has worked for billions of years by rules we don't get t0 change, a defining failure that is non-evolvable, non-viable.
Your genes worked well enough for you to live long enough to have sex, but if you (if you are female) reproduced parthenogenetically, your offspring would work well enough, but not better. For better (evolution), you need to shuffle your deck with someone else meiotically.
Reproduce asexually, if you can, and with modern mortality interventions, most of your spawn may work well enough to become adults. Some will be as functional as their parents, but to get a one in ten to one in a hundred offspring that is noticeably better than its parents involves shuffling the deck enough that half of the results won't be as functional as either parent. A 50% mortality rate in children (excluding miscarriages) is what works best (i.e. "Nature is unkind" and not for no good reason, unlike in human unkindness).
The dramatic reduction in child mortality and adult mortality since the late 19th century has had two dramatic outcomes.
The dramatic upturn in population was due to turning fossil fuels, directly and indirectly, into food, and to a dramatic lowering of mortality by sanitation engineers and doctors who take an oath to first, do no harm.
That a rapid 10-fold increase in human numbers will contract 10-fold (actually more due to global degradation of biosphere), a change of condition which will be perceived by those living through the bottleneck as injury (and also by those who die a Malthusian death), is not taught in medical schools nor considered real by modern medical practitioners (or any Anthropocene enthusiast, aka the 99.999+%).
Among the 0.0001% is Frank Fenner, scientist/humanitarian who headed the program primarily responsible for the eradication of smallpox virus in the wild by 1980. In the 19th and 20th centuries, 800 million humans died from smallpox (3 out of 10 who got it), and 2 billion more were disfigured/blinded.
He died in 2010 at the age of 95, concerned that by saving hundreds of millions of humans from smallpox, that he may have done more harm than good. Saving hundreds of million (perhaps 1 billion or more) from death and suffering, was the good. The potential harm is that the rapid degradation of a planetary biosphere will cause more harm, i.e. the Malthusian deaths of billions this century. The teeming billions may experience far more suffering and an 80% mortality rate, i.e. be significantly more ghastly than death by smallpox with a mere 30% mortality rate (or scientists will perfect fusion in a box so cheap everyone will have one in their three car garage, kick the can down the road for a few decades).
The greater good, far above the good of human life or humankind, is the integrity of the planetary life-support system (Nature/Gaia) all life depends on. There were 6.9 billion people on Earth when Fenner died, up from 1.8 billion when he was born. He (along with Joseph Lister, Maurice Hilleman, Jonas Salk, Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, Norman Borlaug…, those who either drastically reduced mortality or turned fossil fuels into food to enable billions to live/procreate) did good, but unlike most humans (e.g. Doctors), Fenner was aware that adding five billion more humans to a planet already in overshoot (exceeding long term carrying capacity limits) would do greater harm than good (because it already has, e.g. the Anthropocene mass extinction event and mass denormalization of humans).
If more harm than good comes from the one-off human plague-phase overshoot event (the Anthropocene), then celebrating a few billion human lives saved from pre-reproductive mortality in the 19th through early 21st centuries may be short sighted. But modern humans are defined by short-term self interests and lack of foresight intelligence.
Those who would "first, do no harm" (e.g. those taking some form of the Hippocratic Oath), should pledge that for every life saved, one needs to be prevented (e.g. birth prevention). Otherwise, the Anthropocene mass extinction event, one that could rival that of the Permian, one that will likely include human extinction, does harm (i.e. does vastly more harm than good). But human ecology (much less systems ecology) is not part of the education of the 99+%. Note to posterity: sorry about that.
Frank Fenner (like maybe 0.0001% of educated humans) knew that "mitigation [of human numbers] would slow things down a bit, but there are too many people here already [2010 note prior to death]." We (actually posterity, not good news for 10 year olds) are facing a ghastly future because (among other things) we declared war upon human mortality (endeavored to achieve a "drastic reduction of mortality = death of the second death" which = human extinction, or worse, e.g. some humans persist as a boot stomping in Gaia's face forever in an Anthropocene that never ends until Earth is assimilated by Sol as red giant, or worse yet, we merge with AI to become Borg-like expansionists within the Milky Way and beyond).
If humans could and would (modern humans would if they could) prevent all childhood mortality (100% or 95% as now), then alternative selection is needed. Figure half of all children, especially those who would have died without medical intervention (like me), should not reproduce.
To recover from the last eight to two thousand generations of not selecting for a viable outcome, a better evolutionary strategy (to become evolvable again and persist) would be for 20% to 25% of women to reproduce (all watched over by mothers of loving grace). The average mother would have four to five offspring as usual (pre-modernity) and most children would have siblings (per pre-expansionist norm).
Selection is needed to renormalize humans. After renormalization is assessed to have been achieved (in perhaps 20 to 2,000 generations), half of those born and live to adulthood (assuming continued low childhood mortality rate), could expect to procreate (if the mothers of a community assess them to merit the blessing).
If you think that in life, all must win, "and all must have prizes," then the White Queen might agree, but Mother will not. "Nature is unkind."
Such is the nature of things. Not good or bad, but is.
To renormalize, humans need to live in viable sized communities (band sized) of 20 to 50 trusted others with whom each has repeat interactions. The mothers of each community would select among the pre-mother women who becomes a mother. Allowing all women to have as many children as they care to is non-viable long term (e.g. modernity). The mothers would also assess the level of community prosperity which declines if local carrying capacity lower limit is exceeded. To mitigate, fertility would be reduced to fewer births than deaths for a time.
Overshooting the upper limit is selected against, hence happens but is not the norm.
Death Squared
[in short, by John B. Calhoun, Death Squared, 1973,
and when you are ready, bend over and take it]
"Mortality, bodily death
= the second death
[the normal and necessary death of phenotypes
that
enables species, genomes, to be evolvable]
Drastic reduction of mortality
[18th to 21st century births>deaths,
resulting in an overshoot population]
= death of the second death
[failure to maintain population under carrying capacity,
resulting in posterity's death by overshoot debt]
= death squared
= (death)2
(Death)2 leads to dissolution of social organization
= death of the establishment
Death of the establishment leads to spiritual death
[loss of viable function]
= the first death
[functional behaviors are a precondition for evolvable
life
which comes first, so such death is a first death]
Therefore: (Death)2 = the first death.
[failure to renormalize, to recover a capacity to engage in behaviours essential
to species
survival,
is species extinction, first by a loss of societal functionality followed by posterity's bodily death]
For an animal so complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events [exponential growth phase followed by loss of functional behaviours] should not also lead to species extinction. If opportunities for role fulfilment fall far short of the demand by those [the young] capable of filling roles, and having expectancies to do so, only violence and disruption of social organization can follow. Individuals born under these circumstances [modernity] will be so out of touch with reality as to be incapable even of alienation. Their most-complex behaviours will become fragmented. Acquisition, creation and utilization of ideas appropriate for life in a post-industrial cultural-conceptual-technological society will have been blocked. Just as biological generativity in the mouse involves this species’ most complex behaviours, so does ideational generativity for man. Loss of these respective complex behaviours [condition of post-truth believing minds] means death of the species. — John B. Calhoun, 1972
For more of THE TRUTH, to fully bend over and take it, consider questioning your grasp of reality.
SUBNOTE TO FILE 7/16/2023
My one reader (who normally reads each offering by intent) kindly pointed out an error, and with all due effusive enthusiasm, I replied (paragraph breaks added for readability):
I had THE TRUTH! open to edit in Medium, which was the bad link that only works for me. Thanks for any corrections.
When I’m wrong about everything (e.g. mortality being by design and overall a good thing), such errors are harder to correct (I’m guessing 99+% of humans with PhDs will disagree, so how could I not be wrong given that, as everyone agrees, truth is a consensus narrative?).
A design that supports a 50% to 75% non-reproductive population in a society that can prevent 95+% of “unnatural” deaths, would work, but a society that humanely, with all due ceremony, euthanized half of its children who would clearly never be selected to reproduce would work better (this is my first unthinkable thought this morning, I sometimes have as many as six before breakfast, ones that 99.9999% of humans with PhDs would certainly disagree with — other than, perhaps, in the privacy of their own minds).
Today, thanks to modern medicine, 85% of children born with severe microcephaly survive infancy (81% survive to age 4, but don’t even think about the quality of the rest of their life or what happens when society can’t support them during collapse).
That we all live not in a yellow submarine, but in a consensus world of the barking mad doesn’t count as another unthinkable thought this morning since I don’t recall how many years ago I had that thought (before breakfast, as usual).
My wife just told me of a dog breeder she knows who would put a red spot on the forehead of puppies she assessed to have no chance of being show quality (i.e. she could never ethically sell them, there are far too many pet quality dogs…, and her husband would “make them go away.” If I were to mention her name, a mob would soon form in front of her home chanting “puppy killer!, puppy killer!, puppy killer!…” and to make their point, they would castrate me with a rusty tuna fish can lid.
Welcome to the Anthropocene.
SUBNOTE TO FILE 7/20/2023
Salmon are to consider. They keep it simple, simple enough that even humans can grasp a bit of reality 101 by understanding their lives (and deaths). They hatch (are born), grow up, have sex once (procreate), and die (all in 2 to 7 years). Humans complicate matters by living longer and having sex more than once (and by telling stories), but the whole point of their lives and those of salmon is the same. (What point? Salmon have the answer because they don't ask the question, and modern humans can't believe the answer no matter how clearly stated.)
Assume a salmon genius is born, realizes that by removing the gonads of healthy adult salmon, that they would not swim up some river the next year to do what they had never wanted to (or would not miss doing), and then die a ghastly, pointless death when they could keep on swimming in the sea and live happily consuming prey for many more years, maybe forever (while grooving to the sound of God’s great song and enjoying nature maximally). Why die? What has death ever done for you or Me, Myself and I (the only Self that matters)?
Listen O my children, or in a year you will spawn and this shall be thee.
Assume the thanatophobia spreads to all salmon who celebrate the genius of the greatest salmon that ever lived, and all have their gonads removed by skillful surgeon fish who have a taste for them, and the Greatest Generation lives long and prospers unlike their backward, primitive, unenlightened ancestors.
Magnificent at age 132. Praise be His Longevity and Wisdom.
PS: The Greatest Generation did live long, prospered greatly, and grew fat. But they didn’t live forever, and there is now no one to tell a story of “last” instead of “Greatest.” None of the salmon, not even the last one swimming, could think that the Great One, the One True Truth Giver, LORD SALMON, Conqueror of Death, had been wrong, or rather "not even wrong." Nature’s song didn’t miss a beat even if Lord Salmon (and wannabes) self-selected out of the world system (aka Gaia, Mother).
By the way, all you hu-mans (hubris-man-swarm animals) are all products of an expansionist form of human culture that arose 50+k years ago (2,000 generations in the denormalizing). When the last hu-man dies, they will not know for sure they are the last and therefore won't believe they are the last hu-man on Earth to die.
They may know that all known regions of human habitation had contracted to one before reports ended, and that the last region known to have a living human in it was the one they live in. But they will believe that somewhere, likely on an island somewhere, that millions of humans are still living prosperous lives of overconsumption in a land where no one has less than they could want (if they but work for it to help grow the economy). They will die believing that they have the misfortune of not being among the thriving multitudes that yet live.
Are humans different in kind from salmon? Does it matter what you (or I) think?
We have been domesticated by technology to serve the technology we depend on, i.e. to stop developing at about a 22 year old level, old enough to serve the economy, but we never mature, we are never developmentally old enough to question its foundational narratives.
To question the humancentric world socioeconomic-political system is to self-select out of that system which assimilates almost all who would live apart from it, such that perhaps fewer than 10k humans are normal humans or humans with the potential to renormalize.
Perhaps somewhere, likely on an island, there are still some salmon who understand and embrace both sex and death. They yet spawn to death, and perhaps when the last denormalized true-believer salmon dies, they will realize they were wrong and that it is only their form of salmon that, as it must, passes away. Theirs will be a good death.
We modern techno-industrialized humans are such stuff as the denormalized salmon people were made of.
