Chapter 14

To the extent that genes played a role in the creation of civilizations it should be said that it was not their "intent" to do so. We know this, first, because the genes are mere molecules conjured up by a mechanistic universe. To say that genes have motives is, of course, a metaphor. They are simply the product of mutations that succeeded in surviving, and if they survive in the gene pool for several generations (of the individuals they construct) we say that they were successful in trying to express themselves and survive, as if they were motivated to do these things.

We know that it was not their intent to create civilizations because it cannot even be said that civilizations are a product of evolution in the same way that one can say the "eye" is a product, or the "brain." The difference, here, is that the eye exists because the genes that code for its assembly during embryologic development have been "selected" by the process of mutation and survival of the inclusively fittest. Whereas eyes exist because eye genes evolved, a civilization exists because of a fortuitous configuration of circumstances which have the unprecedented outcome of "civilization." The outcome is unprecedented because the genome out of which civilizations arise is essentially the same as the genome that gave birth to the first civilization. And when the first civilization emerged, however one defines "civilization," it was an evolutionary unforeseen event, for which no gene, or combination of genes, can take credit. Only after civilizations change the human genome by competing with uncivilized tribes, and winning, will it be possible to credit the genes for "sustaining" civilizations after their accidental "creation" by the normal evolutionary process of mutation and natural selection.

Civilizations are too new for viewing them as some manner of phenotypic expression that has been measured as adaptive; they have not had time to influence gene frequency. It is more accurate to view the phenomenon of a civilization as an unintended product of evolutionary processes that in our ancestral environment, devoid of civilizations, rewarded genes that we learn later just happen to lead to the creation of civilizations when the random configuration of circumstances are conducive to the civilization's rise.

Even this gives too much credit to the genes. Group selection, GrS, followed by what I have termed individual selection, IS, may be responsible for the creation of civilizations (as I explain in Chapter 11). Although group selection is made possible by the genes, the genes are not responsible for the failure of the group to keep individuals subservient to the group. So, to the extent that my suggestion in Chapter 11 concerning the roles of GrS and IS in the creation of civilizations is correct, some of the credit for civilizations must go to a factor called "LUCK." (In my use of the term “luck” I’m assuming the reader is in favor of civilization, a clarification that is made necessary with the rise of fundamental religious movements throughout Islam, and even Christianity).

The remainder of this chapter, and that of the following, deal with factors that contribute to the fall of civilizations. There must be more ways for a civilization to fall than to rise. The fall of a specific civilization must have many contributing factors, and the most important one may differ in each specific case. The following sections are brief sketches of some of these factors.

The Minoan civilization was destroyed by the volcanic eruption of the island Thera (now called Santorini) in the Fall of 1628 BC. In addition to destroying most life on the island of Thera, the volcanic eruption produced a tidal wave (tsunami) that devastated coastal settlements on nearby Crete. The Minoan settlements on the north shore of Crete suffered damage to their fleets of fishing and trading ships. The Mycenaeans took advantage of the weakened state of the remaining Minoan civilization by invading them and replacing the Minoan culture with theirs. This unlucky natural event led to the fall of what may have been one of the world's first great civilizations.

A comparable volcanic eruption and related earthquake-induced tidal wave would not bring down 20th Century world civilization even if the area destroyed were Los Angeles, San Francisco or Seattle. It would weaken, but I doubt that by itself it would destroy, the American embodiment of Western Civilization. Only if other factors were at work undermining the strength of civilization would a natural disaster of moderate magnitude contribute to its decline and fall. A global civilization could be threatened by an asteroid impact, creating a global cloud of stratospheric aerosols that would cool the surface and upset agricultural production for several seasons, leading to famine, widespread desperation and the breakdown of social order. Short of this unlikely scenario, I doubt that a natural disaster will be an important contributor to the current global civilization's decline and fall.

Chapter 11 describes a possible mechanism for the rise and fall of civilizations, relying on the controversial concepts of "group selection" and "individual selection." I suggested that the appearance of "individual selection" was a genetically unforeseen breakdown of the group's control of individual aspirations for making decisions, and that the "release" of individual creative and productive powers can generate what we call a civilization. After the successful creation of a civilization many of its citizens become self‑absorbed with their new‑found material wealth. Less civilized members of neighboring societies become resentful of the wealthy neighbors, and they feel threatened by the individual‑liberating culturgens of those neighbors. The uncivilized societies may then draw upon the magical strength of religious fervor, with its readiness for fanatical actions, and engage in a "holy war" of terrorism upon the civilized societies. These attacks require that within the civilization individual energy that had been productive now be diverted to defensive and protective measures. The cost of counter‑measures weakens the civilization under siege, thus hastening its decline and fall. (See Chapter 11 for details.)

Speculation over the decline and fall of past civilizations frequently focuses on the idea that the very existence of a civilization guarantees that it will have within itself the seeds for its own destruction. For example, it has been suggested that the Roman Empire recruited too many of their army troops from barbarian populations in outlying regions (e.g., the Visigoths), making Rome vulnerable because it was a city defended by less loyal foreigners. This recruitment practice was the natural result of a Roman citizenry that over‑valued the comfortable life, most efficiently achieved by relying upon others to do the uncomfortable work that its support required. The foreign-born soldiers were treated shabbily, lived far from Rome, and were ordered to battle as if they were “canon fodder.” Meanwhile, back in comfortable Rome, the decadent lifestyle of pampered citizens is said to have led to a neglect of civic duties, and a weakened "character." To the extent that this happened it can be said that the very success of their civilization created the soil within which it was easy to plant the seeds for forces that led to its decline and eventual downfall.

I would like to suggest another "endogenous" theory that should concern smug residents of every civilization. Parasitic behavior is a common part of Nature. All grazing animals are parasites of plants, for example, and all carnivores are parasites of plant‑eating animals and smaller carnivores. Plants are therefore the original non‑parasite "producers" since their "livelihood" is based on sunlight, carbon dioxide in the air and nutrients in the soil, all of which are non‑living and "free" for the taking.

Some animal species rely entirely upon parasitism of another species, the way a leech parasitizes fish. Parasitism also exists within a species. Humans, having conquered Nature more thoroughly than any other species, created opportunities for a variety of individual "strategies" for prospering and replicating that are fundamentally intra‑species parasitic. I will rely upon a common sense definition for producer and parasite behaviors, but if you're having trouble think of a tribe that marauds a neighboring tribe, killing some of them, stealing their crops and possessions, burning their shelters, and taking prisoners for later use as slaves. The victor's rewards are from theft instead of production, and therefore it is a form of parasitism. Or think of a merchant ship on the high seas being pursued by a pirate ship, overtaken, commandeered, causing precious cargo to change "ownership."

I contend that each person inherits a repertoire for many survival strategies, and that the environmental setting (including the social component) elicits from the individual those strategies most likely to work best (based on the experience of ancestral generations). Strategies are "chosen" automatically from among a repertoire of brain circuits whose basic architecture was created by the genes. The process for choosing which behavioral circuits (modules) to activate is itself contained within brain circuits, created by genes.

I also contend that it is possible to assess strategies as belonging somewhere along a spectrum with "Producer" at one end and "Parasite" at the other. An individual person may engage in behaviors belonging to one type, then, in response to a change in the setting, switch to behaviors of the other type. Some people may engage in mostly producer behaviors, while others may engage in mostly parasitic ones. If the same person could be born into the world at different times, he may be mostly producer‑oriented in one setting yet be mostly parasite‑oriented in another.

I will refer to the dynamical interaction of an individual's Genome with Environment to produce the person's specific Phenotype (expressed behavior, as well as expressed anatomy and physiology) using the term GEP (Symons, 1979), and described in Chapter 6. Over generations the physical and social Environment changed many times, and to the extent that specific environment "types" repeat, the Genotype would tend to provide for brain circuits that elicit an appropriate repertoire of possible behavioral Phenotypes suitable for each environment. If, for example, the climate in one locale alternates between two types, for which two different ways of life are adaptive, it is likely that the Genotype will eventually provide for the required pair of behavioral Phenotypes within each individual. Whereas the anatomy and physiology are relatively fixed, behavior can be elicited in response to perceived conditions, and it would be an oversight on the part of the genes if they did not provide for this adaptive flexibility.

Michael Gazzaniga has suggested (1997) that the brain's large repertoire of responses to social or physical conditions is analogous to an immune system, which has a large repertoire of immune responses to a very large number of pathogens. Because our ancestors survived exposure to many pathogen types, our immune system is "prepared" to respond appropriately to each specific pathogen that our ancestors survived. In any single individual's life only a few pathogens will challenge the immune system, so only a small portion of the immune system repertoire is made use of. By analogy, an individual's lifetime involves a small number of environmental challenges and these will elicit a small portion of behaviors that reside within our immense repertoire of possible behaviors. Each behavior type is “poised” for release by the appropriate social environmental stimulus.

Although individuals must have the capacity to switch from one behavior type to another in response to perceived conditions, thresholds for the switching must vary. Thus, some individuals are predisposed to be one way versus another. This complicates analyses that strive to understand the role of producer/parasite behaviors in leading to the rise and fall of civilizations.

As an aside, any modeling of the penetration of a gene into a gene pool is complicated by the large number of phenotypic measures that must be taken into account for determining an individual gene carrier's fate. Not only is an individual parasitic or productive, but he is more or less intelligent, resourceful, immune to infections, physically strong, etc. All phenotypic variables can be relevant to the fate of the genes making up the individual's genotype, and any study of the strength of environmental cues to elicit parasitic behaviors will have to make use of statistical multiple regression analyses.

Another feature of this dynamic deserves comment. Genes exist for thousands and millions of years, typically. The individuals they construct are just temporary residences, meant to survive within a variable environment and compete with other individuals for future genetic representation. Thus, if a person is parasitic, and prospers, the real beneficiary is the gene (or genes) that predispose the individual to behave in parasitic, gene‑serving ways. The individual is sometimes the loser, in an individual welfare sense, in spite of the gene‑winning ways of those that made him.

If we wanted to write a history of an animal species, such as the giraffe, it would be unthinkable to omit the role played by the animal's anatomic and physiological traits. These traits are fairly straightforward, and predispose the animal to specific ways of living. The behavioral capacities, predispositions and inabilities are no less important. They evolved in conjunction with the anatomical and physiological traits. We should therefore expect to find a compatibility among all three trait categories: anatomy, physiology and behavior.

The phenotype, or the way an individual organism is, consists of these three factors (anatomy, physiology, and behavior). For humans, behavior is probably a more important component of phenotype than for any other species (the immune response, a component of physiology, must be another important component). More genes must influence behavior for humans than for any other animal (which is supported by the emerging ubiquity of genes that influence the brain, amounting to as many as 50% of all genes by one estimate).

As a thought experiment, let us imagine that it is possible to measure each individual's "producer/parasite" score at a specific time, in a specific setting. For any population of humans living in a "society" consisting of many tribes that have at least some non‑antagonistic social contacts, it would then be possible to create a histogram of these scores; we could determine what fraction of the population was "productive" versus "parasitic." If we could keep track of the parasitic fraction versus time for a society we would note variations in the incidence of expressed parasitism.

If we could also measure the per capita wealth of a society, the wealth parameter would also vary. Now, I allege that the two parameters, parasitism and per capita wealth, would be correlated. Moreover, I predict that they would be positively correlated, with a slight phase lag. Whenever a society reaches a peak in per capita wealth, parasitism is rewarded more than during the previous few generations; during the wealth peak parasitism will show its greatest growth. I suggest that it is the "rate of growth of parasitism" that is positively correlated with per capita wealth. (For engineers who like sinusoidal curves, the fraction of the population that is parasitic is alleged to exhibit a phase lag of 90 degrees with respect to per capita wealth ‑ disregarding, for the moment, that the two traces are not sinusoids.) To investigate these speculations I created a spreadsheet model that incorporates wealth creation, parasitic gene payoff, and other factors, and have demonstrated that expressed parasitism does indeed lag the wealth trace. Chapter 15 has plots of "innovation rate" versus time, and population versus time. (In Fig. 15.14, and also 15.15, there might be evidence that parasitism rose as the population was rising, at the same time that the innovation rate was decreasing.)

The reason parasitism increases during "boom times" is that wealthy people are willing to tolerate the loss of small amounts to parasitism, whereas poor people will take measures to defend themselves from parasitic losses of the same absolute amount. An individual's actions are based on what effect it has on the genes in that individual, assuming the genes have experienced similar situations in the past and evolution has left mostly those genes that respond to situations "adaptively." If the genes in an individual do not benefit by allocating energy to a defense from parasitism, compared to the cost of that defense, they should not be expected to put up a defense. Thus, parasitic behaviors should be able to invade wealthy societies more easily than poor ones.

This argument does not require that parasitic people "invade" a society from "outside." Rather, desperate individuals may "switch" from being mostly productive to being more parasitic. Also, individuals who are predisposed to being parasitic (have lower thresholds for responding to situations in parasitic manners) may flourish, while their less fortunate producer‑brethren flounder and produce fewer offspring. The first process can occur almost instantly, in a matter of years, while the second process requires generations to have an effect.

The previous argument assumed that within a society there was a wide range of wealth. A society that achieves wealth by capitalist means is likely to create wealth disparities. In

America

the wealthiest 1% now own 40% of the country’s assets, and the wealth gap is increasing at a frightening rate. Among the Western industrial nations

America

has the highest levels of wealth inequality within its borders (Phillips, 2002). This growing disparity within a society is frightening because it causes those left behind to feel forgotten, and “left out” – which resembles banishment from the tribe. And whenever people feel banished, the tribe that banished them is “fair game” for reprisals by the banished.

The greatness of a civilization is probably correlated with its per capita wealth. When we refer to the "rise of a civilization to greatness," we may be thinking about the amount of activity devoted to the arts, science, and technology, and these are correlated with the availability of funds (patrons of the arts, etc.) for those activities, which is related to per capita wealth (consider the famous example of the Medici family’s patronage in fifteenth-century Florence, Italy).

I am assuming that our ancestors have experienced a sufficient number of boom and bust episodes that our genome has "adapted" to this dynamic. Although it is theoretically possible the genome has not adapted to boom/bust scenarios, to the extent that they have our present civilization’s zenith may be short-lived.

Consider super‑tribe civilizations, for which we may take the ancient Mesopotamian as our model. A large city is surrounded by a sprawling countryside devoted to farming. Within the city is a society of "government employees" who report to the king. There is a strong division of labor within the city. There are jobs for collecting taxes from the farmers, recording tax and other government transactions, settling disputes, construction of buildings, roads and irrigation works, manufacturing (cloth, pottery, household wares, etc), commercial transportation of goods from the point of production to the shop‑keeper, commercial sale of goods, entertainment (music, dance, story‑telling), and waging war.

The concentration of wealth always increases the temptation for theft. Thus, other ways of making a living appeared that were not sanctioned by the king and his government, such as internal corruption, highway robbery, high seas piracy, and other socially parasitic activities.

I want to categorize all of the above lifestyles, sanctioned and unsanctioned, as "sedentary" or "adventurous." The warrior has a sanctioned "adventurous" lifestyle. It is important to realize that warriors are measured on many "fronts." The most obvious measure is during combat with other warriors. In a similar way the highway robber and high seas pirate are measured during their frequent conflicts and dangerous lifestyle.

Before making the central point of this section, I want to invite the reader to think about what the strongest evolutionary force might have been facing mankind during this era? Was it invasion by barbarian tribes, environmental destruction due to use of natural resources, natural disasters, predation by other animals, overpopulation and the deterioration of inadequate infrastructure? No, it was none of these! The greatest threat to super-tribe life has always been disease pandemics!

Diseases brought from distant places can decimate a population if the people have never been exposed to the pathogen. It can be assumed that a small fraction of any large population has a genetic immunity to every new disease. It is a fundamental principle of genetics that some individuals will have a better pre‑adaptation to any conceivable new challenge or threat, regardless of how novel or old it is. For this reason we can argue that sometimes only a small fraction of a population will survive the experience of wandering into foreign lands where new diseases exist.

The era of kingdoms brought the threat of disease to its people as never before! The threat went in both directions. Invading armies carried their homeland diseases with them, and diseases in the lands being invaded would infect some of the invaders. Diseases were carried in both directions by more than invading armies. Migrants, traders, and any of the many new categories of itinerants were "vectors" for disease. One way or another, every large population center was at risk, no matter how great were its civilization's technical or military achievements.

Now, consider two hypothetical female inclinations under these conditions: 1) be sexually interested in mating with "adventurous" men, or 2) remain disinterested in the "adventurous" men while maintaining a loyal monogamous relationship with their husband. To the extent that women were inclined to be of one type or the other (and assuming that all other factors were equal), which type would have yielded more offspring surviving into adulthood? The answer is obvious: the better strategy for women is to cuckold their husband by feeling attracted to "adventurers" when she’s most fertile (Haselton and Gangestad, 2006). These “calculating” cuckolding women will have a greater genetic legacy than the "faithful" women!

Female choice refers to the influence of female preference for mating choice. Female choice refers to any action taken by a female that is likely to influence which male makes her pregnant. It may take the form of influencing who she marries, or it may take the form of who she mates with outside marriage ‑ i.e., with whom she cuckolds her husband. Both types of choice, choosing a husband and choosing a cuckolding partner while married, will affect the success of her offspring. On first principles (evolutionary ones), the genes will have "something to say" about such behaviors. Female choice requires that women pay close attention to the males who can be observed. Females should be measuring them for "what they're good for" ‑ from the perspective of her genes. All of this measuring, of course, will be automatic, and usually subconscious. But the woman who fails to evaluate men from her genes' perspective will be a failure as a woman.

A surviving warrior must not only have good genes for physical endurance, he must also have genes for an immune system that can deal with the germs that are out there in neighboring lands. It is just a matter of time for diseases in foreign lands to arrive at the doorstep of large settlements. Women who mate with adventurers and bear their children are likely to do their own genes a favor; for they will be hitch‑hiking with a winner in Man's greatest battle ‑ the battle with viruses and bacteria. The pirate who comes into port, has a legitimate lust, for his immune system has been measured and it has survived exposure to diseases on foreign shores. The troubadour travels with a similar right to women's hearts. And to a somewhat lesser extent, so does the common rogue and scoundrel, who is too easily excused by being portrayed as cute or naughty instead of parasitic! And now we see the glimmer of an explanation for the mild and ineffectual condemnation of scoundrels.

How ironic, that the most parasitic of men should take on the role of exploring "immune system mutation space" to find solutions to near‑future threats of bacterial and viral infection, and thereby appear to enhance the chances of a civilization's survival. Their role as unwitting pathfinders in the invisible war with the microbes can be lauded on this basis; but let us not be blind to the consequences of the rest of their genetic heritage. By this strange dynamic one parasite creates another; the microbial parasite creates the socially parasitic rogue.

I am perilously close to accusing women of being influenced by their genes in unthinking ways, about which they haven't the faintest clue of explanation. Surely, Ruth Westheimer was not driven by deep thought when she wrote (1986, pg. 21) that "Most married women want pirates, or something like pirates..." and "Here is a good marriage fantasy ‑ to imagine that your nice steady husband, who never inconveniences you by being arrested or a fugitive (sic), is really a dangerous criminal..." She never explains why such fantasies should work. I just did!

If ancient kingdoms, like those producing such civilizations as the Mesopotamian, the Egyptian, early Greek, and the Roman, rewarded women carrying genes that caused them to be sexually attracted to soldiers, pirates, troubadours and scoundrels, then how might these genes have fared in subsequent eras? Diseases have ravaged Europe on many occasions since the kingdoms and empires created the conditions from which this curious female behavior originated. The Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and even the Renaissance ‑ have yielded up impressive episodes of spreading disease and death. The Black Plague reduced both

China

and Europe's population by almost 30% in the 14th Century. The European explorers in the New World brought diseases that killed perhaps 90% of the indigenous population. The driving force is unabated, so presumably women's adaptive response is undiminished.

Several paternity test studies in the

U.S.

and

Canada

show that 9 to 20 % of offspring were not fathered by the mother’s spouse. This would seem to be an important statistic, yet there is essentially no discussion of it in public. It is an unnoticed elephant in the room. This would rank as one of women’s best kept secrets if it wasn’t also true that men are universally vigilant about any sign that their wives are interested in another man, and when there is evidence of this interest men are universally jealous. This shows that men fear being cuckolded by women who wish to hedge their genetic bets by mating with other men, including traveling scoundrels with apparently good immune systems.

Additional evidence for the notion that women are attracted to traveling scoundrels can be seen in contemporary styles and fads: such as teenage girls' swooning over the barbaric antics of "rock stars," today's equivalent of the more romantically portrayed itinerate troubadours, the box office success of movies with angry young rebels (modeled after unlawful highway robbers), and the popularity of superficial, airhead movie muscle heroes. Even the new fad of wearing baseball caps backwards (when not riding a motorcycle) seems pathetically ridiculous and inexplicable without reference to this theory's payoffs to men for appearing to be unruly motorcycle‑riding roustabouts.

There is evidence that this female fascination with rogues is modulated by cultural or economic conditions. The Great Depression in

America

seems to have produced a healthy regard for gentlemen "producers." This anomaly extended throughout the World War II years, and into the Fifties. Then, during the Early Sixties, the apex of American civilization, the preferred type began to shift to the rebellious, shiftless, social parasite. The new culture produced such epithets as egghead, nerd and workaholic. The generation that "saved civilization" from Hitler begat a pampered, spoiled generation notorious for its ingratitude and self‑absorption. Well‑mannered movie heroes like William Holden, Cary Grant, Gene Kelly, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn were gradually replaced by the likes of Arnold Schwartzeneger, Bruce Willis, Madonna and Roseanne ‑ which is where we are today! If there's a pattern here, what could it mean?

When "times are tough" it pays to set aside whimsical and immature frivolities and become serious about commitment to hard work. At these times the over‑riding benefits of men who are adult in their attitude, and capable of achievement, give them an advantage over immature, irresponsible rogues. But when times become "easy" the things men are good for changes, and parasitic men become relatively more valuable. Women's values adjust to the times. If the genes that govern women's subconscious behaviors are capable of making this distinction about men and can adjust their preferred type, then these genes would confer great competitive advantage over those women who cannot do these things.

There seem to be two ways to achieve a change in the temperament of a society. The fastest way to achieve a change in outward behavior relies upon female choice. Women are sensitive fashion watchers. They sense the "times" in ways that almost defy logic. Whereas men must sense a storm beyond the horizon, before it can be seen, women must sense a change in social climate before it occurs. Their response to a sensed change is to cuckold their husbands to different men at varying rates. When women make their "preferred mate choice" other women notice, and this speeds the shift. But men also notice these shifts, and they attempt to imitate the preferred male type. In just one generation we have seen a shift away from men wanting to be perceived as Producers to preferring to be perceived as Parasites.

The second way a society's manifest behavior can change is through a change in gene frequency. Once the dynamic of "female choice" has accomplished a shift, the stage is set for gene frequency change. Gene frequency changes are slow. The conventional wisdom is that evolution is so slow that noticeable changes require tens of thousands, and maybe hundreds of thousands of years. This conventional wisdom is ridiculous! The American Indian evolved from an Asian in less than 10,000 years. Darwin's finches change beak size in one generation! People with social agendas wish for slow change, and their beliefs are sadly influenced by their wishes. Try thinking in terms of "a few generations" for significant change when social pressures are great! A fruit fly study by Teotonio and Rose (2000) shows that a change in environment can produce an almost complete switch from one gene allele to another in as little as 10 generations. For humans, a generation is about 30 years (Pang, 1998). So consider the possibility that "the way men are" (genetically) can change during the course of a few centuries!

Female choice can be the "switch" that initiates the start of a gene frequency change. This is an efficient mechanism, since it causes immediate change, which in the past must have been adaptive most of the time, and then it secures this change for the long‑term by adjusting gene frequency. The only problem with it in more recent times, during the past 10,000 years, is that it's a process that can kill a civilization.

These speculations can be used to make predictions. If women are capable of shifting their preferences in men, then the genome must also change (i.e., co-evolution of genes and culture). A new instability appeared with the introduction of rogues into the equation, which had its greatest impact when civilizations arose. For when rogues dominate paternity for generations, because women are (unconsciously) seeking to protect their offspring from civilization‑transported pathogens, the short‑term benefits of immunity from disease is accompanied by long‑term penalties of fewer producers and more parasites that threatens a civilized way of life.

In other words, we should expect that an “Age of Achievement” powered by the labor of Producer Men, and leading to the creation of civilization, should be followed by an "Age of Culture‑Clueless Rogues" who not only cannot sustain civilization but who are by temperament inclined to destroy it! Over long timescales, the dominance of Producers and Parasites must alternate. But whereas Producers create an opportunity for Parasites, by creating the conditions that render them viable, the other half of the cycle will be much slower. After Parasites destroy a civilization, a much longer time is required for its reconstitution by the now‑rare Producers. The ebb and flow of the rise and fall of civilizations may thus have the rhythm of slow rise and fast fall.

After two millennia where is the greatness that was once Rome,

Greece

and

Persia

? Today's residue of the Roman Empire is the Mafia, modern

Greece

is a dysfunctional country and

Iran

is currently ruled by the Koran. Notice that places that once gave rise to the world's greatest civilizations are now dysfunctional societies. If the human genome creates women who prefer to mate with producer men when times are bad and parasitic men when times are good, then it is close to inevitable that civilizations that rise will later fall.

In the previous speculation women play the role of "enhancers." To use a term from chemistry, women are “catalysts” since they speed the process of change by selecting from among the wide range of men who present themselves for consideration. Their choices tilt the direction of evolution to favor their fashion‑obsessed taste. They do this by exercising "female choice," or rewarding men who match their fickle preference by carefully choosing their secret paramours. It is not necessary that women change their preference for husbands, since they should always want a maximum of paternal investment. Their preferences should rather be expressed in who they prefer for extra‑marital matings and how frequently these matings occur.

The producer/parasite theory for explaining the rise and fall of civilizations requires that there were many changes in tribal wealth during the Pleistocene. The troubadour theory for a civilization’s decline requires that population density and migration rates have fluctuated many times during the Holocene.

Sometime in the mid-Sixties I commented to a friend that we had just witnessed the apex of Western civilization, and I still agree with that assessment. In stating that the Sixties were the best of times, I now understand that I meant they were best for Producer men, and that a switch was about to occur. All the new male fashions, which men copied because women preferred such men, fit the pattern of a civilization that was shifting from one that rewards the Producer to one that rewards the Parasite.

It’s not that men and women live more fulfilled lives by doing what they do; we all have no say in what we do (notwithstanding "free will"). As always, the “winners” are the genes, for they make us this way, that they may prosper ‑ at our individual expense! I am suggesting that the thing we call “civilization” is an artifact, or unintended consequence, of a competition between the genes, a competition in which their “gene carrying machines” lumber across an illusory stage where the protagonists mistake themselves for real players in life's drama. And I am further suggesting that the rise and fall of civilizations is driven by a script the genes have prepared for their machines, a script that recognizes when it is optimum for the lumbering machines to produce and when to parasitize. And finally, I am suggesting that women play a crucial role in causing a civilization to fall.

Some people seem intent on reaching within themselves for guidance on what to believe. This is lamentable! For when a person turns inward for guidance, he is asking to be led by his slave masters, the genes!

Although objective reality has helped to create brain circuits for intuiting the nature of the world, the genes have been successful in creating brain circuits that distort our intuiting of reality in ways that serve the genes agenda for genetic proliferation at whatever cost is required to the individual! Our brains are assembled (by the genes) with circuitry that renders us blind to certain realities. Hence, our intuitions can only sometimes be trusted, and are many times betrayers!

The person who looks inward for affirmation of an idea is less inclined to look outward for observational evidence to be judged rationally using logic. In contrast, the scientific endeavor owes its immense success to the custom of bravely measuring ideas against outward looking observations. But while science marches forward, people from an older mold continue to look inward. We have "two cultures" of people marching into an uncertain future.

When a person looks inward in search for wisdom he is more likely to find "belief traps" set by self‑serving genes, and unlikely to find that cold reality called Truth. It is irrelevant that the monk returns from the mountain with a measure of poise, and with the demeanor of someone who has attained superior insight. Any inward contemplation is at risk of delivering the unwary individual to a gene‑created sucker’s heaven. Liberation is more likely to come from the brave adventurer who has survived forays into the real world, where stark truths force themselves upon a reluctant mind.

Throughout the 2.5 millennia of recorded human thought the inward and outward approaches to understanding have been in conflict. Aristotle was a voracious observer, whose observation‑based system was abandoned for almost 2 millennia. His ideas retained their authority for so long because after his era the world abandoned the outward looking approach to learning, as if a cultural pendulum had swung "inward" where no new information could be found. During this sterile period, when endless arguments could rage over how many teeth were in a horse's mouth, the discovery of knowledge was paralyzed. The Dark Ages brought with it the darkness of a world outlook riddled with spiritual explanations, culminating in 3 centuries of witch hunts throughout Europe and

America

. Fortunately, the 18th Century swung the pendulum "outward." The Philosophes challenged Aristotle's authority and an era of exploration, literal and figurative, was initiated.

As described in the previous chapter, 20th Century LBS (Left‑Brain Styled) scientists are acutely aware of the threat posed by the newly‑emboldened RBS (Right‑Brain Styled) common man. It is ironic that in a series of public lectures by Jose Ortega y Gasset in 1928, collected and published posthumously as What is Philosophy (1960), 19^th Century scientists are criticized for their expansive dominance of the climate of thought. Ortega y Gasset's accusation is that the philosophers of this period were "humiliated by the imperialism of physics and frightened by the terrorism of the laboratories. The natural sciences dominated the surrounding atmosphere." He then asserts that "When the surrounding atmosphere ... is hostile to us, it forces us to a perpetual state of struggle and dissociation, it depresses us and makes it difficult for our personality to develop and come to full fruition." He characterizes the conflict between philosophers and scientists with the phrase "...philosophers, having suffered the disdain of those men of science who kept throwing up at them the charge that philosophy is not a science..." but then wins the argument by claiming that "...philosophy is not a science, because it is much more than a science." As a scientist, I find this logic somewhat tortured, especially coming from the person most responsible for presenting the argument that mass man unfairly resents the esteem and influence of the academic who devotes his life to understanding a subject. So strong are the RBS neural circuits that even Jose Ortega y Gasset was occasionally misled by them!

In his The Revolt of the Masses (1930) Ortega y Gasset wrote that because the 19^th Century empowered the masses economically, the masses were emboldened to view their undisciplined opinions, coming from within themselves without the benefit of academic study, to have equal validity compared to those from scholars. He writes: Today ... the average man has ... "ideas" on all that happens or ought to happen in the universe. Hence, he has lost the use of his hearing. Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his ‘opinions.’ "

To the extent that the newly empowered and unschooled mass of men influence public opinion (see Price, 1970 and Allen, 1989), new forces are returning the pendulum "inward" where today's fashion claims Truth can be found. Seeking truth by looking inward is a dangerous trend. It contrasts with the scientific approach of looking outward: observing, speculating, and testing the speculations by appeal to additional observations designed to possibly falsify the speculation.

The scientific process can lead to unexpected, unwanted insights. Thus, LBS inquiry represents a threat to RBS beliefs, and naturally RBS people react by restricting LBS research. Many subjects still cannot be studied because they are too threatening to RBS beliefs. Some of the most lamentable example today are: 1) race differences (Rushton, 1995), 2) the genetic basis of intelligence (Jensen, 1973), 3) eugenics, 4) the sociobiological basis for rape (Thornhill and Palmer, 2000), 5) the role of sociobiological "group strategies" to account for Jewish history (MacDonald, 1998), and 6) the origin of religious belief as an evolutionary adaptation (Alper, 2000).

Scientific inquiry into "uncomfortable" subjects is suppressed by RBS people, such as the (take a deep breath) “Jewish, Marxist, politically-correct New York intellectuals” who have already hijacked a few choice nuggets of our culture and who continue to try to remold our values. New Age "feeling" people may be viewed as harmless, but their politically correct intellectual comrades are harmful, for every time they interfere with "thinking" people there is an incremental loss in the prospects for civilization's continued growth and prosperity.

In most contemporary primitive cultures women have an average of eight babies. Allowing for the fact that in prehistoric times women may have died during their reproductive years (due to difficult births, disease, starvation, tribal warfare, etc), 50% to 75% of offspring would die before reaching reproductive age (which was 16 or 17 years until modern diets changed it to its present 12 or 13 years). In modern cultures women bear an average of two babies, and both of them are likely to live throughout their reproductive years. If this sounds like progress, read on!

According to Alexey S. Kondrashov (1988, p435) "in modern human populations detrimental mutations are probably accumulating faster than they are being eliminated by selection" due to the survival of a larger fraction of newborns than in former times. He postulates that normally there is a steady‑state between the processes of mutational degradation and preferential survival of babies with few deleterious mutations.

Now, pause again, and take a deep breath! Anyone reading this far will sense that they're entering politically incorrect waters! To rationalize your desire to draw back, to recoil away from the uncomfortable implications that you suspect are implied by the preceding, you will probably feel obliged to question Kondrashov's allegation: "Surely, deleterious mutations do not occur at high enough incidence to matter in just one generation!" But what if they do? Because if they do, and if humanity's slow march forward toward an ever‑higher and more glorious pinnacle has depended upon the "sacrifice" of those bearing the deleterious mutations, then what Pandora's box have we opened by creating a society that assures survival for virtually everyone?

The implications are unthinkable! "Would God permit a world that produces an ever‑expanding population of people afflicted by physical deformities, physiological weaknesses, and mental defects?" "If we are in dysgenic decline, is our only recourse that reviled, discredited, mean‑spirited theory called eugenics?" "Didn't Hitler practice eugenics?" (For the record, the answer is “no” – Jews score higher on IQ tests than non-Jews.)

Theory predicts that a population's genetic quality should decline when the mutational load is not removed by a process of differential survival of individuals before they reach reproductive age. This should be self‑evident (but I can provide an analysis to support it, upon request). Is there evidence for a decline in genetic quality during recent generations? The published literature has little to say about this, possibly because it is a taboo subject. Epidemiologists are still puzzling over the dramatic increase in asthma during the past few decades (they say you can't blame it on air pollution). And the incidence of "learning disabled" children is increasing rapidly (although this may be due to changing thresholds for labeling children as such). Herrnstein (1978) has studied IQ in

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and concludes that it has declined 4 or 5 points during the past 5 or 6 generations. However, Herrnstein attributes this decline to a higher fertility rate for people with low IQ, and this explanation is unrelated to mutational load theory. Most traits are a product of both genetics and environment, and this presents a special challenge to anyone seeking evidence for the case that we are in dysgenic decline due to an accumulation of a load of genetic mutations.

As an aside, the "Flynn Effect" (Flynn, 1987) purports to show an IQ increase of between 11 and 18 points between 1950 and 1980 among young Americans, with similar upward trends in other countries. However, questions have been raised about the use of the early, original IQ tests for measuring changes across generations, and Flynn himself has concluded (1990) that this is the case. Interestingly, IQ scores over time are rising while SAT scores and academic performance are decreasing. These waters are muddied.

With the observations of IQ trends ambiguous, we are left with mere theory to guide us. As there seem to be no publications that address this question, I developed a very simple model meant to explore how far a heritable trait can be "degraded" when mutational load is not "corrected" by the normal amount of differential survival of offspring. I used IQ, since it's a well‑studied, multi‑gene trait, and it has a high heritability (0.75 according to identical twin studies conducted by Bouchard et al, 1990). Allowance was made for the fact that the average offspring IQ is a 70/30 weighting of the parent's IQ and the genomic average IQ (defined to be 100) according to various studies that start with Galton (1909). If all of the bottom 50 % of offspring fail to reach reproductive age, the average adult IQ of the adult offspring would be 105.7 in the absence of mutational load. A more realistic assumption is to assume that survival probability ranges linearly from 0% at an IQ of 60, to 100% for an IQ of 140. This would produce an offspring average IQ of 102.0. I interpret this to mean that the mutational load on IQ is about 2 IQ points! In other words, starting with a parent generation IQ that averages 100, the average IQ of offspring is 98, but after the 50% culling of preferentially low IQ offspring during infancy and childhood, when the surviving offspring reach adulthood their average IQ is restored to near 100!

Since this culling effect is greatly reduced in developed societies, the theory predicts that we are producing generations of offspring that reach adulthood with IQs that average closer to 98 than 100. Over time this will lower the "genomic IQ" (the IQ, which is commonly taken to be 100, toward which offspring IQ is "attracted" with a 30/70 weighting). I calculate that this is a very slow process.

IQ is a multi‑gene trait, and therefore has greater "inertia" to change from random mutations. Single‑gene traits, such as hemophilia, should be capable of increasing their representation in the gene pool at much faster rates. For example, before modern medicine most individuals carrying the X chromosome allele for hemophilia would have died before reaching reproductive age. Today, they can be treated, as almost all of them are, and they then have the full potential of reproductive years for passing on the hemophilic gene to their offspring (by way of a sex‑specific X chromosome transmission path). Under such conditions the hemophiliac gene can rise to levels in the genome that are much higher than had ever existed in earlier times. Although most cases of hemophilia can be attributed to an inheritance of it based on family history, some cases are apparently due to "spontaneous" mutations at a mutation prone site. This qualifies hemophilia as an example of mutational load.

As more diseases become identified with DNA locations, the list of examples of mutational load genes will grow. The importance of addressing this problem will also grow, not just because we will be able to identify more diseases as gene‑caused, but because the incidence of gene‑caused diseases will be increasing and the burden to society will become more costly.

The mutational load theory, with its prediction of a deterioration of the mental and physical health, or vigor, of the population, is just one more pressure on a civilization’s continued existence. The timescale for repairing the damage that could be done to the genome by a “too kind” society is much longer than the timescale for creating the problem. Thus, the wealthy society unknowingly, and with the best of intentions, contributes to its own decline. In other words, a society that experiences a rise in wealth is hit by two new challenges: the poorest in society are encouraged to become parasitic and the wealthy are burdening society with defective children.

Empathy for the plight of one’s children is a "micro-motive" produced by the genes. The "macro-behavior" resulting from these micro-motives may produce a perpetually recurrent oscillation of gene pool vigor, producing the rise and fall of civilizations. The oscillation will not be sinusoidal, for the building process should take far longer than the destructive process. How fortunate we are to be living through the cusp of our civilizations apex! Yet how disheartening it will be for our children who will live through the crash.

Why are the opinion shapers of society loathe to talk about this? Every year that society postpones dealing with the problem is a year that the problem grows, and becomes more difficult to solve. It's not just mutational load; there are many other subjects deserving attention that are not being addressed by responsible societal discourse. Some subjects are just naturally taboo!

In this chapter several factors were suggested as possible contributors to the decline of a civilization. The next chapter provides some evidence that civilizations rise and fall in the manner described in this chapter, and that today’s global civilization might be the last one to exist because humanity is doomed to be become extinct during the current millennium.