Worlds

I just encountered a rather mind-blowing concept that I need to write out to process.  It is significant because it comes from a direction I have consistently been opposed to, which gives it credibility against my biases.

Without belaboring the background, suffice to say I do not believe that reductionism is the key to undertanding.  Things are greater than the sum of their parts.  Experience is not reduceable simply to chemical impulses in the brain and bio-physio responses.  But from that direction comes the concept of gene-culture interaction.

This author I'm reading recognizes that environment and genetics, nature and nurture, are inextricably linked.  But here's the kicker.  He points out that any attempt to overly encourage one factor over the other would be devastating.  For example, he says if we had a totally controlled society that required everyone to be equal in ability and performance, giving intensive assistance to the lower performers and holding back the higher performers (e.g. every child goes to college), the result would be that both segments' environments would not allow them to develop genetic potential and variation would be lost, thus genetically reinforcing a loss of ability and variation.  This type of society and it's ills have been described in countless movies and books, so I won't go on.

But on the other side, if we had a totally egalitarian society such that every child was allowed to fully explore their gifts and fully supported in achieving them (no-schooling), genetic heritability would increase to the point that the same societal abuses occur.  It would be caste and feudal system to the ultimate degree in which people truly were born to be something and could not improve their lot.

In either case, you end up with a totalitarian society.  The two ends of the spectrum are really neighboring points on a circle.  Like Fascism and Communism, though ideologically polar opposites, they produce societies that are very similar; both abusive and controlling.

This is not new, really.  Both sides have been treated extensively in literature and cinema.  But what did hit me was the idea that we NEED in a fundamental and very real sense, adversity and diversity, not just in happy hippie self-help ways, but in gritty biological ways.

As a Christian who thoroughly believes in the sovereignty of God and orchestration on the universe, this explanation from a staunchly atheist and materialist quarter fairly solves the question of why bad things happen and why inequality persists.

Perhaps we're looking at it all wrong (what else is new).  If God is sovereign and good yet bad things persist, it must be because those things we perceive as bad are actually in some way good.  It's our definition that's wonky.  Not bad, but perhaps unpleasant, inconvenient, even painful.  But still good.

Now I hear myself starting to sound like Candide's teachers, and I'm not about to start arguing for the 'best of all possible worlds'.  That's as absurd today as Voltaire portrayed it in the 18th century.  I'm also not going to say that we shouldn't work to eliminate wrong and injustice.  Evil is evil and should be stamped out.  What I'm saying is that it doesn't follow that a kid born in a poor area should get a total hand out to bring him to the level of a rich kid.  Neither does it follow that imposing no limits so everyone can 'be free' to follow their whims will lead to healthy people and society.  What I'm saying is that fighting, struggling, dying, suffering, and going without while others go with is not necessarily bad.  It's just how our habitat works.  There is no such thing as a necessary evil, but adversity is not necessarily evil.

It is necessary to promote genetic potential and actually helps make the environments required for us to grow into what we were made to be.  Adversity must occur and succor must be provided just like zebras eat grass and lions eat zebras and hyenas eat lions and all turn back into grass.  A life lost or a case of suffering is to be mourned and helped, but eliminating the condition that led to the suffering is not in our power because it ultimately wouldn't be for our good.  Like all ecology, it's the principle of balance.  Ecology, as a nonreductionist science, a holistic science in the truest sense of the word, allows us to understand the nature of God imprinted in our world.  We can trace the hand of God, see the trails of his garments.  It's really sublime.


But don't dare take what I'm saying and use it to justify your system or even to form opinions about how the world should work.  The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that we can't, shouldn't, and don't really run the world anyway.  And I'm now more than ever convinced that the one who does is way better at it than we could be.  Our purpose is not to take our place as gods, but to rise to our place within God's living relation.