THE HUMAN ESSENCE

1 THE HUMAN ESSENCE A THEORY ABOUT WHAT MAKES US UNIQUELY HUMAN Ron Horgan 26-11- 2021 Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 2 INTRODUCTION What is the essence of our humanity and how could this have arisen by evolution? It is self evident that we are primate animals but show human kindness and altruistic compassion. This seems to conflict with the selfish instinct that appears to be the major driver of evolution. This development is plainly connected with evolution in social groups where group selection is important. We now live in a global environment and our population size and demands have increased to the point that the supporting biosphere may collapse and our population crash, possibly to extinction. To survive the present crisis and live on Earth for millennia to come, we must develop a culture of kindness and consideration in dealing with each other and the Earth from which we emerged. Kindness is the currency of exchange for a long term future. This is a matter of necessity. Is this development possible within the limits of our “human nature”? I believe so, because our ancestors survived by being able to adapt to a wide range of environments requiring great changes to be made A plausible mechanism by which our essentially human qualities were developed and selected by evolution is presented here for discussion. Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 3 GENERAL DISCUSSION We are unaware of much that our brains do. Our consciousness, language and logic, require substantial processing time to catch up with the very fast decisions that our brain instinctively makes from integrating new sensory information with stored memory. This unknown land, where life changing decisions are made, is a new frontier for our exploration. We have examined ourselves in great detail down to seeing individual atoms and molecules at work in real time. Reductive examination finds a bunch of atoms. Unsurprisingly, the subtle emergent properties of human behaviour are not found in the simple components. Each new unpredictable emergent property becomes an entity in its own right, and must be studied as such. How then do we study events which remain beyond our consciousness and which moulded our very humanity? One way is to understand what causes unusual human behaviours is to examine things which seem to have no logical explanation. Another is to “reverse engineer” our uniquely human attributes to find plausible logical mechanisms to account for such an evolutionary development. This is what I attempt here, and hope to stimulate discussion to further understand this crucial topic. Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 4 THE PARADOX OF KINDNESS IN EVOLUTION “Evolution, red in tooth and claw” was an early interpretation where strength and speed to fight for resources seemed to be essential. “Survival of the fittest” implies that under pressure, the weak and elderly are not worth saving. These common caricatures of evolution were contrasted with the human values of kindness and compassion which were correctly believed to be gifts from a beneficent God. I say correctly because such a belief is common to major religions and is in keeping with our evolved “human nature.” This attempt to find a mechanism by which this paradoxical behaviour is a product of evolution, in no way invalidates a belief in God; it may simply show,(as any science does,) how God’s universe works. The reality is that for humans, belief in God has had powerful survival benefits, and the challenge now is to find an appropriate belief in God for our scientific age. My essay “Enlightenment” on Academia considers this topic. So how can the “weak” qualities of kindness and compassion possibly be more powerful than the “strong” qualities of greed and aggression? Can the prophesy, “the meek shall inherit the Earth” prevail? Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 5 ABOUT A BRAIN IS IT? No, it’s about the whole human organism and how the brain interacts with the body to react for enhanced evolutionary survival in a social group. These ancient mechanisms are found in social animals and ensure stable status structures, which improve survival between competing social groups. As a true evolutionary process, this has to work without conscious decisions. The function is to prevent constant fighting for dominance within the group and enable coordinated behaviour. Group selection, is now realized to be an important evolutionary development. “This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution” by David Sloan Wilson documents this understanding. So how does our mental state control our physiological state? What interconnects brain and body to instinctively adjust an individual to a stable status position in society? What is the innate reward for the individual who contributes most to the wellbeing of a social group, and how is it delivered? Conversely what is the innate punishment for the individual who behaves badly according to group opinion? I am ignorant of such integrated mechanisms being mapped, and propose the following mechanism. Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 6 THE mTOR COMPLEX This intensely studied enzyme complex is found in the entire living kingdom, from the simplest single cell organisms up to us. So what does it do? The Neurology of mTOR JO Lipton et.al.Neuron Oct 22 2015 has the following definition: “The ..’mTOR signalling pathway is a crucial cellular signalling hub that, like the nervous system itself, integrates internal and external cues to elicit critical outputs including growth control, protein synthesis gene expression and metabolic balance”, It allocates energy to growth, reproduction and repair as the environment changes. mTOR seems to me to be the life force itself, putting into action all of the essential life functions. As noted above, it parallels the nervous system functions and thus to my way of thinking may have preceded the nervous system. If so, the nervous system is a secondary accelerator of the responses of the organism in adjusting to the environment. (This perspective is in keeping with the evolutionary development of mobile life and may answer some paradoxes. If mTOR came first, perhaps the origin of life was an “enzyme world” with RNA and DNA following as more efficient replicators) I think of mTOR as the “computer chip” of biological life. When food is plentiful the life cycle to maturity is shortened and reproduction maximized. Mouse plagues are an example. It enables the organism to adjust to the size of the niche through good times and bad. Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 7 For a simple animal, a sea slug in this case, a computer programme has been written which precisely replicates the behaviour of the slug. Such simple animals might be considered as biological machines. We humans of course contain the same vital function but modulated by interactions with our large complex brains. Many functions have been linked to human mTOR which appears to be centre of our physiology, and the vagal nerve is a major connection between the brain and mTOR I speculate that mTOR is the mechanistic agent that regulates our health according to what we believe about ourselves as part of a social group. And that belief, about our self perceived social status, is largely set by what others think of us. We are not conscious of this function which is fast and automatic. The reward for the top status people is better health, longer productive life and more children. Our instinctive obsession with status, so cleverly exploited by marketing objects linked to status, probably taps this human need. The lowest status people who are sensed to contribute least to the group welfare are the opposite. A short life of ill health may result in no children. mTOR may have the power to cause death in the short term by shutting down essential processes.”Pointing the bone”, a curse used in some Australian aboriginal tribes could result in a fit strong young man dying in a week. Loss of long term partners, emotional shocks and other sources of grief and despair might also operate via this mechanism. What else could have the power to cause such dramatic deaths? Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 8 Now while this may be thought to select for favourable genes, it may be epigenetic selection of genes from an unchanged genome that is more important. Thus evolution may proceed according to the acculturated habits of the individuals in social groups, as instinctively judged by the group members! ETHICS HEALTH AND SURVIVAL I speculate that our personal sense of social worth, and optimism for the future, is the mental state that mTOR translates into our health, energy levels, and longevity. Self worth is probably sensed instinctively via mirror neurones of the group of people we interact with. We instinctively know when we do the “right thing” or not. Something as nebulous as feeling good about doing something good for humanity will boost your effectiveness to achieve such social benefits by optimising your health and energy via mTOR. It is a true win-win outcome where both the social group and the individual benefit by “doing the right thing” which is intuitively known throughout the prevailing culture. This is why kindness, good behaviour towards other humans and in fact the entire planet, by overriding individual greed, is ultimately the major evolutionary survival ability. It is the basis for every ethical decision; “you do it because it is the right thing to do”: an intuitive knowledge that is a gift from God. Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 9 BELIEF AND SURVIVAL At this point we might consider a version of Pascals Wager? If it is an open choice to believe in God or not, and belief may result in a future benefit, eternal life in heaven, then the rational person will choose to believe. In the light of current knowledge this proposition may be restated: If we choose to believe that God created the universe from the void, and gave the materials of the universe the properties of self assembly that defined all possible outcomes, then that belief may result in a future benefit, eternal life for our species on Earth, then the rational person will choose to believe. What is the evidence for such a belief? We are the universe itself come to conscious self aware life. Our emergence from the biosphere on Earth is extremely rare and almost beyond calculation. Some great influence may have intervened many times on our account. The gift of life we hold in trust is passed to us from an infinitely long chain of ancestors. We are absolutely part of this greater whole and of the biosphere from which we emerged. We have a sacred duty to pass this gift of human life to our descendants on an unspoiled Earth. The above mTOR control mechanism promotes emotional satisfaction for the individual and social group. Belief provides a perspective connecting each individual to the universe and our purpose. Our purpose is to explore and understand the universe from which we emerged. It is a sacred duty to leave the Earth, on which we evolved, in good condition for our descendants. Copyright Ron Horgan 2021 10 Without some appropriate belief we may be seriously depressed and downhearted by seeing ourselves as insignificant and meaningless: just a byproduct of a hostile and meaningless universe. If at the same time, we conclude that both our free will and individual identity are delusions, I suspect that mTOR may limit our energy and optimism to the point that life is indeed a “vale of tears.” SUMMARY If our bodies work as I speculate, we humans are well served by believing in God and our purpose in the universe. As rational scientists, we should admire the existing religions and their followers, all of whom worship life and God in various ways. As humans, kindness and tolerance towards each other and the Earth from which we emerged is the key to our future. Copyright Ron Horgan 2021