Existance.

Human brain thinks of anything and everything it sees and observes in and around its own universe. The other day I was thinking, I exist in this beautiful, physics law bound place called universe. Well the next thought came was, I do not think that there is much of a choice for any organism to live, but this universe... hence we have to accept that whatever is there is beautiful. So my comment that 'universe is so beautiful' is justified. (I have to accept one fact that this universe is beautiful indeed, just for discussion purpose I tried answering my own question).

"I exist"... But does this mean anything to the universe I live in? Well, here I become a bit of Socrates. I really respect that guy for a simple reason, since he tried answering the toughest questions like, what is confidence? what are morals?... Somethings which humans invented but now are not sure of what these terms actually mean. Coming back to the question I posed just now, "what is existence?", I see it as a probability p(e). Here 'e' is whatever events that lead to the the formation and evolution universe till this state and then a little me in it. Talking about genes, it was 1/4 possibility that I become 'me' as far as the pairing of alleles is concerned. Also I have searched for uniqueness in all the organisms on this earth, as in humans we claim that each one of us is unique. 'The one' as best portrayed in the film 'The Matrix' -- I believe each one of us is The one. Here I am not only talking about the the unique genomes we possess, but also about the the universe that revolves around each one of us, and we are the centre of it. The thought that results into this kind of perception of universe, also makes each one of us, owner of ones own universe. Again I feel like saying, enough praising ourselves here. Universe is more that what it seems like.

I still strongly believe in Big Bang theory for universe origin and then Darwin's theory of evolution, that accounts for the current state of life on this earth. So considering all this, don't you believe that we are very miniature part of this mega structure. Although why we are, what we are is a myth... It is an ultimate question that haunts most of us putting forth universal questions about origin and stuff.

Our brains shouldn't have either reached such a level that we question and think about everything, i.e. something more than current survival and propagation, or else, if we have reached a level that we are thinking more that what I mentioned just now, then we should be able to answer these fundamental questions. Everything in this universe has a purpose (I don't know who said it, but I strongly believe in this). Hence evolution of human race and our possession of such a level of intellect is for a purpose. The purpose of solving this mystery of universe.

Selfish Morality

When we look at animal world from outside, it looks ruthless and cruel for anybody who watches animal planet. Just day before yesterday, I was at my friends place. All of us (me and his family) were watching animal world in the eve. We saw back to back two programs. One covered fight between two lion groups for terretory and second was about hunting sharks. All the eyes were stuck to the TV screen. Suddently my friends son shouted out "mom why did all those sharks target that small baby peguin? they were never bothered about the baby getting hurt by their teeth!!!". It was an innocent query. For sharks its was a feast, nice meal for the day, but for us, attacking animals or hunting them and getting them down to earth to eat it live is an immoral behaviour. Even after killing that small baby penguin, it was torn into pieces by other sharks and they literally fought for it (may be that is the way they share ;-)). This violent behaviour of animals can be justified by hunger and need of survival. Everybody wants to survive, and there's no exception.

The point that knocked my brain's door was, we also used to hunt in groups, we also killed smaller mammals to get food and shelter (by using their skin). But then, we developed farming and animal cultivation as an alternative for this field job. We changed with time and along came ethics and religion. We decided the code of conduct, some rules, laws and protocols to govern our society. Those who did not follow these, were punished by the tribe (sticking together as group is already discussed in "Parallel strategies" post earlier).

Our raw animal behavioural part is now masked by decent protocols decided by society, which was not the case earlier. Why suddenly did our species decide what is right and wrong?why some behaviour was considered as a shameful act for individuals in the society? How this behaviour fit into selfish gene theory?

First lets see what is morality.

Web definition of morality: Source Wikipedia;

"Morality can be defined as a system of ideas about right and wrong conduct."

Morals make individuals respect each other and as a resultant, creates a secured place for living. When we look at morals biologically, it is never an extra part of emotional intelligence that was imparted from somewhere outside, it is something which should have only helped better survival of the species in some or the other way. It did that as we can see today in case of humans. Morals are something which set constrains to individuals and make them act true. As being or acting right is always beneficial, this increases trust in the community. These are the set of ideas which seperate us from other organisms. It makes stable living possible as it reduces chaos. This social chaos can cause splitting of groups and individuals. As of now the dependancy of humans over each other has increased to such an extend that this splitting can be quite expensive for individuals (in terms of being alive). So on the whole morality increases the chance of survival of species.

From this we can conclude that morality helps humans in many ways and we followed it with a simple selfish motive of survival.

#Note: I want all the readers to take a note of this, that calling ourselves selfish need not be considered as depressive (again these are morals which make us rebound away from the idea of selfishness). This is the reason we exist in the universe, just to make our genes to propagate in future (rather they themselves make it happen). #

Memetic linkages

This post is an extention of the earlier one ("The social replicators"). I call it extention because this thought came to me while writing that post. Although this writing took a long time to get posted, since I decided to keep the scope of my earlier article to introduction to this topic. Now I believe I can go ahead with another related concept.

Memes have tremendous power (by this I do not mean any supernatural power :-P). They can control masses. Memes can be constructive or distructive (as in case of genes; can be lethal too [Web definition of lethal gene: A gene which brings about the death of the organism carrying it]). Let us consider ideas (memes to be precise) as an object. Something having physical representation, just like genes. They are a part of this evolutionary process and playing a major role in human evolution (about which I have already mentioned in my earlier post “The Social Replicators”). Here I am trying to put forth an analogy between genetic and memetic linkage.

Genetic linkage is an interesting concept. The best and most simple example that we come across in the biology textbooks is in fruit flies. The genes affecting eye color and wing length are inherited together because they appear on the same chromosome. [Web definition of genetic linkages: Genetic linkage is the tendency of certain loci or alleles to be inherited together. Genetic loci that are physically close to one another on the same chromosome tend to stay together during meiosis, and are thus genetically linked]. Appearance of two genes on same chromosome is not a sufficient criterion for considering those two genes to be linked. Their loci’s have to be so close, that there is a very rare probability that they are separated during the process of crossing over. To find out how much two genes are linked generally we need to calculate relative distances between two loci where the genes reside. Even simply by observing the phenotypic traits of a group of organism (in a population) we can assume the linked genes.

Now let us look at memes by taking an example. Consider a theist; any person who believes in God. He will also have a belief in satan/evil powers. Reason is obvious. His conscience tells him that, if something as pure or good as God exists (whom he may not see or experience) then something opposite of him may also exist. These are actually two seperate ideas. But still they exist together in a population. If these two ideas are considered as concrete objects and if we assume that they govern actions in our society by some means (analogous to phenotypic expression of genes), that shows that these are linked ideas; i.e. linked memes. The only difficulty is, placing these two object together (since they are not concrete in practicle world) so that they are not seperated during the process of crossing over. It is asumed in this case that, both these ideas (belief in God and evil) will be inherited together (explicitly talking about memetic inheritance).

If we look around we will find many examples in this context. The point I want to make here is, we inherit memes, they travel across generations as well as individuals, they may mutate (change) or may be conserved in certain environments, but some of them always travel hand in hand. This ideological linkage is difficult to explain, when we consider them as matter. But I strongly stand by this point that they show linkage in society.