There are many prejudices floating around that certain laws and forms of government just 'will not work,' that they are contrary to 'human nature,' and that not only have they failed in the past, but they are destined to fail in the future. Such a hasty induction may be unwarranted, as we shall see, and it may turn out that such ideals and policies simply require some getting used to -- in the form of genetic adaptation.

Communism is one example of a political ideal against which there is a general prejudice in our highly-developed and powerful capitalist society. Although I, the author, have never actually visited a communist country, I am familiar with some of its tenets, and I will here discuss the basic socialist principle of 'enforced sharing,' of dividing the fruits of one's labor equally among one's community and receiving one's share from others' labor in turn. There seems to be a widespread belief that personal monetary gain and mental reward are necessarily linked, that having more money automatically makes a person happier, and further, that citizens of a socialist country are 'naturally inclined' to be lazy and unproductive, to 'take advantage of the system,' so to speak, even though, as Immanuel Kant noted, collective planning must play a role in our behavior in addition to personal planning. In this essay, I will argue that in such a society the link between reward and personal gain may be overcome through gradual, selective genetic adaptation, and that a political system that began as a struggle may even turn out to be more enjoyable than the one previously held.

Another example, one we have not yet followed, is of the creation of societies that permit drug use. Staunch opponents of this idea in the war on drugs are likely to point to the dangers involved in using them: the risk of death, the effect on cognition, memory, and emotional well-being, and -- perhaps most importantly -- the danger to others, as when driving while intoxicated. However, with selective adaptation and the invention of safer technology, we may approach a point in time at which drug use is no longer dangerous.

In Darwinism and Sexual Selection, I described the theory of evolution as a natural culling process that shapes and molds an already-emerging life force, leaving survivors with beneficial traits that help them survive even more effectively: hands, feet, muscles, bones, digestive organs, capillaries, and everything else this 'life force' stumbled upon and found useful in the billions of years evolution has been taking place. Usually, the culling is either natural or in the selection of mating partners, but as has been shown in the laboratory, and as Adolf Hitler frighteningly tried to show, the culling of traits can be directed at will, leaving us with those we prefer best: Aryans in the case of Hitler, and fruit flies with aesthetic bodily properties in the case of scientists. This means we have the capacity to redesign ourselves, to make improvements in the human physiological condition, some of them conveniently suited to new laws or changes in political ideals.

In fact, we do not even have to do it so painfully as with furnaces and concentration camps -- no, we can let it happen naturally, as those most fit for the new ideals end up having more children, or, if danger is involved, we can do it selectively in a way that does not cause needless pain, as in a compassionate eugenics or voluntary euthanasia program, provided that we take measures to make the lives of those not selected as mating partners more comfortable, and certainly that we do not bully them.

Eugenics and Voluntary Euthanasia

For instance, in a eugenics program we might give compensatory privileges to those who will not have children as a way to reduce strife and further strengthen the sense of comradery among participants of the program. There may be problems inherent in letting just anyone have such privileges, however. First of all, if they were so tempting and rewarding that people would disfigure themselves just to qualify, then we might lose out on reproduction altogether, and second -- perhaps even more disheartening -- it might naturally leave us with a higher proportion of genes that cause people not to want such privileges! These genes, which would somehow or another reduce the pleasure in certain activities, could serve as an unwanted adaptive function that left these previously inviting activities dull and boring, as we search for new ways to appease those whose genes are less desired.

As I explained with drugs, therefore, we may have to find a way to prevent adaptation against pleasurable lifestyles from occuring -- for instance, by leaving it out of the participant's decision whether or not he or she gets to enjoy such privileges. Of course, a participant would first need to be examined for signs of genetic undesirability, and this may turn out to be a difficult task. Anyone can just act 'unworthy' to win the prize, so we'd need to a more fool-proof way to decide how to separate the two subgroups of the population.

Alternatively, we could allow people to end their lives voluntarily. This could be accomplished with or without privileges and provide citizens with a painless opportunity to escape a world in which they feel tortured, and in which they would rather not suffer in hope for recovery. Arguments against voluntary euthanasia are numerous but very often, if not always, flawed. The religious sanctity many of us place on letting God decide our fates is one such objection, but as I showed in Christianity as a Tool of Oppression Against the Romantically Unsuccessful, there is a paucity of evidence for the existence of a respectable Christian God, and most if not all arguments for God's existence have been refuted. Due to the great artwork and sentimental ceremonies composed and held in the name of Christianity, it may take some time before our culture finally accepts the cruelty of the New Testament and moves on.

It is my sincere opinion, if we begin a voluntary euthanasia program, that the government should take measures to protect its citizens from rituals of social cruelty conducted on the partial basis of the option to leave the world, and the gene pool from exploding forth with malicious, competitive traits. For this reason, I feel it should be an 'Anti-Cruelty Voluntary Euthanasia Program.'

How would such a program work? We could, first of all, punish people who were deliberately mean and deny them euthanasia rights -- at least for a while -- to enforce sympathy and lovingkindness among participants. We could also work to discourage or abolish icons of cruelty ('Happy Bunny' comes to mind) that, even if humorous to those well-off, could act together to infuriate those who lead more stressful lives. If we do well to promote an atmosphere of cooperation and companionship, a voluntary euthanasia program might succeed.

Desirable Traits for New Societies

I don't want you to be put off by the differences between imaginable societies and our own. In some societies, drug use could become very refined and sophisticated, in sharp contrast to the decadence of some of today's drug cultures. Socialist communities, too, could emerge into flourishing political systems in which the quality of work and life are very high. In order that such societies become what we desire, we must, as we have noted, take into account genetic adaptation and allow for the possibility that human nature may change over time.

Consider socialism, for example. In our capitalist society, we have likely evolved traits that allow us to survive and grow powerful through individual planning and the incentive to work harder for more money. These traits would have come to be valued over time as beneficial traits in a free market. If, at some point in our country's timeline, we made a transition to socialism, we could possibly experience friction and unease with the new policies, since through genetic adaptation we have become used to a capitalist society. When we begin performing under the socialist ruleset, the genes that prime us for successful capitalistic endeavors become less useful as we strive to fulfill the needs of the community. As a result, we might need to endure a period of struggle before people whose genes made them good at socialism, people whose incentive to work came not from guaranteed income but from pleasure in working, a sense of duty, and a love of humankind, appeared through luck of draw in evolution and were selected to have children in the new society. In that case, such beneficial 'socialist genes' could spread and become common, improving our standards of living gradually over time, even to the point where we found the socialist way of life gratifying, natural and comfortable.

As another, perhaps more controversial example, consider a culture in which drug use is permitted. Drugs have wondrous effects, and yet because most have been discovered only recently, they are relatively new to our gene pool, and as a culture we are likely to experience what is called a 'Savanna effect,' a period of genetic maladjustment brought on by environmental changes, before we become more resilient to their negative physiological effects through evolution and perhaps even grow to find them useful. However, in legalizing them, we would have to carefully consider how we might adapt to them, and even whether we would continue to find them pleasurable. They may, nevertheless, grant us intense pleasures and even wholly new cognitive powers impossible in a society without drugs.

Are We Still Adapted to Our Outgrown Ideologies?

Given how recently we've abolished slavery, we may even wonder if we have already adapted to a master-slave environment, if we still inherit genes that would make us good masters or good slaves, and if we're still getting used to recent changes in our system of government. If so, then part of our daily stresses may be influenced by certain groups' being thrust into personal responsibility while they still have some 'slavemaster' in them, and as time progresses, we may find ourselves adapting positively to a society without slavery.

Besides the end of slavery, there may be other changes to which we are now adapting. Even the recent boom in technological progress could take some getting used to, gene-wise. We may grow to find that disciplines like mathematics are more interesting than they used to be, if only due to the mode of thinking required to use the new technology. If we end up replacing Christianity with a more compassionate system of ethics, we may also notice that our lifestyle changes will require genetic adaptation before we may become fully comfortable with them.

Conclusion

While there is a common temptation to make assumptions about human nature and to infer the disadvantages of political systems that don't concord with human nature, I have here shown that these assumptions may be unwarranted. Connections between monetary gain and the incentive to work, for example, may exist only on a genetic basis and be capable of gradual evolutionary adjustment upon transition to a new political environment.

Through the embrace of genetic adaptation we have the power to shape our entire destinies as human beings, to control our means of satisfaction and fulfillment, and to coordinate our entire mode of thinking to new laws and forms of government. This opens the door to a wealth of exciting possibilities in which alternative and perhaps even superior means to happiness and enlightenment can be explored. To this end, several policies may be adopted to ease the transition to a new gene pool, including eugenics and voluntary euthanasia -- provided that the programs are not carried out with cruelty toward those who do not mate. Or, alternatively, we could let the process be carried out on its own, provided that we first improve our conditions and technology to a degree that the new 'ideal' would become far less dangerous. This adaptation would by no means be easy, but the end result is nevertheless within our reach.


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