Currently reading The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins. If his argument is to show that we are just life sized DNA replicators…he has me convinced.
In fact, the more I consider what the heck is going on here on earth, the more I realize that everything is a complex and unique form of the process going on at the simplest level: DNA replicating itself over and over.
Why are Africans, who many are starving and infected with AIDS, continue to reproduce, knowing their children will be subjected to a similar fate? Why the impulse to reproduce? The answer lies in the same reason DNA finds it necessary to duplicate, to pass the information on again and again.
Yes, there are many amazing ways this DNA has found to preserve itself for duplication, but when one looks at what is actually going on, it’s all startlingly similar.
ahh, the purpose of life - to procreate.
if you are in the evolution boat, that’s what life is all about, nothing more.
duplicate, duplicate, duplicate.
how simple.
dna becomes more and more complicated looking for better and more efficient ways to duplicate.
hence the evolution from single cell organisms to primates and humans.
granted, if you’re not in the evolution boat and float with the faith concepts, insert any other meaning of life here and call the replication cause nothing more than self-interest and egotism.
"Imagine a world where parasites control the minds of their hosts, sending them to their destruction.
Imagine a world where parasites are masters of chemical warfare and camouflage, able to cloak themselves with their hosts’ own molecules.
Imagine a world where parasites steer the course of evolution, where the majority of species are parasites.
WELCOME TO EARTH.
For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and in the darkest shadows of science. Yet these creatures are among the world’s most successful and sophisticated organisms. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer deftly balances the scientific and the disgusting as he takes readers on a fantastic voyage. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the fetid parasite haven of southern Sudan, Zimmer graphically brings to life how parasites can change DNA, rewire the brain, make men more distrustful and women more outgoing, and turn hosts into the living dead.
This thorough, gracefully written book brings parasites out into the open and uncovers what they can teach us about the most fundamental survival tactics in the universe."
(end of excerpt)
When people reproduce despite the urgings of compassion and morals, as in the case of having babies with AIDS, genetics trump memetics. The genetic urge to reproduce trumps the genetic-memetic drive of compassion and concern for fellow human beings. But what is stranger is when memes trump genes. Some people have taken vows of celibacy, deliberately avoiding sexual behavior and thus effectively overriding their “DNA imperative” to reproduce.
So the way I figure it, evolution created the human brain, a way for humans to relate to each other and become a superorganism, the human community. But the superorganism has its own “genes”, which are the memes that are accepted in the community. All the ordinary genetic phenomena of mating, crossover, selection, drift, etc. have analogous phenomena in the superorganism’s meme-genes. And it is these memes that control the human world. They do so largely independent of genetics (even subverting genetics as in celibacy) because natural selection has allowed them to do so. The fitness gained by allowing an independent meme platform, it seems, is presently more than that lost by allowing such an independent meme platform to subvert genetic imperatives.
So I would say that while we are “ultimately mere” DNA-replicators, a fuller and more useful description would be humans as DNA/meme replicators.
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So the DNA is being reincarnated from generation to generation. All within and of you are that of your foreparents, reborn in you. They did not die, but other cells of their bodies lived and now in you.
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The information that is stored in the DNA is copied and passed on, that means, instead of new informations being created by each generation, the informations simply duplicate themselves and continue to divide until in the last generation there are still the same informations?
although by this argument, we are not the same person that we were 10 years prior. all cells have a turnover or a life span.
… actually, not ALL, but most. nerve and cardiac cells last a lifetime or close to it. but then you would have to say that a being is only a heart and a nervous system.
depression is the lack of hope. It takes many psychological reasonings to void your life of hope toward love and joy (the two strongest spiritual feelings). The void of a spiritual feeling, is the void of the spiritual energy that would activate the section of the brain that stores memories tied to certain feelings.
Love has no known energy that can rpoduce all the side effects associated with love. But if you think about it in a different light,… it explains more. The souls energy causes reactions in the body. Each chemical energy section of the brain reacts to different spiritual energies.
the secrect of life is we are involintary responces to biochemical trigger according to how we organize our brain???
Close. Impulsive reactions are apart of humanity. But a smart person will not get drawn into allowing his frustraintion turn into rage,… and use intellect to obvert the problem. Thus giveing the section of the brain that stores frustraition thought patterens more ideas to work on in times of impulse.
Secondly. The soul promts the intellectualiztion. The intellectualiztion doesn’t prompt the feelings. Depression is the lack of hope just from the outlook of life. Unless you are opressed, you have little reason to be depressed. But because of desires being portrayed as joy, people confuse joy with these desires.
The truth is friends and family sustain contentness better. Acts of love mean suffering yourself for others. Yet love is a feeling that is 100% spiritual (instead of reactions to the physical). So when people prioretise the physical over the spiritual, their main source of Joy is baced on worldly things. Thus the worldly things through their prioreties out of wack. But love as your main source of Joy will give you a sence of servitude and understanding (selflessness). While people who sleep around will find this errode to only helping those who can help you.
I haven’t yet read The Blind Watchmaker- my understanding of Dawkins is filtered thru Dennet. Next time I head back “home” (a town large enough to have a Barnes & Nobles) I will pick up that book. I had planned to do so today, but it’s getting late and it’s about an 80 minute drive…
It does seem that the inexorable flow of life is based on the epic power of DNA to attempt to replicate itself. The drive in us to reproduce is no mere lust, it’s the entire weight of planetary history being driven like a wedge into our genetic makeup.
While I agree that one of our purposes is to propagate our DNA, I think it is undeniable that we are also influenced to carry out other non-DNA-replicating functions. This, dictated by environmental influences including societal ones and, my own personal favorite, parasites:
“…The Toxoplasma-gondii is spread by cats to humans and other animal species, including rats, and can lead to suicidal tendencies…”
“…Earlier research at Imperial College London said the same parasite may trigger schizophrenia,…”
Certainly replication isn’t the only drive instilled in us by our DNA. But it’s a strong drive. I (meaning the conscious part that I think of as “myself”) have no interest in having offspring, but my DNA still wants to.
Such as? I wonder if it’s possible to undeniably prove that any function we carry out is not somehow related to better preservation of our DNA replication, regardless of the outcome of the small change.