The Quality Life Jungle of Human Individual Differences
From the snarled and tangled interplay of genes and environments in which our individual, cultural and DNA differences have evolved, this global public good appears…
Well-Being Across…
However, there are individuals and groups whose income, wealth, status and power depend on political oppression, economic inequality, and religious, racial and ethnic discrimination…
The planet is 4.5 billion years old, but it has taken just 5000+ years since the first cities and states appeared for a different kind of predator in moral conflict with its prosocial traits, an insatiable appetite for status and dominance, and a contemptuous disregard for the ecosystems in which it evolved to bring its own genome and the planet to the brink of their sustainable limits.
Who are we and what have we done?
Heritable Inequality: The Dark Legacy of Social Hierarchy
Five thousand years ago when the first cities and states began to appear, social hierarchy and socioeconomic inequality came too.189,350
Due to their heritable effects the predatory stresses of social hierarchy and socioeconomic inequality can accumulate over generations, as shown by a substantial body of research.351
For thousands of years, this self-reinforcing pattern of system-justified inequality has been transmitted across generations and populations through the interplay of genes and environments, changing the future of our genome and the planet.352
We are approaching a global tipping point of genomic and climate sustainability driven by the increasingly complex predatory stresses of our social hierarchies transmitted across ever-growing global populations for thousands of years.
Like a jack-in-the-box our social hierarchies will continue to rise and fall and rise again until they consume what is left of our genome, the planet and our future.
Here is why…
Predatory Well-Being: A Global Problem
Is there anything more dangerous to the future of the planet than a predator with a ‘big brain’ that can make harms look like social and moral goods?
Approximately 300,000 years ago, after millions of years of genetic variation in hominin evolution, a very different kind of predator with a ‘big brain’ appeared–Homo sapiens.241
Through language, cause-effect reasoning, technological innovation and prosocial norms this cognitive super-predator would eventually open a doorway to the first very thin horizon lines of well-being—a long, healthy, happy and purposeful life.
However, the doorway to well-being reveals an evolutionary path strewn with the potholes of natural selection.174,63,257,299
Natural selection, in favoring heritable variation in complex psychological traits, created a paradox of the right and the good–what is right or good varies across individuals and groups due to differences between individuals in their inherited DNA (genetic propensities) and the interplay of these differences with environmental conditions (e.g., social, political, economic, technological, natural and biophysical).325
The socio-genetic effects of the interplay create the stratified architecture of social hierarchy, political and economic structures thick with inequalities enforced by system-justified harms–harms that function as social and moral goods.
A Global Public Good
Well-Being Across
Self has no moral space separate from the well-being of Other…
However, Well-Being Across Individual, Cultural and DNA Differences faces a socio-genetic problem: the intergenerational transmission of social hierarchy and socioeconomic inequality.
The Jungle of Human Individual Differences
Much of human psychology and social conflict is about the strivings and difficulties people face in their endeavors to have a healthy, happy, long and purposeful life in the DNA jungle of human individual differences.
The long shadow of hierarchy and inequality has revealed its biological origins, opening a new frontier for egalitarians and a different way of looking at the politics and economics of inequality, fairness and life course well-being.
The Hard Problem
Well-Being Across Individual, Cultural and DNA Differences
Complex psychological traits favored by natural selection for their fitness enhancing effects can nonetheless be barriers to individual and social well-being.
The “Crooked Genetic Timbers” of Human Individual Differences, Equality and Well-Being
It all begins here.
The Cognitive Super-Predator in the 21st Century
The hard problem of human individual differences sits like a sphinx guarding the gateway to equality and well-being with a prosocial riddle, a gateway through which each of us must pass…
Sharpened Points
The Global Problem of Predatory Well-Being…An Example
Excerpts from a Sky News interview with defense analyst Michael Clarke:
‘The Western world as a construct is dead’
Clarke adds we’re now living in a world of “new imperialism” with three great imperialist autocrats who all want to enlarge their countries.
“Vladimir Putin has been clear in where he wants to enlarge his country, Xi Jinping has made it very clear he wants to enlarge his country into Taiwan and the South China Sea, and Donald Trump is determined to enlarge his country,” says Clarke.
Here we are trapped in the jungle of our social hierarchies, feeding on each other like vampires, creating billions of socioeconomic outsiders for future generations.
Something Morally Defective...
Health and Longevity in America
Researchers Daniel Oesch and Nathalie Vigna make the following point about a decline in quality life years for the working class in the United States: “The most tangible sign that the quality of life of the working class has declined comes from mortality rates in the United States, showing that the life expectancy of lowly educated middle-aged whites has been falling since 1999.”96
Socioeconomic Inequality and Genetic Enhancement
Policies that justify and reinforce socioeconomic inequality create environmental conditions that have genetic effects on both current and future generations.
For example, while the term “genetic enhancement” may typically refer to the use of genetic modification techniques to improve specific characteristics or traits in humans, genetic enhancement can occur without bioengineering interventions.
Are We About to Unleash AI Predators on the World?
Solving the Hard Problem of our Individual Differences:
The Critical Role of AI
Will AI sweep us into an electronic jungle of social hierarchy, economic inequality and predatory well-being from which we will never escape?
Will AI’s ethical codes be shaped by its human source…clever prosocial deceptions that promote power and dominance as the sine qua non of human civilization driven by harms molded into social and moral goods?
An article by machine learning researcher Dan Hendrycks “Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans” explains why “AIs can engage in deception” while pointing out the predatory influences that may shape AI evolution.227
Hendrycks writes:
“By analyzing the environment that is shaping the evolution of AIs, we argue that the most successful AI agent will likely have undesirable traits. Competitive pressures among corporations and militaries will give rise to AI agents that automate human roles, deceive others, and gain power. If such agents have intelligence that exceeds that of humans, this could lead to humanity losing control of its future. More abstractly, we argue that natural selection operates on systems that compete and vary, and that selfish species typically have an advantage over species that are altruistic to other species. This Darwinian logic could also apply to artificial agents, as agents may eventually be better able to persist into the future if they behave selfishly and pursue their own interests with little regard for humans, which could pose catastrophic risks.”227
The Global Impact of Rich Countries Gobbling Scarce Resources
Research by Hannah Ritchie, senior researcher at the University of Oxford, and data from OurWorldInData.org321 yields calculations showing 6% of the world’s population (based on 2011 data) live in high-income countries that not only have an average level of dietary consumption greater than other countries but also longer lifespans of approximately 11 years.
Moreover, her research shows there is not enough habitable land convertible to agriculture to allow other countries the same dietary privileges as people living in these rich countries.321
Hierarchy elites argue these disparities are justified… free markets determine who deserves more and who deserves less.
While advocates of free markets claim they are highly efficient in allocating resources, what is efficient about people in rich countries consuming scarce resources others are denied while enjoying 11 years of increased life expectancy?
What is efficient or fair about free markets when people living in rich countries enjoy the benefits of a longer life while being the primary contributors to global warming and climate change?286,287
There is something morally defective here.
Global Jungle News
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
-Associated Press: Is Singapore producing the food of the future?
Research Safari
Qui Summus?
Quantamagazine: “Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare…”
Excerpt from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats
Source: Poetry Foundation
Social hierarchies are inefficient political & economic structures...
In a social hierarchy, individuals with high socioeconomic status (SES) acquire and sustain their income, wealth, status and power by extracting resources and quality life years from low SES others, which includes members of the middle class.
There is something morally defective about a society’s norms and institutions when a person's inherited DNA differences are a determinant of socioeconomic status and life course well-being—quality life years lost or gained.
What We Stand For
Stop the Intergenerational Transmission of Social Hierarchy and Socioeconomic Inequality…
We Support the Following:
Policies Focusing on Quality Life Years Gained…
Universal Health Care
Wage Subsidies
Minimum Basic Income
Rent and Price Control Policies
Supply Chain Transparency in Food & Over the Counter Drugs
The Paris Accord
UN Sustainable Development Goals
Smart Machine Technologies (AI) as a Global Public Good
Public Banking Concepts…as described by Angus Deaton
Global Wealth Tax
Public Ownership of Natural Resources
Anti-Death Penalty
Public Ownership of Energy Supply
A Global Consortium to Establish Policies Regarding Private and Public Rights
Regulation of Ownership and use of Space and Planetary Bodies
All for-profit corporations should develop social enterprise projects designed to reduce the political and economic effects of hierarchy– socio-economic inequality and inequities in health, happiness and longevity.
In addition, we endorse an editorial in Nature March 2022 on climate change.
“Although there’s now a consensus that human activities have irreversible environmental effects, researchers disagree on the solutions — especially if that involves curbing economic growth. That disagreement is impeding action. It’s time for researchers to end their debate. The world needs them to focus on the greater goals of stopping catastrophic environmental destruction and improving well-being.” The editorial concludes “…the world is running out of time.”
All articles and related material appearing throughout this website were developed and written by WGW.
QualityLifeJungle.com is not a 501(c)(3) entity.
A Global Public Good
Well-Being Across Individual, Cultural and DNA Differences
A Quality Life
R(evolution)
The political and socioeconomic stability of every country in the world today is cross-linked in a globalization process driven by a genetic competition across cultures and societies to create, modify and control the norms and institutions that regulate their social environments.
Here we are in the 21st century, cognitive predators trapped in our social hierarchies, devouring resources in a gluttonous state of status consumption destroying the ecosystem that sustains us.
The value of each person’s well-being is equal across our differences
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Attributions:
Map photo courtesy of Hans Isaacson on Unsplash.com
DNA photo courtesy of Warren Umoh on Unsplash.com
Pencils photo courtesy of Kelli Tungay on Unsplash.com
Diverse Group photo courtesy of Fauxels on Unsplash.com
Original paintings copyrighted by Bonheur, LLC
Other images shown in the header, with the articles and elsewhere on this website are copyrighted by Bonheur, LLC.