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 depends on political oppression, economic inequality, 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 predator in moral conflict with its prosocial traits, an insatiable appetite for status and dominance, and a contemptuous disregard for the ecosystem 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?
Predatory Well-Being
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 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.
Natural selection is not about well-being.174,63,257,299
Natural selection, in favoring heritable variation in complex human traits, created a paradox of the right and the good resulting in social hierarchy and unrelenting political and socioeconomic conflicts over the distribution of income, wealth, privileges and power 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
DNA Outsiders
The interplay generates political and socioeconomic structures thick with social eugenic features and inequalities enforced by harms that function as social and moral goods (justified harms).
As a result, conflicts over socioeconomic status (SES) and the distribution of income, wealth, privileges and power create a jack-in-the-box pattern that has dogged human civilizations since the first cities and states appeared…when a social hierarchy rises it is only a matter of time until it eventually falls, and when it does, another one jumps up like a jack-in-the-box to start the process all over again.38,39,160
From institutionalized coercion and economic disparities that favor a few to inequities in health, happiness and longevity, social hierarchies and their justified harms create DNA outsiders, assuring the intergenerational transmission of hierarchy, socioeconomic inequality and conflicts over what is right and good across every country in the world.
There is something morally defective about this.
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 Hard Problem
Well-Being Across Individual, Cultural and DNA Differences
Human psychological differences 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.
More from Sky News and Michael Clarke…
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
For hierarchy elites, these efficiency-equality tradeoffs are justified…equality must give way to efficiency when determining the distribution of scarce resources.
However, there is nothing efficient (or moral) about people living in rich countries gobbling scarce resources others are denied while enjoying 11 years of increased life expectancy any more than it is efficient (or moral) for them to be the primary contributors to global warming and climate change.286,287
Nonetheless, these disparities are justified by hierarchy elites who feed on confusions wrapped in deceptions such as characterizing the poor as members of the middle class where their shortcomings in life are now their fault.
Global Jungle News
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
-HuffPost: Sen. Mark Kelly Says He’s Ditching His Tesla Over ‘A**hole’ Elon Musk
-MSNBC: Elon Musk’s disturbing new definition of ‘traitor’
-MSNBC: Trump isn’t joking about wanting to annex Canada
-Reuters: Russia has a new public enemy number one: Britain
-Reuters Poll: Americans worry Trump too closely aligned with Russia
Research Safari
Qui Summus?
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 socioeconomic effects of hierarchy, 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.