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I suspect that some sort of biologically driven urge to dominate the gene pool will keep humanity from ever reaching any form of utopia. As long as we are progr

I suspect that some sort of biologically driven urge to dominate the gene pool will keep humanity from ever reaching any form of utopia. As long as we are programmed to compete with each other, this will always reflect in the way society is organized. To me it seems that all of these utopian scenarios have in common that people allow others to be successful, expecting the same in return. This only works if everyone behaves this way and seems easy to abuse by people taking advantage of others. In other words, we don't need to worry about retaining unhappy feelings at work, others will make sure that you will remain unhappy at work. Or you will become someone that makes others unhappy at work. It may work on a small scale, here and there, but in general on a global scale I believe we are doomed to live in an endless cycle of evolutionary driven struggle of some sort. I do hope I am wrong, but in any case we are a long way from reaching it, socially, not so much technically. Which makes me a bit sad at times.

marak830 10y ago
Along those lines of thought I remembered an article about a troop of baboons with no alpha males left. http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/11/the-baboon-troop-that-mellowed-out-after-the-alpha-males-died-the-sapolsky-and-share-study.html http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/11/the-baboon-tr...
collyw 10y ago
"As long as we are programmed to compete with each other" Are we? Most of our greatest achievements seem to have come about through collaboration rather than competition.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Are you sure, I can't think of anything where competition was not involved. Can you give some examples? edit: Big science projects like the LHC maybe?
  - catmanjan 10y ago
    I don't think there is any competition when it comes to altruism after a tragedy, like volunteers after a terror attack or a natural disaster. Actually, I'd argue that big science projects are international competitions for getting to the right answer first.
    - tim333 10y ago
      Some people are altruistic after tragedies but there are also usually politicians trying to spin them to their advantage.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  The moon landing was a product of the "space race" between US and URSS. The Internet has its roots on a network developed by the US department of defense. The first nuclear reactors were a byproduct of the development of the atom bomb. The first computers were developed during WWII to perform cryptanalysis and solve military problems. I'm sure opposite examples can be found (mapping the human genome ?) but I doubt they would make a vast majority.
  - yolesaber 10y ago
    Your point is interesting because all of those examples were indeed conceived of due to competition and conflict, yet most had their potential realized because of the need to cooperate between people. Computers were the blinking bean counters of corporations and governments before people started getting together and sharing their ideas and schematics about them (Even before the homebrew club - Stanford AI lab, Engelbart's work etc). The Internet was developed as a means for the military to communicate, sure, but it didn't become anything truly useful or empowering to humanity until we adopted commonly-held standards and protocols which were developed by a peaceful international research lab. Seems like you may need a bit of healthy competition to make the breakthrough, but afterwards cooperation is crucial otherwise the gains of the breakthrough are never realized.
    - drabiega 10y ago
      > Seems like you may need a bit of healthy competition to make the breakthrough, but afterwards cooperation is crucial otherwise the gains of the breakthrough are never realized. I think it's just a product of the societies we've had. In all those cases it was the cooperative aspect that made the breakthrough. The competition was only needed to allocate the resources for it, though, given the nature of our society.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        I think you nailed it. What competition did in this case is allowed enough resources to be allocated for those projects - there are a lot of worthy endeavours today that are mostly competition-free and end up resource-starved because of that. Competition adds urgency to an issue, which reprioritizes things.
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolut... http://libcom.org/library/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin http://libcom.org/library/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin
- Amygaz 10y ago
  I think we are, maybe in a different way than mvdwood is suggesting. The way I see it is that, the same way one doesn't become asperger or autist, you don't become narcissist, your brain is wired that way, early on during its development, so it's in your DNA and what affects it. Medical research on narcissism is still very young, but so far we have indication for genetic inheritance and therefore potential genetic markers have been found, we observed defining prefrontal cortex signatures, and reproducible and predictable phenotypes (e.g. atypical responses to an environmental stimulus). Similar trends are also observed in altruism, which is seen as the opposite narcissism.
tomp 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with competition. Some people enjoy it, and it undoubtedly improves the world. My idea of utopia certainly includes competition in many areas (arts, sports, science, space exploration, computer games). It should, however, be possible to opt out of competition (in any particular area) and still live a good life. I think it's perfectly possible to achieve that in a post-scarcity society. Furthermore, a political & moral advancement could ensure that all "common" wealth (infrastructure, land, property, energy) is more-or-less equally distributed (i.e. "you don't deserve to own that penthouse just because you were born in the right family"), perhaps using taxation by "renting" from the society (e.g. more valuable property owners would be paying more taxes/rents to the rest of us, so they will only be able to keep it if they produce outstanding amount of wealth themselves). Then, the only competition would be based on things like intellect and creativity. The story Manna [0] includes something similar, where energy is distributed equally among all citizens, who can then "use" it (e.g. to create food, clothes, ...) or "donate" it (e.g. to interesting science projects). [0] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  I don't think we can tell competition from parodies of competition any more.
- FilterSweep 10y ago
  I agree with you on many of the values of competition in our current society today, but I believe you totally missed his point. When there is competition, there are winners, there are losers, and there are significantly more losers than winners. There is a _reward_ for winning, whether that be tangible (a trophy, or monetary sum), intangibile (pride of winning), or reproductive (potential mates prefer winners). And therein lies the rub - the losers can surely "live a good life"....depending on your definition....but they surely are not in a Utopian setting, as there are intangibile "rewards" to losing as well - lack of partners, shame, insecurity, among many others. It doesn't matter the arena of competition, the implications of competition are the same - but to different extremes.
cousin_it 10y ago
I disagree. In the long run most of our problems won't be caused by genes, but rather by intelligent entities trying to achieve their goals. Intelligent entities are faster than genes and can edit genes.
- tim333 10y ago
  Though we get to program the intelligent entities, to begin with at any rate.
Styx- 10y ago
Pessimist! :) I disagree. I think much of human suffering due to competition stems from lack of security, or the lack of reassurance that basic needs will be met. Imagine a technological utopia. All of your needs as a human being are met. All of the needs of your friends and family are met. Can you not imagine how much easier it would be to advance toward a "social utopia"? Before the Renaissance, the cut-throat psychotic human beings tended to do the best in terms of gathering resources, security, etc. Since the Renaissance, this has become less and less true and merit has started to take precedence. Eventually, once the conditions for a technological utopia are met and for the majority of the population, it will be a like a light has suddenly been turned on. Those that have all of their basic needs met, tend to be nicer to others on the whole. Besides, even if I'm wrong, it's not hard to imagine some sort of machine or system that short-circuits "our biologically driven urge to dominate the gene pool" for the good of humanity.
- wdmeldon 10y ago
  > All of your needs as a human being are met. All of the needs of your friends and family are met. Can you not imagine how much easier it would be to advance toward a "social utopia"? This is the case for basically everyone I know, and I'd imagine this being the case for a lot of the people here. But we're not advancing to a social utopia.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    There's a loooooong way you can fall in our society. Until that floor is a lot closer to what we call "middle class" you're not going to realize many social benefits.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    Is it? Most of us are one major medical disaster away from being bankrupt. And losing your job generally would throw all that out the window.
- tim333 10y ago
  Slightly off topic but I can't help but be reminded of the quote from The Third Man: "in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." I'm mildly optimistic that we can at least encourage the better bits of society found in the real world today.
emodendroket 10y ago
If that urge is really so deep, then why do so many people voluntarily not have children, or have fewer children than they could? If your main goal is to dominate the gene pool it seems clear that the best strategy is to sire as many children as possible.
- FilterSweep 10y ago
  Cost, artificially-induced social stigma, time investment, and the foolish belief that hard work would procure partner with better genetic material, mainly.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Many of those don't explain all the married couples electing not to have children. If cost and time investment are the concern, we might surmise that the urge to rule the genetic pool is not really so innate and irrepressible after all.
    - FilterSweep 10y ago
      What about the couples marrying for reasons other than having children? Or the couples incapable of having children?
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        What about them? If the urge to affect the gene pool is so irrepressible, the reason you married doesn't matter; you should still, instinctively, yearn for children.
Grishnakh 10y ago
I think you're absolutely correct. Humans are selfish assholes, basically. It's too bad our branch of the great apes family is the one that evolved high intelligence, instead of the branch that has the Bonobos. If they were the ones who grew huge brains and high intelligence, they'd probably already have Utopia by now.
germinalphrase 10y ago
In his utopian novel "Island" - Aldous Huxley proposed rock climbing as a suitable alternative to the desire for domination over others. Instead of sating this desire by building power over (or commuting violence against) others, you exercise domination over yourself. As a sometimes climber, it's a nice - if incredible - thought.

marak830 10y ago

Along those lines of thought I remembered an article about a troop of baboons with no alpha males left. http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/11/the-baboon-troop-that-mellowed-out-after-the-alpha-males-died-the-sapolsky-and-share-study.html http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/11/the-baboon-tr...

collyw 10y ago

"As long as we are programmed to compete with each other" Are we? Most of our greatest achievements seem to have come about through collaboration rather than competition.

adrianN 10y ago
Are you sure, I can't think of anything where competition was not involved. Can you give some examples? edit: Big science projects like the LHC maybe?
- catmanjan 10y ago
  I don't think there is any competition when it comes to altruism after a tragedy, like volunteers after a terror attack or a natural disaster. Actually, I'd argue that big science projects are international competitions for getting to the right answer first.
  - tim333 10y ago
    Some people are altruistic after tragedies but there are also usually politicians trying to spin them to their advantage.
Kurtz79 10y ago
The moon landing was a product of the "space race" between US and URSS. The Internet has its roots on a network developed by the US department of defense. The first nuclear reactors were a byproduct of the development of the atom bomb. The first computers were developed during WWII to perform cryptanalysis and solve military problems. I'm sure opposite examples can be found (mapping the human genome ?) but I doubt they would make a vast majority.
- yolesaber 10y ago
  Your point is interesting because all of those examples were indeed conceived of due to competition and conflict, yet most had their potential realized because of the need to cooperate between people. Computers were the blinking bean counters of corporations and governments before people started getting together and sharing their ideas and schematics about them (Even before the homebrew club - Stanford AI lab, Engelbart's work etc). The Internet was developed as a means for the military to communicate, sure, but it didn't become anything truly useful or empowering to humanity until we adopted commonly-held standards and protocols which were developed by a peaceful international research lab. Seems like you may need a bit of healthy competition to make the breakthrough, but afterwards cooperation is crucial otherwise the gains of the breakthrough are never realized.
  - drabiega 10y ago
    > Seems like you may need a bit of healthy competition to make the breakthrough, but afterwards cooperation is crucial otherwise the gains of the breakthrough are never realized. I think it's just a product of the societies we've had. In all those cases it was the cooperative aspect that made the breakthrough. The competition was only needed to allocate the resources for it, though, given the nature of our society.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      I think you nailed it. What competition did in this case is allowed enough resources to be allocated for those projects - there are a lot of worthy endeavours today that are mostly competition-free and end up resource-starved because of that. Competition adds urgency to an issue, which reprioritizes things.
NoGravitas 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolut... http://libcom.org/library/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin http://libcom.org/library/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin
Amygaz 10y ago
I think we are, maybe in a different way than mvdwood is suggesting. The way I see it is that, the same way one doesn't become asperger or autist, you don't become narcissist, your brain is wired that way, early on during its development, so it's in your DNA and what affects it. Medical research on narcissism is still very young, but so far we have indication for genetic inheritance and therefore potential genetic markers have been found, we observed defining prefrontal cortex signatures, and reproducible and predictable phenotypes (e.g. atypical responses to an environmental stimulus). Similar trends are also observed in altruism, which is seen as the opposite narcissism.

tomp 10y ago

There's nothing wrong with competition. Some people enjoy it, and it undoubtedly improves the world. My idea of utopia certainly includes competition in many areas (arts, sports, science, space exploration, computer games). It should, however, be possible to opt out of competition (in any particular area) and still live a good life. I think it's perfectly possible to achieve that in a post-scarcity society. Furthermore, a political & moral advancement could ensure that all "common" wealth (infrastructure, land, property, energy) is more-or-less equally distributed (i.e. "you don't deserve to own that penthouse just because you were born in the right family"), perhaps using taxation by "renting" from the society (e.g. more valuable property owners would be paying more taxes/rents to the rest of us, so they will only be able to keep it if they produce outstanding amount of wealth themselves). Then, the only competition would be based on things like intellect and creativity. The story Manna [0] includes something similar, where energy is distributed equally among all citizens, who can then "use" it (e.g. to create food, clothes, ...) or "donate" it (e.g. to interesting science projects). [0] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I don't think we can tell competition from parodies of competition any more.
FilterSweep 10y ago
I agree with you on many of the values of competition in our current society today, but I believe you totally missed his point. When there is competition, there are winners, there are losers, and there are significantly more losers than winners. There is a _reward_ for winning, whether that be tangible (a trophy, or monetary sum), intangibile (pride of winning), or reproductive (potential mates prefer winners). And therein lies the rub - the losers can surely "live a good life"....depending on your definition....but they surely are not in a Utopian setting, as there are intangibile "rewards" to losing as well - lack of partners, shame, insecurity, among many others. It doesn't matter the arena of competition, the implications of competition are the same - but to different extremes.

cousin_it 10y ago

I disagree. In the long run most of our problems won't be caused by genes, but rather by intelligent entities trying to achieve their goals. Intelligent entities are faster than genes and can edit genes.

tim333 10y ago
Though we get to program the intelligent entities, to begin with at any rate.

Styx- 10y ago

Pessimist! :) I disagree. I think much of human suffering due to competition stems from lack of security, or the lack of reassurance that basic needs will be met. Imagine a technological utopia. All of your needs as a human being are met. All of the needs of your friends and family are met. Can you not imagine how much easier it would be to advance toward a "social utopia"? Before the Renaissance, the cut-throat psychotic human beings tended to do the best in terms of gathering resources, security, etc. Since the Renaissance, this has become less and less true and merit has started to take precedence. Eventually, once the conditions for a technological utopia are met and for the majority of the population, it will be a like a light has suddenly been turned on. Those that have all of their basic needs met, tend to be nicer to others on the whole. Besides, even if I'm wrong, it's not hard to imagine some sort of machine or system that short-circuits "our biologically driven urge to dominate the gene pool" for the good of humanity.

wdmeldon 10y ago
> All of your needs as a human being are met. All of the needs of your friends and family are met. Can you not imagine how much easier it would be to advance toward a "social utopia"? This is the case for basically everyone I know, and I'd imagine this being the case for a lot of the people here. But we're not advancing to a social utopia.
- XorNot 10y ago
  There's a loooooong way you can fall in our society. Until that floor is a lot closer to what we call "middle class" you're not going to realize many social benefits.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Is it? Most of us are one major medical disaster away from being bankrupt. And losing your job generally would throw all that out the window.
tim333 10y ago
Slightly off topic but I can't help but be reminded of the quote from The Third Man: "in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." I'm mildly optimistic that we can at least encourage the better bits of society found in the real world today.

emodendroket 10y ago

If that urge is really so deep, then why do so many people voluntarily not have children, or have fewer children than they could? If your main goal is to dominate the gene pool it seems clear that the best strategy is to sire as many children as possible.

FilterSweep 10y ago
Cost, artificially-induced social stigma, time investment, and the foolish belief that hard work would procure partner with better genetic material, mainly.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Many of those don't explain all the married couples electing not to have children. If cost and time investment are the concern, we might surmise that the urge to rule the genetic pool is not really so innate and irrepressible after all.
  - FilterSweep 10y ago
    What about the couples marrying for reasons other than having children? Or the couples incapable of having children?
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      What about them? If the urge to affect the gene pool is so irrepressible, the reason you married doesn't matter; you should still, instinctively, yearn for children.

Grishnakh 10y ago

I think you're absolutely correct. Humans are selfish assholes, basically. It's too bad our branch of the great apes family is the one that evolved high intelligence, instead of the branch that has the Bonobos. If they were the ones who grew huge brains and high intelligence, they'd probably already have Utopia by now.

germinalphrase 10y ago

In his utopian novel "Island" - Aldous Huxley proposed rock climbing as a suitable alternative to the desire for domination over others. Instead of sating this desire by building power over (or commuting violence against) others, you exercise domination over yourself. As a sometimes climber, it's a nice - if incredible - thought.