On the (near) death of the Selfish Gene. New understandings of our remarkably cooperative world.., page 1

Hi ATS,

My last thread was a bit of a downer, so I decided my next should be a more uplifting, positive affair. In this thread I will present & discuss some fairly new understanding of the world we live in, which some may already know, of course, but many will not - and hence I hope this can be an enlightening, surprising, life-affirming topic for your enjoyment & discussion.

We've all heard the by-now tired trope of the quest of the Selfish Gene. Supposedly (according to Richard Dawkins, a neo-Darwinist) the only thing which motivates life, is the passing of information from one generation to the next, in the form of genes, without any sense of meaning, purpose, balance or harmony - and certainly there is no room for cooperation, magnanimity, beneficience & the promotion of equality within a world of nature which is supposedly contrived to be motivated solely for this rather pointless exercise of sending little packets of information along ever-branching lineages of selection for fitness unto oblivion.

We are all repulsed by eugenicists, unless we happen to be amongst that cohort of riscible humans holding to the premises of the theory. We all sense eternity in our hearts, we feel the call of our greater humanity, our conscience, and we instinctively know that there is a cause to believe in morality, in justice, in fairness, in the cooperation of individuals, to form something admirable greater than the sum of its parts. Certainly, as someone who was brought to faith in higher order realities as a much younger man, via the unusual mechanism of spontaneous out of body experiences & pointed, personally impactful dreams involving the presence of God, I have never believed in the Selfish Gene theory. I find it distinctly vapid & foolish, in fact, as well as being utterly distasteful. I believe there is instead a grace made manifest within nature, a purposeful intent behind the operations of nature, and the surprsising, infinitely refreshing & curious beauty, humour & fulfilment which is to be found displayed amidst its vast plethora of species in the various kingdoms of the natural world.

Certainly surprising to me, when I first heard of its incredible marvels, is a new understanding of the mycosial network of fungal threads which weave for billions of miles beneath the forest floor, in the soils wherever soils may be found, unless they have been made sterile by the poor management of mankind, or the unusual ravages of nature in peculiar parts of the world.. The mycosial network involves ribbons of fungal growth which take their nutrients directly from the soil, minerals & such, dead plant & animal matter which is decomposed specifically by the action of this fungal network. Once absorbed, the nutrients are then transported by the network around to other parts of the network which need them. The fruiting bodies of these natworks are the mushrooms & toadstools which are so varied & fascinating in appearance, utility & of course, in terms of their value as food to us humans. But the fungal species themselves are often feared & misunderstood, because of the potential for extreme toxicity if one misidentifies a poisonous species for another which looks similar, which is edible. Because of their association with decomposition, we are indwelt with the awareness, or rather the bias, which says that they are filthy, low forms of life, which are to be loathed & avoided at all cost. But of course, without them, the natural world could not sustain itself, because they are the great recyclers of nature, taking what is dead & converting it into a form which can be used in the ever-ascending arc of life, straining against the gravitational vortex of the second law of thermodynamics. So when better understood, they should be venerated merely for these qualities alone.

However, there is indeed more to the story, which is wondrous in its implications for how we view the natural world. Trees which grow in a forest are able to piggyback the mycosial network to 'request' minerals & other nutrients from the trees around them, which may have an abundance of those exact minerals which they can afford to sacrifice, and thus, the tree with an abundance will literally share the nutrients, releasing them through its roots, for the mycosial network to transfer across to the other tree. This requires a sort of intelligence to drive its action, we might suppose. And let's not forget that fungus does, at times appear to act with a certain intent - one species is able to drive an ant into certain behaviours, forcing it to travel to a specific location (the base of a tree), to place its forelimbs against the tree, and then stay there posed indefinitely, until the fungus' fruiting body erupts from the head of the ant, which of course is killed in the process. This is a bizarre & perhaps sinister action, as compared to the beneficient action of the transfer of nutrients just described. Perhaps in the world of fungal intelligence & intent, a base form of spiritual impulse is present..? In the Book of Genesis it is recorded:

And to Adam He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis 3:17-19

I have mused on various occasions that particularly at the lowest levels of life, in the way of decomposition & decay, various species are present which would not be present, were it not for the spiritual implications of the Fall. I believe that the mycosial networks in the soil would have existed anyway, and that in the main these exhibit the equivalent in human terms of virtue (refer to the sharing of nutrients referenced previously) but that there may have been an explosion of life forms which are a corruption of the intended progentiros of those species (such as the brain invading fungus which controls the ant). This is just musings on my part, I haven't tried to work it out in great detail. I see the suggestion though in the scriipture above, and I do not discount the possibility that nature is flawed, because of the implicit pact which was made when the Fall occurred. Our first ruling couple erred greatly & ceded the world & all authority to the Serpent, whatever that entity may have been at the time of the incident. Its corruption was the outworking of the climactic shift in spiritual authority over the world itself - taken from us, given to the Serpent.

I would put it therefore, that the world we live in is both virtuous & fallen in its nature, with shades of each end of the spectrum visible at all levels, at all grades of complexity. We have the magnanimous mycosial network, and the punitive ant brain fungus. We see the beauty & the horror of this world in the 'selfish' drive of competition, but we see the balance & harmony of nutrient sharing, and communication, between plants & trees & fungal networks.

I will add other examples I am aware of later (such as shrubs which send warning to their brethren across the winds that danger is coming - & even slime mould with intellect?)

FITO.