Schematic of Moral Realist model

 

Physics         ßà    |       Biology                |          ßà            Social Science

Matter, energy      ßà       |     Protoplasm, DNA              |               <- ->                   Human Nations

Laws of Physics   ßà       |     Laws of Biology                |                ßà                  Social Science           

                                  (code: DNA)                           (code: Culture)                          

 

 

Cosmos Evolution       Biological Evolution                   Social/Cultural Evolution

Physical universe             Living universe                               Human universe 

 

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This graphic is intended to show how life, and especially human life, works. By Physics alone, life should not exist. Entropy and uncertainty should destroy any entity that is maintaining itself as discrete. Entropy normally chills and scatters everything into smaller and smaller, cold, dead bits. But life forms maintain. Life is the most indisputable reality our minds are aware of, and it defies Physics.  

So how does life sustain? There is code written physically into each living thing, gene code that guides that entity to elude physical forces, even exploit them.  

In short, a living thing’s interfacing with the universe is run by its gene code.

In analogous ways, the interface between a tribe and its environment is further enhanced by code we call culture, a set of apps encoded into the memes of a tribe, which enables that tribe to practice its own communal way of functioning.

All living things have code in their genes that guides them to handle the forces of the world, both physical and biological. Humans have a genome like all other species, and over generations, it is being constantly updated. (Human genome evolution is why our responses to malaria and tuberculosis are more nuanced and more effective now than in 4 B.C.)

But in addition, humans also have a culture-driven mode of living that enables them to adapt as whole tribes to changing hazards and opportunities. We update our cultures so that we survive. We do the updating mostly by processes we aren’t aware of, but, more and more frequently in recent centuries, we have been learning to shape and implement effective, culturally-guided behaviors for surviving.

By Physics alone, life should not exist. But it does because of the code written into genes. And genes are programmable. 

By Biology alone, humans are weak and slow. We should not dominate the living world. But we do because of the code written into our cultures. And cultures are programmable. We could and should be updating our cultural code in ways that enable us to take control of our survival and our destiny as a whole species now, while we still can.