Potential incompatibility of inherited behavior patterns with civilization Olev Vinn Department of Geology, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Ravila 14A, 50411 Tartu, Estonia;
[email protected] Abstract. All intelligent organisms presumably originally have a number of inherited behavior patterns (IBPs) that are not fine-tuned for conditions prevailing in civilized communities. Indeed, some IBPs may be highly incompatible with such conditions and have high potential to induce self-destruction. These patterns may include responses of social organisms seeking power over conspecifics in relation to harvesting and consuming energy. It is possible that all emerging civilizations could face problems associated with incompatible IBPs, which may partially explain why civilizations are apparently rare (since we have not detected any others in our galaxy. Vinn, O. 2014. Potential incompatibility of inherited behavior patterns with civilization. PublishResearch.com, p. 1-3. Inherited behavior patterns IBPs have been evolutionarily tuned to optimize the survival and reproduction of organisms in their natural environments (in terms of acquiring and using energy and avoiding damage by predators). The capacities of social organisms organized in packs to acquire energy may be much higher than those of solitary organisms, because their individual capacities can be pooled. However, violence between individuals within packs of social organisms may occur in tussles for dominance, social status, food or other resources. In addition, violence between packs may occur if resources are limited. Such interactions between individuals or packs usually result in few (if any) fatalities. Furthermore, in natural environments (in which IBPs were tuned) far less resources are generally available than in civilized communities, and excessive harvesting of resources is generally limited by the physical capacities of individuals and regulatory mechanisms, such as disease and predation. In addition, it is generally impossible for individuals or even individual packs to cause mass fatalities among conspecifics due to the geographic distances between them and their limited physical power. However, no natural conditions are likely to foster the evolution of successful behavior for conditions prevailing in civilized communities, where the regulatory mechanisms and limiting factors mentioned above are absent. These conditions include several technological capacities that do not occur in the natural environments where behavioral patterns evolve. The most universal are presumably technologies enabling rapid, comprehensive consumption of available resources. It is also highly likely that civilized social organisms would develop extensions of such technologies that enable individuals or packs to obtain power and high status via mass extermination of conspecifics. Thus, the IBPs regulating energy harvesting and competition between individuals and packs may be highly incompatible with the corresponding technologies in a civilized
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community. The most universally incompatible IBPs are likely to lead to excessive consumption of energetic resources. In communities of social organisms incompatible IBPs could cause excessive casualties both in competition among individuals for status and in competition among packs for energetic resources. They could also lead to massive wastes of resources in demonstrations of power and prowess by sexually selective organisms (Zahavi and Zahavi, 1997). Ultimately, incompatible IBPs could lead a civilization to self-destruct by consuming available energetic resources more quickly than they can replaced (or technologies for exploiting new resources can be developed) and/or the application of mass destructive technologies in conflicts between packs.’
IBPs operating in human civilization IBPs also operate in human civilization and several human values are based on them, such as leadership (status in the pack) and material wealth (possession of energetic resources). Incompatible human IBPs include drives to possess and demonstrate possession of both energetic resources and social status, which are probably responsible for excessive wastes of available energetic resources (ecological crises) and violent conflicts between packs (war). Other human drives that may pose less severe danger but may still raise risks include: curiosity (related risks include use of dangerous technologies before adequate tests); the sex drive (raising several risks, including over-population); parental instincts (nursing of offspring) and need for a home (nesting), which may lead to efforts to acquire disproportionately high shares of resources and thus conflict. The bottleneck for emerging civilizations - ‘inherited behavior patterns’ One could ask why we have not found any alien civilization yet. Why the detectable civilizations are rare or absent in the universe? Incompatible IPBs may pose problems that all emerging intelligences and civilizations must face, and thus at least partially explain why we have not yet detected any alien civilizations. It is also possible that biological evolution could lead to intelligence and civilization via routes that are very different from those that occurred on earth. Thus, the number and type of incompatible IBPs could vary widely. However, all living organisms must harvest energy from the environment. Hence, the emergence of intelligence and civilization will always probably be accompanied by the evolution of incompatible IBPs for energetic solutions. It is also possible that only social organisms will develop civilizations, if intense communication between individuals in packs is essential for emergence of intelligence. If so, incompatible IBPs for leadership solutions and competition between packs will always be involved. Thus, emerging civilizations that cannot solve the problem of incompatible IBPs may inevitably become extinct shortly after the appearance of advanced technologies (Figure 1).
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Figure 1. Possible dynamics of number of civilizations in the universe. The extinctions before the bottleneck of IBPs are due to the natural causes. Acknowledgements. I am indebted for financial support to the Sepkoski Grant Program (Paleontological Society), Estonian Science Foundation grant ETF 9064, Estonian Research Council grant IUT20-34, and the target-financed project (from the Estonian Ministry of Education and Science) SF 0180051s08. I am grateful to Sees-editing Ltd. for the linguistic editing of the manuscript. References Zahavi, A. and Zahavi, A. (1997). The handicap principle: a missing piece of Darwin's puzzle. Oxford University Press. Oxford. ISBN 0-19-510035-2
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