the gods of the copybook headings, part three: getting to the point, or getting the point, or not

[joculum]

Novelists are usually the only ones who actually comprehend how remarkable it is that our screwed-up species accomplishes the many and unimaginably varied number of things that it accomplishes in terms of practical inventions and theoretical discoveries that increase our comprehension of the world within which we live and move and have our being. (As distinct from the world in which we do only one of those things.)

I remain astonished at the degree to which a wish to avoid stereotyping prevents us from comprehending why people choose the professions they do, or the pastimes, or all the other predilections that do in fact come in statistically predictable proportions with just enough surprises to keep things interesting. (Ex-football star Rosie Grier’s passion for knitting used to be the standard citation in this department.)

This sort of comes out of a followup post I didn’t get round to writing, regarding why the types of folks I wrote about in an earlier post tend to write about a bewilderingly broad number of topics…some of which they have actually mastered, but most of which interest them from their own outside(r) perspective.

From that outsider perspective, the following extract from a news story (“Genes Get Out the Vote,” by HealthDay reporter Steven Reinberg) scares the dickens out of me on several levels at once:

“Fowler and Dawes also looked for specific genes involved in the decision to vote. They found that two genes that influence the brain's serotonin system, called MAOA and 5HTT, were also associated with a person's inclination to cast a ballot. The serotonin system helps regulates trust and social interaction, the experts noted.

“In fact, they found that people with more efficient versions of those genes were about 10 percent more likely to vote.

“‘It's not just the gene that makes you vote, but it has an impact on how susceptible you are to different kinds of environments,’ Fowler said. ‘Depending upon what kind of environment you are in, it is going to activate those tendencies you might have to cause you to participate in politics or not.’

“To thoroughly understand politics, one has to include genetics, Fowler now believes.

“‘To study politics without genes is to miss half the story,’ he said. ‘To really get an understanding of what people are doing and why they are doing it, we need to integrate both nature and nurture into the study of politics,’ he said.

“According to John T. Jost, a professor of psychology at New York University in New York City, this article is another in a growing list of studies suggesting that political orientation is partly heritable.
“‘In some ways, this conclusion is not so surprising, given that we have known for over 50 years that there are basic cognitive, motivational, and behavioral differences between leftists and rightists,’ Jost said.

“‘Unless one believes that basic psychological characteristics have no genetic antecedents whatsoever, one would have anticipated these results on the basis of the psychological literature,’ Jost said. ‘Still, it's quite important that these researchers appear to have identified specific gene combinations that are linked to political orientation,’ he said.”

I believe it was Kenneth Rexroth who, probably citing somebody else, suggested that depression in the poor tended to be the result of having a great deal to be depressed about. The correlation is obvious.

But this observation should be modified to include the notion that stress triggers biochemical reactions in certain individuals that leads to long-term clinical depression.

In other individuals, it doesn’t, and those individuals may be the ones who lead the political revolution, or reinvent the structure of the corporation that employs them, or establish their own consulting agencies in which they make a very large amount of money.

We still hear universalizing statements about the human condition and about politics, far too often. And we have not really begun to take seriously the prospect that whereas people with two legs sometimes go from near-paralysis to victory in long-distance races, persons with one leg and no prosthesis scarcely ever do.

Comments

[utopyr.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to ask if you've read Ben Okri's The Famished Road. In a way, it can be read as a take on your self-mocking parenthesis at the end of the first paragraph.

[joculum.livejournal.com]

Nope. Obviously I should read it.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I have the politics I do at least partly because of 1) my grandparents being radicals -- and in one case, I'm fairly sure that her attachment to political theory was her replacement for her father's religious involvement; 2) my parents being disillusioned with their parents' politics; 3) the choices available to me.

This last is important. During the period which includes the English Civil War, the idea "Every Englishman above the rank of servant should have the vote" was a radical-left notion. Advocating the vote for women simply wasn't available as a political position.

[joculum.livejournal.com]

Good. This was the discussion I had hoped to get started. It really doesn't matter what the genetic makeup is of someone whose choices are limited from day one by historical circumstances. In circumstances that maximize choice, the choices will be partly shaped by economics (how much so may be a matter of genetically formed predilections), and partly by family legacy (whether as cherished inheritance of tradition or burden to be rebelled against, or both), and partly by the shocks and impacts of life experiences. I have had my opinions on certain issues turned around one eighty degrees by experience. But I can make sense of exactly why I would have felt one way at age sixteen and another two decades later and yet another way in 2008.

[crowleycrow.livejournal.com]

Why does it frighten you to learn that a propensity to vote is genetic? Why is that different from your former baseless but often accurate observations of people as being the kind that feel they are doing good and having fun by participating in politics? All that was missing from the naive "he's just that way" determination was a mechanism. Now it's revealed. Once it was a "humor" and in a real sense still is. And no one's testing the power of this gene or these genes to keep youvoting after sufficient disappointmets: you're the carrier also of the Fragile Optimism gene, so that even though you sorta miss it, you haven't voted in years.

[joculum.livejournal.com]

Actually, John, I had meant to explain that what frightens me is not what you describe (which is the right conclusion to draw, and which I share) but the prospect that, instead of seeing the possibilities inherent in overcoming one's genetic propensities, people will either see this research as somehow justifying racism and neo-fascism, or dismissing alternative political positions because, after all, "they just can't help it." The point of my parable at the end is that when people actually cannot help themselves, in the most literal meaning of those words, they are enjoined to get with the program and keep up with the pack, while when they could very well change their situation by understanding the details and investigating ways of understanding what can and cannot be accomplished, they will find their genetic makeup to be an all too easy excuse. "My genes made me do it." "Anybody can succeed if they apply themselves." Both statements are false, even if the first one is preponderantly true.

The thing to notice in the story is the varying percentages of probability that can be assigned to genetic factors depending on what aspect of political participation you are looking at. And that was in the part of the story I neglected to copy, which explains why, as usual, my response seems incoherent.

I had intended to post a followup but, "as is the way of men," I forgot where I was going with this.

But you are exactly right and your amplification of the story's meaning has helped clarify my intention considerably. Thank you.

[crowleycrow.livejournal.com]

Genetically, humans have been shown to be divided into two genomes: the genome that makes you believe it's all in your genes and you can't help it, and the genome that makes you believe you are unconstrained by biology and anyone can lift them themselves by their bootstraps. And there's nothing we can do about this division.

[joculum.livejournal.com]

A wonderful variation on the world being divided into two types of people, the ones who divide the world into two types and the ones who don't. I love it.