The basic function of our physical bodies is to reproduce so the species continues. All life is defined by its on-going drive to replicate. The biochemical nature of self-replicating DNA drives the existence of life on this planet forward.
But what if we are not interested or are not capable of following this imperative?
I give the woke movement and identity politics one favourable interpretation: a reaction against the imperative to be defined by biological necessities. I qualify this position with the observation that the extremists of this ideology behave as victims and thusly have a target to persecute.
Prior to 200,000 years, our species coalesced into its current form: bipedal, creating tools which create tools, foresight and planning, and immersed in the abstract. The vast majority of these 200 millennia have been a struggle in climate changes, story telling and local medicines.
Usually breeding and birthing by our 13th year and mostly dying before our 30th, the biological has drive held sway. As different peoples settled, anywhere between 7000 and 70,000 years ago, the ideological took greater hold as people spent more time philosophising about existence.
Until the 1900s, most people died of or due to giving birth, virulent diseases, and health complications which western science could not address. Inoculations, education and commercialisation put an end to this period. With over-population, not breeding is a necessity.
However…
The male body is designed to produce a lot of semen; the female body holds all the equipment to grow babies. A billion years of DNA replication with 200,000 years of survival and suddenly we have 50 years of needing to not breed and to stop using so much energy.
Like a running dog reaching the end of its tether.
The imperative for survival no longer depends upon physical reproduction but on meticulous planning. Our skills in planning, abstraction, and ability to make tools to make a tool to make another tool, are our best hope in perpetuating the species.
As sex is removed from the biological imperative to survive, and identity is removed from biological identifiers, we must increasingly utilise our mental capacity. Can the imperative to survive be removed from biology?
The Great Experiment continues.
A D R A N 