When the earliest mariners were compelled by unassailable
forces to sail their flimsy vessels, riding the waves of
uncharted oceans, they relied mostly on intuition and hopes. The
forces instigating their decision to put out to sea were most
compelling, because then there were not known or reliable
instruments to fix their positions in their unsophisticated
charts and the hazards of their treks were most real. Despite the
dangers ahead, they were inexorably compelled to risk their
lives, travel, and accept the perils matter-of-factly. And travel
they did.
My thoughts, in keeping with my theory of the DNA hardwiring,
is that Mother Nature has taught us that She never leaves
anything to chance. As for most contingencies, she has equipped
us with instinctual tendencies to guide us, tendencies that we
now call talents or intuitions.
How do we discern who would be the first astronomer ever to
emerge? We can"t, the prospective astronomer, some day will find
it for himself, as a revelation or a drive, and will follow his
calling. On this vein, we cannot envisage that every subsequent
astronomer would be a Galileo, as we cannot imagine that every
child that scribbles on paper will turn out, some future day, to
be a Rubens-we just say that the predisposition exists and that
nature would take its proper course in due time. In my
speculations I also allow for the impact of excellence,
mediocrity, and missed opportunities. Not everyone following his
call will excel, not
everyone will rise to excellence, and not everyone will find his
call on time to follow it-thus missing it, and terminating in a
vocation different from the one that, for the for the collective
well-being, he was originally programmed.
For the missing of opportunities is why Nature assured the
outcome of its plans, maintaining a fund of duplicating
redundancy.
Since, (if my hypothesis is valid) we are predisposed by
nature to our professional calling; rudiments of proof of our
innate proclivities must have been present through history, from
the beginning of time. The alchemist came first, as precursor of
the chemist, the witch doctor as precursor of the priest and the
doctor. The gossiper comes easily as prototype of the tabloid
publicist and of the press. The venal liar, as precursor of
politicians, money lenders, money changers or bankers -in this
fashion we can extend the list at infinitum, the real challenge
resulting in being able to discern accurately the occupational
configuration of the antecedents of a newly developed occupation.
For example, who were the equivalents of the Hugh Heffners of the
world before Playboy could be published? Who was the herald of
the Sharon Stones in her kinky performances-those who sell their
nudity and sexuality to the motion picture industry? I want to
know an answer to these questions to be able to place them and
their ancestry in a table of vocational antecedents modeled after
D. I. Mendeleyev"s Periodic Table of Elements.
The need to test my theory
rests in my observations of humans and animals. It"s apparent
that we have basic ranges of possibilities from which to choose
adaptations; and that the adaptations must correspond to the
behavioral repertoire available to us.
For example, the Monarch butterfly or the migrant birds, do
not decide that they should travel to their spawning grounds,
obeying a signal originating somewhere. They just flight. The
salmon does not choose self-immolation in order to achieve
self-preservation; what the salmon do is what is commanded by
some agent to do. The wildebeest stampedes at preordained times,
crisscrossing the savannahs and losing to lions and hyenas
countless heads of their herd, and the apian colony functions
efficiently in the same fashion ant and
termite colonies do-the work gets distributed; specialized
members of the colony are identified and produced in a timed
manner to make their appearance when it would benefit the colony
as a whole. These type of balancing of species" sheet is done by
means of mechanisms we fancy to call "instinctual". But, since we
believe that there is nothing so lowly as to be regarded as
merely instinctual in us-the ones of the largest brain-we prefer
to think, instead, that our selections, behavioral patterns, and
choices are example of our free will-thus my premise may turn out
to be false.
Monarch butterfly
I subscribe to a different way of thinking. I believe that
species always come equipped with a set of narrowly established
behavioral repertoire for its adaptation. It"s not up to a spider
to weave a fanciful web with filigree
and lace, the spider can only entwine one kind of a net-the one
her species has programmed her to weave. The spider always
constructs her cobweb in the one and only manner she has been
programmed to weave, and it does so because in so doing depends
her survival.
Sharks, dolphins, and marine denizens are born endowed with
innate indicators that permit them to fathom, instinctively, the
depths for which her bodies are built and the duration of a dive
without risking drowning. They do not go to school to learn "how
to do their thing," it comes naturally to them in a package of
behaviorally inborn inventory. Nature acts with greater care with
those of the smaller brains.
For us is different. Part of the complex construct we fancy to
call free-will is merely an extension of what could be understood
as the nest building freedom of bower birds-not two of them build
identical nests, yet all of them mate and reproduce precisely in
the exact same manner and during the same period of heat-but
bower birds are not intelligent as we are, you may dispute-true,
I respond.
The idea of our free spirit if it indeed does freely exists,
has to be carefully examined before we appropriate and shine on
ourselves the flame of the temple of demigods. Our so-called
"free will" is a relatively narrow concept, subject to numerous
intervening variables
that, at times render the notion as more will and less freedom.
It would be unimaginable to estimate the chances that in the
lineal scientific, and cultural progression of our species took
place; as men in different places, at different times, while
thinking in complementary ways, produced (by making the same
discoveries) a coherent and cohesive edifice of progress.
The mind-boggling phenomenon, to which I hint, of discoveries
being made by men working at considerable distance from each
other, and in ignorance of what the others were doing; yet,
historically arriving at the same conclusion or discerning the
same phenomena, speaks out to me more of predetermination than
chance-in other words in the natural progression, that a
particular event was programmed, somehow, to happen at the time
it happened. I"d realize this measly explanation has a lot to be
desired, but does anyone have a better one?
We are essentially nomads. We have migrated more frequently
and farther asunder in history than any other living
organism-excepted are our microscopic brethren (the microbes),
roaches, and rodents frequent travelers of opportunity in (our
bodies or following) us. Our imperative to journey is so powerful
that has resulted on our travels to the planets, to the bottom of
the seas, and to anywhere wayfaring can be fancied or
envisioned.
To prepare us for these wide choices of intelligent trekking,
Nature gave us the enormous brain and the intuitive creativity to
compensate for the wings or other organs we came, to this world,
without.
Coincidences and
convergences
Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin laboring
under different circumstances in places considerably distant from
each other and without one having met the other, arrived at the
very same conclusions that led them separately to advance
individually the Theory of Evolution.
The glut of such coincidences, abound in the archives of
science and world history with such frequency, that it would seem
futile for me to provide a list. Equally is perplexing the
seeming unleashing of a chain of social upheavals resulting in
dictatorships being overthrown, systems of government banished,
liberty arriving to countries at unison, wars being started, and
scientific paradigms being supplanted. Discoveries seem to have
been made, at times, amidst an atmosphere that facilitated for
the discoveries to happen in concert.
Explorations, musical periods, rebellions, social
transformations, all seems to be predetermined by an "invisible
hand," acting in much the same inexplicable manner as Adam Smith
postulated in Economics for his own convenience.
These phenomena, to some are mere coincidences; to me they
indicate a more profound organization and a sense of
predetermination.
I"m sure that everybody has, at some time in life confronted a
mystifying experience, an event that defied logical explanation
in terms of physical laws, as we know them. I have had many such
coincidences in life-events that in their complexity and
incidence could"ve only be explained by cosmic (perhaps?)
intercession. I"ll relate one such event; two years ago, almost
to the day, Meg and I were headed from Taos to Albuquerque to
meet her mother and sister at the airport. They were coming to
spend a few days visiting, staying near us in a cabin we rented
for them in the vicinity of our own dwelling.
I am admittedly an inexperienced and unenthusiastic driver in
the winter snow-but drive I had to. We departed for the airport
early in the morning, after snow had fallen in and around Taos
and the surrounding mountains the entire night before. The
weather was clear and the road poorly traveled but plowed. We had
to traverse in our journey elevated ridges and negotiate steep
mountains, driving frequently on the edge of many precipices and
gorges. It was not a trip that I would have taken for
leisure.
To expand our knowledge, during a trip of some duration, we
often listen to books on tape. One such book was playing on the
deck, while I drove and Meg maintained an eye on our maps.
Incidentally, I had never heard before of the term "black ice," a
concept that awaited its surprising introduction to me ahead on
the road. We had entered a winding section of the highway that
reproduced in the space of half-a-mile a perfect serpentine
letter "S," hanging precariously at the edge of a profound
ravine. The metal barrier, guarding the gulch in that particular
location, had been missing some time for unknown reasons; what it
meant was that any automobile abandoning the road in that
particular spot would experience a free fall to the bottom.
We had traveled the first loop of the "S," approaching the
area where the road narrowed down, bringing us closer to the edge
of the canyon, and to the place where the protective obstacle was
missing. All of a sudden (as I hit a black ice spot) I felt the
car entering a rapid spin that I could not control. The car
spun first to the left, in the direction of the median and then
to the right towards the threatening chasm. I vaguely remember
having been told once that one steers in the direction (or was it
away?) from a spin. I could see Meg"s terrified expression with
the corner of my eye, while I felt hopeless — suddenly I felt
the force of powerful hands grabbing my wrists and skillfully
turning the wheel right-and-left-left-and right until we headed
straight, out of the spin, but toward the open cliff-then and
there, having lost speed, I considered, for the first time during
the rotation, the use of the brake pedal, which I gentle applied
bringing the spinning car to a halt. We continued our trip as if
nothing had really happened. We did not even talked about this
incident for long.
Some time later I mentioned it to a theologian friend who
professes skepticism about divine intervention at those levels;
he has reasons to doubt these things, as his son died in a fiery
freak accident caused by a drunken motorist-why should divine
power intervene? I agree. But where did I draw from, to account
for my expert and flawless behavior in the face of certain death?
Where did the strong hands (I intensely felt grabbing my wrists)
come from? And why did I not follow my first impulse, to slam on
the brakes the moment I sensed danger, sending us to a certain
death? I don"t know, and really no one else does. But this and
other similar coincidences have lead me to believe that perhaps,
if we don"t hazard our lives unnecessarily, that a predetermined
force would act correctively in our favor until our time has come
or until an assigned task to us is completed.
When I say above, "If we don"t hazard our lives," there
escapes a hint of my recognition of a free will. Perhaps there is
one; I just don"t think that is all that free.
The Economist published for January 1st, 2000
is a veritable scholarly masterpiece of a magazine, one that
besides being read and assimilated gradually deserves to be
consigned to the bookshelves for repeated consultation and
enjoyment. The obituary of this particular issue is, (wouldn"t
you guess it?) the Obituary of God-truly, it deserves to
be read and appreciated.
Of course God"s demise was predicted in the 1900s when this
millennium was about to begin-the learned of then, prophesized
that this century, properly the beginning of the third thousandth
of the birth of Christ, would be the millennium of the end of
religion, asserting that God was dead.
In this millennium, and mainly in this past century,
progresses in the areas of physics and communications have
dwarfed any progress we have made previously. Interstellar
travel, man setting foot on the moon. The discovery of,
harnessing, and the release of nuclear energy. The great wars,
and the many smaller wars (fought continually), of ethnic and
religious origin, the environmental catastrophes, the thinning of
the ozone layer, the development of the Internet; among many and
nameless inventions and discoveries that truly boggle the
mind.
Hydra
In the backdrop of these advances are the progress made in
biological science. The discovery of the DNA structure, the birth
of the field of genetic engineering (with moral and
ethic issues that need to be addressed), and the possibility, not
only of cloning human beings, but of have designer engineered
children. The potential for euthanasia as our ability for the
prediction of the transmission of poor genes is refined,
constitutes a great conundrum of immense concerns to ethicists
and moralists.
The past century, just gone only three days ago, saw the
erection and the deconstruction of the infamous Berlin Wall, the
rise and fall of Communism, the emergence and the decline of
dictatorships in all of Latin America; as it witnessed the racial
integration (in paper, anyway) of the United States with the
official adoption of the principles and doctrines of the Civil
Rights Movement.
South Africa and
apartheid became an anachronism worthy of being confined to the
darkest pages of history. Nazism, Fascism, and Communism (in the
form of viable governments) disappeared. Monarchies have been
reduced progressively to cosmetic luxuries whose cost some
peoples enjoys defraying. But something that puzzles me remains
in the form of the lingering villains that still remain
entrenched in office as
gadflies thumbing their noses at the rest of humanity. Saddam
Hussein, Fidel Castro,
Muammar al-Quadaffi, Kim Jong Il, Joaquín Balaguer, and
many other petty-tyrants that have, when their presence is no
longer justifiable, and who have prevailed (with rogue nations"
support) despite the cruelty and pain they impose to their
victimized people.
This phenomenon of the residual scoundrel that escapes
punishment, of his ability of enticing support from nations that
have abandoned similar past and brutal ways-while struggling for
reform. This uncanny contradiction that whenever the head of a
malignant regime is severed, or when a pernicious idea is
declared obsolete; that if by magic intervention, an ideological
hydra emerges replacing the missing head with myriad new heads
operating as revitalized reenergized agents of the defunct
ideology or system of government.
Why is it that, more often than not, when believe to have
finally slain the monster of our nightmares that the scornful
monster returns?
Hercules slain the Hydra
I think that this is so because is such a ubiquitous
occurrence that it must predetermined by (whatever it is) the
force that maps our actions and controls our destinies in the
service of the natural and collective well being. Why should this
force preserve what we consider undesirable or disgusting?
Because it must operate with a larger perspective in mind, a
perspective that transcends our own personal
preferences whether, we like it or not. So, the timing for the
evanescing of Saddam or of Fidel may never come; his ideas (of
which few he"s got) can become a movement, which in keeping with
the model of the Catholic Church, will continue to linger on into
the third millennium and yonder. What may happen is that in the
very nature of its staying power resides the seeds that would
transform his doctrines, as they persist into something that, not
even himself, could recognize (remember Dostoevsky"s "Parable of
the Grand Inquisitor"?) For that very same reason some thinkers
contend that if Jesus would roam again, the world of today, that
he would not be able to believe how strangely his doctrines are
being applied or relate to his teaching as seen in the various
cults prophesying to uphold his "Christianity."
De esta manera es como concibiera la Regla del DNA, hace
tantos años…
Bibliografía
Larocca, F: (2007) La Regla del DNA en monografías.com
Autor:
Dr. Félix E. F. Larocca
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