Different times but same place: Earth, the West, the heritage of European civilization going back to the Greeks, you know, to guys like Pythagoras, Parmenides, Pericles, Plato, Plutarch, all of who might have had on average a larger brain than we have. Today’s people? Pretty much the same as those Greeks in most ways except for the smaller brains—possibly even smaller in Canada, but more on that later. According to Nick Longrich of the University of Bath, “Our brain size is evolving—[they] have actually become smaller over the past 10,000 years since we started living in civilization. Brains seem to be smaller now than even in Greek or Roman times.” *
I suppose we might naturally ask, “If our brains are smaller, what other changes might have occurred over the past 20 or 30 centuries, changes possibly accelerating in a burgeoning population of eight billion humans from every land, all exchanging chromosomes because of mass migrations, military conflicts, genocides, and selective breeding?”
We might be witnessing the process of evolution right now. Didn’t I just read that a giant former male swimmer just switched “gender” and beat all women swimming contenders? Oh! It’s not that kind of evolution. Individuals might evolve emotionally and intellectually, but they don’t evolve biologically as individuals. No, evolution is a species-level process, regardless of all those movie plots driven by the contention that radiation, chemicals, and spider bites indicate otherwise. Artificially induced biochemical and physical changes aren’t evolutionary changes, and as experiments by Weismann with five generations of mice showed long ago, Larmarckian evolution, at least over five generations, is a myth: Mice with tails removed produced mice with tails. Male-female swimmers…well let’s not go there except to say that physically altering one generation has no effect on the ensuing generation because genes do the evolving, not surgeons. Genes are the mechanisms that control form, function, and even sexual tendencies.
Transformations
However… And this is where Lamarck is turning over in his grave saying, “Well, if all the trees were short, then giraffes would have shorter legs and necks” or something like that. Some people just can’t let their beliefs go. But maybe Lamarck was just de la marque by a little because environmental pressures and circumstances can affect the gene pool.
There were no mammal grazers, for example, until their were grasses on which to graze. And the pressure of a pandemic can reveal how some people aren’t fit to survive certain environmental dangers whereas others are. Recently, COVID demonstrated that some of us had the natural wherewithal to avoid serious illness; some of us even got the disease but had no symptoms; some did all they could do through masking, isolating, and receiving multiple vaccinations but still contracted and spread the virus, and some died, leaving a gap in the gene pool—bad for them, but not an extinction event because most of those who died were typically beyond their reproductive years. Those who survived without the aid of vaccines demonstrated a genetic immunity against the virus.
Anyway, whereas much that defined “human” in ancient times still applies and the human genome is largely unaltered though we live in a different world by an unknown magnitude of change from the past. We have undergone both complex gene-exchanges and occasional isolated breeding within groups separated from other groups of humans, as in Australia and the Arctic wilderness. We have experienced wars that eliminated lines of genetic transmission, also. In this last example, consider the viably reproductive individuals who never had kids because their lives were truncated by the random violence of modern warfare. Or consider instances of genocide.
In the context of human activities over millennia, we can argue that the mixing of genes in a population of eight billion added to evolutionary pressures. We can also argue with Lamarck that artificially induced environmental changes across the planet have probably had as yet an undetermined effect beyond our shrinking brains—on the assumption that Longrich is correct.
Has our manipulation of the natural world hastened the rate of mutations? If cosmic rays and natural background radiation have modified genes over millennia, is it possible that our nuclear age has affected our species? Certainly, if we watch sci-fi movies, the idea pervades the common shrunken brain: It’s easy to suspect that above ground tests of bombs, nuclear waste dumps, and nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima have affected the gene pool. How much strontium-90 did people consume in the milk they drank during during the 1940s through the 1960s? How many who lived in the shadows of Chernobyl and Fukushima have passed on or will pass on some slight genetic variation?
We might consider, also, Erasmus Darwin’s contention that sexual selection plays a role in evolution, citing as evidence the “ideal” body styles favored through history—somewhat plump in days when starvation accompanied being poor and somewhat thin when abundance accompanied diet fads. (What, I might ask, is the body style that most attracts you? What is your idea of beauty? Has your culture induced you to reproduce based as much on “ideals” as on pheromones?) In a corollary to Longrich’s contention, culture, Lamarck might argue, exerts an environmental pressure on genes.
Apples and Oranges, or Maybe Stew, or Pot Luck, or Vegetable Soup: The Following Is Hard to Follow
It’s almost impossible to discuss any topic nowadays without getting tangled up in political and social controversies. Some will argue that climate change, specifically global warming, will speed up human evolution. But they ignore that we’re not reptiles. Why should I say that? As Matt Ridley writes in Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, “At some point in our past, our ancestors switched from the common reptilian habit of determining sex by the temperature of the egg to determining it genetically. The probable reason for the switch was so that each sex could start training of its special role at conception. In our case, the sex-determining gene made us male and the lack of it left us female, whereas in birds it happened the other way around” (109)**
Today, many young people seem to be confused about gender. Much of that confusion stems from the drumbeat of a liberal press and entertainment industry intent on pushing an agenda and from a compliant group of adults too timid to challenge political correctness. But for argument’s sake, let’s contend that confusion is warranted at times because a pure X and Y chromosome division is often interrupted through, as Ridley argues in his book, a built-in antagonism centered in the SRY and DAX genes. And with regard to Y’s SRY, we can note that Ridley calls it one of the fastest evolving genes. So, males beware; you might be evolving faster than females—but probably not.
Enter Gary Trudeau
Leave it to Leftist leaders to make assumed changes political. Canada now has tampon dispensers in men’s restrooms, required dispensers, that is, in public buildings, by the way, not voluntary stuff…***
As many have remarked, wait till wives of government employees tell their husbands not to stop at the store for such products, where asking a teenage female clerk for directions to the aisle of tampons embarrasses both her and the husband on errand, but rather to stop in a government building’s restroom for free stuff. Never underestimate the wide ramifications of Leftist policies aimed at transforming humanity into some “equitable” ideal. ** To paraphrase the Gospel, “Make straight the way to equity.” E pluribus unum, as we say in America. Menstruating men. Are there bunches of them? And do they require financial assistance to purchase personal hygiene products? If they are on government salaries with cushy benefits, does Mr. Trudeau think they can’t afford a little absorbent cotton?
By the way, one in every 300 Canadians over 15, according to the last census, identifies as trans. So there are, in fact, bunches of them. But are 100,800 in a population of 30 some million deserving of a benefit that the majority of taxpaying Canadians don’t want or don’t use? Will the government check to see that only those who are trans with uteruses get the free tampons from the mandated bathroom vending machines? (Hey, now there’s an opening for another government job: Tampon Guard in Men’s Rooms: By the way, isn’t the term “Men’s Room” like the term “Women’s Room” obsolete?)
But hold on. Am I objecting to tampons in men’s restrooms? No. As an anti-socialist, I’m objecting to “free tampons” in men’s restrooms and to forced “equity.” Why? Because just about everything that big government does ends up not doing what it was intended to do. There will be husbands carting off free tampons for wives and daughters (and maybe girlfriends). And the cost will be another burden on the Canadian taxpayer. Then again, with some 330,000 federal employees in Canada and a rate of one in 300 identifying as “trans,’ that would amount to a little over 1,100 government trans employees, but not all of them would be trans women, and not all men who undergo the transition to womanhood will have transplanted uteruses. How many humans are we actually talking about here? Tens? A couple hundred? ****
Can I ramble or what?
Government. Big government. What could go wrong? What could go wrong especially when the government decides to “aid” evolution? Now I remember: Hitler’s final solution and the Aryan race.
Remember “We Are the World”?
Song writers have had their Buddhist moments over the years. Lennon’s “Imagine,“ Richie and Jackson’s “We Are the World,” Marley’s “One Love” all express a desire for unity. Maybe Gary Trudeau thinks we are disunited when we don’t supply men’s rooms with tampons. “Imagine all the people, menstruating together with you, ooh ooh ooha ooo” Period.
Or maybe we should stop the world on which life has randomly evolved over 3.8 billion years, generating differences. In the words of Robbie Grey and Modern English’s song, “I’ll melt with you.” And why not, especially in Canada, where everyone is “one.”
Much Ado about Little Things: Some Rambling Thoughts for You to Reject or Accept
That we are the playthings of genes disturbs me. I like to think of humans as having free will exercised by a rather complex brain and that we are products of both nature and nurture. That thought enables me to exercise free will in accepting or rejecting any physical or cultural predetermination and allows me accept that others, men, for example, might not want to accept any stereotypes. That’s fine. But do I have to pay for their personal hygiene?
Now I find out that my brain is probably smaller than the average brain in pre-civilized humanity, making me wonder how resistant I am to the pressures of nature and nurture. Ridley writes, “Most evolutionists believe in the Machiavellian theory—that bigger brains were needed in an arms race between manipulation and resistance to manipulation” (116). He’s writing mostly about sexual orientation and the drive to procreate in that statement, but it is applicable to our ability to resist political manipulation through the seduction of propagandists.
The trend toward political correctness and equity in Canada seems to find little resistance in the media, where I suspect brains aren’t as large as they self-contend. Canadians have demonstrated the fast-tracked shrinking of the brain and have given themselves over to the socialist manipulators. They’ll pay for tampons in men’s rooms now, and later for all manner of equitable causes as determined by officials like Gary Trudeau. The exercise of free will will fade as mandated differences fade into oneness. Canadians—all western peoples, in fact—will melt into one another in a forced evolution in which there are no distinctions, not even X and Y distinctions.
Yes, it’s true that given a uterus, some men menstruate, and some men are male in form but female in tendency. Maleness is, after all, a biological afterthought that arose with sexual reproduction long before there were mammals. Once established, it operated first on the basis of temperature of the egg to which genetic control was eventually added. In the latter, X and Y chromosomes shape sex, Xs coming from mothers and Ys, from fathers. What we inherit differs, however, from what is determined.
And that’s where this little rambling piece will end, with “determined.” Canada under Trudeau and the politically correct socialists want to determine the nature of humans, to force them into some equitable ideal. Socialists often play the role of the Fates, determining not only the sexual nature of youth but also the length of life in the elderly, as Canada’s push for euthanasia intensifies, the latest centering on euthanizing the mentally ill. Can anyone say “Nazis” or “pure race.” What’s next, Canada, in your desire to manipulate evolution? *****
Genes might play a cruel trick in mixing gender form and identity, and they appear to do so in one out of every 300 Canadians—if we can trust polls and surveys that are often subjective. But they have most likely been playing that trick since the rise of mammals in the Triassic Period, when Brasilodon quadrangularis evolved at about the same time as the earliest dinosaurs. If humans survive the vicissitudes of a dynamic Earth and their own self-destructive ways, what will the future entail? Will we, as so many sci-fi stories project, enter an age of petri dish reproduction, designed genetics, and even smaller brains?
As I asked above, can I ramble or what?
*https://www.newsweek.com/humans-evolving-rapidly-ever-scientist-evolution-genetics-1852884
**New York. MJF Books. 1999, 2010.
***https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/26/justin-trudeau-installs-taxpayer-funded-tampon-dispensers-canadian-mens-bathrooms/
****https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220427/dq220427b-eng.htm
*****https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/transgender-top-surgery-canadian-children
I suppose we might naturally ask, “If our brains are smaller, what other changes might have occurred over the past 20 or 30 centuries, changes possibly accelerating in a burgeoning population of eight billion humans from every land, all exchanging chromosomes because of mass migrations, military conflicts, genocides, and selective breeding?”
We might be witnessing the process of evolution right now. Didn’t I just read that a giant former male swimmer just switched “gender” and beat all women swimming contenders? Oh! It’s not that kind of evolution. Individuals might evolve emotionally and intellectually, but they don’t evolve biologically as individuals. No, evolution is a species-level process, regardless of all those movie plots driven by the contention that radiation, chemicals, and spider bites indicate otherwise. Artificially induced biochemical and physical changes aren’t evolutionary changes, and as experiments by Weismann with five generations of mice showed long ago, Larmarckian evolution, at least over five generations, is a myth: Mice with tails removed produced mice with tails. Male-female swimmers…well let’s not go there except to say that physically altering one generation has no effect on the ensuing generation because genes do the evolving, not surgeons. Genes are the mechanisms that control form, function, and even sexual tendencies.
Transformations
However… And this is where Lamarck is turning over in his grave saying, “Well, if all the trees were short, then giraffes would have shorter legs and necks” or something like that. Some people just can’t let their beliefs go. But maybe Lamarck was just de la marque by a little because environmental pressures and circumstances can affect the gene pool.
There were no mammal grazers, for example, until their were grasses on which to graze. And the pressure of a pandemic can reveal how some people aren’t fit to survive certain environmental dangers whereas others are. Recently, COVID demonstrated that some of us had the natural wherewithal to avoid serious illness; some of us even got the disease but had no symptoms; some did all they could do through masking, isolating, and receiving multiple vaccinations but still contracted and spread the virus, and some died, leaving a gap in the gene pool—bad for them, but not an extinction event because most of those who died were typically beyond their reproductive years. Those who survived without the aid of vaccines demonstrated a genetic immunity against the virus.
Anyway, whereas much that defined “human” in ancient times still applies and the human genome is largely unaltered though we live in a different world by an unknown magnitude of change from the past. We have undergone both complex gene-exchanges and occasional isolated breeding within groups separated from other groups of humans, as in Australia and the Arctic wilderness. We have experienced wars that eliminated lines of genetic transmission, also. In this last example, consider the viably reproductive individuals who never had kids because their lives were truncated by the random violence of modern warfare. Or consider instances of genocide.
In the context of human activities over millennia, we can argue that the mixing of genes in a population of eight billion added to evolutionary pressures. We can also argue with Lamarck that artificially induced environmental changes across the planet have probably had as yet an undetermined effect beyond our shrinking brains—on the assumption that Longrich is correct.
Has our manipulation of the natural world hastened the rate of mutations? If cosmic rays and natural background radiation have modified genes over millennia, is it possible that our nuclear age has affected our species? Certainly, if we watch sci-fi movies, the idea pervades the common shrunken brain: It’s easy to suspect that above ground tests of bombs, nuclear waste dumps, and nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima have affected the gene pool. How much strontium-90 did people consume in the milk they drank during during the 1940s through the 1960s? How many who lived in the shadows of Chernobyl and Fukushima have passed on or will pass on some slight genetic variation?
We might consider, also, Erasmus Darwin’s contention that sexual selection plays a role in evolution, citing as evidence the “ideal” body styles favored through history—somewhat plump in days when starvation accompanied being poor and somewhat thin when abundance accompanied diet fads. (What, I might ask, is the body style that most attracts you? What is your idea of beauty? Has your culture induced you to reproduce based as much on “ideals” as on pheromones?) In a corollary to Longrich’s contention, culture, Lamarck might argue, exerts an environmental pressure on genes.
Apples and Oranges, or Maybe Stew, or Pot Luck, or Vegetable Soup: The Following Is Hard to Follow
It’s almost impossible to discuss any topic nowadays without getting tangled up in political and social controversies. Some will argue that climate change, specifically global warming, will speed up human evolution. But they ignore that we’re not reptiles. Why should I say that? As Matt Ridley writes in Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, “At some point in our past, our ancestors switched from the common reptilian habit of determining sex by the temperature of the egg to determining it genetically. The probable reason for the switch was so that each sex could start training of its special role at conception. In our case, the sex-determining gene made us male and the lack of it left us female, whereas in birds it happened the other way around” (109)**
Today, many young people seem to be confused about gender. Much of that confusion stems from the drumbeat of a liberal press and entertainment industry intent on pushing an agenda and from a compliant group of adults too timid to challenge political correctness. But for argument’s sake, let’s contend that confusion is warranted at times because a pure X and Y chromosome division is often interrupted through, as Ridley argues in his book, a built-in antagonism centered in the SRY and DAX genes. And with regard to Y’s SRY, we can note that Ridley calls it one of the fastest evolving genes. So, males beware; you might be evolving faster than females—but probably not.
Enter Gary Trudeau
Leave it to Leftist leaders to make assumed changes political. Canada now has tampon dispensers in men’s restrooms, required dispensers, that is, in public buildings, by the way, not voluntary stuff…***
As many have remarked, wait till wives of government employees tell their husbands not to stop at the store for such products, where asking a teenage female clerk for directions to the aisle of tampons embarrasses both her and the husband on errand, but rather to stop in a government building’s restroom for free stuff. Never underestimate the wide ramifications of Leftist policies aimed at transforming humanity into some “equitable” ideal. ** To paraphrase the Gospel, “Make straight the way to equity.” E pluribus unum, as we say in America. Menstruating men. Are there bunches of them? And do they require financial assistance to purchase personal hygiene products? If they are on government salaries with cushy benefits, does Mr. Trudeau think they can’t afford a little absorbent cotton?
By the way, one in every 300 Canadians over 15, according to the last census, identifies as trans. So there are, in fact, bunches of them. But are 100,800 in a population of 30 some million deserving of a benefit that the majority of taxpaying Canadians don’t want or don’t use? Will the government check to see that only those who are trans with uteruses get the free tampons from the mandated bathroom vending machines? (Hey, now there’s an opening for another government job: Tampon Guard in Men’s Rooms: By the way, isn’t the term “Men’s Room” like the term “Women’s Room” obsolete?)
But hold on. Am I objecting to tampons in men’s restrooms? No. As an anti-socialist, I’m objecting to “free tampons” in men’s restrooms and to forced “equity.” Why? Because just about everything that big government does ends up not doing what it was intended to do. There will be husbands carting off free tampons for wives and daughters (and maybe girlfriends). And the cost will be another burden on the Canadian taxpayer. Then again, with some 330,000 federal employees in Canada and a rate of one in 300 identifying as “trans,’ that would amount to a little over 1,100 government trans employees, but not all of them would be trans women, and not all men who undergo the transition to womanhood will have transplanted uteruses. How many humans are we actually talking about here? Tens? A couple hundred? ****
Can I ramble or what?
Government. Big government. What could go wrong? What could go wrong especially when the government decides to “aid” evolution? Now I remember: Hitler’s final solution and the Aryan race.
Remember “We Are the World”?
Song writers have had their Buddhist moments over the years. Lennon’s “Imagine,“ Richie and Jackson’s “We Are the World,” Marley’s “One Love” all express a desire for unity. Maybe Gary Trudeau thinks we are disunited when we don’t supply men’s rooms with tampons. “Imagine all the people, menstruating together with you, ooh ooh ooha ooo” Period.
Or maybe we should stop the world on which life has randomly evolved over 3.8 billion years, generating differences. In the words of Robbie Grey and Modern English’s song, “I’ll melt with you.” And why not, especially in Canada, where everyone is “one.”
Much Ado about Little Things: Some Rambling Thoughts for You to Reject or Accept
That we are the playthings of genes disturbs me. I like to think of humans as having free will exercised by a rather complex brain and that we are products of both nature and nurture. That thought enables me to exercise free will in accepting or rejecting any physical or cultural predetermination and allows me accept that others, men, for example, might not want to accept any stereotypes. That’s fine. But do I have to pay for their personal hygiene?
Now I find out that my brain is probably smaller than the average brain in pre-civilized humanity, making me wonder how resistant I am to the pressures of nature and nurture. Ridley writes, “Most evolutionists believe in the Machiavellian theory—that bigger brains were needed in an arms race between manipulation and resistance to manipulation” (116). He’s writing mostly about sexual orientation and the drive to procreate in that statement, but it is applicable to our ability to resist political manipulation through the seduction of propagandists.
The trend toward political correctness and equity in Canada seems to find little resistance in the media, where I suspect brains aren’t as large as they self-contend. Canadians have demonstrated the fast-tracked shrinking of the brain and have given themselves over to the socialist manipulators. They’ll pay for tampons in men’s rooms now, and later for all manner of equitable causes as determined by officials like Gary Trudeau. The exercise of free will will fade as mandated differences fade into oneness. Canadians—all western peoples, in fact—will melt into one another in a forced evolution in which there are no distinctions, not even X and Y distinctions.
Yes, it’s true that given a uterus, some men menstruate, and some men are male in form but female in tendency. Maleness is, after all, a biological afterthought that arose with sexual reproduction long before there were mammals. Once established, it operated first on the basis of temperature of the egg to which genetic control was eventually added. In the latter, X and Y chromosomes shape sex, Xs coming from mothers and Ys, from fathers. What we inherit differs, however, from what is determined.
And that’s where this little rambling piece will end, with “determined.” Canada under Trudeau and the politically correct socialists want to determine the nature of humans, to force them into some equitable ideal. Socialists often play the role of the Fates, determining not only the sexual nature of youth but also the length of life in the elderly, as Canada’s push for euthanasia intensifies, the latest centering on euthanizing the mentally ill. Can anyone say “Nazis” or “pure race.” What’s next, Canada, in your desire to manipulate evolution? *****
Genes might play a cruel trick in mixing gender form and identity, and they appear to do so in one out of every 300 Canadians—if we can trust polls and surveys that are often subjective. But they have most likely been playing that trick since the rise of mammals in the Triassic Period, when Brasilodon quadrangularis evolved at about the same time as the earliest dinosaurs. If humans survive the vicissitudes of a dynamic Earth and their own self-destructive ways, what will the future entail? Will we, as so many sci-fi stories project, enter an age of petri dish reproduction, designed genetics, and even smaller brains?
As I asked above, can I ramble or what?
*https://www.newsweek.com/humans-evolving-rapidly-ever-scientist-evolution-genetics-1852884
**New York. MJF Books. 1999, 2010.
***https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/26/justin-trudeau-installs-taxpayer-funded-tampon-dispensers-canadian-mens-bathrooms/
****https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220427/dq220427b-eng.htm
*****https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/transgender-top-surgery-canadian-children
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