Magellan, the Movie

The story of Magellan's voyage is positively cinematic.

It has now been five hundred years since the first circumnavigation of the world, by Ferdinand Magellan. This feat doesn't generally get as much fame as Columbus's discovery of the Caribbean, even though Columbus didn't know what he was doing, and kept not understanding what he had done long after he returned. By the time, thirty years later, that some more of the new world had been explored, and the Portuguese had also entered the Indian ocean around the bottom of Africa, the overall geography of the earth had not advanced a great deal, still being based on Ptolemy's significantly (about 30%) too-small estimate. But the lure remained- how to get to the all-important spice islands in a more convenient way. 

And it was a very commercial lure. Magellan had little scientific interest in all this, per se. He was a mariner through and through, and had done extensive research with his colleagues, mapmakers, and astronomers. But most of all he was desperate to make some money after a wide-ranging, but not very well-paid, career with the official Portuguese fleet. He had visited India and what is now Malaysia, and had heard from a friend who had finally found the spice islands, and had decided to stay there. So when Magellan went to the King of Portugal to propose his westward voyage around the tip of South America, it was a strictly commercial venture, hopefully easier and shorter than the trip around Africa and through the Indian ocean. But the king was uninterested, as the Portuguese already were using the eastern route, and didn't seem much point in trying another, unknown one. Columbus had already tried that gambit and had not gotten much for it. Not much in the way of spices, at any rate.

So Magellan stormed off in a huff, renounced his allegiance to the Portuguese crown, and made his proposal to the Spanish king instead. Now that logic made more sense. The Spanish and Portuguese had come up with a colonial demacation line, the treaty of Tordesillas, that split the Atlantic, which is what gave Brazil to the Portuguese. But this line in imaginary fashion extended around the globe to the other side, and depending how big that globe was, might award the spice islands (the southern islands of the Indonesian archapelago) to Spain, not Portugal. Devising a route from the other side might get Spain there faster, and also avoid unpleasant conflict with sea lanes that were now busy with Portuguese shipping. So the expedition was approved and launched in 1519.

It is a fascinating story, and gets more and more interesting as it goes on, with exotic locations, spectacular discoveries, first contact with far-flung natives, mutiny, hangings, and maroonings. It is very well-told by Tim Joyner, in his definitive and meticulous 1992 book. One aspect that did not come up, however, was that Magellan and colleagues could have come up with a much more accurate estimate of the circumference of the globe by their thorough knowledge of latitude. Longitude- that was difficult to calculate, though his voyage made amazing advances in this respect as well. But if they were imaginative enough to consider that the globe was round in all directions, then the circumference around the poles, which was well within their ability to calculate with precision, would have told them that Ptolemy was way off, and that scurvy was going to be their lot in traversing the Pacific ocean (which Magellan named, incidentally).

A top-secret 1502 map of the known world, from Portugal. The coast of Africa is well-detailed, while farther areas are quite a bit murkier. Crucially, nothing is known of the southern extent of South America.

The last ship, of the five that embarked on the expedition, limped back into San Lucar, near Seville, Spain, three years later, bedraggled and desperately bailing out their bilge. But it brought back a treasure of cloves, as well as a treasure of information. The expedition had poisoned relations with numerious natives, not to mention the Portuguese, who quickly overtook and imprisoned the small contingent left at Ternate, one of the spice islands. In fact, Magellan himself died in a reckless attack on a thousand natives in what is now the Philippines. 

So the mini-series version would have to be told by someone else. And that should be Antonio Pigafetta, the self-appointed anthropologist of the expedition. A worldly fellow from Lombardy who had been employed at the Vatican, he was part of its ambassadorial delegation to Spain when he heard about Magellan's plans. He appears to have jumped at the chance for adventure, and kept detailed dairies of the events of the voyage, to which all subsequent authors are hugely indebted. He even kept a day log which he was surprised to see finally came up a day short- precisely the day that one loses when following the setting sun around the world. He seems to have been quite a character, who had high respect for Magellan, and whose adventurousness also saved him from scurvy, which tended to afflict the more squeamish eaters, who were put off by eating rats and whatever else came to hand. 

So there you have it, perhaps a twelve part miniseries spanning the globe, rich with drama, suffering, scenery, deceit, greed, blind ambition, valor, and victory, telling of one of the great adventures of mankind.

• What are we doing in Africa? And what is China doing there?
• Jared Huffman represents me.

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era

China girds for defense against infiltration by Western ideas. And Wang Huning leads the way.

The current Chinese Communist Party congress prompts us to take stock of where we are in our relations with China and where China is going. The major theme is of course conservativism. Xi Jinping remains at the helm, and may stay there for several cycles to come. The party remains uniquely in control, using all elements of new and old technologies to "guide" Chinese culture and maintain power. And increasingly is trying to shape the international environment to abet its internal controls and maybe spread its system abroad.

It is worth recounting the fourteen points of Xi Jinping thought in detail, as stated on the Wiki page:

• Ensuring Communist Party of China leadership over all forms of work in China.
• The Communist Party of China should take a people-centric approach for the public interest.
• The continuation of "comprehensive deepening of reforms".
• Adopting new science-based ideas for "innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development".
• Following "socialism with Chinese characteristics" with "people as the masters of the country".
• Governing China with the Rule of Law.
• "Practice socialist core values", including Marxism-Leninism and socialism with Chinese characteristics.
• "Improving people's livelihood and well-being is the primary goal of development".
• Coexist well with nature with "energy conservation and environmental protection" policies and "contribute to global ecological safety".
• Strengthen the national security of China.
• The Communist Party of China should have "absolute leadership over" China's People's Liberation Army.
• Promoting the one country, two systems system for Hong Kong and Macau with a future of "complete national reunification" and to follow the One-China principle and 1992 Consensus for Taiwan.
• Establish a common destiny between the Chinese people and other peoples around the world with a "peaceful international environment".
• Improve party discipline in the Communist Party of China.

The casual reader will note that Communist party dominance and retention of control is the subject of roughly four or five of these points, depending on interpretation. One can sense that control is absolutely the central obsession and fear of party. And no wonder- there are plenty of structural and historical reasons.

China has had a tumultuous history from earliest recorded times, cycling between centralization and dissolution and civil war. The golden periods were always ones of stability, while the worst were times of anarchy, banditry, decline. Then there were the colonial humiliations, from the opium wars to Japanese occupation. Whether one adds in the disastrous legacy of Marxism- which also came from the West- into the mix, is a matter of taste. As noted above, the current CCP still gives lip service to Marxism-Leninism (though pointedly not to Maoism!).

In the more current era, the West promotes free trade, human rights, and democracy as a way to contest the power and ideology of the CCP. Each have their ulterior aspects, certainly in relation to China. Human rights and democracy are obviously direct attacks on the very core values of the CCP. Free trade might seem like a no-brainer and objectively desirable. But in reality, it cements the advantages of highly developed countries, since less developed countries can never gain an advantage in high technology if their only advantage is low labor cost and poor education & other infrastructure. Therefore, China has had to protect itself from the onslaught of the West, economically, politically, and socially.

This is the basic theme of the CCP ideology, driven particularly by Wang Huning, a social scientist. academic, and now politbureau member and close advisor of Xi Jinping. Huning has been a close advisor to the last three leaders of China, and evidently a major architect of their signature mottos, "The Three Represents", "The Chinese Dream", and now "Xi Jinping thought ...". He is a close student of the US, and appears generally to be the "vision guy" for the Chinese leadership. (Maybe even the brains behind the operation, if one wants to be hyperbolic.) While Huning in his earliest writings advocated for the democratic development of China, in line with general development of a modern, mature state, and with models such as Japan, that has all been deferred and subsumed under the more immediate needs of the party. His public writing ceased after he joined the central government. 

The biggest and most traumatic historical shock guiding the CCP today was undoubtedly the collapse of the Soviet Union. (As it guides Putin as well.) Before everyone's eyes, the siren song of the West, of capitalism, and of "freedom" (particularly the freedom to be nationalist) captured the populace, and destroyed the Soviet state from within, resulting in a gangster Russia that has only painfully re-established its strength and order, turning back into an authoritarian (and nationalist) state and a colleague of China on the anti-Western world stage. 

The Chinese Communist Party avoided all that through its merciless grip on power. It never let its eye stray from the ball, or softened it heart towards its dissidents and malcontents. It patiently experimented with a mixed capitalist / one party rule system, which has turned out (so far) to be highly successful. It availed itself of all available technology and capitalist methods from the West to develop its economy at a pell-mell rate, learning especially from its fellow-tigers, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. However, it continues to (rightly) fear the siren songs of freedom, democracy, etc. as core threats. It conveniently uses psychological projection to blame the West for all these attractive ideas, which in truth are not exclusively Western at all, but are dreams that Chinese people have as well. (See Hong Kong, see Singapore, see Taiwan) So the ideology and the propaganda follows the age-old script of justifying a bloated, intrusive, and often very cruel state by casting the blame for dissent on outsiders.

That's a big TV screen.

The CCP has also been highly effective in many areas. It obviously keeps tabs on everyone with not just surveillance, but with social surveys and party members at the grass roots, and even allows limited local protests, so that it has a feeling for what the people want, despite a lack of formal democracy. It has engineered a miracle of infrastructure, trains, and housing. Indeed, there is an overhang of construction that it is slowly winding down, in the current real estate crunch. It has protected its population comprehensively from Covid, surely saving millions of lives, even as it imposes stark, and likely not sustainable, costs. It has recognized the dangers of bitcoin and shut down the cryptocurrencies in comprehensive fashion- something we might learn from. And it is leading the way in solar manufacturing and installation, even while its use of coal remains catastrophic. It continually identifies and fights corruption in its own ranks, recognizing that a one-party state is an invitation to rot and sclerosis.

But the fundamental conundrum remains- how to justify and strengthen a one-party state in the midst of the rising well-being, education and sophistication of its own population. The other tigers, including even Singapore, all began with strongly authoritarian systems that each evolved, in parallel with their economic development, into more or less free democracies today. While one can sympathize with the CCP's desire to avoid the chaos of the Soviet Union's demise, the now more cogent and relevant models of political evolution in the local region are far more positive stories, which the CCP seems to pointedly, and lamentably, ignore. 

Indeed, China appears to be heading in a different direction, a bit more like that of North Korea. Their wolf warrior diplomacy is given to vitriolic statements and bullying, now showcased over Taiwan. Their internal propaganda is increasingly nationalistic and strident, following the Xi Jinping thought's guidelines of shaping the cultural values of China to be more cohesive and disciplined. (Covid hasn't helped, either.) It is increasingly intolerant of diversity, as shown against minority ethnic groups, which are being wiped out in systematic terms. For example, the government offers generous subsidies to minority members who marry Han ethnic partners, and drives the same policy by locking up large numbers of Uyghur men for re-education. China's ideological leaders are groping for CCP-friendly "values" that can effectively block what they view as foreign viruses, but which are, in point of fact, endogenous and natural to the human condition.

Under Xi and Wang Hunting, the party is still searching for those elusive "socialist core values" that are uniquely Chinese, not Western, not from the backward (and somewhat feudal) countryside, and supportive of the Communist party. But all they have come up with are greed/capitalism, nationalism, an obsession with stability, and a new personality cult. 

While I can not foretell the future, this does not seem like a good way to go. In foreign policy, one can measure success by how friendly the neighboring countries are- in this case to China, and to the US. There are areas of the world where very peaceful relations exist, such as across the EU, and between the US and its neighbors. That does not seem to be the case in the South China Sea. The constant drumbeat of threats and bullying by China, against Taiwan in particular, but others as well, various territorial disputes, and a enormous military building spree have put everyone very much on edge, and not on friendly terms. This is a fundamental problem for China, and for the rest of us if they bull their way into a world war.

Domestically, it is quite possible for the repressive system to continue indefinitely, given its continuing determination and often very intelligent management, always on guard against the heresies of freedom and goodwill. But that would be giving up an important future path. The Chinese culture would have greater growth prospects, and greater beneficial consequences at home and abroad, if it opened up and tolerated greater pluralism. Its economic dynamism is up till now built on foreign technology, and its ability to innovate and operate truly in the vanguard of world development depends on some significant degree of political and social dynamism as well, not on Big-Brotherism. 

So I see a future where inevitably, the CCP will have to experiment with grass-roots democracy in order to resolve its fundamental value and motivation conflicts as growth slows and China becomes a wealthier country. These will be frought and dangerous experiments. But in time, there is a chance that they will lead to the same kinds of opening that other Asian countries have experienced so successfully, with the gradual development of another party, and a more humane and less paranoid culture. Conversely, insistence on repression tends to spiral into a need for additional repression, with corresponding chances for a dramatic crackup that might produce another one of the grand cycles of Chinese history.

• Another review, focusing on Xi Jinping.
• On the dangers of private schools.
• Critique of the Nobel prize in economics.
• Religion and the nuttery.

From Geo-Logic to Bio-Logic

Why did ATP become the central energy currency and all-around utility molecule, at the origin of life?

The exploration of the solar system and astronomical objects beyond has been one of the greatest achievements of humanity, and of the US in particular. We should be proud of expanding humanity's knowledge using robotic spacecraft and space-based telescopes that have visited every planet and seen incredibly far out in space, and back in time. But one thing we have not found is life. The Earth is unique, and it is unlikely that we will ever find life elsewhere within traveling distance. While life may concievably have landed on Earth from elsewhere, it is more probable that it originated here. Early Earth had as conducive conditions as anywhere we know of, to create the life that we see all around us: carbon-based, water-based, precious, organic life.

Figuring out how that happened has been a side-show in the course of molecular biology, whose funding is mostly premised on medical rationales, and of chemistry, whose funding is mostly industrial. But our research enterprise thankfully has a little room for basic research and fundamental questions, of which this is one of the most frustrating and esoteric, if philosphically meaningful. The field has coalesced in recent decades around the idea that oceanic hydrothermal vents provided some of the likeliest conditions for the origin of life, due to the various freebies they offer.

Early earth, as today, had very active geology that generated a stream of reduced hydrogen and other compounds coming out of hydrothermal vents, among other places. There was no free oxygen, and conditions were generally reducing. Oxygen was bound up in rocks, water, and CO2. The geology is so reducing that water itself was and still is routinely reduced on its trip through the mantle by processes such as serpentinization.

The essential problem is how to jump the enormous gap from the logic of geology and chemistry, over to the logic of biology. It is not a question of raw energy- the earth has plenty of energetic processes, from vocanoes and tectonics to incoming solar energy. The question is how a natural process that has resolutely chemical logic, running down the usual chemical and physical gradients from lower to higher entropy, could have generated the kind of replicating and coding molecular system where biological logic starts. A paper from 2007 gives a broad and scrupulous overview of the field, featuring detailed arguments supporting the RNA world as the probable destination (from chemical origins) where biological logic really began. 

To rehearse very briefly, RNA has, and still retains in life today, both coding capacity and catalytic capacity, unifying in one molecule the most essential elements of life. So RNA is thought to have been the first molecule with truly biological ... logic, being replaced later with DNA for some of its more sedentary roles. But there is no way to get to even very short RNA molecules without some kind of metabolic support. There has to be an organic soup of energy and small organic molecules- some kind of pre-biological metabolism- to give this RNA something to do and chemical substituents to replicate itself out of. And that is the role of the hydrothermal vent system, which seems like a supportive environment. For the trick in biology is that not everything is coded explicitly. Brains are not planned out in the DNA down to their crenelations, and membranes are not given size and weight blueprints. Biology relies heavily on natural chemistry and other unbiological physical processes to channel its development and ongoing activity. The coding for all this, which seems so vast with our 3 Gb genome, is actually rather sparse, specifying some processes in exquisite detail, (large proteins, after billions of years of jury-rigging, agglomeration, and optimization), while leaving a tremendous amount still implicit in the natural physical course of events.

A rough sketch of the chemical forces and gradients at a vent. CO2 is reduced into various simple organic compounds at the rock interfaces, through the power of the incoming hydrogen rich (electron-rich) chemicals. Vents like this can persist for thousands of years.

So the origin of life does not have to build the plane from raw aluminum, as it were. It just has to explain how a piece of paper got crumpled in a peculiar way that allowed it to fly, after which evolution could take care of the rest of the optimization and elaboration. Less metaphorically, if a supportive chemical environment could spontaneously (in geo-chemical terms) produce an ongoing stream of reduced organic molecules like ATP and acyl groups and TCA cycle intermediates out of the ambient CO2, water, and other key elements common in rocks, then the leap to life is a lot less daunting. And hydrothermal vents do just that- they conduct a warm and consistent stream of chemically reduced (i.e. extra electrons) and chemical-rich fluid out of the sea floor, while gathering up the ambient CO2 (which was highly concentrated on the early Earth) and making it into a zoo of organic chemicals. They also host the iron and other minerals useful in catalytic conversions, which remain at the heart of key metabolic enzymes to this day. And they also contain bubble-like stuctures that could have confined and segregated all this activity in pre-cellular forms. In this way, they are thought to be the most probable locations where many of the ingredients of life were being generated for free, making the step over to biological logic much less daunting than was once thought.

The rTCA cycle, portrayed in the reverse from our oxidative version, as a cycle of compounds that spontaneously generate out of simple ingredients, due to their step-wise reduction and energy content values. The fact that the output (top) can be easily cleaved into the inputs provides a "metabolic" cycle that could exist in a reducing geological setting, without life or complicated enzymes.

The TCA cycle, for instance, is absolutely at the core of metabolism, a flow of small molecules that disassemble (or assemble, if run in reverse) small carbon compounds in stepwise fashion, eventually arriving back at the starting constituents, with only outputs (inputs) of hydrogen reduction power, CO2, and ATP. In our cells, we use it to oxidize (metabolize) organic compounds to extract energy. Its various stations also supply the inputs to innumerable other biosynthetic processes. But other organisms, admittedly rare in today's world, use it in the forward direction to create organic compounds from CO2, where it is called reductive or reverse (rTCA). An article from 2004 discusses how this latter cycle and set of compounds very likely predates any biological coding capacity, and represents an intrisically natural flow of carbon reduction that would have been seen in a pre-biotic hydrothermal vent setting. 

What sparked my immediate interest in all this was a recent paper that described experiments focused on showing why ATP, of all the other bases and related chemicals, became such a central part of life's metabolism, including as a modern accessory to the TCA cycle. ATP is the major energy currency in cells, giving the extra push to thousands of enzymes, and forming the cores of additional central metabolic cofactors like NAD (nicotine adenine dinucleotide), and acetyl-CoA (the A is for adenine), and participating as one of the bases of DNA and RNA in our genetic core processes. 

Of all nucleoside diphosphates, ADP is most easily converted to ATP in the very simple conditions of added acyl phosphate and Fe3+ in water, at ambient temperatures or warmer. Note that the trace for ITP shows the same absorbance before and after the reaction. The others show no reaction either. Panel F shows a time course of the ADP reaction, in hours. The X axis refers to time of chromatography of the sample, not of the reaction.

Why ATP, and not the other bases, or other chemicals? Well, bases appear as early products out of pre-biotic reaction mixtures, so while somewhat complicated, they are a natural part of the milieu. The current work compares how phosphorylation of all the possible di-phosphate bases works, (that is, adenosine, cytidine, guanosine, inosine, and uridine diphosphates), using the plausible prebiotic ingredients ferric ion (Fe3+) and acetyl phosphate. They found surprisingly that only ADP can be productively converted to ATP in this setting, and it was pretty insensitive to pH, other ions, etc. This was apparently due to the special Fe3+ coordinating capability that ADP has due to its pentose N and neighboring amino group that allows an easy electron transfers to the incoming phosphate group. Iron remains common as an enzymatic cofactor today, and it is obviously highly plausible in this free form as a critical catalyst in a pre-biotic setting. Likewise, acetyl phosphate could hardly be simpler, occurs naturally under prebiotic conditions, and remains an important element of bacterial metabolism (and transiently one of eukaryotic metabolism) today. 

Ferric iron and ATP make a unique mechanistic pairing that enables easy phosphorylation at the third position, making ATP out of ADP and acyl phosphate. At step b, the incoming acyl phosphate is coordinated by the amino group while the iron is coordinated by the pentose nitrogen and two existing phosphates.

The point of this paper was simply to reveal why ATP, of all the possible bases and related chemicals, gained its dominant position of core chemical and currency. It is rare in origin-of-life research to gain a definitive insight like this, amid the masses of speculation and modeling, however plausible. So this is a significant step ahead for the field, while it continues to refine its ideas of how this amazing transition took place. Whether it can demonstrate the spontaneous rTCA cycle in a reasonable experimental setting is perhaps the next significant question.

• How China extorts celebrities, even Taiwanese celebrities, to toe the line.
• Stay away from medicare advantage, unless you are very healthy, and will stay that way.
• What to expect in retirement.

Science Fiction as Theology

Let's look higher than the clouds. Let's look to the stars.

I have always been rather dismissive of theology- the study of something that doesn't exist. But if one takes it in a larger sense of a culture of scripture, story telling, morals, and social construction, then sure, it makes more sense. But then so do alot of other stories. I have been enjoying the Foundation series via streaming, which is at best "inspired" by the original books, yet takes its premises reasonably seriously and grows a complex and interesting set of story lines to what by the end of the first season is a positive and promising conclusion. I would ding it for excessive adherence to Star Wars-style action and simplistic morality, compared with the more cerebral original, but that is only to be expected these days.

Science fiction is having a golden age, as a way to tell important, probing stories and consider alternative futures. The Star Trek franchise generally sticks with hopeful futures, which I certainly favor. Their world is post-money, post internal conflict, post-disease. But philosophically alive through contact with other civilizations. The theological implications are momentous, as we envision a culture very different from our own, and blessed with various magical means of deliverance, like transporters, replicators, and warp drives. Where the "science fiction" books of the Bible were mostly dystopian (Job, Revelation, Genesis), Science fiction in our era straddles the line, with plenty of dystopian offerings, but also hopeful ones. Whether Star Wars is hopeful might be a matter of debate, since bad guys and bad empires never seem to go away, and the position of the resistance is always impossibly dire.

White male mathematician Hari Seldon takes on the role of god, in the Foundation series. He calculates out the future of the galaxy, clairvoyantly predicting events, and then comes back from beyond the grave to keep guiding his flock through crisis after crisis.

Are Star Trek futures any more realistic than those of Revelation? Are they theologically more sound? I think yes on both counts. Revelation is a rather unhinged response to the late Jewish era in its apocalyptic relations with Rome, as it headed into exile and the diaspora. There is a welter of reworked Old Testament material and obscure references, turning into florid visions that have misled Christians for centuries. Star Trek and the other science fiction franchises, on the other hand, are a bit more restrained in their visionary quests and escatologies, and more hopeful, for abundant futures where some problems have been solved while other forms of politics and history continue to call for strong moral values. This is quite different than the bizarre and ecstatic culmination of Revelation at the end of history, in the last days.

We also get to live out the visions, on a small scale, as technology advances in the real world. Smart phones have transformed our lives, for instance, one promise kept from the early science fiction days. And our only real hope for dealing with climate change is to harness better technologies, rather than going down dystopian roads of degrowth, famine, and war. So there are real futures at stake here, not just visions of futures.

While our current physics totally bars the adventures that are portrayed in contemporary science fiction epics, their theological significance lies in their various visions of what humanity can and should do. They, as Revelation, are always keyed to their historical moment, with America ascendent and technologically advanced over other cultures. But they do not use their magical elements and story arcs to promote quiescence and slack-jawed wonder at the return of the son of god, who will make everything right and mete out judgement to all the bad people. (Or do the opposite, in the case of Job.) No, they uniformly encourage resistance against injustice, and hopeful action towards a better world, or galaxy, or universe, as the case may be.

• Some communities rode out the hurricane just fine.
• Loretta Lynn, RIP.
• Eye care- another frontier in predation.
• Christians can't deal with disagreement, claim oppression.
• If you need to delve further into sociopathic narcissism ...
• Essential background on Ukraine.

For the Love of Money

The social magic of wealth ... and Trump's travel down the wealth / status escalator.

I have been reading the archly sarcastic "The Theory of the Leisure Class", by Thorstein Veblen. It introduced the concept of "conspicuous consumption" by way of arguing that social class is marked by work, specifically by the total lack of work that occupies the upper, or leisure class, and more and more mundane forms of work as one sinks down the social scale. This is a natural consequence of what he calls our predatory lifestyle, which, at least in times of yore, reserved to men, especially those of the upper class, the heroic roles of hunter and warrior, contrasted with the roles of women, who were assigned all non-heroic forms of work, i.e. drudgery. This developed over time into a pervasive horror of menial work and a scramble to evince whatever evidence one can of being above it, such as wearing clean, uncomfortable and fashionable clothes, doing useless things like charity drives, golf, and bridge. And having one's wife do the same, to show how financially successful one is.

Veblen changed our culture even as he satarized and skewered it, launching a million disgruntled teenage rebellions, cynical movies, songs, and other analyses. But his rules can not be broken. Hollywood still showcases the rich, and silicon valley, for all its putative nerdiness, is just another venue for social signaling by way of useless toys, displays of leisure (at work, no less, with the omnipresent foosball and other games), and ever more subtle fashion statements.

Conversely, the poor are disparaged, if not hated. We step over homeless people, holding our noses. The Dalit of India are perhaps the clearest expression of this instinct. But our whole economic system is structured in this way, paying the hardest and most menial jobs the worst, while paying some of the most social destructive professions, like corporate law, the best, and placing them by attire, titles, and other means, high on the social hierarchy.

As Reagan said, nothing succeeds like success. We are fascinated, indeed mesmerized, by wealth. It seems perfectly reasonable to give wealthy areas of town better public services. It seems perfectly reasonable to have wealthy people own all our sports teams, run all our companies, and run for most political offices. We are after all Darwinian through and through. But what if a person's wealth comes from their parents? Does the status still rub off? Should it? Or what if it came from criminal activities? Russia is run by a cabal of oligarchs, more or less- is their status high or low?

All this used to make more sense, in small groups where reputations were built over a lifetime of toil in support of the family, group, and tribe. Worth was assessed by personal interaction, not by the proxy of money. And this status was difficult to bequeath to others. The fairy tale generally has the prince proving himself through arduous tasks, to validate the genetic and social inheritance that the rest of the world may or may not be aware of. 

But with the advent of money, and even more so with the advent of inherited nobility and kingship, status became transferable, inheritable, and generally untethered from the values it supposedly exemplifies. Indeed, in our society it is well-known that wealth correlates with a decline in ethical and social values. Who exemplifies this most clearly? Obviously our former president, whose entire public persona is based on wealth. It was evidently inherited, and he parlayed it into publicity, notariety, scandal, and then the presidency. He was adulated, first by tabloids and TV, which loved brashness (and wealth), then by Republican voters, who appear to love cruelty, mean-ness, low taste and intellect, ... and wealth. 

But now the tide is slowly turning, as Trump's many perfidies and illegal practices catch up with him. It is leaking out, despite every effort of half the media, that he may not be as wealthy as he fraudulently portrayed. And with that, the artificial status conferred by being "a successful businessman" is deflating, and his national profile is withering. One might say that he is taking an downward ride on the escalator of social status that is in our society conferred largely by wealth.

All that is shiny ... mines coal.

Being aware of this social instinct is naturally the first step to addressing it. A century ago and more, the communists and socialists provided a thoroughgoing critique of the plutocratic class as being not worthy of social adulation, as the Carnegies and Horatio Algers of the world would have it. But once in power, the ensuing communist governments covered themselves in the ignominy of personality cults that facilitated (and still do in some cases) even worse political tyrannies and economic disasters. 

The succeeding model of "managed capitalism" is not quite as catastrophic and has rehabilitated the rich in their societies, but one wouldn't want to live there either. So we have to make do with the liberal state and its frustratingly modest regulatory powers, aiming to make the wealthy do virtuous things instead of destructive things. Bitcoin is but one example of a waste of societal (and ecological) resources, which engenders social adulation of the riches to be mined, but should instead be regulated out of existence. Taking back the media is a critical step. We need to reel back the legal equation of money with speech and political power that has spread corruption, and tirelessly tooted its own ideology of status and celebrity through wealth.

• California police could use some supervision too.
• Marin- a cruel gerontocracy?

How do Groups Become Individuals?

Investigating evolutionary transitions in individuality, whereby biological entities team up to form greater entities.

As readers are probably aware, they comprise myriads- legions of cells, each teaming with molecules and genes, plus the galaxies of the microbiome. We feel like individuals, but have been assembled over billions of years of evolution out of alot of smaller components, with dramatic steps taking place in what are called evolutionary transitions in individuality, or ETI. A recent paper introduced me to this literature, but it is so poorly written and conceived that we won't mention it any further. 

Some of the landmark transitions of this type are from an RNA world of individual replicators to that of cells, or at least blobs that collected replicators into genes, now organized on chromosomes. Next was the eukaryotic cell, which arose as the joint project of at least two quite disparate microbial cells, one the bacterium that formed the contemporary mitochondrion, and the other the controlling nucleus. Multicellularity came next, building animals out of these eukaryotic cells, first simple, like sponges, but eventually, something amazing. Last came the animal societies, of which ours has only partially transitioned to a new stage of individuality, but where the insects such as termites and ants have completed virtually complete transitions to being super-organisms.

It is inherent in contemplating these transitions that they are examples of group-level selection. In order to achieve higher levels of organization there must be selective benefits of operating at the group level, often in competition with benefits occuring at the individual level. For groups inherently need to regulate and sometimes kill off their members, whether that is a gene that is sliced apart and recombined to serve the immune system of its host, the leukocytes we sacrifice to ward off infections, or the soldiers we send off to battle. Group selection is very real, whether one wants to recast every selective event as gene-centric, (where the mutation takes place), as Richard Dawkins has, or recognize the actual ecological / operational level of selection.

One important form of regulation is of reproduction, without which a true individual will never emerge at the higher level. The group (say, an organism with lots of cells) needs to suppress to reproduction of most of its members, eliminating individual competition and selection. Instead, it will need to select some representatives to stand for the whole and carry out reproduction, while not themselves having an independent livestyle that would conduce to selection on any relevant traits- i.e. those that might compete with the important traits of the collective. That is where germ cells come from, as much-reduced versions of actual organisms that so briefly carry out the hapoid phase of most organism's lives. 

Humans are obviously nowhere near this kind of reproductive control, outside of science fiction and societies that, if they have ever occurred, are extremely rare in their degree of totalitarian control. So our groups are nowhere near becoming a new level of biological individual. This is unlike the most developed social insects, whose reproduction is totally controlled at the group level. One interesting paper in this field brought up the case of dictyostelium, a soil amoeba whose life cycle, while mostly individual and independent, includes occasional mass aggregation to produce traveling slugs and fruiting bodies, which put out reproductive spores. In their words:

"The single-cell bottleneck and subsequent clonal development is thus a key trait facilitating the evolution of higher-level complexity in fraternal transitions. Two widely studied social organisms, the slime mold Dictylostelium discoideium and bacterium Myxococcus xanthus, appear stuck in the transition to multicellularity, despite ample time to evolve multicellular complexity (>400 Myr ago for the Dictyostelid cellular slime molds and >650 Myr ago for the myxobacteria). While both organisms possess multicellular life histories that include cellular division of labour, neither life cycle includes a single-cell bottleneck, and genetic conflict is rampant."

The general life-cycle of Dictyostelium. Many of the aggregated amoebae get to form spores, but not all.

The dictyostelium aggregate slug forms a base, stalk, case, in addition to the spores, so it is evident that some of the individuals that came together will be left behind, and not have even a chance at reproduction. At the same time, many individuals do get that chance, out of the body they form as a community. So this species, like humans, forms collectives of convenience, while not controlling either its own clonality or the reproduction of its members, and thus is quite far from achieving any higher level of biological individuality.

So, the key requirements of individuality at any level are:

• The entity must have traits subject to darwinian selection
• These traits must be heritable, enabling selection
• The entity must reproduce, to make new entities and enable selection
• The reproduction must not be subject to competition by entity members, (i.e. by their own individual reproduction, with their own selective competition and imperatives)

Clearly, clonal colonies of some sort make it easier to form coherent higher level collectives. But that is not enough- reproduction needs to go through a single germ cell bottleneck, preventing the competition among the vast majority of the collective members, while reflecting the collective's overall genetic complexion.

This paper also presented an experiment of selecting yeast cells for collective behavior / structure by selecting those that precipitated rapidly from their growth medium. This is a selection for multi-cellular aggregates, which is relatively easily done in yeast. Successful isolates tend to have defective cell wall separation machinery, so that cells remain attached after division. These entities reproduce, by breaking off occasional flakes of aggregate. This reproduction is largely clonal, with lineal descendents being attached in local aggregates which break off. And whatever trait the aggregate has is reflected in the descendents genetically. So is this a new level of biological individuality? They claim that yes, it is, though limited to this totally artificial regime of selection.

    "Snowflake yeast display a key emergent property: as clusters grow larger, tension among cells increases until it exceeds the tensile strength of a cell–cell connection, resulting in the release of a multicellular propagule5. Once clusters have evolved, they readily become a unit of selection, as whole clusters either settle rapidly enough to survive, or fail to do so and perish. As a result of this shift to cluster-level selection, we observe extensive cluster-level adaptation, including the evolution of larger size, elevated apoptosis and more spherical, hydrodynamic clusters."

These cells would never succeed in the wild, where entirely different and diverse selective pressures exist. Yet the experiment shows that this transition is not intrinsically as hard as evolution makes it seem. Evolution is terribly conservative, with intense selective pressures to innovate only at the margins, given the network of constraints already satisfied by one's ancestors. Coming together to recognize new cooperative opportunities, while giving up one's individuality, is, frankly, anathema.

        

• The social cost of emitted carbon is actually three times higher: $185.
• Political repression and tyranny only go so far.
• Please don't eat seafood.
• Our military is particularly beholden to the Middle East.

Death at the Starting Line- Aneuploidy and Selfish Centromeres

Mammalian reproduction is unusually wasteful, due to some interesting processes and tradeoffs.

Now that we have settled the facts that life begins at conception and abortion is murder, a minor question arises. There is a lot of murder going on in early embryogenesis, and who is responsible? Probably god. Roughly two-thirds of embryos that form are aneuploid (have an extra chromosome or lack a chromosome) and die, usually very soon. Those that continue to later stages of pregnancy cause a high rate of miscarriages-about 15% of pregnancies. A recent paper points out that these rates are unusual compared with most eukaryotes. Mammals are virtually alone in exhibiting such high wastefulness, and the author proposes an interesting explanation for it.

First, some perspective on aneupoidy. Germ cells go through a two-stage process of meiosis where their DNA is divided two ways, first by homolog pairs, (that is, the sets inherited from each parent, with some amount of crossing-over that provides random recombination), and second by individual chromosomes. In more primitive organisms (like yeast) this is an efficient, symmetrical, and not-at-all wasteful process. Any loss of genetic material would be abhorrent, as the cells are putting every molecule of their being into the four resulting spores, each of which are viable.

A standard diagram of meiosis. Note that the microtubules (yellow) engage in a gradual and competitive process of capturing centromeres of each chromosome to arrive at the final state of regular alignment, which can then be followed by even division of the genetic material and the cell.

In animals, on the other hand, meiosis of egg cells is asymmetric, yielding one ovum / egg and three polar bodies, which  have various roles in some species to assist development, but are ultimately discarded. This asymmetric division sets up a competition between chromosomes to get into the egg, rather than into a polar body. One would think that chromosomes don't have much say in the matter, but actually, cell division is a very delicate process that can be gamed by "strong" centromeres.

Centromeres are the central structures on chromosomes that form attachments to the microtubules forming the mitotic spindle. This attachment process is highly dynamic and even competitive, with microtubules testing out centromere attachment sites, and using tension ultimately as the mark of having a properly oriented chromosome with microtubules from each side of the dividing cell (i.e. each microtubule organizing center) attached to each of the centromeres, holding them steady and in tension at the midline of the cell. Well, in oocytes, this does not happen at the midline, but lopsidedly towards one pole, given that one of the product cells is going to be much larger than the others. 

In oocytes, cell division is highly asymmetric with a winner-take-all result. This opens the door to a mortal competition among chromosomes to detect which side is which and to get on the winning side. 

One of the mysteries of biology is why the centromere is a highly degenerate, and also a speedily evolving, structure. They are made up of huge regions of monotonously repeated DNA, which have been especially difficult to sequence accurately. Well, this competition to get into the next generation can go some way to explain this structure, and also why it changes rapidly, (on evolutionary time scales), as centromeric repeats expand to capture more microtubules and get into the egg, and other portions of the machinery evolve to dampen this unsociable behavior and keep everyone in line. It is a veritable arms race. 

But the funny thing is that it is only mammals that show a particularly wasteful form of this behavior, in the form of frequent aneuploidy. The competition is so brazen that some centromeres force their way into the egg when there is already another copy there, generating at best a syndrome like Down, but for all other chromosomes than #21, certain death. This seems rather self-defeating. Or does it?

The latest paper observes that mammals devote a great deal of care to their offspring, making them different from fish, amphibians, and even birds, which put most of their effort into producing the very large egg, and relatively less (though still significant amounts) into care of infants. This huge investment of resources means that causing a miscarriage or earlier termination is not a total loss at all, for the rudely trisomic extra chromosome. No, it allows resource recovery in the form of another attempt at pregnancy, typically quite soon thereafter, at which point the pushy chromosome gets another chance to form a proper egg. It is a classic case of extortion at the molecular scale. 

• Do we have rules, or not?
• How low will IBM go, vs its retirees?

Sex in the Brain

The cognitive effects of gonadotropin-releasing hormone.

If you watch the lesser broadcast TV channels, there are many ads for testosterone- elixir of youth, drive, manliness, blaring sales pitches, etc. Is it any good? Curiously, taking testosterone can cause alot of sexual dysfunctions, due to feedback loops that carefully tune its concentration. So generally no, it isn't much good. But that is not to say that it isn't a powerful hormone. A cascade of other events and hormones lead to the production of testosterone, and a recent paper (review) discussed the cognitive effects of one of its upstream inducers, gonadotropin-releasing hormone, or GnRH. 

The story starts on the male Y chromosome, which carries the gene SRY. This is a transcription activator that (working with and through a blizzard of other regulators and developmental processes) is ultimately responsible for switching the primitive gonad to the testicular fate, from its default which is female / ovarian. This newly hatched testis contains Sertoli cells, which secrete anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH, a gene that is activated by SRY directly), which in the embryo drives the regression of female characteristics. At the same time testosterone from testicular Leydig cells drives development of male physiology. The initial Y-driven setup of testosterone is quickly superceded by hormones of the gonadotropin family, one form of which is provided by the placenta. Gonadotropins continue to be essential through development and life to maintain sexual differentiation. This source declines by the third trimester, by which time the pituitary has formed and takes over gonadotropin secretion. It secretes two gondotropin family members, follicular stimulating hormone (FSH) and leutinizing hormone (LH), which each, despite their names, actually have key roles in male as well as female reproductive development and function. After birth, testosterone levels decline and everything is quiescent until puberty, when the hormonal axis driven by the pituitary reactivates.

Some of the molecular/genetic circuitry leading to very early sex differentiation. Note the leading role of SRY in driving male development. Later, ongoing maintenance of this differentiation depends on the gonadotropin hormones.

This pituitary secretion is in turn stimulated by gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH), which is the subject of the current story. GnRH is produced by neurons that, in embryogenesis, originate in the nasal / olfactory epithelium and migrate to the hypothalamus, close enough to the pituitary to secrete directly into its blood supply. This circuit is what revs up in puberty and continues in fine-tuned fashion throughout life to maintain normal (or declining) sex functions, getting feedback from the final sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone in general circulation. The interesting point that the current paper brings up is that GnRH is not just generated by neurons pointing at the pituitary. There is a whole other set of neurons in the hypothalamus that also secrete GnRH, but which project (and secrete GnRH) into the cortex and hippocampus- higher regions of the brain. What are these neurons, and this hormone, doing there?

The researchers note that people with Down Syndrome characteristically have both cognitive and sexual defects resembling incomplete development, (among many other issues), the latter of which resemble or reflect a lack of GnRH, suggesting a possible connection. Puberty is a time of heightened cognitive development, and they guessed that this is perhaps what is missing in Down Syndrome. Down Syndrome typically winds up in early-onset Alzheimer disease, which is also characterized by lack of GnRH, as is menopause, and perhaps other conditions. After going through a bunch of mouse studies, the researchers supplemented seven men affected by Down Syndrome with extra GnRH via miniature pumps to their brains, aimed at target areas of this hormone in the cortex. It is noteworthy that GnRH secretion is highly pulsitile, with a roughly 2 hour period, which they found to be essential for a positive effect. 

Results from the small-scale intervention with GnRH injection. Subjects with Down Syndrome had higher cortical connectivity (left) and could draw from a 3-D model marginally more accurately.

The result (also seen in mouse models of Down Syndrome and of Alzheimer's Disease) was that the infusion significantly raised cognitive function over the ensuing months. It is an amazing and intriguing result, indicating that GnRH drives significant development and supports ongoing higher function in the brain, which is quite surprising for a hormone thought to be confined to sexual functions. Whether it can improve cognitive functions in fully developed adults lacking impeding developmental syndromes remains to be seen. Such a finding would be quite unlikely, though, since the GnRH circuit is presumably part of the normal program that establishes the full adult potential of each person, which evolution has strained to refine to the highest possible level. It is not likely to be a magic controller that can be dialed beyond "max" to create super-cognition.

Why does this occur in Down Syndrome? The authors devote a good bit the paper to an interesting further series of experiments, focusing on regulatory micro-RNAs, several of which are encoded in genomic regions duplicated in Down Syndrome. microRNAs are typically regulators that repress transcription, explaining how this whole circuitry of normal development, now including key brain functions, is under-activated in those with Down Syndrome.

The authors offer a subset of regulatory circuitry focusing on micro-RNA repressors of which several are encoded on the trisomic chromosome regions.

"HPG [hypothalamus / pituitary / gonadal hormone] axis activation through GnRH expression at minipuberty (P12; [the phase of testoserone expression in late mouse gestation critical for sexual development]) is regulated by a complex switch consisting of several microRNAs, in particular miR-155 and the miR-200 family, as well as their target transcriptional repressor-activator genes, in particular Zeb1 and Cebpb. Human chromosome 21 and murine chromosome 16 code for at least five of these microRNAs (miR-99a, let-7c, miR-125b-2, miR-802, and miR-155), of which all except miR-802 are selectively enriched in GnRH neurons in WT mice around minipuberty" - main paper

So, testosterone (or estrogen, for that matter) isn't likely to unlock better cognition, but a hormone a couple of steps upstream just might- GnRH. And it does so not through the bloodstream, but through direct injection into key areas of the brain both during development, and also on an ongoing basis through adulthood. Biology as a product of evolution comprises systems that are highly integrated, not to say jury-rigged, which makes biology as a science difficult, being the quest to separate all the variables and delineate what each component and process is doing.

• Should we have helped save the Soviet Union?
• Bill Mitchell on de-growth.
• Overpopulation is destroying the biosphere.
• Map of the week: climate tipping points likely at our current trajectory.

One China or Two?

It is time we recognize reality.

Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan (ROC) certainly stirred up a hornet's nest. The PRC (mainland China) threw a fit of hate, saber rattling, and jingoism. The US has been playing into this situation for decades, after the Nixon administration acceded to the PRC's demand to recognize the "one China" policy. Originally, this was not such a big lift, since this was also the policy of the ROC- with the only difference that in its view, China would eventually be unified under the auspices of the ROC, not the PRC. Today, things are different, with the PRC having westernized its economy and grown into a behemoth that vies with the US for world leadership and threatens all its neighbors.

Taiwan has a native population, the Formosans, who are not, unfortunately, part of this discussion at all, but are an oppressed minority on their own island. The island became a province of China roughly from 1700 to 1900 (after being colonized by the Dutch). Then it was ruled by the Japanese empire, after which it was over-run by the nationalists fleeing the Chinese Civil War. Supporting the ROC was reflexive for Western anticommunists, despite it being a dictatorship up to 1987. But now, after it has evolved into a healthy democracy, the US position should be even more simple and direct- we should recognize reality, which is that Taiwan is an independent country on its own historical path that is one of self-determination and independence from the mainland.

All this is subject to the decisions of the Taiwanese themselves, naturally. They have not yet declared independence from China, for instance, and may yet come to some accommodation with their neighbor. But we shouldn't be selling them out to be another Hong Kong. Instead, we should support their right to self-determination and independence, to preserve their highly successful economic and political culture, and their membership in international organizations.

So, what of the PRC? Won't they be irritated, even enraged, if we formally renounce the one-China policy? Absolutely. Would they break diplomatic relations? They might, but we have so many important areas of cooperation and negotiation that such a step would not likely last long. I don't think the PRC can hold out on a diplomatic boycott of this kind for very long, especially if the US is joined by other countries recognizing the reality of an independent, self-determining Taiwan. Back in the Nixon era, we had a very specific goal, which was to use relations with China to scare the Russians. That was quite successful, and led to a long and productive relationship, especially for China.

In general, it is better to irritate bullies than to appease them. The Taiwan situation has reached a critical point for a variety of reasons. On Taiwan's side, they are now the foremost world center of advanced semiconductor manufacture. The PRC would naturally view it as a critical asset in their drive to control the global economy. Mainland China has bided its time for many decades, while it slowly and painfully rebuilt its own power, and one can sense an almost convulsive urge to consummate the re-unification by force, which would be conveniently accompanied by the final destruction of its founding enemies. It is carefully laying groundwork all over the South China sea, in its navy, armed forces, alliances, soft power, and internal propaganda. It is the only actor on the scene threatening war.

It is a situation very similar to that of Ukraine. Russia has had a "one-Russia" policy, in that it regards Ukraine as "little Russia" even though it butchered Ukrainians during its own civil war and then more thoroughly during the great famine under Stalin. They have a fraternal, and fratricidal, relationship. The West nevertheless encouraged Ukraine to become a Westernized country, with possible membership in the EU and NATO. And how we have a war, which has ripped Ukraine apart, with no end in sight. Are we asking for the same outcome in Taiwan? As I write, Russia and China are planning joint military exercises.

Well, we might be, but ultimately it is up to Taiwan to figure it out, as it was for Ukraine to decide which way they wanted to go. We should stand for self-determination and against bullying. At this point in history, seventy years on, there is very little justification for us or the PRC to maintain that the ROC is merely a province and should be subject to hostile re-absorption. It is an ambiguity that may have been diplomatic in the past, but now is misleading and dangerous. No, the ROC has made its independent place in the world, and the sooner we recognize that reality, the more realistic and productive relations throughout the region can be. That includes a recalibration of the PRC's views of the matter, and the recognition internationally that while Taiwan might concievably want to re-unify with the PRC for its own cultural and economic reasons, we fully oppose, on every level, any coerced or military takeover. Our military relationship doesn't have to change. We do not need to enter into a full alliance with Taiwan, only to recalibrate relations to recognize their right to an independent existence, however they choose to carry that out.

There is also a more positive view. The PRC in its current condition would not be an attractive partner for re-unification- it has not been for Hong Kong, or for Tibet, and much less so for the ROC. But mainland China might also change. There is no telling what the future may hold. The recent passing of Mikhail Gorbachev reminded us that history can move pretty quickly, and while the "communist" government of the PRC seems very stable, there are many tensions and problems under the surface. The more they fulminate against the ROC, the more their people would be exposed to the question of what exactly is so terrible about the extremely prosperous, peaceful, and democratic system lying across the Taiwan strait.

• Doves wring their hands.
• Critique of the West.
• Gorbachov was, in essence, the last true believer in the Soviet system.

The Cooperation Game

Thinking about the balance between competition and cooperation in society.

Imagine a world with no competition. No pay differences, no status differences, no sporting competitions, no voting, no choosing. Mates would randomly assigned, public offices would be randomly filled, as would all other jobs. Products would be offered in one type only. All people and all things we use and need would be the same. 

When people ask for social justice, is that what they mean? Probably not. But relief from competition is at the crux of the issue, and to think about it, we have to figure out the role that competition plays and should play in our lives. It is obviously pervasive, and our political divide is fundamentally about just how pervasive it should be. Human nature is no guide. We are intrinsically both cooperative and competitive, and can be led to extremes of either, from the bayonette charge of battle to the self-abnegation and communalism of the monastary. Temperaments vary tremendously as well, making accomodation of them all in one society truly a conundrum.

Consider the other limit case, of no cooperation. There would be no corporations, no states, not even families, which are, after all, the original communistic enterprise. It would be the ultimate war of all against all, one against the world. This scenario is even more devastating then the opposite, immediately extinguishing the human race. That should provide a clue about the relative importance of cooperation and competition.

Indeed, as a rule, competition is largely destructive, and cooperation is constructive. Competition is what destroys civilizations and its control requires all the means we have to "civilize" ourselves, from manners, to sporting etiquette, legal systems, business regulations, diplomacy, etc. It is competition that needs to be rigorously controlled and channelled into a few virtuous avenues, while most of the training we lavish on children begs, pleads with them to cooperate, to get along with others, and to participate in the cooperative institutions of life.

Competition finds its way into the strangest places.

Competition is, in comparison and at best, the spice of these systems. The thrill of victory, the satisfaction of greed, and the earning of love- all are visceral, but only constructive under rigorously controlled conditions such as the institution of marriage, the legal structures of business, and the rules of sport. For example, the common convention of monogamy among non-Arabic cultures is a control over mate competition, which is immensely helpful in keeping social peace and promoting happiness. Even if it lowers the competitive temperature of a society, and may reduce its future fitness, if one takes a eugenic view. For while competition is destructive in the short term, it can be creatively destructive, sweeping away badly run businesses, insufficiently warlike nations, and per natural selection, less fit organisms. Competition is important for long-term discipline and success, for all its short-term costs and dangers.

The political right wing generally wants more competition. It is, as a rule, composed of those who have done well under the current system, and wish to preserve it and allow successful people like themselves more success in their competitive pursuits. If money wins elections, then so be it, and let's equate money with free speech. If whites win over blacks, so be it. If the US wins over communism, no succor should be extended to the vaqnuished. Business should be red in tooth and claw, regulations be damned. Parents should be able to pay for better schools, better colleges, better mates. And should be able to bequeath all their money onwards to create dynasties of wealth and power. What better success than intergenerational success?

On the other hand, the US has traditionally been thought of, and thought of itself, as a land of opportunity, where there is some base of equality- in the law, in voting, and in the opportunity to work hard to achieve a successful life, without the dead weight of nobility and inherited privilege. Some of these ideals were put into concrete form over the last two hundred years by fostering universal, free education through high school, and land-grant and other state colleges and universities. And here is where we get to the crux of social justice- the prospect of equal opportunity and "fair" competition. Is there such a thing as fair competition?

We should take sports as a guide here. While fundamentally competitive, modern sports are all governed by cooperative bodies that set rules, and keep setting new rules whenever some change in technology, social mores, or innovative technique threatens the "fairness" of the competition. So yes, there is such a thing as fair competition, but only where we have the fortitude to put cooperative bodies (i.e. the government) decisively in control of the rules of the game. 

Such cooperative regulation has, for instance, saved the banking industry from its own competitive miasma, transforming the incredibly destructive boom and bust cycles (and bank runs, and bank collapses) of the 1800's into the well-oiled and well-insured system we have today. Contrast that with people like Donald Trump, who in the depths of psychopathic narcissism have no use for rules or committments to an overarching constitutional, legal order. What they think of as "winning" is more like a trampling of our carefully considered and constructed system of cooperative institutions, in favor of short-term and short-sighted corruption.

Fine, so there is a dynamic balance between competition and the cooperative structures that fence in and run "fair" competitions, and also provide a wide variety of public goods that competition can't provide. The point, obviously, is to capitalize on the human diversity that we have in such abundance, and on natural competitive instincts and imperatives, to organize productive systems in government, business, and society at large. 

Where does that leave social justice? It should be obvious that ideologues of the right wing have gone off some kind of deep end of late in their yearing for culture war, white supremacy, and destruction of the state structures that regulate our way to a more civilized and peaceful existence. On the other hand, the Left is also extreme in its fantasies of unfettered immigration, welfare and housing for all, restitution for historical injustices, and enforced diversity in all possible spectra of underprivilege, disability, and oppression. For example, the iconic competitive high school of San Francisco, Lowell High, recently went through a tumultuous elimination of, and then reversion back to, competitive entrance examinations. Clearly the competitive exams were discriminatory in effect against black and latino students. But were they unfair? What is the point of having elite schools, versus having uniform average schools that serve all equally? 

Another example is Native Americans. If we were to be truly just, European descendents would all pack up and leave, providing thorough reparations to the oppressed, in the form of a pristine, vacated continent. Yet, there was a competition, conducted in the ways of its time, which is to say by warfare, disease, organization, numbers, and technology, by which Native Americans lost the competition for the continent. Should all such competitions be ruled unfair, in retrospect? Can we reel back history to such an extent, and do we want to? Are our standards of fairness getting too refined? Are we growing overly allergic to competition? And is equality of opportunity really enough? The history behind us has bequethed blacks with systematic poverty, so we have tried affirmative action to make some small reparation. But even that small amount has fallen afoul of the ideal of equal opportunity, as seem from the white and conservative side, even as they promote obscene intergenerational transfers of wealth and power that will make of our country another feudal and "old" country.

I think that is what the current right-left divide is really about, and involves incredibly complicated questions of history, human nature, and practicality. And of the future- what we as a nation and culture want to be. Neither the far left nor far right paint an attractive picture of that future, and our political system increasingly whipsaws between the more extreme visions. This is due firstly to its own structural failures that were baked in from the start. But it is also due to changed conditions as we come up against growth constraints. When the pie is growing, it is relatively easy to share its pieces. But when the climate apocalypse is looming, when we are clearly overpopulated with respect to planetary carrying capacity, and are unwilling to build physical and social structures of cooperation, then competition naturally heats up.

• So, how are we doing in 2022?
• How bad is the new lying?
• Rapid eye movement does indeed reflect dream scenery.
• International cooperation is evolving.
• Ukraine independence day.
• Sleep loss decreases cooperation.
• Humans cause ecological collapse.