Evolution Without Randomness, Part 2: Implications

Parent-Directed Evolution

Discussing the implications of non-random / parent-directed evolution...

This is a continuation of the topic covered here: Evolution Without Randomness.

In summary: Offspring are not a random mixture of parental genes, the mixture is directed by the desires of the parents... I'm theorising a biological feedback mechanism in which the perceptions of the parents inform & affect the gametes (sex-cells) they produce.

It's not a million miles away from Lamarckianism, but there is a significant difference.

The three theories are:

1. Darwinism:
   The offspring of a union are a random mixture of their parents genes.
2. Lamarckianism:
   The offspring of a union are a non-random mixture of their parents genes (and possibly new genes), that is directed by their physical experiences.
3. Veritopian:
   As Lamarck but is directed by the parents' desires.

Parenthood: The Greatest Magnum-Opus

This is why this topic is relevant to Alchemy & the Great Work:

Children are the greatest investment a parent makes in their lives, and this is the alchemy of reproduction; This is how to ensure you have the best children possible; to maximise your offspring's chances in life and the subsequent return to you.

Using the power of your desire, you can create better offspring. It is solely within you and your partner's power.

To have good children you must desire to have good children.

If this theory is true, then the most powerful genetic engineering tool available is desire.

That would mean we already have all we need to make the world paradise. No external machinery is required, no DNA editing is necessary. Our bodies are infinitely more sophisticated & capable than the best human technology.

Evolution of Mind

If true this would mean: Evolution is not just acting on bodies. It acts on minds too.

The evolution of fit-minds may, in fact, be what it is primarily concerned with.

Perhaps physical biology is downstream from mind. Perhaps mind creates biology, and not the other way around. That is what the Tao tell us, mind creates matter...

This theory suggests that parents whose minds are poorly-formed will produce offspring with characteristics poorly suited to their environment. They'll be selected against, and fail. Their genome is unfit, and is selected against - in the usual way - but the reason those genes are poor may not be just bad-luck, it could be, in part or in whole, an error on the part of the parents...

If the parents' don't correctly visualise & desire the kind of offspring they think would do well, then the reproductive system has no information to work with, and so it's output then might be statistically random. It would make a "shot in the dark".

So evolution will favour those conscientious parents who use their minds to understand reality as well as they can ('seek truth'), and use their willpower to desire suitable offspring ('desire good'). Their offspring will be fitter, and will do better because their reproductive system is better informed about what characteristics are required.

This would mean:
a) Parents (of all species) have much more control over how their children turn out than we currently think.
b) We could improve our reproductive success, by improving our minds & desires.
c) It would be relatively easy to teach people to do this, and thus improve the gene-pool generally.

This would mean Nature then (passively) 'punishes' the offspring of those whose minds are unsuited to reality, as they subsequently suffer from having an inadequate genome, and thus being poorly physically adapted.

Sins of the Father

If true, it sounds a lot like "The sins of the father...":

Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me
Deut 5:9

It sounds terribly unfair for children to have to suffer in this way, given inadequate biology by the failings of their parents, that they had no control over... But what if those children are the reincarnated (great-)great-grand parents of those parents?

This would be 'karma': The children are inheriting the fruits of their own parenting. They as parents failed to clear their minds, and visualise their offspring accurately. They failed to ask God for good children and so didn't receive them, those maladapted children went on to breed inaccurately, and a generation or two later they are reborn directly into the mess they left, but in even further maladapted bodies and minds.

If God gives you the intelligence to see the truth, and you don't use it. Would it be fitting to be reborn as a person who doesn't have much intelligence? I.e. "If you don't use it, you lose it"?

Evolutionary Yang: The Desire Of The Parent

Evolution, like everything, comes in two forms; it has two parts:

Yin: Selection Pressure
The Yin half of evolution is the physical survival of the fittest, it's "nature red in tooth and claw". It's the final judgement of the viability of an organism

Yang: Directed Adaptation
The Yang half is the desires of the parents. It's the will of those actually performing the act of reproduction.

These two things drive evolution together, and it's how we can fill the gap left by the elimination of 'random' as a scientifically-viable concept...

It could explain how speciation / evolution seems to occur so rapidly in the fossil-record, and gradualism hasn't been substaniated.

While Darwinism states that species can only be changed by culling the unfit, this theory states that species can be changed simply by a change in desire.