Notes On The Design Of Homo Sapiens 2.0
There are many flaws in the code for Human 1.0. It’s time for a revised edition
By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
Design Flaws
I think that a majority of the bad things that happen in a human society are driven by the way the human animal was designed, or maybe I should say how the old design has persisted far beyond the existence of the environmental factors that drove the original code.
Today, I think our DNA reflects several poor software choices, but, luckily, we’re almost at the point where we can fix ourselves by creating Homo Sapiens 2.0.
Susceptibility To Addictive Behavior
Number one on the “bad design” list is our species’ susceptibility to drug addiction. We know that a majority of people don’t become alcoholics or drug addicts, but for those who do there’s a huge genetic component involved.
If we could waive a magic wand and eliminate the genetic predisposition to addiction we could probably eliminate at least 25% of all crime. No more drug cartels. No more large numbers of addicts committing crimes to get money to buy drugs. We could almost empty out the prisons and save tens of billions in medical, legal, law enforcement and incarceration costs.
If we could redesign people to remove the genetic predisposition to addictive behavior and, maybe, even install a few genes that would affirmatively deter addiction, wouldn’t that be a huge benefit to the human race?
Over-Active Sex Drive
Not far behind the susceptibility to addiction is our overwhelming, pervasive, sex drive. The constant, powerful drive for sex permeates almost every aspect of human life — food, clothing, entertainment — how we spend our money — how we spend our time.
What does that get us? Overpopulation, fetishes, serial killers and rapists, human trafficking, stalking, sexual harassment, obsessive behavior, spousal abuse — the list goes on and on.
Why is our species so obsessed with sex?
Probably because without constant procreation animals in the wild die out real fast. The harsher and more dangerous the environment, the more babies have to be born in order to keep the species going.
Some animals solve this problem with multiple births, rats and kittens to name only two. But humans aren’t built that way.
The vast majority human offspring are singletons which take almost a year between conception and birth. That means that people living in a primitive, dangerous environment have to keep most females pregnant most of the time just to make up for the losses from starvation, sickness, accident and predation.
A hyperactive sex drive is just nature’s way of making sure that there are sufficient replacements for all those people who starved to death, got eaten by wild animals, or died from plagues, illness or accidents.
Well, today Cincinnati and Cleveland and Kansas City have pretty much eliminated wild animal, starvation and plague deaths, but the hyperactive sex drive programmed into our genes just keeps on humping.
Sure, the species needs to reproduce itself, but didn’t nature overdo the human sex drive more than just a little bit? I’m not only talking about all the strife and pain caused by rape and sexual misconduct, but consider how pervasive problems linked to sex are. Child molestation. Incest. Sex trafficking, sexual harassment, stalking — the list of anti-social behavior driven by sexual urges goes on and on.
What if we could eliminate the sex drive altogether? Boom, gone. Wouldn’t that free us from so much frustration, manic behavior, and strife?
For just a moment, imagine what the world be like if people had no interest in sex at all, if no one spent any time thinking about it, if no one spent any money trying to get it.
Without any interest in drugs, alcohol and sex, wouldn’t everyone’s lives be so much simpler, cheaper, less stressful, and vastly more crime-free?
“Fun” Is Only A Biochemical Imperative
But less fun, you say? Not necessarily. Think about that for a moment.
Why do you want sex? It’s not a logical activity. It’s hormonal.
Isn’t it like hunger? Don’t you want it because your body, your involuntary organic systems, make you want it. You want food or drugs or sex because your body tells you that you want them.
If your body stopped telling you that you wanted a smoke or a drink or a fuck, then you wouldn’t care.
Sometimes elderly people lose their sense of thirst. When they do they can go an entire day without drinking any liquids because their body has stopped telling them that they’re thirsty.
Sex and drugs aren’t that much different. If your biochemical systems weren’t driving you to want them, I don’t think you’d care about them very much at all.
But What About Love?
There’s another aspect related to sex — love. Why do we have the biochemical state of love? Why are people programmed to feel love?
My theory is that humans take a very long time before they can be self-sufficient, thirteen or fourteen years before you can release kids into the wild and they will be able to survive and reproduce on their own.
Nature needed some mechanism to insure that the parents would stick around long enough to nurture the kids until they were ready to go it on their own. And that mechanism is the biochemical state we call “love.”
If parents “love” each other and “love” their children, then they stay together after the child is born. Staying together vastly increases the child’s chances of living long enough to survive on his or her own.
The parents’ love for their children keeps them committed to raising the child. Without the biological condition of love, the survival of human children until they were old enough to produce the next generation would be drastically reduced.
As much as getting rid of the biological condition known as love would simplify our lives, the long maturation period of human offspring seems to mitigate against reprogramming it out of our genes.
OK, leave love alone. At least we can still mostly get rid of our over-developed sex drive.
But We Will Still Need To Reproduce
I say “mostly” because we will still need some way to keep the species going. Personally, I’m thinking that maybe the Vulcan system as explained in Theodore Sturgeon’s iconic Star Trek episode #30, Amok Time, might be the way to go.
[See my column: Maybe The Vulcans Were Right About Sex. Wouldn’t Humans Be Better Off If We Were Horny Only Once Every Seven Years?]
Essentially, every seven years an hormonal imbalance subjects Vulcans an overwhelming desire to engage in sex. Once the act is completed, their hormonal system normalizes itself and the desire for intercourse disappears.
So, would something like this work for us? Could we set up some hormonal timers that would kick in for a week or two once every X years?
We’d want to vary the time periods so that people would be born on a constant basis. Maybe one person would get the urge every fifteen months, another every twenty-three months, another every thirty-five months.
A real horn dog might want to have sex for a week or two every six or seven months. Boy, watch out for that guy.
I say “guy” because we would need to pick one gender that would feel the need. It depends on how many children you want to create.
Which Gender Would Commence The Process?
If the male was the instigator he could impregnate several women, but if the female was the instigator then only one child would result. In the interest of making sure you get enough kids to perpetuate the species, I think the process should probably start with the male.
There would have to be a mechanism that would make the female be willing to cooperate. If the guy suddenly was ready to go, there would have to be some way for at least some of the women to be inclined to give it up.
Perhaps the affected male would emit some pheromone that would trigger a sympathetic response in some random percentage of the female population.
We would need to design this so that the male wouldn’t create a problem for an unreceptive woman. Perhaps in response to his chemical signal a willing woman would release an “I’m good to go” pheromone that he would need to receive in order to have an erection. No response, no performance, move on to the next candidate.
The two biochemically ready people would get together for a week or two of wild abandon until one of their body chemistries slipped back into dormant mode, then it would be, “Nice meeting you. Let me know if you get pregnant.”
The Love Component
We would also want the resulting child to emit some chemical signal that said to the male, “Hi dad, I’m your kid. Take care of me.” Mothers already have this sort of bonding built in.
It would be beneficial to trigger the formation of a biochemical bond between father and child because we’re still going to need dad to cooperate personally and financially in raising the child, even though there would no longer be a sexual attraction between the parents, at least until another XX months had gone by.
On the other hand that might keep dad hanging around. He might think, “Gee, I don’t feel anything right now, but in 114 days I’m going to want it bad so I better keep her handy.”
Not exactly, Romeo and Juliet, but they committed suicide so there’s that.
Poor Appetite Regulation
General defect number 3, poor appetite regulation.
There are illnesses that kill your appetite. As much as the hungry-me might think he really, really wants that medium-rare slab of prime rib and a scoop of mashed potatoes, I think that the me-with-no-appetite wouldn’t miss it at all. My urge to grab that chicken leg is mostly driven by a bunch of chemical reactions that scream at me: “EAT SOMETHING.”
Wouldn’t a really well-designed human have a built-in, highly effective, appetite regulation system, because, let’s face it, the one we have now really sucks.
Sure, we have a chemical feedback system involving insulin and cortisol that’s supposed to match our appetite with our level of exertion and the need to store fat as a hedge against lean times, but the obesity numbers and the billions we spend on diet schemes tell us what a colossal screw-up our current appetite-regulation system is.
So, while we’re cataloging things in the basic human design that need to be fixed, let’s put the appetite-control system on the list.
The Redesign Plan
Now that we’ve scientifically reached the point where we can turn off a few genes here and switch on a handful there, I think we could probably manage this redesign within the next fifty years. It would take a huge increase in computing power to model the results, but people claim that quantum computers will be up to the task.
So, I’m imagining the person-in-the-street, or on the flotation slideway, fifty years from now — slim, healthy, uninterested in sex or drugs, eats mostly to fuel up, though he/she occasionally sucks on a flavored lozenge just to enjoy the taste.
He/she thinks about sex about as often as you or I fantasize about changing jobs or remodeling our house.
He/she might enjoy a cocktail now and then but mostly for the taste as they find any resulting buzz mildly disconcerting.
Those few, rare, genetic mutations who still run around drinking and fucking, like potential plague carriers, are viewed with suspicion and disgust.
And in at least one park in every large city there is a life-sized statue of Mr. Spock. Of course, he’s not smiling.
–David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
