The Maladaptive Evolutionary Bias in Politics: Humanity’s Path to Extinction
The evolutionary mechanisms of human beings have played crucial roles in shaping our societies over the years. Psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists have striven to understand our evolutionary tendencies, which have significantly influenced our behaviors, biases, and decision-making processes. Yet, it is this innate primal instinct that appears to be contributing, inadvertently, to the extinction of humanity. This concept is particularly evident in our choice of political leaders (mic drop!)
Maladaptive Evolutionary Bias in Politics
Our evolutionary inclination for discernible leadership attributes, such as charisma, assertiveness, and physical dominance, among others, harkens back to our tribal history. Well, actually it’s more accurate to say it goes back to our days as chimpanzees (watch Ngogo on Netflix). Back then, those were the very qualities that signaled a leader’s capacity to ensure a group’s survival. Chimpanzee tribes go to war for territory to acquire and defend resources. This inherent bias for strong, assertive leaders was less problematic in primitive times when the stakes were different and the impact of leader dynamics was localized.
However, in the modern political landscape, these primal instincts may not serve us as well. Today’s problems require more collaborative, strategic, and empathetic leaders who can effectively manage complex issues such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, human rights, and global poverty. In 2020 written in The Guardian was about how women world leaders had significantly better outcomes for their population’s survival during the COVID-19 pandemic (Hanley, 2020). Before you claim it’s anecdotal, this trend continues across other crisis’. According to the United Nations, when women author, negotiate and sign peace treaties, the treaties remain enforce for an average of 15 years. When men negotiate and sign peace treaties it’s not uncommon for peaceful eras to only last 2 years on average before conflict and war breakout. To put this in perspective, when women led peace keeping negotiations we as an entire species have significantly longer periods of peace and prosperity. Every 30 years women lead peace negotiations we go to war twice in those 3 decades but in the same three decades when men lead peace talks humanity goes to war and treaties will breakdown 15 times, needlessly sending our children and grandchildren into perpetual war. Women belong at the forefront of peace talks. Women belong at the forefront of foreign relations. I write about this extensively in my book, “The Pathway Towards Peace: U.S. Human Rights Manifesto.”
Unfortunately, the human brain’s evolutionary blueprint tends to favor more visible attributes over these less obvious yet more essential skills. This phenomenon is called maladaptive evolutionary bias, which Dr. Nathan Lents, a psychologist, defines as a bias stemming from behaviors once helpful for survival, but now harmful in the modern era. In the context of leadership, the bias skews in favor of candidates exuding confidence, dominance, and charisma – traits that may fail to produce effective solutions to modern problems (Lents, 2019).
The Path to Extinction
Bounding this to the potential extinction of humanity might seem extreme, but it underscores the severity of the issue. We are living through the middle of the 6th mass extinction. Global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, rising inequality, and nuclear threats require political leaders who can understand the intricacies of these problems, collaborate on a global scale, and show empathy towards affected communities.
Electing leaders based on superficial traits rather than their understanding of these complex issues or their willingness to advocate for sustainable solutions, humanity risks exacerbating these existential threats, thus leading the human species into extinction. For instance, leaders who don’t prioritize or even deny climate change could lead to the escalation of environmental destruction, endangering humanity’s survival. While it sounds nihilistic, there’s hope. Evolutionary biologists and physicists have recognized that varies ethnicities are demonstrating perfected genetic codes which means some of us are becoming Super humans an advanced homo-sapien species known as super-sapiens. Who will most likely rise into positions of power and disrupt the status quo. Hopefully, they’ll save all of us from extinction. These perfected genetic codes are emerging in mixed-ethnicity communities around the world. Computational, Evolutionary Biologists and Physicists agree.
Moreover, leaders who indulge in intimidation and aggression might find it challenging to reach peaceful resolutions during heightened political tensions, escalating the risk of nuclear warfare – a perilous threat to the survival of mankind. We are confronted with a daunting choice; either we take the reins, steer this vessel away from annihilation and effortlessly manoeuvre into an advanced phase of significant evolution encompassing a multi-planetary species, cyborgs, and robotics, or we concede to the existing state of affairs, thereby submitting to the culmination of the sixth mass extinction.
The latter is not an option for me. I am committed to evolving my genetics and creating an environment where my DNA will thrive. I’m sure many of you feel this way too. Former Republican Senator Liz Cheney said, “We keep electing idiots.” The reality is this has to change in order for us to survive. I envision the world coming together before the point of no return. We are edging that reality in the next three to four years. We have a lot to think about and do.
