Zeitgeist: Moving Forward Page #2

influences how a cell deals with

an energy crisis up to

what makes us who we are on the most individualistic

levels of personality.

And what you've got is this complete false dichotomy

built around nature as deterministic

at the very bottom of all the causality.

Life is DNA and the code of codes

and the Holy Grail, and everything is driven by it...

At the other end is a much more

social science perspective which is

We are 'social organisms'

and biology is for slime molds.

Humans are free of biology

and obviously both views are nonsense.

What you see instead is that

it is virtually impossible to understand

how biology works

outside of the context of environment.

[It's Genetic]

One of the most crazy making

yet widespread and

potentially dangerous notions is:

Oh, that behavior is "genetic"...

Now what does that mean?

It means all sorts of subtle stuff if you

know modern biology, but for most people

out there, what it winds-up meaning is:

a deterministic view of life;

one rooted in biology and genetics;

genes equal things that cannot be changed;

genes equal things that are

inevitable and you might as well not

waste resources trying to fix;

might as well not put societal energies into trying

to improve because it's inevitable and it's unchangeable...

and that is sheer nonsense.

[Disease]

It is widely thought that conditions like

ADHD are genetically programmed

That conditions like schizophrenia are genetically programmed.

The truth is the opposite.

Nothing is genetically programmed.

There are very rare diseases

a small handful

extremely sparsely represented in the population

that are truly genetically determined.

Most complex conditions

might have a predisposition that has a genetic component

but a predisposition is not the same as a predetermination.

The whole search for the source of diseases in the genome

was doomed to failure before anybody even thought of it

because most diseases are not genetically predetermined.

Heart disease, cancers, strokes

rheumatoid conditions, autoimmune conditions in general

mental health conditions, addictions...

none of them are genetically determined.

Breast cancer, for example, out of 100 women with breast cancer

only seven will carry the breast cancer genes.

93 do not

and out of 100 women who do have the genes

not all of them will get cancer.

[Behavior]

Genes are not just things that make us behave

in a particular way regardless of our environment.

Genes give us different ways of responding to our environment.

And, in fact, it looks as if some of the early

childhood influences and the kind of child rearing

affect gene expression

actually turning on or off different genes

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