NOT WHAT THEY SEAM

TEMPORALS, SPATIALS, AND SPITEFUL MUTANTS

In the last (book related) post, I explored the archeological literature on collapse for a better understanding of what might be really going on in these historical cycles (maybe, better called spirals) that so many scholars have observed, for long stretches of time. In that context I claimed that these spirals should not be viewed either through the lens of tragedy, as in the spatials’ framing of decline, nor as pathology, as in temporals’ framing of degeneracy or decay. In the latter context, I specifically addressed the literature on what is called “spiteful mutants.”  I’d like to flesh this idea out a little more as it dovetails nicely with the arguments that I’m making about human reaction norm enantiodromia.

And, parenthetically, I’ll add that I think that enantiodromia is probably a better term for what I’m describing than dialectic (or, in some instances, collapse), which I’ve used a lot recently. I’d been using dialectic in something like the Hegelian sense of resolving contradictions to attain newer states (though not necessarily, as Hegel would claim, to reach higher truths). This though wasn’t really what I was trying to get at, so I think that enantiodromia works better. Connecting the Ancient Greek of enantios ("opposite") and δρόμος, dromos ("running a course"), from Heraclitus to Nietzsche and Jung it has carried the sense of something flipping back into its opposite. This is much closer to the dynamic I envision occurring within the human reaction norm as spatial and temporal phenotypes displace each other’s prevalence, pushing human society through the transitions that compose our historical spirals.

I’ve been importantly influenced by this group of scholars and find their contributions intellectually valuable. And I’m not denying the existence of what they call spiteful mutants (SM). I am though disputing whether such people are what those scholars say that they are. Consequently, I then also dispute their framing of what the implications and consequences are of spiteful mutants (SM). And, indeed, I draw significantly different lessons about the SMs’ biological nature. First, though, I’ll spell out their argument. Then we can see where I think their framing goes astray.  

Fundamentally, they argue for a process which they call SEAM: the social epistasis amplification model. The SEAM argument is made in several books by different though often overlapping authors. I’m not confident the relevant arguments of those books are always identical in every detail. And I don’t currently have the bandwidth to assess them all, exhaustively. So, I’ve focused on one, Modernity and Cultural Decline¹, which I hope will be close enough to stand in reasonably well for the entire genre. I chose it simply because, despite these significant differences, I find it a rich book from which, as noted, I initially learned a great deal. All the quotations below are from it. Having said that, I don’t doubt to some degree the arguments of other books by the same circle of scholars may have bled into each other in forming my understanding of the SEAM case.

In broad strokes, the argument is that as our society has gotten richer it has been able to reduce the harshest of Darwinian conditions. As a result, far fewer people die from the harshness of nature, including vastly reduced infant mortality rates. This natural filter for eliminating counter-fitness mutations then has been disabled, allowing the survival of individuals who would have died earlier in life under harsher Darwinian conditions. Due to pleiotropic and polygenic processes, when around 80 percent of human genes play some role in the development or maintenance of the brain, it becomes clear that such mutations will manifest at both the physiological and psychological levels. Both morphological deformities and psychopathologies have become more widespread as a result.

These conditions create the opening for SEAM and its spiteful mutants (SM). The novel argument is that some of these newly surviving mutants are spiteful, in the sense that they have epistatic influence over others. Epistasis refers to the idea that some genes can regulate the action of other genes. In popular science, the Y chromosome is the most well-known case of epistasis. Our default setting is to produce fetuses as female phenotypes. If a Y chromosome is present, it hijacks this process, recalibrating alleles across the somatic chromosomes, directing them toward the building of a male phenotype, instead.

The SEAM argument is that this action occurs at the level of human society. I don’t take them to be using epistasis as a metaphor. And those who are inclined to dismiss such a notion as sci-fi woo-woo, or something, be aware that such parasitic “mind control” is ubiquitous throughout the animal world.² It is often conducted with the physical invasion of flukes or pheromones. Though, it is fascinating to ponder whether, among such a symbolic species as humans, it may be possible to trigger such parasitic “mind control” through symbolic representation. The example, for instance, of how children’s psychology can be tricked into regarding step or adoption “siblings” with the same incest disgust they generally feel toward 50 percent genetically related siblings seems to suggest the possibility of something along these lines.³

In any event, somehow the behavior of the SM triggers genetic regulators within others that amplifies, possibly SM behavior, but definitely counter-fitness anti-natalism.⁴ There are a whole host of technologies, behaviors, and ideologies that can be posited as illustrative of the SEAM: the birth control pill, DINKS culture, Pride Month, agitation for unfettered abortion, gender transitioning medication and surgery, normalization of “gay marriage,” and even the more fanatical wing of Climate Change radicalism, etc. These all can be conceived as contributions to the expansion and normalization of anti-natalism.

These authors will also point to SEAM’s contributions to declines in groupishness and religiosity. These seem though to be proximate effects. Indeed, they may ultimately be epiphenomenal. What seems essential is the deleterious effects of SM in the spread of anti-natalist ideas and behaviors which injure the evolutionary fitness of SEAM’s “victims.”

Parenthetically (again), we should be clear that this is not a characterization of how the SM see themselves. From their perspective they are the most radical force of human liberation not merely that exists, but that has ever existed. This is not just a liberation from political or economic oppression, but from cultural and sexual oppression. It is liberation from the oppressiveness of the family, sex-negative taboos of superstition and religiosity, stultifying conformist norms, the tyranny of conventional and patriarchal sex roles, and indeed against the strictures (alleged or otherwise) of nature itself.⁵ This is Thomas Sowell’s unconstrained vision⁶ on steroids. It is the logical culmination of the radical revolution of monadic individualism described by Nisbet in The Quest for Community. Though, this divergence of framing does not I believe put in dispute the material or empirical claims of the SEAM scholars.

While I have no (or at most very little) dispute with the empirical claims of SEAM, and do not accept as sufficient the SMs’ self-framing, I do think these scholars framing of what it all means, socially and biologically, is distorted by what I take to be their temporalist prejudice. Certainly, given how endlessly inundated one cannot help being by spatialist prejudice coming out of academia these days, this may be a breath of fresh air. But the temporalist prejudice, no less than a spatialist prejudice, is still a prejudice likely to produce a misrepresentation of data. Still, this is a potentially helpful analysis once its temporalist prejudice is weeded out. So, let me offer some clarifications and qualifications.

Before getting to the heart of the real matter, I don’t think the credibility of their argument’s impartiality is helped using the rather provocative phrasing of “spiteful mutants.” Again, I appreciate they are not making a metaphorical argument, but neither do I doubt their awareness of the language nuances upon which they’re playing. If they simply wanted to make a biological point, they could have referred instead to the characterized phenomena in question as “spiteful mutations”: referring to the actual genetic phenomena themselves. That would have contributed to a credible claim that they were merely operating within the discourse of evolutionary science. The choice of “mutants” seems intended to invoke pop culture memes of radiation produced giant spiders and some such uncanny monsters from old school B-film horror movies.

But, scientifically unfortunate (even if politically useful) as such rhetoric may be, let’s get to the evolutionary heart of the matter. Even if they had used mutation instead of mutant (which they occasionally do), there’s no doubt they are framing these developments as negative or pathological. They use the phrase “deleterious” frequently, including in the title of at least one preceding journal paper that earlier explored these ideas.⁷ There’s no doubt in their minds that these are evolutionary failures, leading to outcomes that cripple fitness. A couple of passages give a taste of the treatment:

while the picture thus far constructed is partial, it clearly suggests a pessimistic view. The main concern, drawn from the data so far presented or indicated, is that peoples of the West are losing their genetic and behavioral integrity.

If social epistasis occurs in humans, and evidence suggests that it does…, it is not unreasonably expected that mutations can social-epistatically alter patterns of gene expression in pathological ways…

The problem is that their argument does not entail some kind of evolutionary or fitness failure. They must engage in several fallacies to arrive at this conclusion. In fact, it seems that the SM are just a different kind of self-replicating phenotype. Relying on parasitism and inclusive fitness rather than sexual reproduction.

A first point to be made in this regard is that, of course, in evolutionary biology mutants are not intrinsically pathogenic. Certainly, they can be. Indeed, most of the time they will be. However, they’re also the source code of evolution; they are the means by which life forms become better adapted to their world and so better at the business of life. New phenotypes and even species become possible because of mutations. Such new phenotypes and species, then, of course are literally mutants. There’s nothing inherently deleterious to fitness about that. On the contrary, improved adaptation, by definition, would constitute improved fitness. Designating something a mutant tells us nothing about its relation to fitness; this relation must be assessed based on the evidence.

Before going full tilt into an assessment of the evidence, I should make clear my operating assumption in this discussion. My claim is that these SM are a subset of spatials. They have the common spatial traits of novelty-seeking and border/rule-transgressing. Obviously not all spatials are SM. Spatials and temporals are not strictly binary; they’re bimodal. There are spectra on each side. Not all temporals are equally traditional or religious. Some temporals would only be happy living in a rural, Amish-like community, while others may be perfectly satisfied to live in the kind of urban villages celebrated by Jane Jacobs. Likewise, SM might be thought of as a sub-phenotypic strain of spatials. Though it is also true that the runaway symbolic abstraction that enables the uncoupling from nature’s negative feedback loop, which SM accelerate into overdrive, is facilitated by spatials’ characteristically high trait openness.

As a phenotype, and one which, as we’ll see, is evolutionarily effective, there’s no more reason to denigrate SM as “mutants” than any other spatials, nor any more than temporals, for that matter. Setting up the traits of temporals as the normal or healthy phenotype is no more or less a scholarly prejudice than spatialist scholars who pathologize nonspatial phenotypes as anti-social, conformist, or crypto-fascist conservatives. Yes, spatials are less group selected, more hostile to religion, and more libertine. And yes, they act to mold the world to facilitate their goals, preferences, and interests. Just as is expected of any extended phenotype. Including temporals. So, the rather special nature of spiteful mutants, as these authors would have it, is not really so unique or spiteful – but rather is just another evolutionary strategy.

So, then, let’s examine that strategy. As noted, some of these scholars would defend their use of the “mutant” rhetoric by referring to differences in morphology, and even forms of clinically acknowledged psychopathology. On the morphology, this seems like a spurious argument. As the same theorists would acknowledge, due to multipurpose work of genes (through pleiotropy and polygenic inheritance), mutations (or simply differences) in personality structure would likely manifest morphologically. The defenders and patrollers of the Speckled Wood Butterfly, for instance, have obvious morphological differences evident in the number of spots they have. This pattern of cognitive-morphological difference doesn’t make either phenotype pathological.⁸ They are simply evolved phenotypic strategies, primed for differing conditions.⁹

The same basic point applies to clinical psychopathology. Evolution selects for fitness, which is an objective fact: specific traits do, or do not, enhance the marginal ability to be more successful at getting copies of the phenotype’s genes into future generations’ genomes. That’s all that fitness is. If traits that temporals judge psychopathological objectively increase fitness, they’ll be perpetuated. And, indeed, if sufficiently fitness enhancing, they eventually become the new social norm, in which case psychopathology claims are not clinical, but merely self-interested.

Indeed, it’s not uncommon for temporals to consider garden variety spatials to be counter-fitness. But of course, many of the vocations to which spatials are drawn, vocations, incidentally, which are only widely available options in space biased society, are perfectly fitness enhancing. See Richard Alexander on artists as fitness optimizers.¹⁰ Scientists too fit this mold.

The problem comes when the positive feedback loop flips into overdrive and symbolic abstraction starts encouraging and authorizing behavior which is counter-fitness. Things like unfettered abortion and “sex”-transitioning seem to destroy one’s own fitness. It is at this point that garden variety spatialism seems to transition into SMism. And, at the very least, garden variety spatials provide fertile soil for SM behavior.

But here’s the fascinating question: certainly, SM promote anti-natalism among others, but is that necessarily a counter-fitness strategy for them? In a certain sense, that even these authors acknowledge, SM appear to self-replicate, at least at the behavioral level. This is the whole point of the E in SEAM. The epistasis refers to the SM’s ability to activate SM traits in others. The interesting question is whether those with particular personality dispositions are more susceptible to SM activation and recruitment. If so, since all psychological traits are heritable to some degree¹¹, SEAM would entail a kind of parasitic reproduction: fitness operating horizontally rather than vertically.

One would only fail to recognize this horizontal fitness if one assumed, incorrectly, that fitness can only be achieved by means of direct sexual reproduction. But as discussed in a recent post, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of the 20^th century, William Hamilton, earned his spurs by demonstrating this was not so, with his discovery of inclusive fitness. It too was a horizontal, rather than vertical fitness pathway.

An uncle who has no children can still enhance his fitness (or more accurately, through him, his genes can enhance their fitness, by providing him the relevant psychological disposition) in lavishing support and resources upon his nieces and nephews. Since they are roughly 25 percent genetically related to him, in helping them succeed in life he is increasing the likelihood of his own genes getting into future generations. His fitness pathway then is not vertical, down through his own direct offspring, but horizontal, through his siblings’ children. This incentive for selective retention of such behavior was the core of Hamilton’s identification of inclusive fitness.

Sociobiology icon E.O. Wilson famously speculated that homosexuality might persist, despite its sexual reproduction disadvantage, through inclusive fitness: in absence of their own children, the hypothesis went, they offered high levels of investment in nieces and nephews. This hypothesis turned out to not be true, at least in the 1980s. Though, the refutation was based upon the observation that in the 80s homosexuals were often alienated from their families. Now that homosexuality is so much more widely accepted socially, someone might retest this hypothesis. Has social acceptance of homosexuality increased homosexuals’ fitness, and thereby improved fitness prospects for their nieces and nephews?¹² In any event, at the time, it was still a sound hypothesis in that case, as it is in this one.¹³

Under SEAM, the SM appears to be doing the same thing as the childless uncle. Whatever genes generate the SM traits are experiencing a selective benefit by being activated under the influence of the social epistasis. However, this is the key point, then, having these SM traits activated only benefits the SM recruit to the degree that there are a sufficient number of such SM to be successful at the extended phenotype strategy: creating a world better disposed to such SM behaviors. Social epistasis then can be seen as a two-pronged strategy, simultaneously identifying and activating SM susceptible genes, while phenotypically extending to create the niche within which SM enjoy a fitness advantage. Interestingly, I found a passage in Modernity and Cultural Decline in which the authors concede precisely such a dynamic:

To the extent that Western populations have taken on progressively larger shares of individuals carrying spiteful mutations, and have become adapted to inter-individual as opposed to inter-group competition, those who do not carry spiteful mutations are likely progressively less advantaged, and thus unsurprisingly less successful, in the competition with the carriers of these mutations to structure culture. People not carrying spiteful mutations may “lose out” to a dyscorporate elite insofar as the former are compelled to align their explicit preferences to those of said elite, who may impose their preferences in a top-down fashion. In light of considerations in the prior chapter linking negative social epistasis to low fertility, it may be that a hallmark of a society undergoing social-epistatic decay is a prevalence of inducements to low fertility.

So, at this point, it should be clear that while SM promote anti-natalist attitudes and behaviors, this does not entail their phenotypic strategy being in any way counter to their own fitness. Indeed, to the degree that the SM trait-generating-genes create through their extended phenotype an SM-friendly niche, they are enhancing the fitness of the same genes in other humans wherever they are available to be identified and activated. Indeed, especially to the extent they can activate younger recruits, SM reproduction is fully consistent with Dawkins’ “selfish gene” heuristic, which is about genes “desiring” immortality: ever pushing themselves into future generations.

It is just less obvious a strategy, as SM follow a horizontal pathway of inclusive fitness. Just as a childless uncle will benefit in fitness from nepotism toward a nephew. The SM does extend its phenotype niche, but to the degree that SM susceptibilities are heritable and the extended SM phenotypes are successful at niche creation, the transition is helping the recruit better thrive in the environment, increasing the likelihood it too can recruit others, and so promote the fitness of the relevant genes indefinitely.

This though is not pathology, it is parasitism: a perfectly common and successful reproductive strategy in nature. (Though, of course, it can be pathological from the perspective of the host population.) Of course, in such reproductive strategies, just as in predatory relations, there is a question of balance at stake. There is always a risk with such a strategy of the parasite population overwhelming the host population. As long as temporals, and more moderate spatials, are sexually reproducing there are hosts for the SMs’ horizontal inclusive fitness form of parasitic replication.

While there are going to be temporal (and some spatial) phenotypes who will continue to sexually reproduce regardless of how pervasive or oppressive is the anti-natalist niche created by the SM, whether they’re producing enough potential recruits for the perpetuation of SM strategy is another matter. Objectively, the ideal for SM would be the maintenance of an almost cattle-like caste of sexual reproducers, keeping them in a continual supply of potential recruits. This attitude, however unconscious, may be reflected in the common use by acute SM of the epithet “breeders” to designate and stigmatize such people.

However, at a certain point, temporalism may become so highly heritable, as the more susceptible lineages are picked off by the SM, that the remaining population is not sufficiently susceptible to epistatic recruitment. And indeed, at a certain point, the host population (i.e., sexually reproducing parents) may get wise to what’s up and take extraordinary measures to shelter their offspring from spaces in which they would be vulnerable to SM activation. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that this is currently happening: see, e.g., school board meeting confrontations over “queer” and “trans” school cultures and curricula; the growth of home schooling; those protesting and boycotting the cultural normalization of Pride Month values, institutionally and commercially; or parents cutting the cable or otherwise more aggressively regulating their children’s use of social media and smartphones.

Any of these outcomes could evaporate the necessary pool of replicatory resources for success of the SM horizontal inclusive fitness strategy. I wouldn’t necessarily predict this would constitute the collapse of a space biased society. Some spatials will likely even be glad to see the reining in of their more extreme phenotypic cousins. (These are the self-identified “liberals” one regularly hears constantly lamenting that “the left has gone too far.”)

But insofar as the ideology and legitimacy of the current regime of managerial liberalism – with its social engineering and bureaucratic paternalism – is predicated upon extreme spatialist novelty-seeking and rule/border-transgressing, such an SM population collapse could be dire. Combine that with Weber’s anticipation of the crisis of the iron case of rationality, and you probably would have the conditions for a turn in the spiral of reaction norm enantiodromia, back toward a temporalist world.

These recent posts continue to be gap-fillers as I flesh out my forthcoming book. I don’t know when the next post will be (it could be a while from now), but if you’d like to be among the first to know about it, and the book, once it’s done, please…

And if you know anyone else who’d be interested in these topics, please…

1. Matthew Alexandar Sarraf, Michael Anthony Woodley of Menie, and Colin Feltham, Modernity and Cultural Decline: A Biobehavioral Perspective, 1st ed. 2019 edition (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Other works produced by this circle of scholars that either feed into or draw upon such analyses are: Edward Dutton, At Our Wits’ End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for the Future, 1st edition (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2018); Steven C. Hertler et al., Life History Evolution: A Biological Meta-Theory for the Social Sciences, 1st ed. 2018 edition (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Steven C. Hertler, Aurelio José Figueredo, and Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre, Multilevel Selection: Theoretical Foundations, Historical Examples, and Empirical Evidence, 1st ed. 2020 edition (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); Edward Dutton and J. O. A Rayner-Hilles, The Past Is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution (Exeter, UK: Societas, 2022).

2. Ryan E. H. Herbison, “Lessons in Mind Control: Trends in Research on the Molecular Mechanisms behind Parasite-Host Behavioral Manipulation,” Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 5 (2017), https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2017.00102; Frederic Libersat, Maayan Kaiser, and Stav Emanuel, “Mind Control: How Parasites Manipulate Cognitive Functions in Their Insect Hosts,” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018), https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00572.

3. Shepher, “Mate Selection among Second Generation Kibbutz Adolescents and Adults”; Debra Lieberman, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides, “Does Morality Have a Biological Basis? An Empirical Test of the Factors Governing Moral Sentiments Relating to Incest,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 270, no. 1517 (April 22, 2003): 819–26, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2002.2290; Debra Lieberman, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides, “The Architecture of Human Kin Detection,” Nature 445, no. 7129 (February 15, 2007): 727–31, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05510; Robert A. Wilson, “Incest, Incest Avoidance, and Attachment: Revisiting the Westermarck Effect,” Philosophy of Science 86, no. 3 (July 1, 2019): 391–411, https://doi.org/10.1086/703572.

4. And to be clear, as I’ve indicated in numerous other circumstances, the fact that we can’t identity the exact causative mechanism is not an argument against the existence of such a mechanism, provided there is enough correlative evidence. We knew genes existed at least a century before anyone ever saw a strand of DNA. The popular reflexive objection that “correlation doesn’t equal causation,” trotted out by the low g crowd, is too often mistaken as implying that pointing to correlation is a failure of identifying causation. In fact, the greater the degree of correlation the greater the confidence that there is causation, even if it can’t yet be identified with precision. If you want to identify causation, correlation is your friend, not a logical fallacy, as midwits seem to think.

5. I’ve never read the book, but I’ve heard Camille Paglia say in interviews that her opus, Sexual Personae, illustrates that such assaults on (what today’s SM would call) heteronormativity is a common feature of civilizational twilights. See, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Illustrated edition (New York: Vintage, 1991).

6. Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, Revised edition (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2007).

7. Michael A. Woodley of Menie et al., “Social Epistasis Amplifies the Fitness Costs of Deleterious Mutations, Engendering Rapid Fitness Decline Among Modernized Populations,” Evolutionary Psychological Science 3, no. 2 (June 1, 2017): 181–91, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-017-0084-x

8. Though, if Speckled Wood Butterflies had the capacity for symbolic abstraction, possessed by humans, along with the linguistic and semiotic manipulation which that capacity enables, I’ve no doubt “defenders” would be constantly denigrating the immorality of “patrolling” as a deviant lifestyle. And vice versa.

9. On the butterflies, specifically, see T. G. Shreeve, “The Mate Location Behaviour of the Male Speckled Wood Butterfly, Pararge Aegeria, and the Effect of Phenotypic Differences in Hind-Wing Spotting,” Animal Behaviour 35, no. 3 (June 1, 1987): 682–90, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-3472(87)80104-5. For other, including human, examples see my (other must read!) book, Biological Realism.

10. Richard D. Alexander, “Evolution and the Arts,” in Human Social Evolution: The Foundational Works of Richard D. Alexander, ed. Kyle Summers and Bernard Crespi, 1 edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

11. And, while I won’t extend the discussion by going into it here, even so-called “environmental” influences on psychological (or any other) traits are in fact genetic. There are no such thing as environmental influences which are not mediated by evolved genetic receptors. Such receptors I call PCBM in my book Biological Realism, which fleshes out the argument with plenty of empirical illustrations.

12. Surely I don’t have to make the obvious point that homosexuals are not definitionally SM. Though, of course, some are.

13. Homosexuality has long been a problem for evolutionary theory. Insofar as homosexuals are exclusive to the orientation they cannot reproduce. Of course, some may not be exclusively homosexual in their practices, but even then it would be expected that the marginal differentials, which make all the difference over the long run of evolutionary pressures and selective retention, would result in homosexuality being selected out of the gene pool. But clearly it has long existed, so this persistence required an explanation. Today there are more convincing explanations than Wilson’s original hypothesis, though to my knowledge there’s still no consensus on the answer to this evolutionary riddle. (And, parenthetically, this case of Wilson’s failed hypothesis is an obvious rebuttal to the ignorant, but common objection that evolutionary biology and psychology are only a bunch of just-so stories, not subject to refutational testing.)