Overpopulation

Overpopulation may be a product of our own selfish interests. Humans want to have as many descendants as they can, no matter the cost. According to Dawkins however, when a country becomes overcrowded, the rate of population growth should drop because of our genes. Females drop their fertility rates when they notice lack of resources. That has been proven with science experiments. However, in the present world I see the opposite. Rich countries, where the standard of living is high, such as European countries are suffering from lack of population, to a point in which governments are having to give rewards to people who have kids. Instead, in countries like China and India, which are countries that have a lot less income per person, overpopulation is a big problem, so big that governments have to reward people who don't have any kids. It could be a cultural thing, but then you have the case of Japan, which has almost worst lack of population problems than Europe. So the real life cases apparently contradict Dawkins's theory. But then there's the cost of living in Europe and in Japan, versus the cost of living in China or India. Since in general, European countries are richer than China or India, the living cost is also way higher, as well as in Japan. Tokyo has been officially labeled as the most expensive city to live in in the whole world, and after NYC, European cities like London, Paris and Frankfurt follow. Therefore, we can see a little of selfishness there, which could explain overpopulation and relates with Dawkins's theory. Or not preciselly selfishness, but these people have no kids because its too expensive to mantain them. They will rather have a good life without kids than pass their genes, even though that goes against their own genes. But the selfishness could be seen when we talk about countries. Lack of population does bad to countries, as well as overpopulation. But people in Europe prefer to live a good life and leave the task of developing the country's population to others, while Chinese and Indians prefer to pass on their genes, and force the others not to pass them on so that the country can improve. This is an example of the selfish gene.

Passing of Ideas

Albinism is one of the topic Dawkins discusses in the sixth chapter of “The selfish gene”. How is it that albinism survives when it has been proven to be so inefficient? It’s simple. Albinism is a rare mutation present only in one out of every 20,000 people, but it is a disease that rarely kills, and it doesn’t affect all of its carriers. Therefore, the chances of having an albino baby are extremely slim, but always present. You can only have an albino baby if both you and your couple carry the gene, which is extremely difficult. However, all descendants are carriers, and just because the albino person doesn’t later have kids it doesn’t mean the chain is broken, because the person’s brother, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, will all carry the gene, but it’ll only be activated if they have a baby with another person who comes from an albino family. So the chances are extremely small to have an albino baby, but they are just as small as to the disease of albinism becoming extinct. Instead, if there was a dominant disease which killed its carriers, it would become extinct in its first appearance, because it would not get passed on. In the book Dawkins talks about albinos being attracted to other albinos so that the gene would be passed on, however, this is not true, and he admits that this doesn’t happen even though it would help the albino genes. I think the same happens with human ideas. If they don’t get passed on, because they are not “dominant”, then they will die in their first appearance, instead, if they manage to get passed on to the others they will live and be prosperous, even if they’re not dominant. Also, the fact that two people share ideas doesn’t mean that they should be attracted to each other, although in the real world I think they would. Maybe some ideas come with genes. Maybe that’s why people say “Look, that baby is just like his father, he’s always jumping around”. I don’t think that the “jumping around” gene exist, although it maybe does. Also, it could just be that the kid is trying to imitate his father, although I have heard this expression with babies whose parents are dead. And also, it could just be a coincidence, but I think these things also get passed on, and that the theory of Gregory Mendel doesn’t only work with genes, but with other things, such as ideas as well.

Humans in the Animal Kingdom

We are selfish beings. I never thought so before reading the selfish gene, I thought we just had selfish moments, but in general, apparently we are selfish. We compete for everything, especially in our capitalist environments. Although we do share, we share with the people who we appreciate, but if a stranger comes and asks for something we might give him something, but not at all what he needs. For example, if we are asked for a couple of coins at the street we happily give them away, but what if that same person who asks for a couple of coins asked us for a couple million pesos? Would we give them to him? I personally wouldn’t. I don’t know the person well enough, and maybe we’d say “If I could afford it of course I would.” Yet we can afford things that are far more expensive than that and we couldn’t give 2 million pesos to a stranger. Then there are other people who give millions of dollars to the poor, but those are the people who make billions of dollars, to whom a couple thousand dollars mean the same as a couple of coins do to us. We also afford thousands of dollars to get our kids in college, because we want our genes to be best. We are competing with the rest of the population and we want our kids to be better than the rest, even if that means we won’t treat others well. Just as lions compete with gazelles we compete with cows, and pigs, and lambs etc. We kill them and eat them for our own benefit. However we don’t kill and eat other humans because this is a greater risk. A human would be harder to kill than a cow, and if you killed a human you would be punished severely, especially if you ate it afterwards…But if you killed a cow then it would mean nothing to the other humans. Perhaps maybe they’d want a part of the cow too, but nothing else. It surprises me how similar we are to the rest of the animal kingdom, but then, we are part of it as well, so it’s natural, although still surprising.

The Chess Programer

In chapter 4 of "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins talks about a chess programmer, which is the person who programs a computer so that you are able to play chess. The programmer, says Dawkins, is like a father teaching a son how to play chess. The computer cannot play chess better than the programmer, but it can beat the programmer anyways. Until now, computers are still incapable of beating humans, but this is because the machine does not have the intelligence level to go against humans. Maybe the machine knows how to play chess better, and knows how to distinguish between a loss and a win, but it won't feel sad about the loss or happy about the win. It will feel nothing and think nothing. A human would think "I'm better than him/ her at chess", but the machine has no such thought and therefore, since the programmer made the computer, then he will always be superior, or at least that’s the concept we humans have. However, just like a son, a computer could one day break free. If we take a look at humans, we can see that just because a father educated his son or daughter, it doesn’t mean that he/ she will always depend on the father. Eventually, the son or daughter will match his or her parent, and maybe even surpass them. Then why is it that we still think that a computer is not the same? For me it’s simple. The computer and the human will never be the same, and even if the computer’s artificial intelligence was greater than that of any human, I don’t think that they would take over the world or anything like that, as mentioned in Dawkins’s example. Humans have feeling, and feelings guide us through life. No artificial intelligence could give feelings to a machine, and if they could, they’d be empty feelings, which wouldn’t affect the machine’s decisions. Feelings are what differ machines from humans.

Natural Selection

Naturally, we always prefer whatever is best for us, and nature does also. Nature's duty here on Earth is to create a balance in everything so that every species can do its own duty. If you take off one of the millions of species of animals on Earth, you'll mess up the entire planet. That's why extinction is so dangerous not only for whatever is getting extinct, but for us as well. In the third chapter of the selfish gene, we are introduced to Gregory Mendel's theory. Gregory Mendel experimented with plants to find out more about dominant and recessive alleles. In this experiment, Mendel planted purple and white flowers, which he knew had no different-colored ancestors. The white allele was a recessive allele, while the purple allele was a dominant one. After Mendel planted the flowers, he crossed the white flowers with the purple ones, and the result were lots of 100% purple flowers, not a trace of white ones. This was because the purple allele was dominant, so even the flowers that had the white allele in their DNA were purple because the purple beat the white. However, when Mendel allowed the plants to reproduce, he found that about ¼ of the plants were white, because some plants had inherited the white gene from both their parents, even though both their parents had also a purple gene and therefore were purple. The diagram above can explain Mendel’s experiment if you switch the blue eyes for white flowers and the brown eyes for purple flowers. This experiment demonstrated how nature creates a balance in everything. If one of the genes is brown then the body will receive the order to produce the protein that makes eyes brown. Otherwise, it won’t, and the eyes will remain colorless (blue). Is this the idea of a selfish gene? Or is it just nature’s effort to create a balance? Out of four alleles, only one was brown, but because of it the person will have brown eyes. In other words, the brown allele is “better” than all the rest, making it selfish, since it doesn’t care about what the other 3 blue alleles say. On the other hand, this brown allele could be nature’s effort to create balance. Since there’s only one brown allele and 3 blue ones, then naturally the brown one should be granted more power to compensate the lack of other brown alleles. However, what if there were 3 brown alleles and one blue allele? The brown alleles would beat the blue one by far, and whoever inherited those genes could just forget about having blue eyes. Therefore, the brown one has more power, but why? Maybe it has some scientific reason, just like dark skin. It is proven that dark skin was a result of evolution in Africa because it is much more resistant to the sun. Maybe having brown eyes has its advantages, and that’s why nature made it more powerful.

Beneficial Mistakes

Mistakes are always present. They're present in our everyday lifes and they will be present always. However, the word "mistake" is often related with something bad. It's not necessarily bad. Evolution is a chain of mistakes that lead the species to become better. Evolution works by mutations, which are mistakes in the DNA of the individuals. For example, let's just imagine that for some odd reason, a sloth was born with wings. This would enable the sloth to get food from the trees more easily. It would also help it survive predators, and maybe even get a better partner. Therefore, this sloth would pass its odd winged DNA to its kids, and these kids would pass their own DNA and so on, until winged sloths would be much stronger than regular sloths and they would leave the regular sloths with no partners, so eventually the regular sloths would become extinct and sloths would evolve to have wings. All because one sloth was born a mutant. This can relate to us and to our minds. Let's just imagine that someone comes up with a different idea than the rest, and this idea was fairly interesting. This idea would be passed on to the other readers and then eventually most of the people would share the idea. Take a religion for example, if the religion is believeable and satisfying, then it will become stronger and stronger. Instead, if the idea is not too good, the person who came up with the idea will be excluded from the general group, preventing the idea from entering society's mind. We learn from our mistakes, even though sometimes they can hurt a lot and give little knowledge.

The Law of Life

"Abide by whatever task is set before you as if it were a law, and as if you would be committing sacrilege if you went against it. But pay no attention to whatever anyone says about you, since that falls outside what is yours."
-Handbook of Epictetus
If we lived that way, our quality of life would improve. I'm sure of it, because if you made all the effort you could for certain tasks, we would perform greatly in all areas. People with special talents would perform almost unnaturally well, and science and technology would improve a lot. However, we need a motivation to make our biggest effort. Sometimes we have it, but most of the time we don't have enough motivation to make our BIGGEST effort. I don't think anyone has ever done his or her BIGGEST effort in something, unless he or she does it instinctively, like for example, a mother trying to save her child. In Slaughterhouse Five, for example, I think Billy Pilgrim lacks motivation greatly, since he knows that no matter what he does, life will always be the same, and that there's no point in actually making an effort. For example, when Valencia tells him she's going on a diet, he reacts by telling her that its useless because anyways they will live happily married. He tells her not to make the effort because its not worth it, so she never really gets on a diet. I don't understand how Billy Pilgrim had such a great life and did so well if he didn't really care about what he did. However, according to Billy, life is written, so maybe his life was just written that way. I personally think that's not right, and I think that we should always look for some kind of motivation, like imagining that your task is sacred, so that we can make the best effort possible, even though it can be difficult sometimes.

Are we altruistic?

In my opinion, we may be some of the least altruistic beings in the planet. Since we are "smarter", we know when we're taking risks and when we're not, while animals just do things by instincs, or at least some animals, like bees. Richard Dawkins places the bee as the most altruistic being in the planet, but the bee really does the stinging as self-defense and in defense of the colony, but by instinct only. The bee doesn't really know it will die, and it doesn't know that it is going to help the colony with its sting. Its brains tells it "Do it", and the bee will proceed to do it. Instead, since we have reason, we know when we might be taking risks, and when we're being "heroic".In movies, we see men being "Heroic" all the time, but is dying for someone else really "Heroic"? When someone we really love dies, we will suffer, and sometimes we are willing to give our lifes so that the other person lives. I am sure that if a mother was given a choice, she would rather die than see her kids dying, but I cannot be sure if it is really for love or just because she wants to transfer the suffering of seeing a loved one to the kids. You don't suffer if you die. People who love you are really the ones who suffer. The mother might be thinking deep inside:"Well, I won't see my kids dying so I won't suffer, and I won't suffer if I die either. Instead, my kids will see me dying and suffer, and they will have to carry with that burden all their life". Which is better for the mother? Of course the mother most likely doesn't think of it that way but she's avoiding her suffering by causing suffering to her kids or her loved ones. This is a rather disturbing thought, but it may be real. Instead, we can see people in situations (like war, for example) in which they fight to defend their country (or colony). In this scenario, they are putting the interests of the country before their own self-interests, causing less suffering to the whole country. Of course we could also think of it in the other way. They may be avoiding the tragedy of seeing their families die by avoiding the threat of war to get to them. They could be avoiding their own suffering. Therefore, although I think humanity can be altruistic sometimes, in general I think it is not very common. People actually try to place their families before them, but only because they want to avoid the suffering it would cause to see them in danger or harmed.

Friendship:The anti-nightmares.

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find. In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
To find a friend who has these qualities, Who has, and gives.Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you—Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!” (19-28).

That's a piece I found in the reading, and a piece I read over and over again. Partly because it attracted my attention and partly because it was one of the little things I understood. It's a piece describing the importance of friendship, which is one of the most valuabe things someboody can have. Without friendship life would be much harder. Friendship is a very difficult word to define, yet everyone knows it's meaning because it's such and important part of life. Friendship is not something you learn in school, and the author is saying that it is hard to find a true friend, which is true in my opinion because you might think you have a true friend, but you won't ever prove it until you're in a difficult situation. While you're in a good situation a friend may be with you but when you go through a bad moment they may abandon you. I know this, I have seen it. It has been done to me and I have seen people do it to others, I must've have done it as well, but the author is saying that once you get friendship, then you can be happy. For the author, the most important quality of friendship is to have and to give. These qualities are important, especially the giving part. If you have kindness, honesty and trustworthiness then you can be a great friend, but you also need to give a part of you to the people who consider you your friend. Friendships need both people to put some effort in the relation, just as love does. The last sentence is "What a cauchemar!", but after asking a friend what cauchemar meant I found the meaning of the sentence. "Cauchemar" is the french word for "Nightmare". Therefore, for the author, life without friendship is a nightmare. I am in complete agreement with that. Love is some kind of friendship, as well as family. Therefore, if you had no friendship then it would mean you had no love and poor family relations if any at all. What other purpose in life is there than finding love and friendship? The purpose of life for me is to be happy, and yes, life would be a cauchemar if we had no friendship, because at least I would never be happy without it.

Close to "So it goes"

"Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen and your life will go well."-Handbook of Epictetus.
This piece of the handbook reminds me of an important aspect of Slaughter House Five. Throughout the novel, Billy recites over and over again his famous "So it goes" phrase, and we can see how he lives happily knowing what is going to happen in all his life. We could say he wants things to happen as they do happen, and therefore he lives a happy life. However it is different because Billy doesn't really want things to happen as they happen, he just thinks that he can't do anything to change them , so I guess his life is happy because he understands that all is just destiny. I agree with the handbook of Epictetus about getting the best out of life's events, but I disagree and have always disagreed with "So it goes", because I think that maybe life has destiny, but if you were able to go back in time you could still change stuff, and I think you should always change for the better. You can always change for the better since we are human and we won't ever be perfect.

Judgement and Experience

"What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgements about the things."
This is a true statement in my opinion, but the idea is not right. In the text it says that things are not really bad, but if we judge them bad then they will seem bad to us. This part is right, but some things really are bad, therefore we judge them as bad. We see things depending on our judgements, but we judge things depending on our experiences, therefore the experiences can or cannot be bad. It's not right to say that all experiences are good in essence and that our judgements make them bad. It would be right to say that our judgements make experiences good or bad, but again, judgements are based on the experiencs themselves. We could try to get the best out of something, and then our judgements would change to make our life better but some experiences would still be better than others. For example, one day you could be attacked by a bear and try to get the best out of it. What's the best thing about being attacked by a bear? Well...you survived, you got to touch the bear, and...what else? Two moths later you get married. You can compare the experiences. You were also alive during the wedding...plus you also got a bunch of other great experiences. You took the best of both situations, but if you were asked "Which of the two moments would yo go back to?", then you would most likely go back to the day of your wedding. They were not equally nice experiences, I don't think it would be a hard decision, so both moments were not equally good in essence. You judged them depending on how good they were and then you classiffied them as good or bad depending on your judgements. That's why people are upset by the things themselves, but indirectly.

What Now?

“Poo-Tee-Weet?” say the birds when the war is over. And that’s all there is to say about war really. Once it’s over it’s over. Does “Poo-Tee-Weet?” maybe mean: “What Now?”, because when you think about it, what was the point of that war? The only answer I could think of was that that war happened to prevent war from happening. Britain and France told Germany that it would face a war if it started war, and when Germany started war then France and Britain made it bigger. However Britain and France had to declare war because otherwise Germany would’ve taken over all Europe eventually anyways, but after the war is over there might be celebration for a couple of days and then its just building the world again. Burying the dead, repairing the damages, and re-starting economy, but other than that there is nothing else to do about war. There’s nothing more to say. It’s over, people died, buildings crumbled and the world was destroyed, but there’s no winning. There’s nothing to celebrate other than the fact than destruction is stopping. What was that all about? What now?

Is Death just Fine?

Although we have seen Billy Pilgrim’s attitude of not trying to make life better, I still don’t agree with it, and when I read something as absurd as saying that the bombing in Dresden was just fine, I must admit that I don’t really like it. “It was all right. Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore.” (p198). Once again he says that even being able to go back in time, he won’t change anything because it’s meant to be. How absurd is that?
Having the chance of saving those people’s lives, he wouldn’t do it because “It’s all right since it’s meant to be”. He could at least say that it was bad, and that it was a mistake and that it shouldn’t have happened, but he says that “It was all right”. It’s kind of a lazy attitude towards life, he’s like “Why bother in doing anything? Who cares about anything?”. I don’t know how a whole race like the Tralfamadorians can prosper with such an attitude.

The Moon-like City

Most of the times that we talk about air-raids in World War two we talk about cities like Berlin or London, which were heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe or the British Royal Air Force. But they had reasons to bomb cities like this, since they were capitals of the nations in conflict and probably centers of important industries, as well as sites where the politicians who were actually in war were residing. Germany knew that Britain was the only threat to them after France's defeat, as well as the Soviet Union and the United States. However, he had an arrangement with the Soviets and the United States were looking for peace, so after France's defeat all they had to do was destroy Britain. Therefore, London was the site of the heaviest air raids by the Luftwaffe, to the point in which the city was bombed every night, a period of time called "The Blitz". As revenge, the British bombed Berlin and other German cities. All these bombings could be considered justified, but the bombing in Dresden was not necessary, since the war was almost over and the United States knew they were going to win. What is even more surprising is that in such a little time it was devastated in such a way that the city was like the moon. It is an event in history that teaches you that war is not fair.

No Real Soldiers

When WWII is almost over, Billy and Edgar meet a woman at Dresden who wants to help the Americans. She speaks with them for a while, but among the things she tells them is that “All real soldiers are dead”. It was almost the end of the war when Dresden was bombed, and what she said was true. Even though Billy had been “prepared” to be a soldier, he was no real soldier. Actually, I don’t think most of the “soldiers” in the war were real soldiers. They were still kids, and I remember in the first chapter, when Mary O’Hare reacts so badly after she’s told about the war book. “You were just babies back then!” (p14). I think that is one of the saddest things about war. Kids pay for the mistake that politicians make when they get a country in war, and young people die because of this.

Unstuck in Time For Real

In class we’ve discussed over and over again whether or not Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time or not. Well, the ability of traveling in time would allow you to see events from the past and events from the future. We weren’t sure if he was really traveling in time or just remembering scenes from the war and from his past life. However, while you are alive you cannot possibly remember your own death. You can only remember events in the past and death can never be in the past, because once you die, there is no more future from which you can remember, and therefore death can never be remembered. Well…Then how did Billy know that he was going to die exactly the day he died? Simple…He really is unstuck in time. In page 141, the novel says that Billy recorded in a tape the exact date of his death: “I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976.” So, finally I think we can conclude that Billy Pilgrim is really unstuck in time. However I am just referring to Billy Pilgrim. Not the Narrator, since we are not yet sure if they are the same, related, or not related at all.

The Structure of the Moment

Why try to prevent something from happening when it’s going to happen anyway? This is the Trelfamadorians’ attitude towards life. They consider that whatever they do, moments are going to happen anyways. I think differently, although of course I don’t have the ability to travel in time. Time-Traveling is no advantage at all if you can’t use it to change the past or even the future. Therefore, Trelfamadorians should not be more advanced than us only because they are unstuck in time since they don’t use that ability anyways. I think instead of an advantage, knowing what is going to happen is worse than not knowing at all, because at least I am sure that I don’t want to know the date of my death, and if I knew it, I would have a bitter life thinking that I am getting nearer and nearer, although I am still getting nearer and nearer, but it’s still a surprise. In chapter five, when Billy asks Trelfamadorians how to prevent war on Earth, they call him stupid because they say he shouldn’t do anything. Billy asks how the Universe ends, and the Trelfamadorians reply that a Trelfamadorian blows it up by pressing a button, and when Billy asks them why do they not prevent it they reply like this: “He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way.” In other words: “Why prevent it from happening if it’s going to happen anyways? The moment is structured that way.” Therefore, as I see it, Trelfamadorians have no will; they cannot make decisions because of their way of life. They don’t make an effort to change the future. For all I know, they could lie in a bed for all their life and their life would be exactly the same as if they actually tried to do something with it.