Evolution and Sexuality 1

Chapter Five

Evolution and Sexuality

Evolution is one of the great unifying concepts in Biology. In general, without any specific designations, the word evolution means an unfolding or unrolling, a development, a revelation or unveiling. As a term of a scientific theory and in its restricted sense, it is commonly understood as organic evolution. This conceives that all the various plants and animals existing at the present time have descended or evolved from simpler organisms by a series of gradual or sudden modifications both structural and functional.

There are two pertinent questions which, arising from rational wonder, interrupt the joy of the intuitive contemplation of an organic evolution. They are its How? and Why?

The mechanism adduced by many biologists to explain organic evolution may be described as a kind of natural selection acting on inheritable variations of a population. The raw materials of evolution are the mutations in chromosomes and genes. Some sort of isolation, geographic, genetic, or ecological seems necessary for the setting up of new species.

Natural selection is a choice. It does not create new characteristics. It plays a part in choosing and determining which new characteristics shall survive. Gene and chromosome mutations can be produced naturally or artificially by a variety of agents. Genetic engineering is nothing new, but who? or what? is the engineer. Aseity’s answers the Who?, her Existential Relativity answers the What? From what we know today of the seeming fickle nature of so much genetic material in living things and also the continual harassing pressure of a mutation-effecting environment, it is something to be marvelled at as to how any living organism retains any semblance of stability. Some other's immanence dictates ordered togetherness from its self-functioning self-evolving presence.

The concept of natural selection is central to most modern theories of biological evolution. Natural selection is generally associated with an organism’s survival and reproductive success in response to environmental pressures which result in the adaptation of a species to a specific environment.

Theories of natural selection in the origin of species (species only) can be made plausible if they are based on some factual evidence concerning the advent of certain new species from older species of already existing types. Nevertheless most explanations ultimately pose more questions than they answer.

The genesis of completely new classes of living things from pre- existing ones precedes any natural selection within already formed species and is still shrouded in mystery. If, as thought and taught by many scientists, the process were gradual, being built up by a series of small adaptive changes, then it is argued by many others that the fossil evidence should be replete with an abundance of such intermediary or transitional forms.

Such is not the case. Indeed all the evidence is to the contrary of Darwinism's theory of cumulative processes so slow that they take between thousands and millions of decades to complete. Aeons of time do not seem to have been necessary for the evolution of new classes from older ones. Their appearance is sudden, their links with what would have been expected in a slow process are missing from fossil records. In their absence, one can not be blamed for concluding that they never existed and that Mother Nature effected new classes in selected begotten mutations of immediate eventuality.

There are unaccountable mysteries in the developments of evolution whereby organs appear, seemingly invented by an extra- ordinary genetic engineering to purposely increase the freedom of the individual and its independence, with respect to an inter- dependent environment. Aseistic evolution pressed on in the past with a lavish differentiation towards an upward spiralling goal, not satisfied with a range of beings extending from those merely capable of existing, to those perfectly adapted to their surroundings. For example, the appearance of homoiothermism or constant temperature in birds is an extraordinary and unmistakable liberation from slavery to the environment. It has all the hallmarks of a suddenly begotten mutation. So also has sexuality.

Sexistential relativity is fundamental to Nature. As a unique biological unity of distinction and union, it is observed in some very early levels of life, not as begetting a new member of some species, but as perfecting only existing ones by exchange of gene sets as in the protozoon Paramecium, or in the cold-resisting zygospore of Spirogyra. In these and all other organisms, humans not excluded, sexual union and propagation are equally distinct, even though for efficiency the two processes do link together. Accompanying the sexual process, there is a real but poorly understood protoplasmic rejuvenation on the biochemical metabolic level. Hormone exchange, stress reduction and psychical as well as physical rejuvenation can be important aspects of orgasmic sexuality for adult humans and also, as now verified, among fish, birds and animals.

It is useful here to recall what was written onPages 38 and 39. Sexuality as a true symbol, has associations with the spatial distinc- tion effected by the differentiation of an outside from an inside. Female is inside, male is outside. In the spatial arrangement of its essential generative organs, human sexuality follows this pattern..

The sex relationship of man and woman participates by analogy in very many of the experiences of biunity which we both perceive and conceive. Sometimes it is convenient to allude to contrasting masculine and feminine overtones of meaning and activities, as when we associate right-lobed cerebral functioning with feminine and left-lobed with masculine. We can consider cultural evolution in the East and the West from such lines of contrast. Speaking in generalities which necessarily overlap, the East is more intuitive, the West is rather more ratiocinative; the East is more concerned with percepts, the West with concepts; the East seeks perfection in feminine, right-lobed unifying activities like contemplation, whilst the West waxes strong in masculine, left-lobed meditative distinctioning as in philosophical analysis and legislation for uniformity. Each human being is a blend of both, having resulted from the fusion or two-in-oneness of a female egg and a male sperm, and each of these two contribute to the genetic blueprint of the new individual.

We are living examples of the unity of distinction and union. Though differentiated physically, generally as man or woman, each human self must become integrated psychically. Psychically we are not sexless, but both sexes in one. We are hermaphroditic in the inner space of our whole self's consciousness, female in immanent parental first person "I am" being and male in transeunt filial second person "Thou art" becoming. The maiden self in the psyche knows both being and becoming. Her alpha-self's being is fertilized by male distinctioning and she conceives her omega-self's otherself of man's becoming.

Sexuality knows its most meaningful and profound reality in involvement with religion and selflife experience. Personal develop- ment and self-transcendence through sexual relations can and should have sacrificial connotations. To sacrifice should mean to make sacred in an act of reverential worship. For sexuality to perfect a new cultural and religious species in evolutionary ascent, we must apply such ideas of sacrifice analogously to personal relationships involving a self and its other. Unless the I-self's grain of selflife seed die, there remains but a sterile "me and mine", but if it submits to a psychical metamorphosis on encountering a beloved "you", then it enjoys a more abundant selflife life as "we-us-ours" in the oneness of existential togetherness.

In the orgasm climax of sexual union there should be experienced the ecstatic pleasure of a mystical death. Biology's sex-functioning introduces limits bringing eventual death to the individual's body and likewise psychologically, there should be exacted a similar transition with respect to the individual self's conscious personal life. This is the self-sacrificial price that has to be paid for Nature's selective growth in unity and complexity. Sexual fertility, with its potential for an increased quality and diversity in the fruits of its union, requires ultimately the sacrificial surrendering of the flesh-masked personal individuality of both its participants to effect love’s togetherness.

Aseistic evolution as a progressive revelation is opposed in many respects to adaptation which is strictly conservative and opts to get out of the erratic race. Paradoxically, evolutionary development would seem to have both constructive and destructive aspects, manifesting not only a retrogressive entropic aspect towards uniformity and directional irreversibility, but also a progressive tendency towards greater distinction in unity as if a series of goals had to be attained. There is displayed a fine purposefulness and prodigality whereby Nature seems not content that there should be mere life, but that it should abound both in quantity and quality of increasingly sophisticated and selected improbable types. Biological evolution begins with amorphous living matter or things like Coenocytes which are without a real defined cell structure, and ends in social human beings endowed with freedom and an expanding selflife consciousness, in which there is an increasing awareness of an inner revealing and loving maternal otherself.

The three phases of mutation, adaptation and a rational sort of natural selection, functioning progressively together in that order are simple mechanisms which have contributed at times to a gradual blossoming or lateral unfolding of Nature's revelation, without in themselves being in any way vertically progressive. They are not determining factors in general ascending evolution. The criterion of adaptation is usefulness in the present. A vital criterion of aseistic evolution is freedom for the future. It seeks a progressive liberating from entropy's anarchy and the suicidal randomness of unordered independence to a freely chosen ordered symbiotic interdependent togetherness of self with others.

The cliché, adapt or perish, is a half-truth. If it really means abandoning a selfish independence in a self-only-survival situation and adaptively adopting an altruistic interdependence with others, not only for common survival but for self-perfecting growth, then such prudent adaptation is beneficial all round. It must always be remembered that such adaptation demands a self-sacrificial negative feedback for true success and spells the end of entropic self-only interest. Adapting oneself to become a unit part of a fertile whole unity means perishing as a sterile individual. Generally this is not the understanding which evolutionists have in mind when they speak of adaptation. More often than not, they are referring to mere changes in habits or habitats, like adapting to new food chains or climatic conditions.

When the equilibrium constituting their perfect adaptation still as individuals has been finally reached, living things naturally cease to be transformed. As long as the environmental situation is not sufficiently modified to make further adaptation necessary and thus as long as the equilibrium is not violated, no further evolution is required and indeed, if such adaptation is the only goal, then no further evolution is possible. Much of the fauna and flora observable in Nature, though they are masterpieces of ecological adaptation, are but in fact the mere leftovers of progressive evolution. Only one stock amongst all the others never arrived at adaptation's equilibrium and not merely survived but culminated in what we humans call ourselves. It is not the thing best adapted to its environment which contributes favourably to evolution. It is true that its chances of survival are thus much higher, but its better adaptation excludes it from any upward spiralling progression and only increases the number of dropout quasi-stagnating species which inhabit the earth.

In its passage through the sea, over mountains and across deserts towards its destined Promised Land, Aseity's if...then...vertical evolution progresses or struggles from one instability to another and would cease if it gave up the struggle, not just for mere existence, but for more and more existence or selflife on a higher level of complexity. Natural environments may change and those things which were the fittest in a former situation may find the new conditions quite harmful. Adaptation then works to offset its own previous efforts, and natural selection tends now to choose to do away with those whom before it had encouraged. In all such cases, adaptation is certainly not progressive but conservative, self-protective and defensive. Paradoxical situations emerge revealing that some of the theoretical and seemingly plausible mechanisms that are ascribed to Nature in evolution actually militate against the very process for which they are supposed to account.

Freedom from being a slave of the environment, freedom from the necessity of having ever to adapt, freedom to be able to adapt the environment to our own rational needs, these are the ends which Aseity, in her selflife revelation, seems to have set out to achieve and to a certain extent has achieved in us, sometimes for better and often for worse.

For people disposed to see it this way in a contemplated and comprehensive overall view, evolution has all the manifestations of being a choice, always made in the same direction, ascending towards fixed goals amongst which freedom of activity in systems of increasing selflife is a dominating consideration. It is with certain mutants amongst whole populations of individuals that such a choice seems to be made. Many, or all, are called for the new adventure but only a relative few are actually chosen. Aseity randomly selects whom she wishes, for what she wishes, when and where and how she wishes. She does this often with a revolutionary touch of typical, unpredictable feminine humour and teasing caprice, which misunder- standing misogynist minds might consider quite irrational. This interpretation of the concept Natural Selection is different from that as understood by many orthodox Neo-Darwinians.

The increasing liberty among living things is evident if one begins from one-celled organisms and considers such factors as locomotion and dependence on the environment with respect to such things as saline medium, temperature and food. The real menace of destruction by other species demands liberating new developments as does also such things as freedom from the necessity of using hands for walking and for digging. Biological evolution climaxes in the female placental mammal. Culturally, it continues in the psyche where there is the liberation, through programmed speech and memory, from the old time-consuming gene method of passing on favourable acquired characteristics and useful experience. Modern electronic computers aid their cerebral counterparts in the rapid processing and utilizing of information.

Finally we have personal liberty in the human self's will-powered choice of that unity in positive plural becomingness whose truth sets us free from the disorders of singular virgin existence. The perfection of liberty does not lie in inertial sterile independence, but in willed fertile interdependence.

The real problems in theorizing about evolution do not arise in the history of a genus or species, but in the formation of the much broader phyla and classes. There are numerous forward and upward non-adaptive jumps in evolution which defy any Darwinian, mecha- nistic or statistical explanation and which all bear the hallmarks ofthe immediate activity of a manufacturer and operator of Do-it-yourself Kits. To such a begetter we have assigned the personal name Aseity. As Selflife, she is both artist and scientist, skilled in chemical, mechanical, electrical and genetic engineering and an absolute wizard at cerebral computer programming.

Already two of these extraordinary leaps have been noted as with constant blood temperature in birds and animals and the introduction of sexuality into propagation processes. Others of note in Nature's long list of wonders are the passage from monocellular beings, the Protozoa, to the Metazoa composed of many kinds of cells, specialized to perform new particular tasks. Among the character- istics of living things are properties such as metabolism, movement, and irritability or response to stimuli.

The development of chemicals and structures for these functions presupposes knowledge of some end in view. Enzymes and hormones are essential parts of living systems whose self-functioning presupposes their existence. They are not just fortuitous findings amid an abundance of wild isolated compounds in a disordered chemical junk yard. Are such systems capable of conceiving them- selves by the operation of a fictional natural magic, called chance, which in theory is blind, chaotic and has no real existence, and yet in practice sees and knows everything and invents the most extra- ordinary ordered complexities with relentless regularity, contrary to all thermodynamic restrictions?

No intelligent and unbiased person could possibly object to the basic idea that from just mere simple beginnings, and somehow or other, by a succession of gradual transformations the more complex living things eventually evolved. Just how this happened is the subject of much conjecture. In the past study of Natural History, such evolutionary ideas had often been proposed, but it was not until after Charles Darwin elaborated his Theory of The Origin of Species that major controversies arose when explanations based on chance began to be voiced. At the risk of incurring the ill will of many academics, this writer dares to assert that the introduction of the word chance into Biological Science as an accepted, but unprovable, fact rather than as a novel alternative fiction to similar Biblical Creationism, is one of the great cultural deceptions of our time.