Socioenergetics
The Energetics of Political-Religious Behavior
by Charles Brack
Erwin Schrödinger, the author of the famous Schrödinger equation of quantum mechanics (1926), also wrote an influential book on the physics of biological systems, called What is Life?. Schrödinger refuted the proposal that biological systems violated the second law of thermodynamics by noting they are not closed systems, and maintain internal order by "continually sucking orderliness from [their] environment". Therefore, living organisms maintain low states of entropy by increasing the entropy of their external physical environments (e.g., global warming). Interestingly, the extinction of a species results in its thermodynamic equilibrium with the environment. Both Crick and Watson credited Schrödinger's book with their inspiration in the quest to discover the molecular blueprint for life, DNA, which Schrödinger postulated to be an "aperiodic crystal".
Social organizations are fundamentally energy systems. This should be expected, given the simple fact that all living organisms are biological systems dependent on energy acquisition, conversion, and finally, energy loss. Many characteristics of social organizations reflect the fundamental energy dependence of biological systems.
However, extrapolating the energetics of living organisms into the world of social organization has received little attention, possibly because the people attracted to the study of the physical sciences are cognitively quite different than the people attracted to the study of social behavior--thus these two worlds seldom meet.
Nonetheless, there have been some remarkable forays into the strange energetic principles of living organisms (such as Erwin Schrödinger's, 1944) and social organizations (such as Jaffe's, 1998). In short, family organizations, business organizations, political organizations, and religious organizations all facilitate some form of energy adaptation to the environment.
Indeed, each variety of social organization can be modified by the energetic adaptations of the others: the energetics of business organizations often weigh heavily on family household organization, while the energetics of political entities often weigh heavily on business and religious organizations (and vice-versa), etc. In many ways, the structure of a given level of social organization is a compromise with the energetic characteristics of the other levels of social organization.
There is evidence among other species that social complexity is positively correlated with negentropy (Jaffe, 1993), or the ability to extract energy from an environment. The greater the social complexity, the more efficient a species is at extracting energy. This is obviously true among humans, and most notably seen in the division of labor, something that conservatives and liberals accomplish in a quite remarkable manner, albeit quite hidden (see The Secret Symbiosis).
The social impact of energy is one of the more overlooked, yet obvious phenomena in the animal kingdom. Reproductive behavior illustrates this point quite well, as it closely correlates with some sort of energy cycle, be it diurnal, seasonal, or habitat-specific. Among humans, changes in the energy extracted by a social group correlate with changes in the behaviors and relationships in that group.
But the dynamics of energy extraction and distribution in a social organization are only truly understandable by introducing the phenomenon of genetic drive. As we have previously discussed, genetic drive is the collection of processes that change gene frequencies in a population. (For a more comprehensive discussion on genetic drive, see Blazing Genomes).
Genes live their lives somewhere in between full cooperation and full competition with other genes. Genetic drive is the competitive side of genetic behavior, and occurs at all levels of biological interaction: genes within a genome; cells within an organism; organisms within a population; populations within a species; and, between species.
The greater the numbers of genes involved in that level of biological interaction, the greater the number of different alleles that are being driven into the gene pool. Cancer typically starts by driving at the level of the gene, and if successful, converts to driving at the cellular level (which often results in killing the host). Moving up the ladder, an individual, having a large number of children, is driving the entire set of alleles in its particular genome into the population gene pool. A population, initiating a conflict with another population, is driving the entire set of alleles in its population into the species gene pool.
Genetic drive is the fundamental force behind the never ending political and religious conflict that plagues the human species (see Genetic Warfare and the 2008 Presidential Election). Humans seem forever destined to live in this middle world of cooperation and competition, and evolving in this world has resulted in many interesting evolutionary adaptations, both in terms of phenotypic expression and social organization.
In social organizations, these energetic adaptations are seen in family, religious, political, and business organizations. In all cases, both cooperation and competition occur in the the energy extraction and consumption processes, which follows the general tendency: changing genetic distance changes the levels of cooperation and competition in the energy extraction and consumption processes.
The energetic riddle of family household size
Human social organization expends a lot of energy keeping people spaced at a "comfortable" distance. What constitutes "comfortable" is most likely modulated by both genetic and environmental factors. This is illustrated in the riddle of family household size, which constitutes the front line in the human utilization of energy and space.
One of the major energetic adaptations of human behavior is household size, and its magic lies mainly in the shared usage of the home, the household capital (e.g., furniture, appliances, utensils, etc.), space heating and cooling (which accounts for more than half of all household energy use in the United States), water heating, electrical and plumbing systems, etc.
Sharing is one of the major energy efficiencies across all varieties of social organization, especially in family households. But curiously, given the substantial energy efficiency of shared living in a single household, there is a dramatic decrease in family household size in the United States, and industrialized nations in general. In the US, average household size has decreased from 3.42 people per household in 1949 to 2.62 in 2000, for a 23 percent decrease. Compare that to the concurrent increase in per-capita energy consumption, which rose 63 percent, from 215 million Btu in 1949 to 350 million Btu in 2000.
During this same time period, housing size exploded, as per capita floor area increased by more than a factor of 3, from 286 sq ft in 1950 to 847 sq ft in 2000. Americans (and almost everywhere else in the world) were converting a substantial amount of energy into spacing themselves further apart, even as total population increased. Thus, three distinctive trends: a decrease in family size per household; an increase in the number of households; and, an increase in the space per person in the average household.
What is behind this compelling human drive to be at an "comfortable" distance from others? The factors are numerous, and sometimes surprising.
Garden eel feeding radius is equal to body length. Among most species, social spacing can be remarkably precise and species-specific, that is, each species seems to have its own specific social spacing distance, depending on the type of activity it is engaged in. For example, while aggregating in groups, the swallow Hurundo rustica maintains 15 centimeters from each other, and the black-headed gull maintains 30 centimeters, while the sandhill crane maintains a rather unfriendly 175 centimeters from its conspecifics. When thrown together, they will spread out again, back to their comfortable distance (Wilson, 1975).
First, and most obvious, is the physiological impact of changes in social spacing, which appears in a substantial number of species studied to date. The stress response is usually associated with changes in levels of plasma cortisol, and interestingly, studies of other species implicate several major genes, along with other weaker polygenic influences, in plasma cortisol response (Vallejo, 2009).
Indeed, elevations in cortisol levels have been linked to competition for resources (Wobber, 2010). This certainly implies selection for plasma cortisol response, however, the direction of selection is arguably habitat dependent, and influenced by the ability of a population to disperse as density increases.
Since sustained and elevated cortisol levels have been implicated in a wide variety of pathology, such as reduced body size, immune deficiencies, insulin resistance, reproductive effectiveness, obesity, etc., the proper modulation of cortisol is fundamental to survival efficiency. Thus, the human allocation of energy to proper social spacing, in part, reflects the negative impact of sustained cortisol release associated with high population density and competition.
However, it appears that cortisol is just one of a pantheon of neurochemicals under the influence of social spacing, as testosterone, serotonin, adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, etc., have all been found to be modulated by population density in diverse species. Therefore, it is certainly arguable that the substantial energy humans divert towards increasing social spacing counteracts, to some extent, a wide variety of survivally inhibiting biochemical reactions that are generated by high density social life.
Further, we cannot forget the great war waged by vertebrates with the microbial world. In general, disease communicability is increased in environments with low and sustained social spacing, such as airplanes, schools, daycare centers, workplaces, etc., and proper social spacing has implications on disease transmission and resistance.
In other species, there is evidence that animals are deliberately increasing spacing to avoid pathogenic exposure. One notable recent experiment involved the gregarious Carribean spiny lobster, which avoided conspecifics with lethal pathogenic viruses even in the presence of a predator, very unlike its normal tendency to aggregate under such circumstances (Behringer, 2010).
Hart (1990) proposed five behavioral strategies that vertebrates utilize to increase their personal or inclusive fitness in the face of pathogens: avoidance of parasites; controlled exposure to parasites to potentiate the immune system; behavior of sick animals including anorexia and depression to overcome systemic febrile infections; helping sick animals; and, sexual selection for mating partners with the genetic endowment for resistance to parasites.
On the bright side, with further implications on social spacing, there may be immunological benefits from appropriate levels of contact with conspecifics: the social immunization hypothesis. Traniello et al. (2002) noted this phenomenon with dampwood termites, as they "significantly improve their ability to resist infection when they are placed in contact with previously immunized nestmates." How this social immunization hypothesis applies to humans certainly depends on a large number of variables, but the hypothesis that modulated social contact can be immunologically beneficial certainly might facilitate higher population densities among humans.
How the communicability of disease and the possibility of social immunization modulates the spacing of the members in the family household is certainly speculative. But we do know that humans, much like the stars in the universe, are on an expanding course when it comes to social spacing. They are moving away from each other rapidly, and using a lot of energy to do so.
The trend towards increasing genetic relatedness in the home
The decrease in family household size is one of the most persistent trends in economically advancing nations, even as total population increases, which is indeed remarkable. Given the substantial per capita energy efficiencies of increasing household size, what Darwinian conundrum is being solved by the steady decline of the family household?
To shed some light on this puzzle, let's look at the phenomenon of genetic relatedness, which is simply the percentage of genes shared by common descent: you share 50% of your genes with each parent; 50% with each sibling (100% with an identical twin); 50% with your child; 25% with a grandparent; and, only 12.5% with each first cousin.
Genetic relatedness is significant in the study of altruism, since altruistic investment has a greater evolutionary payoff if it is directed at genetic relatedness, as described by Hamilton's Rule (see God's Rule). It is indeed interesting that the decrease in family household size corresponds to an increase in genetic relatedness.
Let's see how this works by looking at the average genetic relatedness in three prominent cases of family household organization: the extended family (Table 1), the two-parent nuclear family (Table 2), and the single-parent family (Table 3).
Table 1: 3-generation family average relatedness by common descent
Table 1 is an example of the genetic relatedness of a 3-generation family household, consisting of two maternal grandparents, two parents, and two children. By common descent, the maternal grandparents share 50% of their genes with the wife, 25% of their genes with their grandchildren, and 0% of their genes with the father. The mother shares 50% of her genes with the maternal grandparents, 50% with her children, and 0% with her husband, and so on.
The average relatedness in the 3-generation family depicted above is only 30%. Breakup stress in this family structure is more likely to originate between those with the lowest coefficients of relatedness: the maternal grandparents and the husband; and, the husband and wife. Table 2 shows what happens when we subtract the grandparents from the family unit, thus exposing the classical nuclear family, so prominent in western culture.
Table 2: Nuclear family average relatedness by common descent
As seen in Table 2 above, the nuclear family is more closely related, on average, than the 3-generation family. In the example above, the two parent, two children nuclear family has an average relatedness of 42%, substantially higher than the 3-generation family. Instability in this family unit again resides with those with the lowest coefficients of relatedness, that is, the husband and wife.
It is interesting to note that after divorce, a relative is often substituted for the ex-spouse, thereby increasing the genetic relatedness of the household. Note that the average coefficient of relatedness increases with each additional child in both the two-parent nuclear and 3-generation families. Thus, large numbers of children increase average relatedness in the family, except in the case of the one-parent household, as seen in Table 3 below.
Table 3: 1-parent family average relatedness by common descent
As seen above, the 1-parent family, with n number of children, has the highest average coefficient of relatedness, 50%, of any family structure (excluding the presence of identical twins). It is also the structure less likely to decay, as further reductions in family size usually only occur under extreme circumstances. Further, it has the unique condition that additional children do not increase the average relatedness. If they are from multiple mating partners, it decreases genetic relatedness in the family.
Thus, the interesting relationship between decreasing household size and increasing genetic relatedness in the family household, which is the general trend as societies utilize increasing amounts of energy per person. Given the general applicability of Hamilton's Rule to altruistic investment, we could presume that the increase in genetic relatedness results in a general decrease in spiteful behaviors, competition, and conflict in the progressively diminishing size of the family household, thereby eliminating some of the biochemically harmful aspects of low social spacing.
Offspring yield per unit energy: the energetics of decreasing fertility
Humans are a remarkably efficient species when it comes to reproduction. Human fetal growth generates the lowest incremental energy stress of any mammalian species, that is, the human fetus grows just slow enough to minimize the daily energy drain on the mother (Prentice, 2000).
While this characteristic of human pregnancy constitutes a remarkable energetic adaptation for our species, the real energy savings of human reproduction has been the substantial decrease in child mortality rates. Humans are by far one of the most efficient species in terms of the percentage of offspring that survive to breeding age, which is the critical age for which species survival depends.
There are two substantial energy gains from decreasing child mortality rates: the energy savings from the avoided energy loss due to child death or sustained illness; and, the energetic increase due to the parental diversion of energy from pregnancy and child care towards other economic pursuits. Besides the obvious emotional trauma associated with child mortality, it is a tremendous waste of reproductive energy.
Some estimates place the average fertility rates of prehistoric humans at about 7-8 offspring per female, while the net yield, (i.e., those surviving to reproduce), at around 3-4 per female. (Note, estimates based on fossil remains are highly speculative). As we have previously noted, males desire more offspring than females, and high reproduction in contemporary cultures typically implies higher levels of male dominance. Thus, improvement in child mortality rates facilitate the bias towards female reproductive strategies in any culture.
By eliminating the energy drain of child mortality, humans also have the luxury of reducing family household size, and we suspect, the longevity of the pair bond, since the energetic efficiencies of long-term pair bonds historically have acted as a compensating mechanism for higher child mortality rates.
The energetics of genetic variation
Across species, the rate of evolution tends to increase in proportion with the genetic variation in that population. This principle, first elaborated by R.A. Fisher, basically follows rather simple logic: if there is one type of allele at a given gene locus in a species, and no mutation, after any number of generations, regardless of changes in the environment, there is still only one allele at that locus for that species. On the other hand, if there are two or more alleles, with different adaptive impacts with respect to a changing environment, the result is a change in the frequencies of those alleles in that population.
But Fisher also proved that large populations sustain more genetic variation than small populations, therefore, a large population generally has a greater chance of survival in a changing environment. Given the energy requirements of reproduction, it therefore follows that energy, if directed towards reproduction, not only increases population size, but sustains more genetic variation in a population.
This brings us to heterozygosity, or the presence of different alleles at the same gene locus. This is generally a demonstrated evolutionary advantage, as the disease resistance value of heterozygosity has been noted in many species, such as rainbow trout (Ferguson, 1990), pigs (Henryon, 2001), and cattle (Lewin, 1989).
This raises an interesting question: does increasing average energy utilization in a population increase the average heterozygosity in offspring? This seems to be true, and is associated with the general tendency for genetic variation between populations to increase with geographic distance. As populations use more energy, they increase their mobility, their range, and their rate of intermingling with nearby populations.
Following this line of reasoning, increasing energy use in a population would seem to increase heterozygosity in offspring, since it increases the range of prospective mating partners. However, as previously mentioned, any increase in the population increases the total genetic variation in that population, as demonstrated by Fisher.
The energetics of genetic variation between social classes
This brings us to a particularly pernicious aspect of human behavior, and that is the energy investment associated with building genetic divergence between subpopulations. This is presumably seen in the development of social classes, and indeed, the study of Indian caste systems implicates genetic variation between castes (Bamshad et al., 2001).
Why is so much energy devoted to genetic variation between social classes?
Societies have spent extraordinary amounts of energy in the establishment of genetic variation by social class, and further, the ongoing maintenance of that genetic variation. But why?
The phenomenon of genetic drive, mentioned earlier, is in full operation in the asymmetric energy levels utilized by social class. But as the nuances of genetic variation between social classes are many, so are the complexities of class structure. First, we must consider the application of the three-or-more social class model, which is ubiquitous across cultures (see Trends in Class Warfare for a more comprehensive discussion).
The two social class model appears to be a politically unstable configuration, although it seems to yield the highest average energy utilization differential between social classes. We have previously proposed that the greater the average energy utilization differential between social classes, the slower the rate of gene exchange between them (this applies not only to social classes, but any two subpopulations in general). While the upper class would presumably drive the economic system towards maximizing their energetic advantage, over time, this also decreases the gene flow between social classes.
In a three social class model (e.g., upper, middle, and lower), gene exchange between adjacent classes is higher than gene exchange between classes that are further apart. Thus, the upper class exchanges more genes with the middle class than it does with the lower class.
Therefore, the upper class is caught in a bit of a dilemma: they can increase their average energy utilization, which can be funded, in part, by the conversion of segments of the middle class into the lower class (e.g., offshoring), but do so at the increasing risk of social instability, which induces political countermeasures to reduce their rates of energy utilization (a.k.a., increased tax rates).
This brings us to the second hypothesis of political conflict. The first hypothesis was presented in Genetic variation, group selection, and political behavior, and briefly, states that the energy devoted to political conflict between two populations changes in proportion to the total genetic distance between those two populations. Following this line of reasoning, the total energy devoted to political conflict increases until the respective sizes of competing populations reach equality.
Current genetic trends in the United States (and elsewhere) are consistent with this hypothesis. As the percentage of Hispanics increases, political conflict is also on an increasing trajectory. This hypothesis projects that the total energy expended on political conflict will increase until the Hispanic and Caucasian populations near equality, all other things being equal. However, there are compensating mechanisms, and certainly no mandate for aggregate political conflict to increase. But so far, in this latest recession, these compensating mechanisms appear to be negated by the second hypothesis of political conflict.
The second hypothesis simply states that a reduction in the energy available in a population increases political conflict among subpopulations, if those subpopulations initially have different rates of energy utilization. These subpopulations can be defined as ethnic groups, social classes, religious groups, or even political parties, as long as they have different rates of energy utilization to begin with.
Current economic trends are consistent with this hypothesis, as one of the major contributors to the heightened state of political conflict is indeed the recession (and the corresponding decline in available energy it has caused). Obviously, a population with a wide divergence in energy utilization among social classes is problematic when the energy available declines dramatically (i.e., recession). These are periods of both heightened political conflict and more importantly, from a Darwinian perspective, shifts in population gene frequencies.
The energetic adaptations of the religious
Religious organizations are close cousins to family organizations, and there is a substantial overlap of their respective behaviors. First, religious organization appears to increase altruistic behaviors by increasing the perception of genetic relatedness to other members of the religious group.
The wide usage of father, mother, brother, and sister to refer to other members of their religious group is a more obvious window into this phenomenon. Indeed, the religious indicate greater altruism to genetic relatedness than do the non-religious.
Concurrent with the religious group as being a sort of extended family with increased altruism (directed towards other members of the religious group), are a set of behaviors that are energetically adaptive, and these adaptations are usually organized around reproduction, although religious groups, like family households, also take advantage of the improved energetics of sharing of resources, the closer coordination of economic behavior, and the inhibition of spiteful behaviors.
Interestingly, religious behavior seems to facilitate a decrease in the average energy required to raise offspring to reproductive age. There are several behaviors that do this: the religious maintain larger family household sizes, which, as discussed above, takes advantage of energy efficiencies associated with sharing of household resources.
Further, the religious have increased rates of monogamy and longer duration of pair-bond relationships. This allows for not only the per capita energetic efficiencies of increased family household size (by keeping both parents under one roof), but also allows for specialization (religious households are more likely to have the mother specialize towards child-care).
Note that long-term monogamy also increases genetic relatedness in the household relative to step-parenting relationships. Interestingly, economic development correlates with an increased divorce rate. But perhaps as importantly, long-term monogamy decreases the energy required for the establishment of a new reproductive mate. Having multiple mates for reproduction has an implicitly higher cost per offspring. Thus, the religious are trading genetic variation in offspring for higher fertility, and funding this with the energetic efficiencies of long-term monogamy and increased family household size.
Interestingly, the religious can also take advantage of their close-knit ties and inward directed altruism to initiate a zero-sum game within the local capitalist economy. This game is "sell to outsiders, buy from insiders", and is played to substantial success among tightly organized religious groups. These groups know who does what, who sells what, and who buys what, and adjust their economic behavior towards the mutual benefit of those in their religious groups.
We also suspect that the strong promotion of heterosexuality and anti-abortionism is also an energetic adaptation. Human sexuality is not discretely heterosexual or homosexual, but rather, approximates a continuous spectrum that varies substantially across any population. This spectrum is modulated by both genetic and environmental influences, and the religious tend to counter the ambiguous spectrum of human sexuality by investing energy in promoting heterosexuality.
Given the presumed ability of environmental influences to improve fertility rates in those that are not completely heterosexual (or even predominately homosexual), the energy investment the religious make in promoting heterosexuality would appear to have a payoff in potentially reducing the energy drain of having poorly reproducing members in the social group. For each non-breeding homosexual, there is a corresponding reproductive energy drain in the social group. Thus, homosexuality constitutes a reproductive energy inefficiency, in that the non-breeding homosexual's energy is less likely to be directed towards reproduction than the heterosexual's.
A similar argument can be made with anti-abortionism, which is more obvious. The energy investment of pregnancy is high, and each terminated pregnancy constitutes an energy waste. This is not to say the religious are consciously taking economic positions on heterosexualy and anti-abortionism. Rather, they are more emotionally reactive to these issues, and this emotional reaction has two Darwinian payoffs, which are fertility and energy efficiency in reproduction.
Given this strong orientation towards reproduction, the energetic efficiencies of the tightly-organized religious group constitutes a unit of social organization that is destined to come into considerable conflict with social organizations on a larger scale, such as the political organization.
The energetic adaptations of political organizations and the rise of secularism
The origins of political borders constitutes one of the more interesting applications of selfish gene theory to political behavior. Political borders correlate closely with natural habitat barriers: rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, deserts, etc. The significance of this correlation lies in the fact that habitat barriers reduce gene flow between populations residing on opposite sides of the habitat barrier. And not so coincidentally, so do political borders.
The Kayser study (2005) of German and Polish genetic divergence illustrates this point. Kayser found substantial Y-chromosome variations between German and Polish populations following the general rule: the genetic border between Germany and Poland matched the political border quite. The rivers separating Germany and Poland have provided a habitat barrier that has slowed down the gene flow between these two populations, and a subsequent political barrier has arisen on top of it. The political organization of the world's territory into 194 sovereign nations is substantially under the influence of population genetics, and subserves the Darwinian function of protecting the niche to support those genetics.
The nation-state can be a very unstable level of political organization. We would therefore submit a general tendency for the stability of nation-states: the larger the territory, the greater the instability of its borders. This, of course, is only a rough tendency, and has recently played out in the former USSR.
But it isn't geographic area that is the true enemy of nation-state stability, rather, it is the corresponding genetic diversity of the various ethnic populations that inhabit it. With expanding territory comes increasing genetic divergence between populations. Political instability is found, in most nations, at the ethnic fringes, typically the remote areas of nations, which vary both genetically and geographically from the capital city.
As such, a nation-state is caught in a delicate balancing act. To improve stability, it benefits by providing for some sort of general benefit to compensate its considerable costs. One of the principal benefits of the nation-state is its ability for defending the populations (and gene pools) it represents.
A government that loses a war is not long for this world. As seen recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, nation-states are notoriously unstable after military defeats, and indeed, this constitutes one of the key events that can topple political parties, governments, and potentially shift the locations of political borders.
The practical value of nation-states is particularly relevent for political disposition, as those with conservative political dispositions consider defense to be the primary function, while liberal viewpoints are more likely to promote social welfare. To the conservative, particularly the religious conservative, the nation-state has little value other than in its ability for military competence and facilitating reproduction.
The religious conservative's altruism is expressed across lower genetic distance, with a corresponding propensity to organize their behavior into local religious and family social structures. To them, the nation-state is a substantial compromise to this natural tendency to organize locally.
Thus the nation-state presents quite a dilemma for the conservative. However, conservatives are naturally predisposed to responding to potential threats from outgroups (see The Neuropsychology of the Apocalypse), and this is a tremendous force underlying the conservative's support for organizing into a nation-state. Conservative governments are indeed quite notable for their focus on increased military expenditures.
Unimpeded by liberals, the religious conservatives will quickly attempt to organize nation-states along religious lines (e.g., base laws in accordance to their religious canon), which can cause considerable political conflict, particularly if the nation-state is religiously and genetically diverse.
But the religious conservative tendency to drive nation-states to organize religiously raises the question: does this create an energetic inefficiency in a religiously and genetically diverse population? An argument can certainly be constructed that it does, as the resulting political (and violent) conflict of religiously organized nation-states constitutes an expenditure of energy and a disruption of economic behavior, if indeed that nation-state is substantially large and diverse. Although interesting speculation, we know of no studies that corroborate this hypothesis.
While organizing nation-states religiously may indeed prove to be an energetic efficiency in smaller, less diverse populations, in larger diverse populations, this efficiency becomes negative, and the secular state constitutes a greater energetic payoff in reduced political (and violent) conflict and less disruption in economic behavior.
It is probably no coincidence that the rise of the secular nation-state has correlated with both increased genetic and religious diversity, along with increased economic specialization and cooperation across a wider range of genetics. Secularism, therefore, would seem to constitute an energetic adaptation.
Conservatism, liberalism, energy use, and the optimization of biomass
One of our proposals, which drew many complaints from our conservative audience, was that conservatives utilize more energy than liberals (both in total, and per capita). We were not initially confident with this argument, as it only had one thing going for it: conservatives produce more children than liberals.
Over the years, other evidence was also hinting at the enhanced conservative propensity for energy consumption: larger homes, more and larger cars (and a lower propensity to use mass transit), and a greater propensity to consume meat, particularly beef.
Interestingly, the conservatives were also more likely to be engaged in the energy extraction industries, and further, more likely to select occupations in transportation and construction. They were certainly giving every indication of being the "energetic" part of the political spectrum, not to mention their highly energetic political polemic, such as "drill baby, drill".
But there is other evidence that indicates a probable liberal advantage when it comes to per capita energy consumption. Cabrera and Jaffe (1998), in their cross-cultural study of energy use concluded: "Established urban societies optimize the average energy consumption per individual as the society increases in size, where larger urban societies are more efficient in optimizing energy use."
Thus, urban areas are more energy efficient, per capita, than smaller-size communities. Further, the longer a community exists, the more energy efficient it tends to become. Given the urbanistic tendencies of liberalism, this is certainly consistent with the theory that liberals are more energy efficient than conservatives (see The Thermodynamics of Conservatives and Liberals). Liberalism seems to keep populations at a slightly higher average age than conservatism, which is an energy efficiency.
But it also raises the question: does liberalism increase the biomass supportable by a given amount of energy? This is indeed a fundamental question, especially as it relates to the future of the human species. If liberalism can sustain more human biomass than conservatism, doesn't this constitute a compelling Darwinian argument for the expansion of liberalistic attitudes as population size increases?
Conservatism and liberalism are two solutions to the problem of human species survival, which varies based on population density and the carrying capacity of the habitat. Remarkably, in order to optimize economic (and energy) production, an admixture of conservatives and liberals (and other political phenotypes) seems to be required, since the various political-religious cognitive styles correlate with different occupational preferences and efficiencies.
We shall revisit the Darwinian problem of the energetics of human biomass and political-religious affiliation in our next edition, when we take a closer look at the results of our economic survey. As we shall see, conservatives and liberals have been adapting to this recent recession (i.e., decrease in energy) in some interesting and very Darwinian ways. So well, in fact, that it appears they really didn't need all the excess energy created in the previous economic expansion after all.
Charles Brack, October 2010
See my short piece on conservatives and liberals in Rita Carter's 2010 edition of Mapping the Mind.
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