I think overall you're right and I love your metaphor...but just to defend evolution for a second. Evolution doesn't predict that reproduction should overwhelm drives like intelligence and morality, nor is the existence of such drives outside the explanatory range of evolution. Evolution predicts that drives like intelligence and morality will exist to serve the need to reproduce. Human beings are intelligent because smarter proto-humans were better able to figure out how to get food and resist predators, and therefore could reproduce more. We're moral because a society in which each human is willing to sacrifice him or herself for the good of the group is a more cohesive society and, on average, is able to reproduce more (source: studies with prairie dogs (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-inclusive-fitness.htm)). As such, I don't believe we ever defy our instinctual drives, only strike a balance between various instinctual drives of different levels, all of which originally existed to perpetuate genetic material.
(This is all sort of reminding me of Paul Erdös and his "Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated" spiel)
But to treat evolution as if it has feelings or preferences is silly. It sounds like the people about whom you're talking want to think that you're somehow offending evolution and making baby Darwin cry. On the other hand, for you to accuse people with a stronger sex drive than intellectual drive of "ingratitude" sounds like the same "heresy". From an evolutionary standpoint, there is no meaning to life that makes one set of drives better than another. Evolution is just the observation that things that self-perpetuate tend to be around more than things that don't.
I hope you don't mind that detailed and contrarian a response. If you ask me not to do it again, I'll listen.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-07-24 01:42 am (UTC)(This is all sort of reminding me of Paul Erdös and his "Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated" spiel)
But to treat evolution as if it has feelings or preferences is silly. It sounds like the people about whom you're talking want to think that you're somehow offending evolution and making baby Darwin cry. On the other hand, for you to accuse people with a stronger sex drive than intellectual drive of "ingratitude" sounds like the same "heresy". From an evolutionary standpoint, there is no meaning to life that makes one set of drives better than another. Evolution is just the observation that things that self-perpetuate tend to be around more than things that don't.
I hope you don't mind that detailed and contrarian a response. If you ask me not to do it again, I'll listen.