“Is God A Conservative?”
What we learn from nature is that conformity, conventional behavior and conservative living systems, are adequate and adapted to their environmental and social conditions. They remain stable and unchanging in their adapted environment which becomes the norm. What is adapted biologically and behaviorally to environmental conditions usually survive and thrive. They become the majority within the species and in the adapted environment. They become consistent, predictable, and are the embodiment of preconceived normality. But when faced with environmental change they become unstable and are unable to adapt. They become stagnant and do not evolve. They become evolutionary dead ends. Adapted and conservative human systems are no different. Their economies, political and social ideologies are no different than natural animal adapted systems. They are less likely to adapt to change or to embrace change. They are more likely to opposed and to suppress change. They embrace conformity, consistency and what worked for them in the past. Conservative ideology embraces and remembers what worked in the past, and prohibits adaptation to changing environments and behaviors. They are stuck in the past and it leads to evolutionary dead ends.
If nature and human behavior remained the same forever, then conservatism would be fine. We would be one happy adapted, conservative and consistent human society. But nature and humans are far from being consistent. They are unpredictable, dynamic and ever changing. Nature does not favor the adapted, the consistent or the conformed. It favors those that are inconsistent in their biology, behavior and ability to adapt. Nature favors variety and differences, not likeness and similarity. Nothing remains the same for very long, and that which does not change with the dynamics of nature, is doomed to perish. When natural or human caused catastrophic change happens, which it most certainly will, it is the biologically or behaviorally adapted that will suffer. They are the ones who will not be critical of their own behaviors enough to change with the times, or are physically unable to adapt to changing environments. In the long run nature does not favor that which is already adapted and conformed, it favors that which may adapt, that which is unique in its ability to survive. With humans it favors that which is different from the rest, the odd ball out, the physically different, the creative, the critical or the progressive thinkers. Those that were different biologically and behaviorally will have the best chance of surviving the destruction or the new changed environment.
One hundred to seventy thousand years ago, when the African continent was experiencing severe climatic change and humans were slowly becoming extinct. It was a group of humans that were different from the rest that survived while everyone else was perishing and unable to adapt to the changing environment. Physically and biologically they looked no different from the rest, but behaviorally they were different enough to increase their survival. Their survival enabled them to pass on their genetics. We can now recognize them as being ever so slightly different genetically from the humans that ultimately perished from the African continent. These surviving humans were slightly more creative tool makers, enabling them to adapt to and to survive the changing environment. Their behavior slightly more social with other groups of humans, establishing trade with them. These are the humans we all come from. They are the humans that inherited the African continent and eventually left Africa and migrated to every corner of the planet. They are the humans that eventually adapted to every environment on this planet, even at the cost of evolving and changing physically themselves. It was the nature of these humans to adapt. It is our nature to adapt and to not conform. Adaptation not conformism or conservatism is what enables humans to survive.
We are still the same species only with slight physical differences. Every human is slightly different genetically than the rest. That is the gift of nature. It favors variety. Even identical twins are slightly different from one another genetically. If you believe in god and that god is the creator of everything including nature, then god is nature and god favors change, differences and inconsistencies. God does not favor conformity, consistency and conservatism. God is not a conservative. God is nature and nature is unpredictable, destructive and everchanging. We must be willing to adapt, which means willing to change. We must be willing to change behaviors, ideology and embrace differences. We must be critical and open to progressive and liberal thought. We can embrace the past, but we must not live in the past. We must learn what this old African Sankofa symbol teaches us. “We must remember and learn from the past in order to move into the future.”
David Yanez
2-20-2021