by Rick Bayan
(September 1997) I don't know about you, but I used to suspect that I might be part Neanderthal.
As evidence I would cite my prominent brow-ridge, slightly hunched shoulders and inability to follow the plots of most James Bond movies. My table manners and housekeeping skills have always bordered on the Paleolithic. I'm incapable of giving myself a clean shave, and by noon I'm already sporting a conspicuous shadow. At business meetings I tend to nod blankly at the speaker to feign comprehension. I'm heavy on my feet. People who can type 60 words a minute are a marvel to me. I like barbecued meat and will always prefer it to pasta with pesto sauce. I've never understood computer error messages like "No carrier received from modem"; I simply mutter at the screen while black smoke slowly billows from my ears.
In short, I had reason to believe that I harbored more than a few residual genes from those lumpy and ill-favored humanoids. I was reasonably proud of my Neanderthal heritage, and I viewed myself as a stubborn survivor in the ancient warfare of evolution.
Now comes a report from the scientific community that all vestiges of the Neanderthal line almost certainly died with them. There is no evidence, they say, that Neanderthals ever interbred with our race, or that any of us have carried their genes into the Microsoft age.
I was sorely disappointed to hear the news, as you might imagine. Was it possible that not a single Neanderthal ever warmed his hide with any of our ancestors during those long, desolate Ice Age nights? That none of them ever once got lucky with those uppity Cro-Magnons who begat our tribe? How unfortunate. How sad for them. How patently unfair!
Think about it: an entire gene pool of earnest, sturdy heathens, obliterated for all eternity... victims, like the pteranodon and the giant ground sloth, of evolutionary pressures that forced them out of contention like a mom-and-pop bookstore in the shadow of a Barnes & Noble. Natural selection, triumphant again -- ensuring, as always, the survival of the fittest rather than the survival of the good or the amusing or the most interesting.
Frankly, I'm sick of it. Why should the fortunes of individuals or species be determined solely on the basis of how effectively they ADAPT? What about intrinsic traits like character, wit, kindness, imagination or the ability to recite the Gettysburg Address in Pig Latin? As far as I'm concerned, a world that values adaptability over singularity gets the kind of creatures it deserves, like ticks and yuppies.
Even worse, we creatures actually HELP nature sift out the "unfit" minority from the "fit" majority. This instinct runs so deep in our bones that you can see it at work among children. A beefy little bully picks on a bespectacled tot who wants nothing more than to be left in peace while he reads Aristotle. The bully has sensed that the bookworm is different from the herd: physically inert, a bit withdrawn, feeble of limb, eccentric. In other words, the bully has surmised what the gods already know: this boy is "unfit" for the battles of life.
So what does the bully do? He isolates the bookworm from the herd, pummels his body and lacerates his self-esteem, making him even less likely than before to thrive in the world, find a suitable mate and pass along his genes. Wittingly or not, he has aided the ruthless forces of natural selection.
And what about all the innocent juvenile bystanders who observe the bully in action? Don't they rush to the aid of the overmatched underdog? Don't they use their combined strength to restrain the oppressor and help the bludgeoned bookworm to his feet?
Guess again. More often than not, they actually JOIN the bully in tormenting his victim. By allying themselves with a dominant male, they've raised their own odds of thriving in the world, finding a suitable mate, and passing along their traits unto all the generations. The bottom line: they've bet their genes on the winning side.
And what happens to the bully? He gains stature among his friends and acquaintances, swelling his ego and preparing him to step into the world as a certified alpha male. Fortunately, nature has been charitable in one respect: most bullies are also fairly stupid. This fellow won't win a graduate fellowship at Yale. But he'll probably run his own construction firm and earn five times as much as the little scholar he pummeled. He'll win the favors of a susceptible woman, sire more children than the bookworm, discard his original mate in favor of a trophy wife, sire still more offspring, buy an absurdly large boat and spend his golden years comfortably developing skin cancer in the Florida Keys. He'll still be stupid, but in the eyes of the Darwinian gods he'll be the eternal fair-haired boy.
As for the others -- the onlookers -- they've absorbed a principle that will help them navigate the choppy waters of life for decades to come. It's called moral relativism, and it goes something like this: Ask not what's good or evil; ask what's in it for me.
This genetically motivated self-interest persists through life, as any student of sociobiology will gladly tell you. Adolescents are famous for their social machinations; they'd kill to be accepted by their local in-crowd, even if that crowd is distinguished by nothing more than a fondness for body piercing and wearing Tommy Hilfiger's name somewhere on their persons. (Ask them who Tommy Hilfiger is and you'll be met with a blank stare; he's just, you know, this NAME.)
The in-crowd traditionally embodies the most desirable gene pool in adolescent society: predominantly blond, lithe, well-heeled, extroverted and appealingly shallow. Their ranks are carefully screened to exclude genetic packages deemed odd or inferior -- including those inordinately bright ones who answer to the appellation "geek." An invitation to an in-crowd party carries substantially more weight than an invitation to a geekfest; to be conspicuously associated with the chosen few is the teenage equivalent of nirvana.
Generally personable, bright (but rarely intellectual), reasonably aggressive, socially skilled and sexually astute, the in-crowders are admirably equipped for the business of life: finding a profitable niche, procuring a desirable mate and propagating their genes. While the rise of the computer industry has been a shot in the arm for the geeks of the world, chances are their bosses will be former in-crowders.
Yuppies are in-crowders with good jobs. Like adolescents, they display a uniformity of taste and attitude that serves them handsomely in the pursuit of status. This uniformity makes it easier to associate with socially desirable friends, find socially desirable mates and -- no surprise here! -- propagate those socially desirable genes.
What distinguishes yuppie culture from most mainstream in-groups is its affectation of singularity. No meat loaf and mashed potatoes for these enlightened folks. All good yuppies strive to achieve a unique personal style -- as long as it's identical to the style prescribed by their peers. "You mean YOU like goat-cheese pizza with sun-dried tomatoes, too? Will you marry me?" What a surprise. Fussy neo-Italian cuisine, pretentious children's names and raspberry wheat beer all go with the territory. Yuppies enjoy the illusion of individuality without the risk -- or the social isolation.
By contrast, true individualists are always at odds with the universe. Set adrift by their peculiar tastes and interests, they spend their lives searching for kindred spirits and a compatible mate. They are hopelessly out of step with the business world and its trivial urgencies. Their priorities are not the priorities of their neighbors. They are unique; therefore they are alone.
Chances are they will produce no offspring to perpetuate their singular genes. Think of Sir Isaac Newton, Jonathan Swift, Beethoven, Thoreau, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Kafka. All of them odd birds. All of them celibate. All of them childless. Eccentricity, no matter how brilliant, has never been a propagator of nations.
In the end, these remarkable individualists are brothers to the sorry Neanderthals: their genes die with them, leaving not a trace on future generations. They've been expelled from the communal gene pool. They've been isolated, selected out, cast among the unfit. As nature evidently intended it should be.
Sometimes nature is a bully.
