Words are imperfect creations, each one dependent upon our individual experiences for its meaning, yet we expect our words to be understood by others. So everyone would benefit by being more careful with them. Several very simple words are creating all sorts of mischief, especially when mixing science with popular culture.
Prime among them is “natural.” In earlier days, natural referred to the realm of the Earth, while spirits controlled the “unnatural.” Natural now refers to all activity on Earth except for man’s. So it’s natural for doves to mate for life and for lions to kill and consume their young but unnatural to plant gardens.
Man is taken with his exceptionality, but biologists aren’t. To biologists, man is just another organism, so all he does is natural. Nurturing our babies is natural. Homosexuality is natural. Genocide is natural. Caring for our crippled and aged is natural. Pedophilia is natural.
Another troublesome word is “normal.” All normal means is what is most common. Most blue jays build their nests in the spring, so that is seen as normal, but there are always some blue jays that build their nests in the fall. The males of some species of spider mate once and then die, and while most manage to find a correct and willing female, some mate with dead insects or the wrong species and then die.
Anyone who studies nature quickly discovers that it is filled with tremendous variation, some of it poignant in its futility. To human eyes, these organisms simply get things wrong and shouldn’t be considered normal. The great majority of organisms we encounter are normal; that is, they exhibit a similar suite of attributes, but exceptions and outliers always appear.
In the old parlance, these were “monsters.” The production of monsters is itself natural. “Aberrant” is statistical, not pejorative.
Man elaborates complex moralities, but nature is amoral. There are only two sins in nature: failure to survive and failure to reproduce.
The penalty for offending these isn’t hell; it’s extinction. Biologists recognize this primacy in their recursion equations — the algorithms that predict the future makeup of a population given the fitness of its individuals. Fitness is a function of survival and reproduction, since if you don’t survive, you can’t reproduce, and even if you live for a very long time, if you don’t reproduce, the future will go on without your kind.
“Survival of the fittest” doesn’t mean the survival of the “best,” only of those who contribute the most, biologically, to the future. Reproduction is the be-all and end-all of the living world.
There is tremendous variation in reproductive strategies in nature. Some unicells have multiple sexual versions or “genders.” Multicellular organisms reproduce asexually, producing clones, or have two genders that have come to be termed male and female.
Some invertebrates incorporate both genders in the same organism, while some vertebrates can transition from one gender to another. But there is no continuum of sexuality within any organism. There is no sexual ambiguity in nature. At any time, all multicellular organisms function as either male or female or they do not function.
In humans, gender is fixed at conception. There are genetic abnormalities that produce sterile individuals who do not conform to either gender. There are developmental abnormalities that don’t allow individuals to evince secondary sexual characteristics, so their physical appearance does not conform to their genetic nature. But there is no in-between gender in humans.
All reproduction in humans results from the mating of opposing genders. There is no exception to this. No human is the offspring of two mommies or daddies. Every human is the result of a heterosexual act, even if it occurs in a clinic rather than a bed. Homosexuals only get children by their own or someone else’s heterosexuality.
People like to think themselves above nature, but the same rules apply to us as to every other organism. Variation is important; it provides the internal diversity from which nature will choose, by her unforgiving standards, what the future form will be.
There is a tremendous amount of hopeful sloppiness in nature. There are always some blue jays building their doomed autumn nests. There are always spiders mating with dead insects, thinking that they have fulfilled their lives’ destinies.
“Natural” selection weeds these organisms out. Their fitness is zero. They contribute nothing to the future. It’s how nature works, producing a dynamic world filled with vigorous life. As rational beings, we question nature, but successfully working with nature means respecting her wisdom.
In our cultural rush to be accepting of the aberrant, we too often neglect to celebrate and treasure the “normal” members of our communities who simply get things right. They are the ones who allow our species to survive and flourish. They are mankind’s future.
John Blasiak lives in Greenfield.