Og, Ig, Eg, and Ag

Interesting idea about  Eg, Ig's cousin, taking a few shortcuts probably in making his arrowheads more quickly and almost as effective as Ig's, so that he was able to undercut Ig, dominate the arrow trade, and have his way with more of the fair maidens.  That is until Ag came along.  He didn't have better arrowheads than Ig, and he couldn't make them as fast as Eg. but he knew how to promote them, carved little graffitis on the cave wall and had some kind of traveling show, He realized that seeming to be good, was even better than actually being good, so that it was more important to put your efforts directly into appearing to be good, rather than putting it into being good and hoping that people would notice.

But again you guys, these are metaphors not stories. I can see where in tonight's seminar, unless we are barred from the seminary door for not  having the hundred dollar cover charge, where i might use the metaphor, the early bird catches the worm, and see Old Dog crinkle his brow and say what if the later bird is late because he stayed up until midnight the night before inventing a worm detector, which allowed him to find the worms before the early bird could get to them?

You know that story about the competition between Eg and Ig has parallels with the assembly line.  Ig was a craftsman, unlike Og, (remember Og?) who was merely putting out arrowheads that were good enough, Ig took pride in his work, made arrowheads of exceptional beauty, and maybe with aesthetic flourishes, he was kind of his own man, taking pride in his work, whereas Eg had no problem in pandering to the masses. A story there, how the assembly line did in the old masters.


Last morning I came across a copy of The Selfish Gene, and there was a banner across the cover, put  there no doubt by an ancestor of Ag, announcing this was the fortieth anniversary of the first edition.  How time flies.   Anyway in response to Old Dog's question of if we are the product of the most successful genes, why are we in such turmoil, it's because the object of the selfish gene is just to make more replicas of itself, not to make this a better world.  As long as it is replicating itself the selfish gene has no problem with income inequality or war or those unpleasant things that make things miserable for most people

But, as Beagles points out, the selfish gene doesn't need to be competitive all the time, sometimes it makes more sense to cooperate.  If all us humans were mega competitive we would still be fighting in the Serengeti.  It is good for the sake of the selfish gene if all humans do well, lifting all boats as it were, but then it is better still if everybody around you is nicey nicey and you can take advantage of them, but better for them if they develop genes to dislike people who take advantage of them,