The Synergy Conjecture

This is based on a SS class I conducted at Park View Mennonite Church in November of 2009. It begins to develop a language, a set of metaphors, for talking about our understanding of God, a language that comes from Biology, especially ecology, genetics, and evolution, and the concept of synergy. Like any metaphor for God it is limited and broken, and this presentation is very cursory. “The Synergy Conjecture” is the conjecture that such language can be the basis for a secular language with the scope of religious language.

The gene pool of the gray squirrel species, today, is defined as follows. Take one set of chromosomes from each living gray squirrel (say ahhh, mouth swab, isolate one cell, remove its chromosomes), unravel each chromosome into its two strands, chop those strands at the gene boundaries, and put the resulting molecules into a bag, when you’re done with all the squirrels, that bag contains the gray squirrel gene pool. A gene variant, producing say a slightly longer tail, can increase the reproductive success of squirrels who carry that variant. So if you compare the bag you got when you did a census of all the gray squirrels 10 years ago to the bag you got with this year’s census, you find that that variant has more copies in the new pool than in the old pool. Call that “prospering”, the gene variant has prospered. Note I’m not talking about the squirrels prospering, not any individual squirrel nor set of squirrels, because they all die, but the gene variant, or identical copies thereof, prospers.

[Those of you who know some biology, technical note, I’ll frequently use the word “gene” today when I should use the term “gene variant” or “allele”. Forgive me.]

In symbiotic behavior, a gene, say in a Grouper (a species of fish) for NOT eating the shrimp that clean the mites off their gills, costs those Groupers who carry that gene some good eats. But the decrease in their mites might have more benefit to those Groupers’ reproductive success than the cost of the loss of the eats, and thereby the number of copies of the gene is increased. Note that if a gene arises in the shrimp that lets them recognize that species of Grouper and learn to no longer fear them but hang out in the safety of the Grouper’s mouth and gills, that gene will also increase the number of copies of itself in the shrimp gene pool, and we have a symbiotic relationship. Two genes, in two different species, prosper.

So one can have first order prospering, where your behavior directly benefits your reproductive success, or second order, in which a behavior of species A benefits species B which has a behavior which benefits A, or third order, A, B, C to A, and so on into what I’ll call the web effect: a whole ecosystem is stable because the genes in a web of interlocking cooperative behaviors prosper. Each participant is engineered, by long evolution, to cooperate within the web, and the micropayments of the system to each member outweigh the costs of those behaviors, and in all those species all the genes that promote those behaviors prosper.

If a new source of energy opens up, say a mutation in a species of bacteria living in the gut of an insect permits it to get energy from the previously undigestible bark of the ClamClam tree, then the bacteria population grows, the insect digests the bacteria, the birds eat the insects, their poop feeds the lichens which are eaten by the mice which are eaten… and that new energy source is available to the web, which will slowly adapt to the new situation. As long as energy sources remain stable, the web grows in diversity to take advantage of every discoverable efficiency in the use of that energy.

Now words are limited, and the word “cooperation” isn’t perfect here, I’m stretching it to mean behavior which is ‘win-win’, which gives positive feedback to the ‘prospering’ of the parties involved. The word “synergy” might be better, but today I’ll use “cooperation” and “synergy” rather interchangeably. In particular I don’t mean “catering to”, or wholly sacrificial behavior, nor do I mean whatever keeps the system the same, because you’ve got to allow new information to disrupt the system, it’s got to be able to learn. So be careful, and for the moment bear with me with my abuse of the word “cooperation”. Think “long term viability provided by a large basis of interrelated behaviors that effectively harness the available energy sources and enhance their mutual persistence”: cooperation.

It’s positive feedback. Given enough time, ecosystems tend towards webs of cooperative behaviors. Call this the “trend to cooperation”. The trend to cooperation is natural selection of a very fundamental kind. We’re not talking about particulars: adapting to how much water there is, or sunlight, or are you on land or at sea or on Titan. We’re talking about systems logic, that implies that regardless of the physical particulars of a situation, ecosystems tend to cooperation.

Wait, some of you are objecting: things get eaten out there, how can they be cooperating with the things that eat them? Hold fire a minute, I’ll show you how that is cooperation, bear with me.

Now for the dark side, think about an invasive species. Say gypsy moth. It owes nothing to the ecosystem it invades, its caterpillar eats some member of the ecosystem, say oaks whose population levels are maintained by the ecosystem as a valuable member of the system. But the invasive gypsy moth has no predator in the invaded ecosystem, it is a parasite on the cooperative system. The moth profits by the ecosystem’s payments to the oaks, but killing the oaks greatly diminishes all the behavioral roles whereby oaks used to contribute to the ecosystem. The gypsy moths are on easy street, fat pickings, and they prosper greatly, for a while. Then their success is their failure, and their population crashes. If the oaks go extinct, the whole ecosystem is permanently changed. If all the kinds of tree the moth can eat go extinct, the moths do too. More likely, the ecosystem becomes much less efficient for a while, neither oaks nor moths go wholly extinct, and then after many generations, some other species changes to eat gypsy moths, or the gypsy moths change to make themselves edible or to produce some other costly benefit to some other species, and slowly the logic of cooperation again takes hold, and a new web of interdependent cooperation evolves. The trend to cooperation asserts itself slowly, but surely.

Now the objection I mentioned: how can the moth being eaten be called the moth cooperating? Remember to think on the level of the gene: if the gene can sacrifice this copy of itself, to profit some other species, that through the web of relationships causes the population of oak trees to be maintained, then the gene has avoided extinction, and the exchange is worth it. It’s the gene that cooperates, not the moth.

To summarize the tension between parasites and cooperation: New parasites are always possible. A healthy ecosystem is a sweet place for a new parasite. But the trend to cooperation will eventually turn long-term parasites into cooperative members, or they will go extinct.

Done with biology. Now I’m going to start to use this language. Let’s make an analogy between the evolution of genes and the evolution of cultures. A language evolves, a culture evolves, a society evolves, a person evolves. I don’t want to push the analogy too far, but I do think a case can be made that webs of reinforcing cooperative human behaviors exhibit similar dynamics to ecosystems. Each role is engineered, by long evolution, to cooperate within the society, and the micropayments of “the system” to each member outweigh the costs of those behaviors, and in all those individuals whatever promotes those behaviors prospers. In societies, there is a trend to cooperation. Think of the trend to cooperation as selection for personality traits that favor cooperative behavior, because of the benefits of cooperation.

Parasitic behaviors are always possible. But the trend to cooperation will eventually turn long-term parasites into cooperative members, or they will go extinct. To quote from a more familiar language, “that it may go well with you in the land” (Exodus 20:12), that you will be “multiplied exceedingly” (Genesis 17:2).

This trend to cooperation is powerful. It has shaped the biosphere we live in. All the species around us have been honed by evolution, many levels deep, to cooperative behavior. It’s not eat and be eaten, on the gene level, it’s cooperation.

Careful, by cooperation I do NOT mean socialization: doing what your parents, or your ruler, or your group, tells you to do. Being cooperative implies stability inducing—which, taking the longer view, may mean not cooperating with what your acculturation tells you to do. Your received culture may need to change in order to survive.

I would argue that cooperative traits are understandable to us, because the trend to cooperation has honed us throughout evolution, we have been formed by it. It is our progenitor, our father and our mother, who art in our future, who has been in our past, since way the beginning, and whom we can feel in us, now. We have been built that way, cast in that mold, forged in that image.

So how do you like my new language for talking about God? In this new language, God is “the trend to cooperation, or synergy.” Did you notice the definition of omnipotence: “the trend to cooperation asserts itself slowly, but surely.”? But before I throw this open to discussion, I want to DO something with my new language. That’s what a new language should do for us, permit us to understand and say certain things more easily than before.

So here’s one: this new language lets us sort out the implacable nature of God from the merciful. How can God be both implacable and merciful? Well, the trend towards cooperation is not something to be bargained with, like an idol that can be placated by an offering. You can’t negotiate with the trend to cooperation, it’s absolute, it’s going to put selection pressure on us regardless of what we do.

Now for the mercy part: one personality trait that the implacable trend to cooperation is going to select for, is arguably mercy. Mercy could well be a cooperative behavior, one of the traits of a cooperative suite of behaviors. There’s an implacable process, that produces a merciful behavior. This distinction is the classical distinction between God and His Spirit: If God is the implacable trend to cooperation, then his Spirit, the behavior that’s trended to, that has been been bred into us, is merciful. So God can be implacable, and his Spirit be merciful. Cool, we mainstream American Christians haven’t been able to talk about an implacable God for several generations now. It’s time.

Notice the role of time. Parasitism has a short term benefit, but destabilizes the ecosystem. Either the parasite will die out, or the system will domesticate the parasite and turn it to cooperation. But that takes time. Evil is short term success, good is long term.