Overactive taking care gene

[Tero]

We have a megachuch a mile away. Not the biggest, but I am sure the send people on missions. A bus load takes off and saves a Mexican village. Others go save Orphans in Russia.

Save fetuses. Marry death row inmates. Save abused pets.It goes on and on.

So Im thinking there is probably a gene for this. If you have time and money you go and save things. The mothering gene in overdrive.

I had a conversation on Texas abotions with a Finnish lady there. She gave me a number. I asked her if she wanted those extra 5 children now. I was going to give each Texas couple 5 children. The ones she had saved.

She never responded.

[Ronja]

Something akin to this?

In The Ape and the Sushi Master, de Waal points out that Darwin, like Aristotle and Aristotle’s contemporary, the Chinese sage Mencius, thought kindness and co-operation must be based on natural instincts. It was Huxley, he writes, who distorted Darwinism into ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. Nowadays, the metaphor of the ‘selfish gene’ has done much to purge the wishful thinking that genes, or animals, will sacrifice themselves for larger wholes like the good of the species. However, if genes gain reproductive advantage by co-operation instead of competition, fine – they go for co-operation. De Waal moves up several levels from genes and genomes to explore how individual animals may have evolved to want to help each other.

He has a wonderful photograph of a dog stepping daintily over the head of a recumbent tiger, who opens an eye to look up as she passes. They live together in a zoo in Thailand. Zookeepers gave three tiger cubs to the dog to suckle along with her own puppy. De Waal points out that she sacrificed energy that could have been devoted to her own potential reproductive effort, because she had evolved nurturing instincts for needy babies, even if they did smell funny and have stripes. The grown tigers now observe one of our own rules: honour your mother, and don’t eat her. She is top dog in the group. (The tigers haven’t lost their predatory instincts: de Waal watched uneasily as their yellow eyes followed the three-year-old human child he took to the zoo.)

It is easy to see why parents’ care for children and children’s respect for parents have evolved. How far such feelings spread varies from species to species. A wolf or a wild dog suckles her pack-mate’s young, and, it is said, even human wolf-children. A sheep, on the other hand, defends herself against rearing others. Lambs run through the whole herd, and could easily steal milk if allowed to. But a ewe learns her own new-born’s smell as she licks off the birth fluids. After that she will suckle no other lamb, butting away any interlopers. Primates, like dogs, are good adopters. Within a monkey troop, or even among ring-tailed lemurs, females may nurse and carry the young of related females. Orphans who are old enough to feed themselves can be reared by other animals – even by males. Not always, of course, but often enough to suggest it’s a widespread trait of our whole lineage. Two cases of human children falling into gorilla enclosures at the zoo have hit the newspaper headlines. Jambo, a silverback in Jersey, stood guard over an unconscious five-year-old until help came. Binti Jua, a female in Chicago, picked the baby up and carried it back to the door to give to her keepers. As de Waal points out, it is nonsense to think that gorillas, famous for long-term individual recognition, and in Binti Jua’s case with her own baby on her back, might not distinguish a little blond boy in red trainers from a gorilla infant. It’s just that many primates like babies – even those of other species.

More here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n18/alison-jol ... here-is-me

If the caring instinct can be twisted by mere circumstances - how much more effectively can it be twisted, if those wanting to twist it are doing it goal-orientedly and deliberately, having been twisted themselves to believe that they are caring for those they are twisting - caring for their souls and their very fates during eternal life?

[Tero]

Yes, something like that.

And the weakthy suburbanites have the funds to do it.

We ourselves are rausing an exchange student for a school year. No bebefit to us. Others take students from poor countries only.

[Tero]

Saving critters is always popular for movies:

[amused]

I've made it a rule to not date women who have pets.

I don't date much.

May be time to rethink that...

[Tero]

You could always turn the woman into a pet, just need the bunny costume.