 
### From Stardust To Soul

The Evolution Of Values

Neil L Griffiths

Published by Neil Griffiths 2013

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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from Right Here, Right Now by Jesus Jones

### The Author

Neil Griffiths trained as a Chartered Surveyor and worked in property investment and development in London for almost 20 years before he decided he had had quite enough of that, and his then wife decided she had quite enough of him. He then returned to doing the things he had loved doing in childhood: playing with ideas, painting, inventing, making things, composing music and thinking about why things are as they are and how they might be different. In 2000 he met Jane Rosser (who was then working as head of people at the coffee chain Café Nerro) at a party and asked her what her dream was. She said it was to run her own business. After two businesses, a marriage, two sons and a move to a rural idyll in Wiltshire, they are working together as directors of Song, a consultancy that helps organizations and their people find better ways of realizing their dreams and ambitions.

Cover art: Airfield Angelus (N L Griffiths) with kind permission from the David Lathwood AAIW Collection

This book identifies and follows the single thread that leads from Big Bang and the origin of all matter, through 4 billion years of evolution to the operation of the human brain and the thing we call soul. Gathering information from the breadth of scientific knowledge – physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, neuroscience and psychology – and relating it to aspects of human endeavour as diverse as sex, sport, humour, politics, music and business, so as to reveal the mechanisms at work.

Written in order we might better understand what makes us, and the world around us tick, it explains not only why we do what we do but where we are going; in turns: thought provoking, enlightening, amusing and alarming.

Dedicated to Jane, Jack & Noah

For giving me what I foolishly once thought I could take for granted, and then thought would never be mine, and for giving me that which I never dreamt possible.

Index

you can navigate directly to the chapters from this index

to return to the index just touch the chapter heading you have just navigated to

Foreword

Stability From Chaos: The Bedrock of Existence

The Basic Building Blocks

Brainpower

Brain Function \+ Memes

The Bare Bones of Psychology: False Dawns & Enlightenment

Need

Values

The Envelope of Needs and Values

Mental Processing + Perception + Deciding What To Do – Taking Action

Values – An Evolutionary Perspective

Tradition + Conformity + Security + Power + Achievement + Hedonism + Stimulation + Self-Direction + Universalism + Benevolence

Using Values To See What Makes Us Tick

SDs + ODs + TDs \+ IDs + MDs + Interpreting Mixed Value Systems + Development Patterns

The Evolution of Cultural Values

Soul

Music + Tastes In Food, Drink & Sex + Stress + Anger & Aggression + Competitive Sport + Guilt + Humour + Morality + Personality

The Final Chapter

So What?

This book refers frequently to DNA (Dominant Needs Analysis). This is a needs and values based tool that informs a range of personal and organizational development consultancy initiatives. It was developed by Neil Griffiths with the support of Prof. Shalom Schwartz of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This book also frequently refers to DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) which developed Neil Griffiths, Prof. Shalom Schwartz and you, amongst others, as well as permitting the development of DNA (Dominant Needs Analysis).

Foreword

Why can some people write novels able to capture the imagination of millions, while the words of others seem to lie flat and lifeless on the page? Why are some people able to make millions in business while others work just as hard yet never make a penny? Why are some people like a volcano of emotions ready to erupt at any time while others never seem to get their feathers ruffled? Why are some people engaging and others impenetrable? Why do some people lie and cheat while others are kind? Why are some people passionate lovers and others a little more restrained? Why do people vote for different political parties? Why do people enter politics? Why do some people become ruthless dictators? Why do others follow them, let alone become devoted to them? Why do some people believe in God and others don't? Why do we live in a capitalist society when so many call themselves socialists? Why do some people care about the environment and others aren't bothered? What makes us different? Why should this be? Would it be better, for our own sakes and others, if we were different from the way we are? If so, how might we change?

The purpose of this book is to try to answer these questions.

The search for the answers has taken me into the realm of psychology. This is not always a great place to be. While the mists of ignorance have largely retreated from most areas of the heath of human understanding, in so doing exposing the proclamations of snake oil salesmen, intoxicated shamen and their ilk to the revealing light of science, in the world of psychology patchy mists prevail, obscuring evidence and inhibiting rational analysis. The 'wisdom' of the Victorian and Edwardian ages, and of older traditions, lingers, miasma like, in the airless hollows.

My professional involvement with psychology relates to the world of occupational psychologists, coaches and psychometrics, in which consultants still peddle dark-age enlightenment. This is not to say their work is always ineffective. Some help their clients significantly, despite the tools in which they put their trust.

I am reminded of the story attributed to Albert Szent-György but more often associated with Karl Weick, which goes as follows...

A small group of Hungarian troops were camped in the Alps during the First World War. Their commander, a young lieutenant, decided to send out a small group of men on a scouting mission. Shortly after the scouting group left it began to snow, and it snowed steadily for two days. The scouting squad did not return, and the young officer, something of an intellectual and an idealist, suffered a paroxysm of guilt over having sent his men to their death. In his torment he questioned not only his decision to send out the scouting mission, but also the war itself and his own role in it. He was a man tormented.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, on the third day the long-overdue scouting squad returned. There was great joy, great relief in the camp, and the young commander questioned his men eagerly. "Where were you?" he asked. "How did you survive, how did you find your way back?" The sergeant who had led the scouts replied, "We were lost in the snow and we had given up hope, had resigned ourselves to die. Then one of the men found a map in his pocket. With its help we knew we could find our way back. We made camp, waited for the snow to stop, and then as soon as we could travel we returned here." The young commander asked to see this wonderful map. It was a map not of the Alps but of the Pyrenees!

The moral of the story being: "when you are lost, any old map will do". If Jungian guesswork, 'seven stages of consciousness' mysticism or the daily horoscopes give you something to start a conversation with a client, and this leads to a pleasing outcome for all involved so be it. However, if it was possible to give people an accurate map rather than just 'any old map' I can't help but think this would be very much more useful. If I am wrong the Ordnance Survey, Google and Tom Tom are wasting an awful lot of time and effort.

The journey I want to take you on will end up in psychology, but, since this area of science lacks the solid foundations available in others, it has to start somewhere else. Where physics has Newton and Einstein, chemistry Mendeleev and biology Darwin, Crick & Watson, all of whom discovered laws and processes that provided wholly reliable within their field, as far as human experience could ascertain at the time, in the field of psychology there have been no such figures. Freud and Jung are the prominent names that spring to mind, but while they had some interesting things to say, and made a contribution to advancing thinking in the field, 'interesting things' are not necessarily true. While plausible, and therefore acceptable to many people, their ideas were not capable of being proved true. Indeed we can now prove they were not true.

This lack of truth hasn't stopped people laying down the collected ideas of such thinkers as foundation stones for psychology. Many have added bits of religious teachings here, mystic, spiritual insights there, cut and pasted attractive snippets of real science around the edges and then attempted to bind the lot with half-baked, home-spun intuition into some sort of pseudo universal philosophy masquerading as knowledge. As a foundation on which to build a real understanding of the subject they are the intellectual equivalent of quicksand.

Blessed with an absence of a formal or informal indoctrination in these 'teachings' I have not been encumbered by having to make sense of reality through this miasma. Perhaps the reason why psychology has not thrown up a Darwin or an Einstein is that it doesn't need one. The scientifically proven theories they came up with provide the only foundations needed to understand the workings of the human mind. The continuing work of neuroscientists bears testament to this: with each new revelation capable of being understood within the combined framework of relativity and evolution.

It is in my nature to ask questions of myself and others and try to figure out the answers. The answers haven't always come quickly, partially because I am interested in just about everything. While all the questions posed at the beginning of this foreword concern our psychology, what makes us tick, if all I was interested in was psychology, I would have probably come up with some answers much quicker than I have. While they might have been plausible, it is far less likely they would have been true.

Distracted by such questions as why are stars and planets round, how do fish find their way back to spawning grounds, how is a chair made, how does electricity work, how do you install central heating, what is cancer, how do computers work, what makes hard things hard, why are large organizations so inefficient, why does food go off, why do politicians behave the way they do, what makes Radiohead and Led Zeppelin so great, what's the art of a great risotto, why do I sometimes have to colour a wall green in a painting for it to look like grey stone, why is Barcelona such a good football team, why is the sky so beautiful and why am I here, I have been making slow progress in all directions rather than steaming ahead in any one.

It is true that the greater the breadth of one's foundations the higher one can build one's knowledge, but perhaps more importantly, the wider your field of knowledge the more you are likely to find unexpected similarities and patterns in disparate areas. If one is able to connect these it is possible to find keys by which to unlock large areas of previously missing knowledge very quickly; just as one if is playing the equivalent of the 'minesweeper' game supplied on every PC I have ever used: one click of the mouse and, instead of the contents of just one tile being revealed, a whole section of the grid is exposed.

The meanderingly slow progress made in my early formative years has eventually paid dividends. While I remain a Jack of All Trades and master of none, my mastery of certain aspects of behavioural psychology would now seem to be greater than far too many of those who set themselves up as masters, or if not masters, as practitioners.

As a Jack of All Trades I am indebted in particular to two individuals, both of whom are masters, and whose insights have helped me turn what was a recognisable, if slightly hazy, black and white, small screen picture of what makes us tick into a high definition, richly coloured, wide screen picture in which the seeming miracle of human existence and consciousness is revealed.

Professor Shalom Schwartz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is an internationally garlanded psychologist, and the author of the Portrait Values Inventory, which, through extensive, peer reviewed, international and pan cultural research involving hundreds of thousands of people, codified the system of values we all use to make decisions. Once introduced to his work, after a short period of consternation, the extraordinary significance of his work has been an ever unfolding and illuminating source of joy to me. His kind response to what was effectively a cold call from an amateur has enabled me to develop his work to offer practical help for many people and organizations, and his subsequent support has led to further research I hope will extend the reach of this.

Secondly I want to thank Tom Mitchell. Tom was educated as an evolutionary biologist specialising in botany and graduated from Cambridge with a 1st before continuing there for his PhD. While he subsequently veered from the path of intellectual righteousness to become an investment banker, I met Tom shortly after he had returned to botany, having emotionally crashed and burned during the vertiginous climb to what became the precipice of the global financial meltdown, and set up a specialist nursery growing various exotic species raised from seed he combs the world in search of.

Evolutionary biology remains Tom's passion - all manifestations of it. Included in which is the field of psychology; an area Tom has something of a special interest in, having suffered protractedly from depression; although, perversely, he is one of the least depressing, most engaging, fascinated by life and good humoured people I have ever had the good fortune of getting to know. In our early, red wine soaked evening discussions he pointed out the preposterousness of my staking out any claim to understand the operation of the human mind without first understanding evolution.

I considered myself familiar with the basics of evolution, and perhaps I was, but as I was soon to discover, this basic understanding did not include a full grasp of the fundamentals. At Tom's introduction I have now enjoyed conducted tours of the fascinating world of genetics that is evolutionary biology, and from this developed some greater understanding of the workings of the brain in terms of evolutionary psychology. It is both extraordinary and so typical of human frailty that I should have previously thought it possible to understand psychology without understanding genetics. Looking back it seems as ridiculous as thinking one could understand accountancy without understanding arithmetic.

This book is intended to encapsulate what I have come to understand about why we are here, how our brains evolved, the nature of consciousness and how we came to have a quality people recognise as soul. It is a book that addresses the question why. Unfortunately knowing why isn't as much use to people as it should be; too often we either respond with a "that's interesting" or "so what?" This book is for people who are more likely to respond with an "aha" and a "so that means if we just......"

My interest is always drawn to why, because once I understand this I can more often than not generally answer the 'so what' and work out how to put the knowledge to good use. For those who haven't the time or interest to invest in gaining an understanding of why, it is my intention to follow this book with a more concise book of 'how's that will be quicker to read and easier to follow. Since I don't possess the elevated status that might incline the potential audience for a book of 'how's to believe what I say is any more worth listening to than the next soap box ranter, my hope is for this book to fall into the hands of people capable of recommending my thoughts to a higher authority and, through them, they might acquire some greater credibility. While it is something of a personal mission to encourage people to think more clearly for themselves, and stop needlessly deferring to and believing in others, I understand those who have already acquired some level of authority, and are therefore able to deliver simple messages to a credulous audience, enjoy a competitive advantage over those whose sole weapons are reliable information and reason.

Stability From Chaos: The Bedrock of Existence

This book was inspired by my work on values: what they are, how fundamentally important they are to us, how they work, where they come from and what we can do with them. Most of us seem to have some idea of what values are; there's enough talk of them in the media. However, unless you are a specialist in this area of psychology, you are unlikely to know too much about them, and this means you are missing out on perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of what makes you, and the world around you, tick.

Before plunging into the meat of the subject I feel I need to do my best to dispel a generalised prejudice plaguing the subject of psychology. This relates to the tendency for us to enter into the subject from our personal perspective, or from the perspective of mankind in general. The problem with this approach is our ability to fully understand what makes us tick is blinkered by preconceptions about what we are and what motivates us. And since, as I will later explain, it is our values that play a key role in motivating us, this prejudice needs to be expelled.

The general prejudice affecting our understanding of our psychology appears to come from two sources: (1) our tendency to see our world as being centred on ourselves, and (2) the belief there is some purpose to our existence. The first inclines us to give undue significance to personal experience. The second causes us to think we are being drawn toward an uncertain goal, or being propelled, by some unseen force.

The self-centred view of the world is the only one we have. It works very well for us, providing us with very specific, well-targeted information. However, as with any view taken from a single perspective, not everything may be visible to us, and even the things that are may be misinterpreted because we cannot fully appreciate them from our position. If we see only part of a picture, or know only part of a story, we can quite easily, and often do, jump to the wrong conclusion, or a whole host of wrong conclusions. So, while personal experience is important, it's not enough.

When it comes to addressing the question 'why are we here?' even if we are not religiously minded, we are all conditioned to see ourselves as being at the centre of some greater process, in which humanity, and life in general, is of fundamental importance. This may seem to be an uncontentious belief, and one that should present us with no particular difficulties. However, it is a misplaced belief, and, as such, it promotes and sustains ignorance. While it is occasionally said ignorance is bliss, if we really believe this we should immediately close all our schools and universities, burn all books, shut down all institutions imparting any kind of information and, if we are going to be really thorough about it, steadfastly avoid speaking to our children so as to limit their ability to learn. Having gone this far we might as well, while we are at it, stop feeding them. Life is about learning. Learning dispels ignorance. Knowledge helps us.

If you want to understand how something works it can be helpful to examine it and take it apart. We can see how a toy car is propelled by its turning wheels. If we turn it over we can see its wheels are attached to axles, and if we take the bottom off the car we will see one axle has a cog on it that engages with another attached to a little box that is its motor. Inside this box we will find metal blocks surrounding a block of coiled wire that can be made to rotate on its own little axle, and wires attaching the metal blocks to a battery. The more we take the car apart and test each component the more we will discover about how it works. Armed with this information we would be better able to build our own car, repair this car if it broke or maybe even design an improved car.

In order to build a complete picture of what we are and what makes us tick, it might be helpful if we were able to dismantle ourselves, so we could look at every component, no matter how small, see what it does, try to understand how it works and what makes it work. Fortunately, for many aspects of a human being, this work has already been done.

Rather than attempt to start the process of explaining what we have learned from these investigations, working backwards from a complete human being toward a box full of strange and potentially hazardous bits and pieces (subatomic particles and energies), I will start from these tiniest components and work upward. This makes more sense to me because, unlike when we are dealing with the remains of a dismantled toy car, the components we are left with are all the same; i.e. the bits used to build the brain are the same as those used to build our feet, our blood, our eyes and even our thoughts. Instead of the motley collection of differently shaped bits of plastic and metal we might get from a routinely dismantled toy car designed to fit together in only one way, when human beings are fully (and I mean fully) dismantled we end up with a collection of bits that can be used to build anything: a toy car, a cloud, a rainbow, a tune or an atomic bomb. Because there is no more to us than these building blocks, if we begin by gaining a true understanding of what these blocks are and how they work, it should be easier for us to see how we are constructed, and come to realise this requires no magic or design.

I should perhaps here issue a short warning. What comes next might be filed under the heading of science, or, more specifically physics, chemistry and biology with a itsy-bitsy bit of maths thrown in for good measure. I really shouldn't have to do this, but I know many who profess an interest in psychology struggle with science; perhaps feeling psychology is something one can fully understand from observing social interaction and the superficial contemplation of emotional issues.

As a consequence of certain value priorities people have, which we will get to later, there are people who will begin reading the next few pages and quickly decide the subject matter has nothing to do with what interests them, i.e. what makes people tick. If you are one of these people, and you are inclined to skip to the main action, or worse, to set the book aside, I would urge you to have patience and do your best to engage, because it is the foundation for everything that follows. Without an understanding of the basic building blocks of matter and life, any subsequent 'understanding' you may acquire is likely to suffer from a tendency toward subsidence.

I'll try to keep it brief but, as the band Simian sang in an old favourite song of mine, "chemistry is what we are", and, without a solid scientific foundation, psychology can quickly descend into mumbo jumbo and claptrap.

The Basic Building Blocks

At one level of deconstruction all material things in the world are made of atoms. Broadly speaking these atoms come in 92 different types: the 92 naturally occurring elements. In the average human body 60 of these different building blocks are likely to be found, but Oxygen (65% by mass), Carbon (18%), Hydrogen (10%), Nitrogen (3%), Calcium (1.4%) and Phosphorous (1.1%) are the most significant (accounting for over 95% of our mass). Also present and acting between these atoms are the forces of gravity and electromagnetism.

All matter creates its own gravitational field. Einstein's general theory of relativity explains it as 'a deformation in four dimensional space time' that we might visualise in three dimensions as being similar to the effect created by a heavy ball resting in its own depression in a stretched, thin, elasticated sheet. Objects being rolled across the deformed sheet move in a similar way to objects moving through another object's gravitational field. If they approach directly they will quickly fall into its centre and stay there. If they approach at more of an angle they may go into orbit around the centre. If they pass across the outer edge of the depression quickly they may just be deflected slightly toward the centre before carrying on their way.

The strength of a gravitational field is proportional to the mass of the object (or collected objects at its centre) and the distance at which the measurement is being taken. So it is, relatively speaking, very weak with objects as small as atoms, somewhat stronger when dealing with planets such as the Earth and very much stronger when dealing with things as massive as stars like our sun, but its effect at any one point is dependent on how close this point is to the various centres of gravity. So while the gravitational pull of the Sun is vastly greater than that of the Earth, we are only aware of the Earth's pull on us. The gravitational pull of the Sun on the Earth is what keeps us orbiting it so that we benefit from its electromagnetic radiation (heat and light). Yet, as far as we are concerned, despite its much greater overall gravitational field, the Sun's gravitational pull is trumped by that of the Earth when we are as close to it as we are. If it weren't we would be drawn off the surface of the Earth and propelled toward the Sun.

Gravity is weak enough on Earth that it can be overcome by relatively little things like us every time we want to pick up small objects, but between large objects it can be irresistible, and since it exerts its pull over tremendously long distances, it is gravity, and its ability to pull matter of any size and any description inexorably together, that has given rise to the vast congregations of matter that make up our world, and upon which our very existence is dependent.

Our universe began with an event we have called Big Bang. Our perception of space and time, or space-time as physicists since Einstein refer to the stuff of the universe, originated from a singularity, a single point. All the matter in the universe was fired out from a single point at this time and has been spreading out ever since. We know this because if we rewind the chronological record of the movement of galaxies we have gathered from observations and measurements, and continue this backwards we find all the matter in the universe converges on a single point.

We don't understand what triggered Big Bang and what there was before it. This is one of the frontiers of human understanding. It stands where the finite edges of the supposedly flat Earth and the celestial sphere that once was thought to surround the spherical Earth one stood. However, after the moment of Big Bang we are able to understand the evolution of matter and the universe as a relatively simple and predictable mechanism. Just as Newton's laws would enable us to see just a glimpse of the starburst from an exploded firework and work out the exact place at which the firework exploded, Einstein's laws enable us to wind back time to the beginning of the universe, identify its point of origin and account for the otherwise inconceivable truth that all the matter in the universe could be condensed into an infinitesimally small space, due to the transformational potential of matter, energy, space and time. Since the moment of Big Bang nothing unpredictable has happened, or is happening. Any god or unknowable force people choose to believe in has not intervened so as to have made any observable effect on anything in the universe since Big Bang.

The principal reason why the universe isn't a uniformly expanding dust cloud is gravity. Particles are drawn slowly together, and as they do they become more attractive to other particles. As they increase in mass gravity crushes them into the most efficient, load bearing shape possible: the sphere. That is why stars and planets are all spherical.

The other form of energy is electromagnetism. The electromagnetic spectrum covers such things as heat, light, radio waves and X-rays, which are all manifestations of the same thing, just with different wavelengths and energy levels. Electromagnetic energy is understood to comprise individual bullets of energy (or quanta) called photons. Photons are pure energy and have no mass. They can be absorbed and emitted by atomic particles, and it is the release of photons from electrons moving from atom to atom, and to different energy levels within an atom, that give rise to all the most familiar manifestations of electromagnetic energy we experience.

If we look inside the atoms we find a greater level of uniformity, in that inside the atom of each different element we find five ingredients common to every one: electrons, protons & neutrons (the nominally 'solid' bits) and the strong and weak nuclear forces (the nominally 'invisible' bits). The electrons in your brain are the same as the ones in your feet, and are the same as the ones you would find in a walrus, a piece of wood and a bomb, and are the very same things that make all your electrical appliances work. With the caveat that neutrons and protons are made of even smaller particles, we know that all matter is made of these things. The elements differ only because of the number of these teeny-weeny components clustered together in their atoms.

The significance of this information is we know exactly how these components behave at all times. They observe rules that can be easily understood and mathematically modelled. Our understanding of these rules may not allow us to accurately predict and immediately understand everything in our world, but this isn't due to our understanding of the basics being insufficient, it is just the possible range of interactions between these components is staggeringly large. When we toss a coin we can't usually be certain which side will come up, but this is only because we can't accurately gauge how hard we flick it, the height from which we flick it, where exactly our thumb is placed and the speed and density of the air-flow around it in flight. If we were we wouldn't need to guess. These things are knowable, and therefore if we could measure them all we could determine the outcome as soon as the coin left our thumb.

When we analyse anything new we always find it can be completely understood in terms of the known behaviours of these components. The point being, in the context of the world as we encounter it here on planet Earth, while we are still filling in the details - the Higgs Boson being a notable recent discovery - we broadly understand how it all works, and can accurately model how the tapestry of existence will respond when we interfere with it. There is no room for an unseen hand, there are no mystery ingredients, there are just these infinitesimally small things doing nothing in particular apart from just being.

This becomes particularly important to bear in mind as we build up a clearer picture of how these components make us what we are, when we might otherwise be tempted to feed in abstract forces or concepts such as spirituality or destiny. While the awesomely complex machine of existence often seems to be too fantastic to understand, when we look deeper and deeper into its machinations, all we find are countless little cogs made up of these elementary particles and forces, and they are all behaving just as we would expect them to; moving only as the forces between them compel them. There is nothing else. Absolutely nothing.

While the world we can model with our understanding of the above ingredients is fully functional, detailed and true, to better understand the way it operates, and therefore how we operate, it proves useful to look a little deeper at these sub atomic components.

When we examine all the big things in the world, peeling back layer after layer, right down to the atomic level, we find everything in its right place, where we expect it to be. However, as we open up the atom and look inside the miniscule universe within, things start getting strange. While we are able to model how sub atomic components behave with sufficient accuracy to allow us to design and build bombs capable of releasing their energy and destroying entire cities and everyone living in them in the process, when it comes to getting a clear and unambiguous understanding of what these particles are, and where exactly we can find them at any one time, things get a bit tricky.

As a schoolboy I was taught the sub atomic world was like a miniature solar system, in which the nucleus of protons and neutrons was like the sun with electrons orbiting like planets around it. However, it turns out that if we were able to miniaturise ourselves, so we might visit this inner solar system, we would not be able to locate, let alone land upon, an electron as we might a planet. It seems the best we could hope for is to dream we caught a fleeting glimpse of something that perhaps looked like a momentary holographic projection of what we might take to be an electron. Indeed, even the notion of being able to see anything at all becomes a little strained at this level, since the distinction between the 'invisible' sub atomic components of energy and the 'solid' components of matter becomes blurred and the photons we perceive as light are one of these components themselves. As encapsulated by Einstein's famous formula E= mc2, a little bit of matter is the equivalent of a vast amount of energy – c being the speed of light (a very, very large number) and c2 being that very same very, very large number multiplied by itself to create an unimaginably large number. This is why only 730 mg of converted matter (i.e. equivalent to about ten grains of rice) was required to destroy the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II.

I am no quantum physicist and cannot pretend to have any great understanding of what goes on in this sub-atomic world, but I am comforted that even a Nobel Prize winning physicist stated that anyone who claimed to understand the subject had clearly missed the point. Those who have the greatest claim to understand something of this world of the imagination and complex mathematics have successfully modelled the behaviour of sub atomic particles by coming up with a series of probabilities that certain events will take place in certain locations, which, when considered en masse, accurately predict the behaviour of particles such as electrons as if they were stable bodies.

To illustrate this let's replace the possible range of behaviours of these sub atomic particles with a few numbers. For the sake of simplicity, rather than consider the potentially infinite range of actual possibilities, let us assume there are only six, and we can model their behaviour by rolling a dice. We start to roll the dice and record the number we have just rolled in the top row and the average score of all our throws to date in the row beneath it. The scoring proceeds as follows:

What we would find if we carried on with this dice rolling exercise is that the average score would rise and fall, but gradually these fluctuations would become smaller and smaller until eventually the number in the lower row would settle at 3.50. The average would never reach absolute stability at 3.50 exactly, but to see this we would have to express the average with ever increasing number of decimal places. After a few hundred throws, for the purposes of this exercise, the number in the lower row would not change.

In the sub atomic world, not only are things happening on a very small scale, but they are also happening very quickly indeed – near light speed in fact. To illustrate this, imagine the above dice rolling exercise is being represented by an array of very fast reacting illuminated numbers laid out in front of you, with 1.00, 1.10, 1.20 etc. to the far left and progressing upward in 0.1 increments to pass directly in front of you at 3.50, and the end of the sequence, 5.80, 5.90 and 6.00, over to the far right. The numbers for the actual dice throw and the average then flash up together instantaneously. If we start slowly we will see one flash of light hopping randomly between the whole numbers from 1 to 6, representing the actual number being thrown on each roll of the dice, left to right, and another light representing the running average also dancing from left to right, being led by the other but gradually confining its hopping about to the centre of the array. As we speed things up, so we are replicating the equivalent dice rolling frequencies of the sub atomic world, the only number we will clearly see illuminated will be 3.50. All the other numbers will flash on and off so quickly and comparatively infrequently they will hardly leave any lasting image on our retinas. From our perspective 3.50 is a stable representation of what is going on in the dice rolling exercise, despite the fact that the number 3.50 is never actually rolled.

When contemplating the significance of this simile we need to understand that the individually unpredictable events taking place at the sub atomic level are not contained within the visible shell of each atom like an unseen grain rattling away inside a ping pong ball: they are the atom: there is no shell. The shell, if you like, is the outer limit of the electrons' orbits, but since these electrons aren't solid, the outer limit of these 'orbits' is a fairly intangible thing.

Atoms, when looked at through a scanning electron microscope, can appear like little round balls, but since what we are 'seeing' is actually just a representation of the boundaries of atomic force fields encountered by the electrons being fired by the microscope, the notion that matter is made up of lots of little round atoms arranged in rows is a little misleading. Each atomic nucleus may have a spherical force field around it that mimics the appearance of a ball when one is 'looking' at it by assaulting it with charged particles, but this is an illusion.

Just as when we alter our view of any given object by zooming in from a distance with the naked eye, or use a magnifying glass or microscope to achieve ever greater powers of magnification, things that might start off looking regular and smooth can end up revealing unimagined gaping pores and intricate, rough and irregular detail. Therefore things appearing solid, reliable and wholly tangible in our world are ultimately built on foundations that vibrate, pulse and move in ways we can hardly imagine. Underneath the smooth and certain surface of existence lies a seething bed of seemingly chaotic activity. Yet from this chaos patterns emerge, and it is these that give the discernable fabric of existence stability. The world we know is made up from the collected equivalents of my 3.50s; comprehensible stability created from incomprehensible chaos through the law of averages.

The concept of finding patterns of stability in apparent chaos is a recurrent theme in nature, one we will return to later and one of some importance to the operation of the brain.

These sub-atomic particles, these metaphorical 3.50s, are the building blocks of all matter, and like building blocks such as Lego they fit together in ways that dictate the characteristics of the things they build. So just as if we have a box of 3.50s to play with and putting them together at random we find we can only create certain numbers with them; namely: multiples of 3.50 such as 7.00, 10.50, 14.00, etc. While the construction of atoms is a little more complex than this, this illustrates the basic principle. If our imaginary 3.50 is the equivalent of an electron, the 3.50 would correspond to a hydrogen atom, as hydrogen atoms have just one electron (and one proton). 7.00 would be the equivalent of a Helium atom, as it has two electrons.

The atoms created by the coming together of sub-atomic particles have characteristics and qualities all of their own, but these are predetermined by their sub-atomic ingredients. In our world built of 3.50s the fourth number we encounter is 14.00, and this is the first even number we come to, so this makes it quite distinctive. In the world of atoms the fourth element is Berylium and among its distinctive qualities are it is a solid at surface temperatures on Earth, it is a hard metal with exceptional heat dissipating qualities. When one looks at the periodic table of elements one finds similar patterns of characteristics cropping up as one would do in a table of 3.50s or any other number. This is the nature of things; when the same building blocks are used repeatedly to construct something patterns emerge that give different parts of the whole distinctive qualities. In the periodic table of elements we can pick out lines of elements with similar qualities, like those that are gases at the surface temperatures encountered on Earth, and those that don't react with other elements. Just as in any table of numbers we can pick out patterns described by the even numbers, the numbers divisible by 10, and other groups.

Gravity has drawn the atoms of the universe together into all sorts of objects - stars, planets, moons and other things – all with their own distinctive qualities. The bigger these things are the more gravity squeezes the atoms at their centre together and makes interesting things happen. Here on Earth this has created a planet with a molten core of iron - under such tremendous pressure that its countless compressed atoms exude a magnetic force field that gives the Earth its magnetic north and south poles, a dense metal and rock layer, a layer of molten rock (that occasionally gets squeezed out in rocky pustules we know as volcanoes) and an outer rocky crust on which seas of water and ice sit. Outside these lies a thin layer of gas (air) we called our atmosphere – which is predominantly a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen.

What with the compression going inside the planet due to its own gravitational pull, the additional and ever changing gravitational pull of the moon, and the differential heating of the planet's poles and equator by the sun, the Earth is subjected to enormous stresses and strains that turn it into one giant chemistry experiment. Elements are heated up, frozen, compressed, blasted with radiation, pushed together and torn apart.

As they bump into each other some of these atoms fit together, some do not. Those that fit together (either with others of the same construction or of other elements) form molecules – stable groups of atoms. Carbon atoms may fuse together to form graphite or diamond. Some oxygen atoms pair up with each other and bob around in the air we breath, others get together with two hydrogen atoms to form the water in our oceans, rivers and clouds. The distinctive patterns of the electrons in each element determine how the atoms of each fit together and what properties these molecules will have. It is the properties of these molecules that determine what the world around us looks like and how it functions. They may come together and stay together for very long periods of time, or they may have fleeting relationships with each other. The oxygen in the air may react with molten rock from volcanoes and then get tied up in new minerals, only to be broken down by the erosion of wind and rain and the stresses of being heated up and cooled down by the sun. It will then be freed back into the atmosphere from whence it may be breathed in by creatures and absorbed into their blood stream. The molecules they form may change from time to time, but, unless they get swallowed up in the high-pressure environments at the centre of planets and stars, they will remain as stable atoms and be recycled; cropping up in nose hair one year, in soil the next, then in a plant's leaves, then in natural gas, etc. Every atom of every person that has ever lived and died and avoided being preserved has been recycled. You and I could be made of atoms that once rested up in the body of a famous historical figure and/or excreted by a dinosaur.

As any two atoms bump into each other the event of the collision will either bring about a change or it will not, dependent on conditions in the environment in which they meet. If two oxygen atoms meet they will tend to link together as if they were a courting couple holding hands. If two helium atoms meet they will say hello and continue on their way independently. If hydrogen and oxygen atoms meet they may do the same as two helium atoms in most environments, but if there is a burst of energy, say from a spark of electricity like lighting, the two react explosively and water molecules are produced. In water molecules two hydrogen atoms 'hold hands' with one oxygen atom.

If atoms combine to become molecules they acquire different chemical properties as a consequence of the altered configuration of the electrons in their outer orbits. This makes them react with the other atoms and molecules they encounter in different ways. Water reacts differently than oxygen and hydrogen, and should water react with sulphur dioxide (one sulphur atom and two oxygen atoms) the resulting sulphuric acid will react very differently from either the water or the sulphur dioxide; as anyone who has splashed it on their hands or onto metal will attest.

In all atomic and molecular collisions the pattern is the same. The colliding particles will either change or they wont. If they change they will either cooperate, joining forces to create a new stable form, or compete, tearing into each other before cooperating in a new stable form. This is essentially the process of natural selection, whereby two or more things comes together, react, and in so doing give rise to something either less or more stable than its components in their shared environment.

Sometimes these reactions give rise to molecules of increasing complexity. Sometimes they break molecules apart into simpler components. The chemical formula for the amino acid histidine betrays the complexity of its construction: NH-CH=N-CH=C-CH2-CH(NH2)-COOH, but when subjected to appropriate agitation from a competitive chemical it will break down into its constituent elements of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

Some people think it is an extraordinary coincidence for our planet to provide such abundant supplies of water and air, as these are the very things we need to survive. The water and air are not there for our benefit. We are the product of, and an ongoing chemical reaction between, these two stable substances (and others). Tornados are formed by air flowing between areas of high and low pressure as a consequence of differential heating in their local environment. A tornado both uses the air and is of the air; i.e. that is what it is made of. Humanity uses air and water and is of the air and water.

The chance collisions between atoms have given rise to all that surrounds us on this planet, and everywhere else in the universe for that matter. The factors governing what will bond with what, and how the newly created substances will behave, obey known laws mankind has derived from theory and backed up by experiment. It is very easy to understand the construction of simple molecules such as those of water, and imagine how they came into existence, especially as we can replicate the formation of these molecules in a laboratory. It is less easy to make the leap to understand how very complex molecular constructions such as fish, trees and humans could have come about by chance collision; maybe because the chance collisions that gave rise to life were cumulative and took an enormously long time to do their thing. When I say 'a long time' I mean an unimaginably long time. From the first moment of the universe's creation to this day has taken maybe 14 billion years. The Earth is a mere 4.5 billion years old, so our planet took over 9.5 billion years to form. It is thought the seeds of life were sown as far back as 4bn years ago, but it took perhaps a further 1.5 billion years for life forms comparable to bacteria to evolve, and another 1.5 billion years for life forms as complex as algae to come about; i.e. about 1 billion years ago. That's a long time to be rolling billions and billions of sub-atomic dice, especially given the infinitesimally small time scales applicable to the fast moving world of what we take to be elementary particles.

We don't know exactly when the simplest form of life came about on Earth, or whether it originated here or arrived in a rock from space. That really isn't important in terms of gaining an understanding of the stuff we, and all life forms, are made of. Even trying to estimate an exact date is rendered meaningless unless one can define exactly what we mean by 'life'. Simple bacteria are life forms but bacteria didn't spring into existence from nowhere. Long before we get to bacteria we need amino acids and ribonucleic acid (RNA). These compounds are, as their names suggest, not life-forms but acids – hydrogen based chemicals with molecules that release a hydrogen ion (proton) when dissolved in water - but they are the jumping off points for life. RNA sets out the blueprint for bacteria in the way DNA (dioxyrobonucleic acid - RNA with bells and whistles) sets out the blueprint for all the other more complex life forms – from bananas to baboons to us. Due to the complexity of these compounds, they are immensely difficult to construct, and we cannot yet do this artificially, but just as billions of years of random dice rolling gave rise, and continue to give rise to such spectacularly complex things as galaxies, chance collisions eventually gave rise to these chemicals.

Two of the many special things about DNA are: (1) it causes amino acids to make chemicals called proteins, and (2) it replicates itself. Proteins are important because they are capable of creating structures. All the structures in our bodies are made from them. One of the key structures DNA first created formed a bubble around them that served as a protective boundary. DNA inside such a shell is what we call a cell. Bacteria and amoebas are single-celled life forms, while we, and the vast majority of other life forms, are made up of many cells. Replication isn't in itself a signifier of life, as crystalline molecules do something very similar, but the way DNA does it defines everything most distinctive about the evolution of complex life forms such as ourselves.

Before beginning to explain how we evolved from cells replicating by division, I think it important we get one thing straight. Just because we are alive does not make us special; not in the sense we are fundamentally different from things that are not alive.

In The Good Book I devoted a chapter to the sometimes misplaced importance we attach to categorization: carving up our world into distinct bits to which we can give separate labels, so as to make distinctions in terms of black and white rather than shades of grey. This creates a problem for us when we try to distinguish living things from other things. To many, the mere fact of something being alive imbues it with a special, otherworldly significance. Consequently living things often seem to be utterly distinct from lifeless things, yet, at their most basic level, they are made of the same stuff and assembled by the same processes.

Technically, to be alive, a thing needs to be capable of reproduction and have a metabolism (the ability to turn one chemical into another to use as fuel). It is, of course, possible to use these terms to distinguish those things we accept to be alive (bacteria and other single celled life forms) from those that are not. However, if we take a more relaxed and less technical approach to such categorization, we can look at things as different as rivers and rust and see they have much in common with life forms.

Anyone who has watched rust slowly consume a neglected piece of iron might note how much it seems to have in common with a living thing such as mold growing on rotting fruit. Like mold, rust consumes the substance on which it grows. We even say rust 'eats' away at metal. Technically rust doesn't eat the metal in the sense it is metabolised into food energy, or reproduce in the sense one particle of rust creates another, but it (or, more correctly, water) does convert one substance (iron) into another (ferrous oxide, i.e. rust) and it does appear (superficially at least) to spread/reproduce in a similar way to mold.

The reproduction and metabolism analogies are stretched even further when we think about rivers, but that doesn't diminish the lifelike properties of rivers. Hydrogen and oxygen atoms come together and, when their clusters get big enough, fall to the ground as individual water droplets (rain). From there they run into each other to form rivulets on the land surface, or merge together to form an underground mass that seeps between and surrounds molecules of soil and rock and heads downward. At some point this mass of water meets and flows across an impermeable lower surface, before eventually emerging on the surface where the impermeable layer is exposed, or where the accumulated volume of water exceeds the capacity of the permeable layers to hold it, from which point it becomes a well-defined stream cutting away at the ground on which it travels. These streams merge periodically to make rivers, which in turn merge to create large rivers that run into the sea. They carve away at the surface of the earth to make valleys, banks, flood plains and deltas, they cascade into waterfalls, irrigate crops and disappear underground creating vast caverns the size of cathedrals and awe inspiring sculptures.

These watercourses appear to have life in that they are both constant and constantly move. They bubble, race and roar with energy, sustaining life and shaping the surface of the earth. Perhaps they only reproduce in the sense that when they merge they create new, larger rivers, and they only have a metabolism in that they convert gravitational energy into kinetic energy, but in many ways they can seem very much alive.

At the margins of life are viruses. They are not alive in the sense they have an independent ability to reproduce and metabolise, but they are distinct entities that merge into the DNA of living things, reproducing there and then jumping from one life form to another. The effect they have upon us and other creatures they inhabit may be similar to those we get from interacting with bona fide living things such as bacteria.

My aim in whacking on about the above is to try to dilute any sense that the random events giving rise to 'lifeless' things, such as rust and rivers, are so very different to those creating and sustaining life. What these categories of living and non-living things have in common is they are made up of stable collections of atoms. A river can't think for itself like a dog, monkey or man, but then neither can a bacterium, mushroom or tree. Just like their living counterparts, non-living things can be very complex in their atomic construction and can do incredible things. If we choose to ignore the simple fact that all things are just the product of the unbidden interaction of atoms, and introduce the totally unsupported notion of there having to be some special conscious or supernatural force to create life or affect the lives of living things, we do so out of ignorance in the face of available knowledge, and, in so doing, leave ourselves open to the weakening and limiting effects of belief.

This becomes of great significance when we march briskly from the origin of life, through its evolution on this planet to what it is today, and, in particular, on to the functioning of the human mind. If we have not fully accepted the basis of the evolution of any natural phenomenon (whether it be an electron, an atom, a molecule or a hippopotamus) is the natural selection of a stable form from chaotic events, then our impulse will be to introduce imaginary causes to explain the extraordinarily complex construction and behaviour of human beings. If we can just about accept natural selection (in its broadest definition) is capable of building non living structures such as sand dunes, perfectly 'designed' to support their own weight, without any engineering know how, we shouldn't really have too much difficulty in accepting the building blocks of life are assembled on a similar basis. The relatively stable things populating our world are not special because they have some magical ingredient, it is just that countless other possible manifestations of the same ingredients are unstable. If you like, they are nature's failed experiments, and therefore they don't stick around long enough for us to appreciate them. They are not 3.50s.

So, back to DNA and cell division...

In order to demystify the nature of this fundamental building block of life even further it might be useful to draw attention to the D of DNA. It stands for deoxyribose, which, in common with other chemical names ending in 'ose', like sucrose, glucose and fructose, is a sugar – a complex combination of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon atoms. These sugar molecules are connected by a phosphate group, comprising one phosphorous and four oxygen atoms. Then, because DNA is a double stranded affair, connecting the sugar molecules from each strand are bridging pairs of molecules called nucleotides. These are molecules of nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, and they come in four, slightly different types that arrange themselves in complimentary pairs: adenine (A) with thymine (T) and guanine (G) with cytosine (C).

The sugars and phosphates provide a structural framework for the nucleotides, and it is the particular pattern with which the nucleotides repeat themselves along the DNA molecule that imparts each living thing with its distinctive chemical coding - its instruction manual, blue print or blue touch paper if you will. So in one creature the sequence might start AT-AT-GC-TA-CG-GC-etc., while for another it might start TA-GC-GC-CG-TA-AT-etc.

In the earliest DNA based life forms the DNA molecules would have been relatively small, but in the intervening billion years or so they have grown considerably. The DNA molecules in us are now very, very, very long. In you and I there are approximately 3 billion of these pair-bonded nucleotides. Given there are 4 possible pair bonds for each position, that gives rise to a total of approximately 81 billion, billion, billion, billion possible combinations by which to rearrange the DNA of a modern human being.

The sequences in which these nucleotides come determine the effect these chemicals have on the chemicals surrounding them. This is why we can talk about them in terms of their being like an instruction manual or code. In organisms as complex as us the number of chemical chain reactions they set in motion is vast, and it is these that are responsible for building every component of our bodies, including our brains.

Exactly the same building blocks are to be found in every living thing. The differences between us, monkeys, dogs, mice, oak trees and bananas arise only as a consequence of differences in the sequencing of these components.

The reason why we have longer and more complex DNA than early life forms is a consequence of mutation. While DNA divides and duplicates itself with a high degree of fidelity, occasionally external events disrupt its reproduction. It is thought particles (electrons and protons) streaming from the sun (in the solar wind) are mostly responsible for this. When this happens molecules are changed and additional molecules may be created. Mostly these mutations create instability. Instability usually means deformity or death for the life-form. However, occasionally the mutation is stable. If it is stable, and bestows benefits for the life-form, it will not only persist and reproduce itself, it will flourish.

Richard Dawkins likens the ordering of these nucleotides within DNA to words in a book. In this book analogy there are 46 volumes (chromosomes), covering different subject areas, with two volumes per subject. Within each volume the pages represent different genes. The genes are recognisable, often repeated sequences of nucleotide pairs that are responsible for, or contribute toward, certain attributes of the organism.

Possibly a better analogy would be to replace books with computer files, as unlike books, where words can only be understood when taken together in a single sentence, in DNA information can be stored all over the place. On your computer, while you may be able to call up a file and leaf through its contents on your screen as if it was all stored in a single place, like words on a page, pages in a book or books on a shelf, the information is actually stored here, there and anywhere your hard disc has space.

The computer analogy helps me, as a novice in such matters, to avoid confusing the arrangement of the 23 twinned volumes of chromosomes with the twinned construction of DNA as a whole. The 46 chromosomes in human DNA take the form of two twisted strands of molecules, and each strand is related to the other so that when they come apart during replication (the process called mitosis by which we grow and repair ourselves) a matching pair of molecules is pulled out of the chemical soup that surrounds it. In this way, when the contents of one cell separate, two new cells with identical DNA are created.

However, when we, as humans, reproduce the division process is different (and is called meiosis). Male sperm and female eggs contain just half the DNA of the man and woman. Each contains 23 chromosomes, with only one of the two possible volumes present; although each volume may be compiled from 'pages' from each of the man or woman's original two volume set. When a sperm penetrates an egg and fertilizes it the 23 volume sets from the male and female come together to create a new 46 volume set that will define the new human being.

In this book I do not intend to explore in any detail how early life forms began to develop, as this is a strictly 'big picture' overview I am trying to paint. However, I hope it is clear that, in keeping with the extension of the principle that all matter originated from the random collision of atoms, one shouldn't allow the apparent enormity of the journey from the formation of the first simple proto DNA molecules, that would initially have comprised just a few dozen atoms, to humans that are made of billions of cells containing 3 billion paired molecule sets, to cause any confusion as to the simplicity and viability of the process that enabled this journey to be made.

The processes involved are well understood and are not just theoretical; they have been validated through examination and experimentation. Perhaps the only missing ingredient preventing most people from fully accepting and understanding the truth of the process is an accurate appreciation of time and scale. As mentioned earlier, the time scales involved are absolutely MASSIVE. From our perspective a hundred years is a long time, but evolution on the planet has been going on for billions of years. In each of these billions of years there have been over 30 million seconds and in each of these seconds countless numbers of subatomic event cycles – i.e. the time it takes for something to happen inside an atom. To further boggle the mind, there can be billions of atoms in every object the size of a printed full stop. So, if one considers our planet is billions and billions and billions times larger than a full stop, one can begin to appreciate that, in the great dice rolling exercise of existence, however improbable a single event or connected series of events may seem, the sheer scales of time and space involved make just about anything possible.

The vast majority of people who buy a national lottery ticket understand their chances of winning, i.e. of their six chosen numbers being identical to those drawn at random from the lottery machine, are one in several million. They therefore don't expect to win but know someone probably will. For every one of the several million people whose numbers don't come up on lottery draw night the news they have not won but someone else has will be unremarkable. However, for the winner things will feel very different. Lottery winners may have some difficulty accepting their winning happened completely by chance, because the chances were so small. They may imbue their luck with a dash of divine intervention, of fate, of purpose. However, they will be wrong.

This reaction is understandable because we are sometimes too insular and illogical; we see the world as if it was centred on ourselves and attach inappropriate significance to events within our bubble.

In our view of the world all we see are lottery winners, seen from the perspective of another lottery winner. The chances of any two atoms colliding and sticking together and then going on to combine with many others to create a complex and stable molecule is tiny, but we are surrounded by billions and billions of such molecules. Even more unlikely is that some of these molecules will combine to create beings as complex as ourselves, but they did. It is tempting for us to see ourselves as the inevitable and somehow 'right' end-product of evolution, and therefore seek to find an explanation for the existence of all things based on design, destiny or purpose. But given the overwhelming evidence against such design or purpose, and the complete lack of evidence for it, there is no rational justification for thinking in this way.

What is the chance of a penniless man or woman becoming a millionaire? Zero? Yet some do. What is the chance of a penniless person becoming poor, or a poor person escaping poverty? Much higher? Tales of poor people becoming millionaires are relatively common. Even in a fraction of a single-life time some people make extraordinary journeys. When summed up in one sentence these journeys may seem fantastic, but taken one step at a time they look entirely different; we may then see how one thing led to another; how through many unremarkable steps being taken something amazing happened. When we are considering the evolution of matter, DNA, life and humanity, we are dealing with an inconceivably drawn out time scale, along which each of the easy to understand steps took an inconceivably long time. Therefore it is hardly surprising if we struggle with the concept of evolution at all, let alone evolution by chance.

Evolution was not working toward the creation of a human being; it was not working toward anything. Evolution is even more directionless than a lottery. Unlike a lottery there is absolutely no purpose in it; there is no intention to create a winner. Evolution is more like what would happen if we were to start rolling dice capable of both replicating themselves and changing the number of their sides (and therefore the numbers printed on them) at random, and keeping a note of the numbers thrown and a running average. The running average of the numbers turning up on our throws will be whatever it will be, and all other possibilities will be absent. The outcome cannot be predicted at the outset, yet when we look back we will be able to see how the average was derived. The processes of evolution are a little more complex than this analogy allows, but in evolution, as in dice throwing, the rightness of the prevailing outcome at any one time can only be considered 'right' inasmuch it is the consequence of what has gone before; not that it is in anyway the best outcome possible, or the most suitable for the fulfilment of some objective criteria.

Accepting this is the way things are is somehow easier to accept when one is talking about the origins of inanimate matter. It is easier to accept a lifeless lump of rock, drifting in some far flung reach of outer space, came into being as a consequence of the rolling of cosmic dice than it is to accept it is as the explanation for the creation of DNA or the state we recognise as life. The reason for this may be, being conscious, we know we are alive, and therefore we understand, at least a little, how phenomenally complex we are, both physically and psychologically. If we can't overlook our all too evident vitality, perhaps we might benefit from reconsidering the significance we attach to being alive.

When we swat a fly, or use disinfectant to kill bacteria, most of us are unlikely to trouble ourselves too much about robbing these fantastic creations of their lives, presumably because, while they are clearly alive, their lives are not comparable to ours, from our perspective at least. So perhaps it would be profitable to dispense with the use of the word 'life' in our contemplation of evolution, so as to help prevent us from attaching inappropriate insignificance to things 'less special' than mankind. Once we do this, the boundary between life and non-life should become easier to ignore, and crossing it should become just as easy to take as any other step along the path of evolution. If it is easier for us to accept DNA is just a sugary acid, virus's are just like bits of DNA, and simple things like amoebas are just gift wrapped DNA, we should be able cross that boundary in our minds. Once we have crossed the life/non-life boundary the rest of the journey should be a piece of cake. It just carries on as it did before, one step at a time.

The evolutionary path that sprang from the formation of the first DNA molecule was laid down, step by step, with mutations in the length and sequencing of its chain of nucleotide pairs: each mutation being selected (i.e. carried forward because it improved stability and/or reproductivity) or rejected (because it didn't) according to its reaction with the chemicals and electromagnetic radiation present in the local environment.

Like slimy, genetically engineered versions of the copper sulphate crystals my children have just grown with their Christmas chemistry set, these early DNA molecules could have only thrived in a solution of DNA's constituent parts. The big leap forward toward life came with the mutation that led to a chemical reaction that created a bubble of protein around the DNA molecule. As spacemen and Water Zorbers will attest, bubbles can be very useful in enabling things to survive in otherwise hostile environments. Protected in their bubble, DNA molecules might endure periods away from the soup that nourished them, perhaps allowing them to be transferred to other nutrient rich locations by watercourses.

The protection afforded by these cells would have provided a miniature laboratory in which a greater variety of future mutations were given the chance to prove their stability and reproduction enhancing credentials in a wider variety of environments. The evolution of the cell can be seen as a starting line in the evolution of life. While it was just another small step on from what went before, it created the means by which the ingredients of the thing we understand to be life could be brought together as a stable unit.

Just as the bonding of positively and negatively charged particles in the aftermath of Big Bang can be seen as a something of a starting line, in that it represented the change that brought separate, pre-existing components together in the cooperative venture that is the atom: the fundamental building blocks of all matter, the evolution of the cell represents the point at which a change in the DNA molecule brought about a cooperative venture that created the building block from which all life is constructed.

The billion or so years of evolution that followed, in which life remained stubbornly single celled, may seem like a period of inactivity when viewed in the context of what followed, but it was not. The transition from the slimy, inanimate molecule of DNA to the pulsing, flexible, self-regulating thing we recognise as life was not easily made. Just because cells are small and do not have legs, arms, eyes and brains does not mean they are simple things. Each cell contains a community of chemical workers set up to provide energy, healthcare, security, environmental protection and information technology, each of which with its own lengthy evolutionary path. A glimpse inside a single animal cell would leave one wondering how it was possible for such complexity to evolve by chance mutation at all, irrespective of the time available.

The evolution of cellular life may have initially allowed it the ability to survive for short periods away from the soup of nutrients in which DNA was first created, but after a great many mutations the cell allowed DNA to brew up its own soup within the confines of its laboratory. All it needed was access to the appropriate ingredients. Billions of years of evolution eventually enabled cellular life forms such as ourselves to store sufficient supplies to allow us roam freely, and abstract our ingredients from a variety of sources on the hoof.

The next significant step change in the evolution of life perhaps comes with the series of mutations that allowed separate cells to cooperate with each other to create the first multi-cellular organism. One again this would not have happened quickly. Perhaps one mutation would have seen two cells failing to separate after division, but if that mutation was stable in itself, and was copied in DNA division, it would have led to cells that continued to divide endlessly, creating an ever increasing cluster of identical cells that would eventually become unstable and break apart, just as excessively large piles of bricks or rafts of flotsam do in our everyday experience.

The first stable multi-cellular organism would have needed mutations to stop it growing before it became unstable; needing one mutation to stop separation on division and another to stop division. In order to have some advantage in terms of natural selection, it would also be helped if the collection of cells were differentiated in some way: if the cells changed so as to specialise and cooperate, and thereby achieve more together than they might if they had identical qualities.

The synchronicity required to bring these elements together was unlikely to have come about quickly, and it didn't. Once a cooperative group of cells had evolved so as to create self supporting diversity, with mechanisms enabling each other to communicate their relative location, activity and relationship between each other, then pretty much all the essentials were in place to enable organisms as diverse as earwigs, apple trees, foxes and carp to evolve relatively seamlessly. Seen in this light it seems little wonder it took over 3 billion years after planet Earth was born for this milestone to be reached, yet only a little more than 1 billion years for the vast abundance of life as we know it to evolve, and for billions more organisms such as trilobites, dinosaurs, mammoths and dodos to have come and gone.

Eventually the journey of evolution took us to another potential barrier for those who struggle with the idea of evolution as a satisfactory explanation for the existence of mankind: sex. However, there is nothing special about sexual reproduction. Life forms don't need to sexually reproduce; they can just clone themselves, as DNA does. Some creatures as familiar as bees and ants do both; i.e. clone and sexually reproduce. Sexual reproduction just means the DNA of the next generation is created by mixing the DNA of two members of the last; whereas clones effectively enable the previous generation's DNA to be used again, like a re-useable tea bag.

Exactly how sexual reproduction started (currently estimated as having evolved approximately 1.2 billion years ago) is still open to conjecture, but one theory that appeals to me relates to parasitic infection. While parasitic infection sounds like something we might wish to avoid, we wouldn't be here without it. Many plants and creatures have bacteria with which they have co-evolved and to which they are effectively married, and without whom they would not be able to survive. We depend on bacteria in our gut to digest food and without bacteria termites wouldn't be able to digest the wood that is their staple diet, yet is indigestible to most other life forms. However, parasitic infection can go deeper than marriage. In every one of our cells there are mitochondria. These are effectively power plants that fuel each cell. Mitochondria are not separate entities in the same way bacteria are, yet it is thought they might once have been. Mitochondria have their own genome and this bears certain similarities with the genetic configuration of bacteria.

For a more readily appreciable example of parasitic coexistence we can look at the way viruses infect us. Viruses are like free floating chunks of DNA that find their way into our genomes like a cuckoo's egg does the nest of another bird. Once they are there they can be very difficult to get rid of. In the early single celled phase of the evolution of life it is easy to imagine a virus like infection having the effect of making one example of a species parasitic on another. Once a parasitic relationship begins it can only be sustained if a stable balance is achieved. If the parasite demands too much it will eventually cause the extinction of its host, and, if it is dependent on its host, it too will become extinct. Many parasitic relationships are only beneficial to one side, therefore they tend to persist only when they afflict a small percentage of the host species. However, it is possible for a parasitic relationship to lead to an arms race between the parasite and the host that ultimately makes both sides stronger. When this happens co-dependency and cooperation develops. The creation of males and females may have evolved from just such a parasitic arms race in a primitive multi-celled life form, resulting not only in the proliferation of two co-dependent forms of the same species, but all subsequent sexual reproducing species.

This is not to suggest that men and women are different species. If parasitic infection marked the beginning of sexual reproduction, its legacy is much like that of mitochondria. Mitochondria is not a separate species but an essential component of all species in which it is found. The relationship between it and its host has evolved from parasitic infection to symbiosis to integration. While mitochondria retains its own dedicated genome, which is transmitted exclusively through the female line, the different sexes have amended versions of the same genome; males with one x and one y chromosome, and females with two x chromosomes – the y chromosome being a shortened version of the x chromosome.

Cloning tends not be favoured by evolution because, when something in the environment changes ill suiting one particular type of life form, it's effects will impact equally on all members of the species, because all clones are identical to each other and therefore equally vulnerable. Sexual reproduction encourages diversity and makes it less likely any one environmental issue will result in the eradication of a species. Just one atom's difference in the composition of a chemical can change its properties, making it react differently to contact with another. Therefore, just as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide have very different properties, despite having just one oxygen atom's difference between them, two life-forms with slightly amended versions of DNA may have different reactive properties: e.g. making one more or less tolerant than the other to the presence of something in its environment.

The process by which DNA reacts with its environment involves a process referred to as coding for proteins. What this really means is DNA reacts with the chemical soup in which it flourishes so as to create structures and mechanisms, which, as a consequence of natural selection, tend to make it more stable, better protected and more reproductive. These structures and mechanisms are built from proteins. If DNA is our blue print, proteins are the building materials. There are a huge variety of proteins, all made from different combinations of simpler molecules called amino acids (like histidine, that was mentioned previously). Some of these proteins are known as enzymes, and these function less like building materials and more like project managers: managing as catalysts rather than becoming part of the fabric of the life form itself.

As previously mentioned, one of the key drivers in the process of evolution is mutation, particularly during the process of reproduction. Mutation occurs when something unusual happens in the creation of a new double helix of DNA. Perhaps as a result of stray particles attaching themselves to a nucleotide, the enzyme responsible for identifying which pairing of nucleotides is required creates an unstable bonding; for example creating an AG or AC bonding instead of an AT bonding. This happens, apparently, around once in every 100 million divisions, and is usually corrected by other enzymes. However, some slip through the net, and when they do, and the cell divides again, the mismatched pair is not replicated, instead new pair bonds are created matching the inappropriately created nucleotides with their appropriate partners. When this happens the sequence of pair bonds change and the mutation becomes stable.

What this 'stability' actually means for the organism varies tremendously. Usually it will be bad news, possibly even resulting in its death. However, it may result in changing some characteristic of the creature without causing it any immediate problems: changing the colour, shape or size of some component or altering how it functions. If this change does not immediately imperil the organism, or stop it reproducing, then this mutation will be passed on to the next generation and spread outward into the gene pool. While the chances of mutation are relatively small, as life forms multiply and time stretches out on the scales we are dealing with, they occur frequently enough to have a significant impact on the process of evolution. With creatures as reproductively active and short lived as fruit flies the effects of evolution can even be observed in the laboratory.

In 1859 Charles Darwin published theories to explain the processes by which we and all other life forms evolved; namely natural selection and sexual selection. While his theories were slow to pick up admirers, as they challenged the fundamental 'truths' of religious teaching, as evidence accumulated over the next 100 and more years, particularly in the light of research carried out since the 1960's, they have come to be recognised as the only credible explanation for how life has evolved on this planet.

Natural selection explains the process by which life forms prosper or dwindle from generation to generation. In any group of life forms that have evolved differentially through mutation to display a variety of traits, it is inevitable some will be better suited to the environment in which they find themselves than others. Even if the differences are small, with each new generation the effects will become magnified.

If we represent a creature's battle for survival with a game of dice, it may be a mutation gives one creature the equivalent of a 7 instead of a 1 on a dice, and therefore, instead of having an equal chance of beating another member of its species with a conventional 1-6 version, it will then have an increased chance of winning. If the nature of this mutation was actually an increase in the height of the creature, so it could reach fruit 7ft high but not those at 1 ft from the ground, in a sympathetic environment, the benefits accruing to the creatures with the mutated gene might be greater than for the dice roller. While it may be disadvantaged competing for the low hanging fruit, it would have free reign to snaffle all the fruit available at the higher level. In the event the fruit harvest should reduce over a period of years, the relative advantage accruing to the taller creature, and every one of its heirs carrying the same gene, would be even greater. If each successive generation of the species was met with a 30% reduction in the total fruit harvest available, the main body of the species might be expected to decline by 30% per generation (if the fruit was its sole diet), while the creatures with the mutant gene would still multiply as long as the availability of fruit at the higher level exceeded their requirements.

The combination of mutation and changing environmental factors initially gives rise to a greater diversity of form within a particular species, and eventually to the extinction of less successful types in some areas. Because of differences in environmental conditions, it may be that some varieties become extinct in one area while flourishing in another, and vice versa. If these groups become sufficiently separated so they no longer interbreed, the processes involved will result in the separation of the species and the independent development of new species. This happens as a result of two distinctly different chemical compounds (life forms) evolving such that they are no longer capable of reacting (mating) so as to create another stable chemical compound (life form).

Again the key point to understand about natural selection is there is nothing conscious or deterministic about the selection process. It does not involve the shaping of living entities or the genes in the DNA that creates them. It merely accounts for the process by which some of nature's randomly generated creations make it over the hurdle of regeneration and some don't. If an environment changes and becomes more hostile to a particular type of creature, the environment doesn't turn on some mechanism inside the creature to enable it to adapt, it merely eliminates those unable to survive the new conditions. If some varieties are able to survive it will be because their genes have endowed them with qualities better suited to overcoming the environmental challenge than others. Having survived, ongoing mutation will continue to throw up further adaptations on a random basis. Of these, any new genes that negatively impact on the creature's survival will be eliminated along with their host, while those having no relevant impact will not have any significant impact, and those that improve the survival prospects of the creature will not only survive but multiply; thereby giving the impression nature has somehow moulded the evolution of the species to suit the environment. The reality is nature operates by trial and error alone. Perhaps if the agents of decay and consumption hadn't tidied away the accumulated corpses of thousands of millions of years of lost species, we would be more likely to appreciate the arbitrary nature of the process, and be less willing to imagine an unseen and caring hand guiding it.

The other evolutionary force identified by Darwin is that of sexual selection. Survival of the individual is one thing, but if that individual never gets the opportunity to mate and pass on its genes to the next generation then there is no next generation and no evolution. In order to reproduce, not only has the individual got to be up to overcoming the environmental challenges involved in natural selection, it also has to be successful in attracting a mate. Not every creature is guaranteed success in this field, and therefore being healthy and well adapted is of little help to the survival of a creature's genes if it cannot pass those genes on to the next generation. As with natural selection, it will be the genes predisposing a creature to be successful in the mating game that have the greatest chance of being passed on, and, conversely, the genes falling short in this regard that will tend to be eliminated.

From the creation of the first atomic elements, through the creation of DNA and on to the evolution of complex life forms such as ourselves, the constant in existence, on which we may hang our hat, is stability. There is no huge significance to stability other than that which we attach to it. That which isn't stable simply disappears, and, unless before doing so it enjoyed a period of stability long enough to leave some record of its existence, we are unable to attach significance to it because it never came to our attention. All that surrounds us, whether alive or not, is either an exemplary manifestation of stability in its own right or a stable collection of long surviving stable components.

In order to become stable a thing must be able to resist destabilizing forces. At the atomic level these might include overcoming electromagnetic forces coming from nearby atoms. At the level of complex life forms, not only will this involve overcoming the environmental forces of gravity, wind, rain and solar radiation (heat and ultraviolet light in particular), but also competition from other life forms. This comes in the form of competition for territory, food and other resources, and comes not only from other species but from members of the same species. The challenge presented by competition from other life forms is special in that it will, in almost all circumstances, inevitably be pitched at a level close to that which other life forms can rise to, even if they cannot overcome; if this were not the case there would be no ongoing competition, only the elimination of one life form.

While environmental challenges can come from anywhere and may be beyond the ability of any life form to overcome them, competition from other species is a steadily active agent of evolution. It is arguably the particular demands of this form of competition that gave rise to the constant bar raising exercise that helped us develop into the highly sophisticated life forms we have become.

Tracing back the human family tree to the earliest common ancestor of all life on planet Earth, it is Archaeans, Eukaryrotes and Eubacteria that seem to be candidates for our most distant relative. The oldest life form was likely to be something we might recognise as a variant on bacteria. Perhaps 400 million years on from these bacteria the last common ancestors of all plants and animals evolved, but these were still single celled life forms. Over the next few million years the common ancestors of amoebas, fungi and slimy little chaps known as DRIPs evolved, but not necessarily life forms we might readily recognise from their current manifestations. Just as we have since had a billion years to evolve, so have these.

If we fast forward to just 700 million years ago we would come to the common ancestor we share with jellyfish. Jellyfish are interesting because they don't have brains, yet behave in some ways one might associate with some form of consciousness; in particular: they move freely around and do so in pursuit of light. From a truly scientific perspective, this manifestation of apparent consciousness is perhaps no more significant than a plant's ability to track the movement of the sun. For a layman like me, that they move around, bodies pumping, tentacles catching prey and steering themselves by the sun, makes the jellyfish seem to have more in common with a sentient being such as ourselves than a tree.

Because jellyfish don't have brains, it seems reasonable to assume our common ancestor didn't have a brain either. Therefore somewhere in the branches of the family trees that converge on this common ancestor, the brain, as we understand it, evolved.

That said, I wonder how significant this really is, because the functions a simple brain would have performed would have been little more sophisticated than the electro-chemical control systems enabling a jellyfish to sense the location of the sun, adjust it's depth and propel itself through the water accordingly. The brain as we recognise it didn't arrive as a fully formed walnut impersonator, it evolved as a swelling on an organism's central nervous system (which itself evolved from the alignment of cellular molecules' electrical potential – all molecules have electromagnetic potential as determined by the sharing arrangement of their electrons) perhaps like the equivalent of a switch accidentally appearing in an electric circuit by virtue of the wire being broken and the loose ends touching each other periodically.

By the time we move up our genetic family tree to our common ancestor with the worm family, we encounter relations with brains. The suggestion is, our common ancestor with the worm family dates (very approximately) to around 600 million years ago. Worms may not be, what we might consider, great thinkers, and, to the untrained eye, their activities may not seem a great deal more sophisticated than those of jellyfish, but they do have brains.

Sebastian Seung is a neuroscientist who is trying to map out a human connectome – i.e. to trace each and every branch and connection in the neural network of a human brain. This is a massively daunting task, given that our brains have billions of neurons (brain cells) in them, and the total possible number of ways these may be linked together into the neural pathways making up our connectome is said to exceed the number of fundamental particles in the universe – i.e. a number way beyond our ability to relate to. However he has made a start and, as a warm up, mapped out the entire connectome of a worm. This worm was found to have around 300 neurons, which were wired up so as to create approximately 1,000 neural pathways. Given it is thought each neural pathway is the equivalent of an idea, this might seem a surprisingly high number for a worm, but, when compared to the unimaginably large number of available connections in the human mind, 1,000 may seem about right for a creature stationed where it is between the jellyfish and ourselves.

All the creatures joining our family tree later than worms have brains, so it seems clear that, however sophisticated we think we are, and how uniquely clever we think we are, our brains started out as just another step on in the process that began with the alignment of cells in accordance with their electromagnetic potential. If all this initially achieved was to repel the cells from potential danger, like one magnet being repelled from another, mutation and natural selection would eventually 'improve' the 'design'. Single celled creatures don't have brains but they are still capable of detecting obstacles and moving away from them. Over billions of years these involuntary responses led to the sophisticated electrical switching mechanism that is the human brain.

Brainpower

Perhaps more than anything else it is the special qualities of the human brain that differentiate us from the rest of life on this planet. We are not alone in being self-conscious, in the sense of being aware of our own existence as individuals, but no other creature is endowed with comparable levels of intelligence and self-regard.

This said, we are not really aware of our brains and how they function, because, from our perspective, we are our brains. Of course we are aware of the bodies we inhabit, what they do and what they look like, but, as conscious entities, our brains define what we are.

The principal functions of the brain that give rise to our sense of consciousness are those of sensing, responding and memorising.

Any chemical or energy source is capable of sensing and responding to another, but not in the sense we might associate with our consciousness. Put a painted card in sunlight and the card senses the sunlight and responds by curling up, becoming warmer and becoming lighter in colour. Similarly memory is not a quality uniquely bestowed on living things. All chemicals have the capacity for memory, inasmuch as their atomic structures tend to resist external forces with apparent intent to return to a previously stable state. Perhaps a more useful example of electromagnetic memory (our memories are recorded and recalled electromagnetically) is that contained in the rocks at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. These rocks were initially spewed out by volcanic activity at the mid-Atlantic ridge and then drifted away from the ridge in tectonic plate movements. The iron and other magnetic elements in the newly created rock became aligned with the Earth's magnetic field when in a molten state, and this pattern became fixed when the rock cooled. Analysis of the ocean bedrock has shown the magnetic alignment of rocks to be arranged in stripes running parallel with the mid-Atlantic ridge. The patterns in these rocks showed us the magnetic polarity of the Earth is not fixed, and every few million years it flips. The positive magnetic pole of the Earth is currently in the south with the negative in the north, but this will be reversed at some point in the future as it has many times in the past. The rocks on the ocean bed contain the memory of these events, just as a music recording contains the memory of a piece of music being played.

Put sensing and reacting together with memory and you pretty much have the foundation of everything the brain does. Combining the ability to sense opportunities and dangers and react accordingly, and then remember how these events panned out, gives us the ability to learn and to imagine. Memory frees us from only being able to react to events in real time, in that it enables us to sense and respond to recorded events, and thereby use virtual reconstructions to develop conscious strategies. As our abilities to sense and respond evolved with an increased capacity to memorise, we gained the ability to cross reference memories and discern patterns. It is this ability to discern and make sense of patterns that enables us to identify gaps and missing pieces and repeat them beyond our immediate frame of reference. This ability to interpret and extend the information we gather gives rise to our intelligence and ability to develop skills and knowledge.

This pattern recognizing ability also explains consciousness itself. Just as we are able to use triangulation to work out the location of an object and measure and map the space between by taking measurements from just two points of reference, memory enables us to understand things in ways we could not if we had to rely on the single reference point that it is the present. When we move, either physically or in time (when we look at something and look again a moment later we have moved in time), we not only gain a different perspective on the things we experience, with memory we are able to gain a different perspective on ourselves, and so gain greater awareness of ourselves. If I walk in and out of a waterfall, I learn about myself as much as I do about the waterfall, and by comparing the sensations I experience when I do it with those I experience when I see someone else do it I learn even more.

The depth and breadth of our consciousness is so great it is understandable if we should think there must be more to it than glorified triangulation. That is the way with our attempts to understand most complex things, but essentially it is true. What may have began with something as simple as triangulation, i.e. the ability to compare two bits of information concerning the same thing and, by comparing the two, learn more about the thing than we could do from either alone, has slowly evolved into an ability to compare millions of bits of information about millions of different things and learn more about all of them, us and the nature of existence itself.

I mention 'us' because it is perhaps the complexity of what is going on inside our bodies and brains that we most take to be the essence of that thing we call consciousness some of us find so mysterious. Our brains are just a small part of us and they are connected to the rest of us by electromagnetic pathways we call nerves. When I rub my fingers of my hand together and move my hand around I gather information on what is going on from four principal sources: (1) the electromagnetic nerve impulses running up my arm to my brain; (2) the electromagnetic light waves entering my eyes and being converted to nerve impulses; (3) the sound waves entering my ears and being converted to nerve impulses; and (4) the electromagnetic messages being retrieved from stored memory. By comparing these four streams of information I gather large amounts of useful information about my body and immediate environment. I am aware that my consciousness doesn't reside in my fingers and may even realise it doesn't reside in my eyes or ears. I would be less aware that my memory was playing any role at all, but if I thought about it I would recognise that I made an assessment of, amongst other things, whether my fingertips were a bit dry or if they felt a little numb, and that I could have only done this by comparing the experience with the memories of previous experiences of rubbing my fingers together. Simple logic might lead us to the suspicion that, given our relatively low awareness of, and inability to isolate, the role memory played, our perspective of the experience was gained from the same place as where the memory was stored. This suspicion would not amount to evidence of course, but now we know, from proper, scientifically gathered evidence, our consciousness is generated in the same place as our memories; i.e. our brain.

In common with every other bit of our bodies, our brains evolved slowly through a series of mutated molecular improvements on what went before. As life forms became more complex, and their sensing and responding functions became more sophisticated, enabling components of an organism to react in ways more complex than direct chemical attractions and repulsions, simple forms of nervous processing would have developed so as to, for example, better regulate temperature and/or the location of the life form relative to the sun. Successive genetic mutations would have then modified these simple mechanisms to better address and overcome environmental challenges, and, when it arose, competition with other life forms.

The brain evolved as just another process that improved genetic stability and increased the likelihood the genes present in any given individual were passed on to the next generation. The chief functions of a fully developed brain are to solve problems and manage processes on a predicative and reactive basis. If variants of a chemical substance, energy source or combination of the two are able to 'sense' more than one piece of information about their environment and make a preferential response – be attracted more to one than the other – the variant 'choosing' the one that increases stability will proliferate while the variant 'choosing' the one that threatens stability will tend to disappear. Through a process of trial and error the equivalent of intelligent decision-making evolves.

As before, there is no determinism involved in this process - no problems needing to be solved by a brain - it's just that any gene mutations giving rise to an improvement in the ability of the organism carrying them to survive and reproduce - and problem solving certainly does this – would tend to flourish at the expense of rival genes.

While it may appear, from our perspective, the development of the brain and human intelligence has pursued a strangely linear path to its present state, as if it had been trained, this is just another example of how viewing a situation from too personal a perspective gives us a warped impression of reality – like assessing the likelihood of winning the lottery by only talking to lottery winners. The development has been 'trained', but not in the way a fruit tree might be trained to grow up against the wall. One difference being, in training a fruit tree, the grower prunes away all new growth that would allow the tree to grow away from the wall, so all the tree's energy is devoted to lateral growth only – i.e. it is shaped to suit the grower's purpose. Natural selection doesn't care in which direction any aspect of a living thing or its genes develops, however, any 'new growth' has to result in a net benefit otherwise it will tend to be eliminated. Once living things start to compete with each other this will tend to result in the enhanced linear development of survival enhancing attributes.

The reason for this being: it is almost always the case that any beneficial mutation comes at a cost. It is not as if every beneficial mutation can be picked up and carried forward in the gene pool as if it were an attractive bauble being plucked off a shop shelf by an infinitely wealthy and self-indulgent shopper, and then placed into an infinitely large and weightless shopping basket. Our brains are far from cost free. While they represent only around 2% of our mass, they consume 20% of our energy. Consequently, unless they contribute more than 20% of our ability to survive, the benefit of having them wouldn't outweigh their costs, and natural selection would tend to eliminate them. Big brains not only need more energy to keep them fired up, they also require big heads with big hard skulls that are difficult to support on top of upright bodies and are difficult for mothers to squeeze out during birth.

Most mammals keep their young in the safety of the womb until they are better able to fend for themselves than we do. The ones with the smallest brains are pretty much fully match fit when they are born. The brains of human babies need to undergo a period of training when they are born to better prepare them for the sophisticated culture they will have to adapt to. So while the brain and its basic programming is in place at birth, it is during the period of brain development known as infant plasticity when the software it will need in childhood is programmed in. Because human young are so unprepared for the complex lives they will lead they need active parental protection for an extended period after birth. This represents a massive cost, as resources devoted to active parenting cannot be invested in food gathering and fending off competitors, and for this to be justified requires the benefit to outweigh the cost.

In a competitive environment benefits and costs have to be calculated in reference to the particulars of prevailing environmental conditions. Therefore if two near identical competing life forms are subject to two different beneficial mutations at the same time, the costs and benefits will be judged by natural selection on relative terms. If one creature benefits from a mutation that enables it to gain a competitive advantage over another in taking a greater share of the available food source, while the other benefits from a mutation that endows it with greater longevity as a consequence of making it resistant to disease, if incidence of disease is sufficiently low, and food resources are sufficiently tight, then the relative benefit of the first creature's mutation may result in the extinction of the other. While the disease resisting mutation will flourish within the species with access to it, if the species as a whole is placed at a competitive disadvantage to the other in terms of access to food, the species will die out, taking this beneficial mutation with it.

While it is likely that most beneficial mutations will have more than one effect, no mutational development quite compares to that of the brain in terms of the array of potential benefits accrued from its development. A mutation that, say, helps a marine organism to digest a particular starch present in the sea weed on which it feeds may help it to digest more than just this particular type of sea weed, as the starch is likely to be found in other potential food sources, but if these are either not to be found where the organism lives, or those with the starch also have ingredients the organism cannot digest, the actual benefit to the organism may be effectively restricted to its consumption of its staple diet. However, the types of challenge brains have evolved to overcome tend to be more universal in their nature, and therefore the potentially realisable benefits can multiply exponentially. An ability to recognise and react to an object approaching you at speed may protect you from not just one dangerous thing but from many predators and falling objects. An ability to sense warmth from other creatures may serve to alert you to a range of possibilities, from lunch to sex to death, and when coupled with other abilities may open up a range of learning and survival enhancing opportunities.

Once one has the ability to retain the memory of an event and its many ingredients, and categorise it with others and recall these for comparison with comparable new events, one is able to learn and judge. When brains evolved so as to enable our ancestors to recall the information from past events and reconfigure them effectively at will, i.e. without needing the prompt of an almost identical sequence of events to that previously experienced, but instead by smaller elements of those experiences, our ancestors developed the capacity to think creatively; to have ideas.

In keeping with my previously stated view that it can be fairly meaningless, and sometimes unhelpful, to seek to categorise such matters as 'what is life' and 'when did life begin' in terms of black and white divisions, I cannot see it helps to wrestle with questions such as 'when did brains first evolve' and 'when did intelligence/consciousness/ideas evolve'. A mechanism that moves one thing away or toward something else when it is sensed may not be a brain, but it is a function our brains take care of for us, and the passage from such a basic mechanism to the wonderfully powerful instrument now located between our ears was a smooth one. It is unlikely there was ever a single mutation that turned such a simple mechanism into something we could all recognise as a brain. Similarly, what we might think of as sensitivity, awareness, intelligence, or any of the other evolved attributes of the human brain, such as memory, values and personality, did not arrive with a bang, they evolved step by step as refinements on whatever attributes existed before.

The evolutionary process that gave rise to human brains and the myriad activities they now enable seems no more remarkable than the evolution of the chemical processes that led to the creation of 'base creatures' such as worms, aphids and non-creatures such as viruses. All are similarly remarkable if one is able to disassociate oneself from the special perspective of a human being. Once a process begins enabling replication, extension and modification, there is no limit to where it might lead. Just because we are able to ponder on the significance and meaning of life, journey out into space and do so many other improbably sophisticated things, doesn't mean our abilities to do these things have their roots in any different processes than those giving rise to simple life forms, non living things and other wonders of the natural world. Once a creature has evolved simple sensing and responding mechanisms and memory, it may go on to develop more complex systems such as the ones we have.

Brain Function

While it may not be a true reflection of how the brain really operates, for the sake of convenience, we can divide brain function into two basic categories: internal physical regulation and external environmental processing.

Internal physical regulation covers such matters as pumping blood, breathing, fighting infection, etc.; external environmental processing covers all the stuff we are more aware of: sensing, memory, intelligence, personality and motivation. The process by which all of these functions evolved is the natural selection of mutated genes in our DNA. As my principal interest lies in understanding how our conscious minds operate, and my lack of expertise may become horribly exposed in the area of physical regulation, I will bypass the realm where the surgeon and doctor reign supreme and concentrate on the areas falling into external environmental processing: the realm of psychology.

Given this is the realm in which mankind has forged its sense of self-importance; that which separates us from inert matter, plants and other animals, and therefore to some justifies misplaced notions of spirituality and of being connected to some higher force or purpose, it is the area most open to misunderstanding, misplaced belief and ignorance, and therefore arguably the most worthy of investigation and in need of clarification.

Memes

The first 'psychological' function of the brain is to gather information, to sense what is going on. Genes alone have equipped countless life forms with the ability to sense what is going on in their environments, but like a movement sensor attached to a building, being endowed with the ability to sense is of little use without an associated decision-making mechanism. For movement sensors the decision-making mechanism is one programmed to close a switch should movement be detected: thereby allowing an electric current to flow to a light or an alarm. For mankind the decision-making process is somewhat more complex, and involves programming for intelligence and memory.

Intelligence and memory are particularly important because they enable the brain to create something capable of evolving independently from an organism's genes. The name given to such things is memes; a word invented by Richard Dawkins and now firmly embedded in the language. Ways to catch fish, tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots, architecture and any other ideas we have are examples of memes. Brains are able to create memes and then facilitate their replication and evolution. Once you or I have an idea we can play with it and change it. If we tell each other our ideas we can mutate them further independently or collectively. Therefore genes facilitate the manufacture, replication and evolution of memes, but, once created, memes have a semi-independent existence. For most life forms, genes are far more significant in governing behaviour than memes. For humans the importance of memes is massive. It serves no great purpose to apportion significance between genes and memes, but given that language, mathematics, science, computer code, social culture, religion, sport, accommodation and business are all examples of memes, it should be apparent that memes are pretty damned important to us.

Research carried out on the remains of our ancestors would seem to indicate that our brains have evolved relatively little over the last 30,000 years, yet whatever human memes existed then have since evolved and multiplied like nymphomaniacal rabbits. Just consider the technological advances that have taken place in the last 30 years, and the impact these memes have had on the way we live. This should illustrate one of the differences between memes and genes. Genetic evolution proceeds very, very slowly, while memetic evolution can proceed very, very quickly. The reason being: a meme can evolve significantly inside the brain of one human, and, more importantly, can spread, reproduce and evolve just by being expressed. So, whereas one step in genetic evolution takes two life times at least, and may only affect a handful of people directly, a step in memetic evolution may take a matter of seconds, and (as a consequence of modern communication technology) can potentially affect countless people. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Bill Gates are among the well known people who have been responsible for personally evolving memes in ways that have changed the way in which we interact with the world. But the interesting and perhaps alarming thing about all the memes we enjoy, and have come to depend upon, is they could be lost in an instant.

Unlike genes, memes are not hard wired into our bodies. Whether one likes one's genes or not, you cannot help but pass them on through your children. However, like music recorded as digital mp3 code on a hard disc, memes can be erased from our minds, or, when reproduced in tangible form, like stories printed in a book, they can be destroyed, and as with either, their reproductive capacity disappears entirely if others are isolated from them.

If, by way of an extraordinarily cruel, probably impossible to achieve, but nevertheless potentially fascinating experiment, we took children away from their mothers at birth and put them on an island on which there was no trace of mankind's influence: no other people, no technology, no written language, no Internet access, no planes flying overhead, etc., yet were somehow able to feed and protect them so they survived childhood, none of the children would benefit from, or be able to pick up on, any of the countless memes we now take for granted, and perhaps assume have in some way become hard wired into the definition of what it is to be human. None of the children would be able to speak what we might recognize as a language, let alone the tongue of their parents. None would be able to read. None would be aware of any of the discoveries or inventions mankind has come up with. No wheel, no music, no appreciation they are on an island, surrounded by a sea in which there are many other islands big and small, on a broadly spherical planet orbiting a star called the Sun. What's more, if they remained in isolation, it is highly unlikely they would rectify any of these handicaps in their life times.

Many of the things we take granted hardly seem to have needed invention; they seem so obvious. That's the benefit of hindsight. When we are shown how to do something, or how something is made, we can easily repeat the act of creation. However, coming up with the idea in the first place is not so easy. Even something as simple as the wheel required an inventor, and its inventor is hardly likely to have come up with the idea from thin air. The idea of making something round to help roll things along might spring to mind from watching a dung beetle roll a piece of dung, or a round pebble rolling down a gradient, or even, forgive me, by rolling a bogey casually between ones fingers, but this wouldn't be enough to lead to the invention of the wheel, as inventions tend to come about only if they help meet a need. Until other memes, such as building structures out of very large objects, or other projects requiring the transfer of large quantities of materials from one place to another, came along, the wheel would be an answer to a question yet to be raised. The wheel is likely to have evolved in sympathy with other memes as an improvement on whatever solution went before it.

One of man's most important memes is language. Without language, written and spoken, we would have had much greater difficulty in working as teams, disseminating knowledge and passing it on to the next generation. Without it there would be no Internet, no telephones, no TV, no radio and no schools. The evolution of language has played an important part in the evolution of the brain and, in many ways, mirrors the process of genetic evolution itself.

The IndoEuropean tree of languages, as the name implies, illustrates how the vast majority of European and Indo-Asian languages can be traced back to a single IndoEuropean Language. As one might expect, the languages most closely related – the ones with the most recent common ancestor – have the greatest in common. Therefore English has more in common with such languages as Dutch, Yiddish and German than more distantly related languages such as Latvian, Sanskrit and Kurdish. While there are always exceptions, this broadly mirrors the consequences of genetic evolution as expressed in living organisms. We share more common features with chimpanzees and gorillas than we do with dogs, birds, jellyfish and trees because we are more closely related. For both languages and organisms it is possible to draw up family trees tracing their evolution back through a series of common ancestors. Because of the speed with which language develops, language makes it easy to appreciate something of the effects of evolution and the fundamental reality of evolution.

Given a shared language and vocabulary, we can all, particularly those of us with children (who often exhibit a flexible attitude to word selection and grammar), see how new words and phrases seem to come from nowhere and change the way we communicate. As with genetic evolution, the initial change or mutation will be a single event, and will initially have only local impact; a genetic mutation will be passed on to children, memetic evolution will be passed on to those around the source.

If a person who is, say, asking another to hand them a fig, in an accidental slip of the tongue, asks for a pig, it is possible the other will find this amusing and repeat the mistake to others. If they decide to start referring to figs as pigs, it may be that 'pig' will become the preferred local name for figs.

In this way, with time, two groups of people in different locations can quickly develop distinctive elements from what was once a shared language. In the past, when there was less broadcasting and long distance communication, these local differences would have much greater potential to diverge than they do today. But it is quite clear to see the effects of such divergence. When I (who have always lived in southern England) was in Paisley (just outside Glasgow) a few years ago, the Scottish colleague I was with stopped our car to ask a local for directions. While my friend assured me the man was speaking in English, I could not understand a single word he said, such was the strength of his accent. One could easily imagine how, if the converging forces of modern culture should ever disappear, this local dialect would continue to pursue a different path from my own, and, if freed from the stabilizing effect of a common, widely understood written form (which was largely absent from the world even a few hundred years ago) his language would become distinct from my own. At this point, it would be something more fundamental than accent dividing our mutual comprehension; we would literally speak different languages.

This seems to me analogous with how species diverge. When different groups of a single species are separated and subjected to different environments, over time, different characteristics will emerge: initially creating a divergence of form, and then possibly leading to the creation of two separate species. In the initial divergent period the divided groups may look very different but will still be able to mate – genetically communicate if you will – as can Europeans, Africans, Asians and Australian Aborigines for example, but, as divergence continues, this ability to interbreed will become compromised – horses and donkeys can mate and produce offspring (mules) but these cannot reproduce. Once divergence goes a little further the genes of the two groups become incompatible, and the species become as distinct as man and chimpanzee.

For all the superficial similarities between the evolving form of organisms (genetic evolution) and of language (memetic evolution), it is worth pointing out that memetic evolution is adaptive, i.e. it can react to the effects of environmental change, whereas genetic evolution cannot*. While the difference is subtle, because a change in environment may eventually result in changing the genetic make up of a particular line of organisms, this is not because genes or organisms are adapting, it is because those organisms with genes least suited to the changed environment will tend to die away, taking their genetic inheritance with them.

*epigenetics is the study of heritable adaptations – until relatively recently it was thought new heritable genetic traits could not originate from anything but mutation, but it is now understood certain changes in the way genes are expressed, brought about by environmental factors, are heritable; nevertheless these do not affect the sequencing of the DNA and therefore offer a more limited range of variation and have less impact in evolutionary terms

It is difficult to judge to what stage in man's cultural evolution the children I left stranded on an island a few pages ago would be transported when isolated from modern memes, because we cannot pinpoint the date of man's first meme or which memes have become hard wired into genetic code, but what is certain is they would only be left with the abilities and potentials endowed on them by their genes

When we talk about the differential impact of 'nature' and 'nurture' what we are effectively talking about is the difference between genetic and memetic influence. That said it is in our nature to be nurturing. Therefore when these island children eventually had children of their own they would almost certainly be able to care for them. I say 'almost' because this isn't an experiment that has been carried out. Even if we look to animals in nature for comparable evidence we face a problem, because most creatures have some memetic capability, it is difficult to isolate exactly which nurturing behaviours are learned from parents and peers or come about as a result of genetic programming.

Nature vs. Nurture has long been a subject for fevered debate. From the popular theatre of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady to serious psychological study, the matter of which is more significant in terms of moulding the people we end up being remains a hot topic. Where once it was considered nurture was far more significant, subsequent studies involving identical twins separated at birth have swung the thinking back towards nature. The reality is separating the two is easier said than done. Our ability to think and generate memes is rooted firmly in our genes. Therefore whatever seemingly independent flights of fancy we may undertake with our memes, it is difficult to separate these entirely from their genetic roots. The physical and electromagnetic mechanisms that create memes were built by our genes, therefore it should not be surprising to learn their purpose and function is inextricably linked to our genes.

As mentioned previously, while genetic evolution is achieved solely by random trial and error, memetic evolution creates purpose from these genetically derived patterns. Genetic evolution does not respond to need and is not crafted by need, it is just that more stable, genetically contrived modifications seem to be meeting what we might perceive to be the needs of their hosts; principally the needs to survive and reproduce. However, once brains capable of sensing, reacting and memorising (i.e. thinking) evolved, these needs became real, in the sense the brain created an awareness of its host's existence, and that the activities it was responsible for were all apparently serving the functions of keeping the creature of which it was apart alive and enabling it to reproduce. For the first time it was possible for conscious and sub-conscious strategies to develop for the continuation of the patterns random genetic evolution had established; principally to make improvements to better facilitate reproduction and survival, and thereby overcome the hurdles of natural and sexual selection.

At the outset of memetic evolution one might envisage the advantages bestowed by the first meme would be practically indistinguishable from those bestowed by preceding genetic progression. Indeed the nature of this meme might make it difficult to distinguish it from other genetic effects. However, once the first step had been made, the evolution of all other memes just became a matter of time, or more likely a combination of time and further genetic evolution. While genetic sequencing is incapable of adapting to memes, just as it is incapable of adapting to the environment, memes become just another external factor by which the relative usefulness, and therefore stability, of genes will be judged by natural and sexual selection. If a random genetic mutation results in a change in brain function that enhances a creature's stability in these terms, it will tend to proliferate at the expense of less successful creatures and/or genes.

Therefore while memetic evolution, once established, will tend to race away from genetic evolution, genetic evolution will still continue so as to appear to be actively supporting and facilitating the production of ever more effective memes. With memes and genes evolving together in partnership, it can be difficult to separate the effects of each. It may be that a certain gene's primary function is to serve certain types of meme, for example language. Therefore, while the memes themselves would need to be passed on from person to person, as language is taught by parent to child, the genes supporting those memes would be passed on regardless. Therefore, those children we abandoned on their island may well have language supporting genes that would not have existed in their pre-language forebears, but this would still not enable them to speak, since they would be deprived of the means by which memes can be passed from one generation to the next, i.e. being passed on in speech, writing or some other recording media.

At the outset of memetic evolution memes and genes would have served entirely congruous purposes, as a consequence of their very close relationship. Now human memetic evolution has been going on for at least tens of thousands of years, it is not always immediately apparent what many of the things we think and do have to do with overcoming the challenges of natural and sexual selection. Streaking? Collecting china teacups? Bungee jumping? My hunch is no meme can be entirely isolated from its basic genetic foundations, and for me the great majority of memes display clear links. Whether certain activities people indulge in have any positive contribution to make toward overcoming these challenges is another matter, but it is possible to construct entirely plausible arguments to support the notion that even the most inessential (or even harmful) memes are generated to serve a perceived need related directly to real survival or reproductive needs. Plausible arguments aren't evidence of course, but there is evidence to take us a long way down this road, which I will return to later.

Before moving on I would like to make a few distinctions between what memes are responsible for and what genes are capable of doing without any memetic support. It is somehow easier to think of genes being responsible for dictating how many arms and legs we have than it is to give them responsibility for the things we think and do. However, genes are responsible for many complex activities one might think would more easily fit into the category of memes, in that they appear to be the result of carefully worked out strategies or learned behaviour.

We took our (now sadly departed) dog from its mother when it was too young to have seen a rabbit or a cat, or have been educated by its mother in the ways of dogdom. Nevertheless he could easily and eagerly distinguish the difference between dogs – any dogs – and other animals, particularly cats and rabbits, and behaved very differently toward each. Just like the distinctive behaviour of most animals, this can only have come about as a result of genetic programming. Fish finding their way back to distant spawning grounds, beavers building dams, spiders making webs and people running away from spiders do so because it's in their genes. Abilities to complete some amazingly complex acts can be hard wired into the DNA, and hence into the brains, of creatures. Each facilitated by the unimaginably slow drip, drip, drip of random mutation over millions and millions of years.

An answer to the riddle of how a meme such as fear of spiders could become hard wired into our genes came to me when reading RS Ramachandran's excellent The Tell Tale Brain. The experience of being bitten by a spider and the subsequent experience of illness that follows creates a series of related patterns of electrical flow through the brain, with the effect that an emotional imprint (which serves as a knee jerk, sub-conscious protective mechanism against further recurrence) is made in the amygdala (and/or wherever else in the brain's emotional responses are generated). The key signifiers defining a spider (shape, colour, number of legs, etc.) generate a particular, signature pattern of electrical responses (comparable say to multi-layered patterns of pixels on a computer screen) in the same way a large volume of water dropped onto a spot of land on a hill will create a distinctive pattern of flow, dependent on the volume and speed of the water's delivery and the distinctive configuration of the land at and around the point of precipitation. Having established this pattern, a repeat occurrence of the event (or, more importantly for humans and spiders, the events leading up to being bitten - e.g. seeing a spider) will trigger a similar flow, although this time it will move more freely along a prepared path. This will result in a similar outflow at a similar location in the case of the water, and a similar emotional response induced by the electrical flow in the case of the spider. Therefore the relatively small electrical flow generated by the sight of the spider alone, that previously would haven't been sufficient to penetrate deeply into our brain, is fast-tracked along a prepared expressway to our emotional emergency services.

Given the brain's landscape is determined by genes and the electrical flow generated by the experience merely entrenches/formalises a natural path of least resistance across the contours of the neural landscape, it is not difficult to imagine how a genetic mutation would be capable of creating a landscape with a modified, pre-formalised pathway along this route, and, if the effect of this was that the flow generated by the experience of seeing a spider (even for a creature that had previously never encountered one) immediately triggered electrical flow through this emotional pathway and caused the creature to take impulsive avoiding action, the mutation would likely proliferate as a consequence of its survival enhancing legacy.

It is not the apparent complexity of a behaviour that gives the source of its root programming away, it is whether it is reproduced in the next generation without any external instruction. If the language you speak was in your genes you would speak it regardless of where you were born and the language your parents spoke. From the plentiful evidence available from adopted infants brought up in foreign lands, we know this does not happen. If the way of thinking you have, and certain of your behaviours, are found to be common to people all over the world, from very different cultures, with and without access to similar sources of information, it is more likely these are the result of genetic programming than learning.

Another apparent giveaway as to whether a behaviour is the result of genetic or memetic programming happens when the brain of a creature is removed. As far as we can determine all memetic activity takes place in the brain – all memories and manifestations of intelligence are stored in the neocortex – the outer part of the brain that looks like a walnut in humans. If a human head is cut off we die. Without our brains we die. It is therefore remarkable that this isn't the case for some other creatures.

Famously, headless chickens run around like, well, headless chickens. Without their heads they are literally brainless, yet not necessarily lifeless or even feckless. There is one recorded instance of a partially decapitated chicken being kept alive for many months. This chicken, named Mike became something of a celebrity. Despite having lost his brain when most of his head was cut off, Mike carried on much as before, its bemused owner keeping it alive by feeding it with an eyedropper. It apparently carried on grooming itself, could jump up to its perch and even motioned its headless body as if to peck at the ground. When it eventually died the post-mortem established that a blood clot had prevented it from bleeding to death and, while the brain had gone, its brain stem remained in place. The brain stem happens to be the place in the chicken where many of its auto functions – the basic, life sustaining physiological functions \- are controlled.

Experiments with flies have demonstrated they can also live on after decapitation, for a day at least. While their brains and brain stems may be lost, flies are still able to detect movement, fly and groom themselves. The reason for this being certain of their auto-functions are controlled by clumps of nerve cells (ganglions) dispersed around their bodies. These take care of specialised local bodily functions without the need to defer to a central control mechanism such as a brain.

One final point on what genes can be held responsible for and what they cannot: while it is often said DNA is like a blueprint for life, it is both a bit more and a bit less than this. The type of blue print used to create a building or a machine needs to be interpreted and enacted by an external agent: i.e. a person or group of people. DNA requires only access to materials. If it is surrounded by, or can gain access to, the right chemicals it can synthesise the building materials, the project manager and the construction team, and then build a complete living thing by itself. However, what it builds, and what this thing will be capable of, will be dependent on prevailing environmental conditions.

If, during the construction process of a creature, such as a man, there is a non-fatal shortage of a required chemical, say calcium, the construction project may not have to be aborted, but it will not follow a strictly determined course. For instance, calcium deficiency may result in differently composed, weakened or malformed bones. The potential impacts of nutritional shortfalls are not confined to the construction process as it takes place in the womb. They will also impact upon body and brain development and function later on in life, as may nutritional overloads of certain chemicals.

While natural selection encourages gene mutations that improve survival prospects, it does not encourage the proliferation of genes capable of dealing with a challenge yet to arise: nature tends not to over-design (or design at all in fact). The benefits to a creature from every beneficial genetic mutation are usually finely balanced with its costs. A bigger brain may be capable of processing more information, but it also requires more fuel. If a mutation enables a creature to gather or process fuel more efficiently, the creature finding the most productive means of investing the potential surplus will flourish at the expense of those that don't. Once a surplus is invested into a new activity it ceases to be a surplus; the demands of fuel supply simply increase to match the demands of the improved survival machinery.

For the vast majority of the time over which mankind has evolved, acquiring sufficient food to cover our basic requirements has been difficult, requiring considerable effort and making heavy demands on our resources. Consequently genes that helped deal with an over abundance of resources would have unlikely bestowed an advantage on creatures hosting them, and therefore they would not have proliferated. Since mankind came up with such memes as agriculture, intensive farming and food retailing, we have been given easy access to the types of high energy foods our ancestors would previously have had to push themselves to the point of exhaustion to acquire. As a consequence, our ancestral genes programme us to eat all we can while the going is good, leaving only memes to save ourselves from immobility, ill health, lack of attractiveness to members of the opposite sex and early death.

Genes do not create the finished article; they merely set the process rolling in a particular direction, subject to certain environmental conditions being satisfied. The possible influences affecting the development of a foetus, a growing infant, child and adult are potentially limitless. Therefore while genes are hugely influential, environmental factors also have huge potential to influence how we grow, who we become, what we think and go on to do.

The Bare Bones of Psychology: False Dawns & Enlightenment

When one starts to contemplate how brain function might have evolved from more simple, brainless neural systems into the fathomless pool we call consciousness and explore with psychology, one is inevitably drawn to make comparisons with artificial intelligence, and dig up that old chestnut concerning whether computers would ever be able to think like us and develop consciousness. When that particular question was first asked, perhaps 50 years ago, computers were little more than servile adding machines. Now the levels of memory and processing power they possess enable them to learn by themselves. Whatever the evolutionary force is, whether genetic mutation, human invention or independent machine learning, the end destination is likely to be the same.

When the brain began to evolve as a discrete body component, distinct from the rest of the electric circuits coordinating bodily maintenance and movement, there would be no consciousness, and the idea of applying psychological analysis to its operation would be ludicrous. It would have been nothing more than a hub or a switch, perhaps with a level of functionality similar to very elemental components of the earliest computers, or their ancestors. The tiny incremental enhancements that took place over millions of years eventually raised the level of functionality to the point when we might start to consider applying such terms as consciousness and psychology.

The evolutionary process that gave rise to human brain function and consciousness also gave rise to the cognitive apparatus of all other creatures on this planet. The genetic and environmental influences shaping the different neurological 'designs' of every extant species are the products of natural and sexual selection. The reasons for the differences between bananas (no neurological system), jellyfish (no brains), chickens (less complex brains) and mankind (complex brains) are to be found in the cocktail of mutations and specific environmental and competitive pressures that arose along the way. The reason why all these creatures exist in their current states is they are stable in an evolutionary sense.

As stated previously, perhaps the greatest obstacle lying between us and an understanding of ourselves is the intuitive starting point we have for our contemplations on our place in the universe. Because we are both the centre of our personal universes and part of the only species on the planet to have developed a memetic culture, we are too easily inclined to see ourselves as the end product of evolution, and readily interpret ourselves as the inevitable destination of evolution - the perfect design evolution has been working toward. Consequently we attach too much significance to the here and now, and try to find meaning in it. It is this approach that tempts us to bend the evidence we gather to fit with our intuitive assumptions as to who we are, what makes us tick and why we are here. In evolution there is no destination and no perfection, there is only the rolling of sub-atomic dice and the perception of relative stability our time horizon permits us. For now, on the basis of our ability to influence our environment, we are the most important creatures on our planet. However, in 400 million years it may be the descendents of jellyfish, not mankind, reviewing the archaeological record of this planet, and comparing our influence to that of the dinosaurs. While it seems unlikely dinosaurs ever built cities, explored the universe or wrote books contemplating the meaning of life, they did hang around for over 100 million years. Mankind in our current, modern, civilized incarnation has only been around for a small fraction of 1% of this time. What record we will leave for intelligent non-human life forms to contemplate in the future is uncertain. What is certain is our significance at this point of time is the equivalent of a person appearing in a randomly taken snapshot of people walking down a crowded street. In the moment of the snapshot, the person captured by the camera's eye is all there is, and their significance is huge, but over the course of an hour, a day, a month, a year, etc. that person is seen to be no more significant than the thousands of others who have passed that point.

The examples of how this singular, narrow framed perspective affects how we perceive, think about and try to manage our existence are numerous and have been well documented in many respected publications in the fields of biology and psychology. Richard Dawkins, in The Ancestor's Tale, refers to the conceit of hindsight in an evolutionary context, and Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, cites many examples of how meaning is mistakenly attributed to events just because they have happened, while alternative and equally likely outcomes are ignored. The reason why I bang on about this is because if we really want to get to grips with understanding who we are, what makes us tick and why we are here, we need to be able to hold up our intuitive, often widespread, misunderstandings to the light and be prepared to set them aside when they don't come up to scratch.

We are at an interesting point in the process of our gaining a true understanding of how our brains work. Not only are we coming to understand how natural selection acts upon our every gene, we now have the ability to examine how chemical and electrical signals are generated in our brains, and in so doing we are beginning to be able to literally see thoughts and memories being formed and recalled. The work done by such luminaries of their time as Freud and Jung can be reviewed in the light of what we have since discovered. Working without access to such powerfully persuasive measurable information, the key figures in psychology worked from their observations and their intuitions and made the best of it. Now we have information that puts their theories into a broader context, and in this, while some still make some sense, much of what they thought can now be shown to be wrong. Therefore we have to be prepared to set it aside.

Our ability to look into the operation of the mind, and thereby our spiritual place in the universe, has parallels with our ability to understand our physical place in the universe.

Initially mankind's intuition was the world we lived on was at the centre of the universe and the bright objects seen in the night sky revolved around it. A perfectly reasonable assumption, and one anyone might arrive at today had they not learned otherwise.

Since this intuition was supported by the interpretation of the evidence available to most of mankind for thousands of years, the Earth centred view of the universe became not just the accepted way of thinking, it became enshrined into the teachings of religious leaders, and so became not just what we thought but what many took to be the unassailable truth. Challenging this way of thinking therefore became somewhat difficult. Religious leaders of yesteryear were considered infallible, and were not just respected for their personal opinion, but as being vessels for the word of God – the very embodiment of the truth. This way of looking at things still holds good today for most fundamentalist religious practitioners. Question the view of the church and you are seen to be putting yourself above God and must face the consequences: ridicule, humiliation, rejection and possibly even death.

The first voices airing the thought that, given the strange movement of certain bright things in the sky, perhaps the Earth wasn't located at the centre of the universe, were thought to have been heard in ancient Greece over two thousand, five hundred years ago. In the grand scheme of things their opinions didn't count for much. Around two thousand years later (c.1500) Copernicus theorised that the Sun and not the Earth was at the centre of the solar system. When published, a little before his death, his ideas attracted some attention and followers, but the Catholic Church (which dominated European civilization at this time) rejected his view entirely.

As the church strained to resist the slowly increasing weight of evidence pressing in on its defence of the Earth centred way of thinking, it was delivered a partial saviour in the form of Tycho Brahe in the latter part of the 16th century. His meticulously recorded observations of the heavens shaped his theory that Copernicus was partially right, in that the planets (apart from Earth) did indeed go around the sun, but he was wrong in thinking the Sun was at the centre of our system. In Tycho's system, the Moon and the Sun orbited the Earth and the other planets orbited the Sun. This theory was not only intuitively satisfactory, because it didn't change the central assumption that man's home – the place God had created on the first day - must be at the centre of things, but it also provided an explanation for why the other planets didn't quite always behave as one would expect if they were orbiting the Earth.

The church's reaction to Tycho replicates the way many of us today prefer to take on new information – clinging on to the old while trying to accommodate the new. However, the reason why Tycho Brahe is not a name as familiar to us today as those of Copernicus and Galileo is he was wrong.

The Catholic Church was still rejecting evidence that the sun was the centre of our little part of the universe in 1633, when it gave poor old Galileo a life sentence for daring to present evidential testimony, based on his own measured observations, to support Copernicus, in the hope it would stop the church's persecution of those who supported Copernicus.

With the invention of telescopes with good quality optical glass man was able to map the planets far more accurately than had previously been possible, and by 1700, when Newton was explaining the driving mechanism for the movement of the planets, all reasonable doubt about the validity of the central tenet of Copernicus's theory was removed.

When we try to understand brain function and psychology much of the most influential thinking on the matter from the likes of Freud and Jung can be likened to that of Tycho Brahe, or even to the unrecorded individuals who first proposed the planets moved around the Earth. What they had to say may have made a great deal of sense but it was still flawed. The chain of thinkers with something really useful to say on the nature of the processes that make us tick pre-date and bypass these psychologists; running from Newton, Darwin and Einstein to the many better informed scientists of the current day with access to the evidence extracted from neuroscience and genetics.

The psychologists I have picked out as having something particularly useful to say on how we think and behave are Abraham Maslow and Shalom Schwartz. Up to and including Maslow's time the work of psychologists was effectively carried out in the neurological dark ages. Like astronomers before the telescope, all psychologists could really do was make the best of what they saw with their own eyes. Maslow's insights, while revealing, were ultimately flawed; perhaps he lacked the grasp of genetics we have today. The more substantial, measurable and effectively provable theories of scientists in the fields of physics and biology have laid the true foundations that have enabled us to start building a more reliable theory of how the brain works, and therefore a more profound understanding of psychology. Schwartz's theory on values has been established by scientific experimentation rather than hypothesis. It demonstrated Maslow's sequencing of values related to needs was right, but that he was wrong in thinking one had to start at the bottom and work up; but more of this later.

In the foregoing account of how matter comes together from elementary particles, and how chemical reactions give rise to organic matter, and DNA kick-started the process of evolutionary biology, I am hoping I have left no room for an external agent to creep in to give our existence meaning or provide us with a destiny, to imbue us with spirituality or to mystically connect us with the infinite and eternal. We are surrounded by forces other than those of humanity, but they, like our humanity, are constructed from the fundamental particles with which our evolutionary tale began. I have chosen to follow the evolutionary path that led to humanity because this is a book about humanity, but this path was laid by the same agencies as all others.

We evolved from soft machines and, despite our ability to think for ourselves, we remain soft machines. Our brains are just one component of our soft machinery. This is an important point to accept as we return to the evolution of brain function and into the realm of psychology. Without acceptance of this, and the casting aside of existing beliefs, the best you can hope to achieve is a Tycho Brahe like understanding of the human condition; one that is fundamentally flawed and ultimately useless; a curiosity that may allow you to feel a little more comfortable in the dark, but will shed little light.

Since we will likely never be given the opportunity to examine the brains of our ancestors to see how they worked, all we can do is work with what we have: information gained from modern human brains and the operation of the brains of other creatures. From what we have learned so far, as a sensory event (an experience) takes place it triggers a chain reaction of electrical signals and chemical reactions, which enter our body through our eyes, ears, nose or through our skin, travel to our brain and then are processed and fed back to other parts of the body.

The nervous system is like a highways network connecting every building, house, office and shop in a country. No matter where they are there will be at least one small track leading to all their doors. Each local road connects with a slightly larger one, and these eventually connect with a dual-carriageway and then a motorway to a major city. There is a saying 'all roads lead to Rome'; in the human body all roads lead to the brain, and the biggest motorway is the spinal cord, a neural highway running up the spine, with junctions off it providing neural connections to every part of the body.

Whatever we experience, and wherever the experience enters our bodies, the chain of impulses it creates travel along our neural highways and enter the brain via the brain stem. This is located at the base of the brain, above the spinal cord. In evolutionary terms, this is the oldest part of the brain; the place where the nervous systems of the ancestors we share with chickens began to develop so as to increase neuron (the cells that transmit and process electrical information around the body) density in a place close to the creature's principal sensory detection centres (now the eyes, nose, mouth and ears).

For certain types of information relating to key body functions such as breathing, keeping the heart beating and other central physiological functions, the brain stem communicates directly with the rest of the body, ordering activity without conscious intervention. This is why Mike the chicken lost his head but not his composure.

Other information is sent on to the cerebrum. This is the large bit that does the thinking. In humans it represents 85% of the brain's mass. The information enters the cerebrum in the neocortex, which is the bit around the outside that looks a bit like a walnut. The surface area of the neocortex bears direct relation to the amount of information it can process. The reason why human brains look like a walnut is if they didn't, and the neocortex was smooth, our heads would have to be massive. As already explained, big heads present a number of difficulties, and therefore are potentially costly in survival terms. The demands natural selection has made in terms of changes having to offer greater benefits than the costs they incur, has led to an evolutionary path in which the neocortex has increased in capacity through a process of becoming increasingly folded. Just as if we stored duvets without folding them would take up a lot of cupboard space, natural selection has selected folding as a sustainable means of facilitating the competitive advantages bestowed on creatures capable of thinking for themselves.

Once electrical signals enter the neocortex they travel down into the cerebrum along neural pathways – patterns of connected neurons (brain cells) and synapses (cell links). Pathways seemingly created by the sheer volume of electrical activity in any one area, just as rivulets, streams and rivers are created by the sheer volume of water falling in any one area.

These pathways are created in the first year of our lives in response to the type of information being presented in the environment in which we find ourselves. At this stage we are not thinking or creating memories as we will later do. In this stage of brain development, called infant plasticity, the operating systems of the brain are being set up so as to be able to successfully process the information likely to be experienced in later life. Therefore, for example, while language itself is not being learned at this time, the patterns of electrical and chemical impulses being generated by the sound patterns of speech are being registered in the electrical and chemical impulses in the brain, with dominant patterns in speech being reflected in the creation of dominant neural pathways.

In a TED speech in 2009 Michael Merzenich explained how children born with cleft palates suffer from an accumulation of fluid in the inner ear (which has the effect of muffling sound) develop a neocortex which is unprepared to process un-muffled speech, and therefore have difficulty understanding speech and talking. Before this was understood it was thought children born with this condition also had inherent learning difficulties. Now it is known if they receive early surgical intervention to ensure the ear drains properly this problem can be avoided, and children born with cleft palates needn't experience learning impediments.

From a year onwards the brain moves more into a pattern of development it will be capable of sustaining for much of an adult's life. Electrical signals, generated by sensory input, spill across the neocortex and down into it, passing down existing neural pathways and sometimes striking out to make new pathways and connections. Information with apparently common or connected themes may share part of the same neural pathway, branching off to make unique complete patterns to record distinctive elements. These neural pathways make up our memories. We have billions of neurons capable of being connected in more configurations than we can imagine, giving us the capacity to build up an almost limitless collection of memories.

The word 'memories' implies a sense of passive past – reminders of things gone by. This is appropriate in the sense this is what they are - as soon as we have experienced anything, the precise moment of impact is consigned to history and all that remains is a recording; however, our memories are far more significant to us than as a resource for conscious reflection upon times past. Our understanding of the world we live in, of the others who live in it with us and of ourselves is based on these memories; this almost infinite store of information. Smells, visions, sounds, conversations, ideas, tastes, thrills, pain and all other information capable of generating neural activity in our neocortex leave a memory, or series of memories. All these are filed so they may be cross-referenced quickly to build an understanding of the world around us. The filing system enables recorded information to be called up and compared to new information as it arrives, enabling it to be appropriately filed and for existing information to be checked against it. The cross-referencing process works so different neural pathways, representing different aspects of the same thing (its smell, its colour, its size, its texture, its location, it's potential use, etc.) can be brought together to create unified comprehension of the thing in question.

The condition prosopagnosia is brought about injury to the part of a person's brain that deals with visual signals. It has the curious effect of preventing people with it from recognising even those close to them. Therefore they may refuse to accept their parent or spouse is who they say they are when they are standing in front of them, despite being presented with other confirming information. A blockage in the visual neural pathway to their amygdala (the area of the brain mentioned earlier with a key role in memory and emotional response) prevents the brain from being able to confirm that which it expects, i.e. that the person who sounds like their loved one looks like them. Because the expected validating message from the visual cortex can't get through, the person is treated as an imposter. However, when the rejected spouse or parent speaks to them from another room or over the phone, the afflicted person has no problem accepting them as the genuine article. In these circumstances, because the brain does not anticipate the arrival of confirmation from the visual cortex, no conflict arises and the potential for rejection doesn't arise. On the basis of the information available they can be extremely confident the person speaking to them is their loved one.

This provides a good illustration of how neural networks connect and function, or should connect and function. Our understanding of the world around us is derived from the filtering and coordination of messages passing down different neural pathways. Different information streams (electrochemical signals) enter the outer part of the neocortex as energy from sunlight enters a tree via its leaves, and from there it is passes down into the internal structure through a series of branch junctions. In the brain the passage of information through each junction (synapse) is facilitated by the strength of the electrical signal. Comparatively strong signals, especially those created by the joining of two or more branches carrying correlating information, pass deeper into the brain where they may connect with other correlating information. The deeper the signal penetrates, the more important the information is; the more useful and reliable it is deemed to be. Complex things such as other human beings are understood not as single entities, but as composites of many fragments of information the brain instantly connects to give the impression of the whole. Even the impression of another person's voice is not one fragment, but a complex of associated fragments relating to tone, pitch, pace, articulation, language structure, etc. Therefore even when a person is not able to see another, the number of criteria by which the brain analyses their voice is such that, in order for that person to be recognized, they have to pass a very rigorous, multi-stage authentication process. Should they fail any one of these stages their identity will be called into question, and, dependent on the importance of the failed criterion, they may not be recognized.

In the case of a person suffering with prosopagnosia the huge significance attached to a person's appearance is such that the lack of the required emotional verification from the amygdala is sufficient to override all other criterion.

This linking of memorised components through our neural networks relates not just to visual things like faces and aural things like voices, but to every piece of information passing through our brains, whether the information appears to be a recording of external inputs or thoughts and emotions generated internally.

Our thoughts cover a wide range of activities. Some may be undertaken simply for enjoyment; e.g. replaying past events that have given us pleasure, or synthesising events that might give us pleasure by cutting and pasting memories to create fantasies. However, most of the conscious thinking we do is aimed at problem solving or decision-making. When we have information that appears incomplete or, while complete in itself, is part of a larger picture, we seek to fill in the gaps or extend our view so we might make better sense of it. The process by which we do this is pattern recognition. We seek out rhythms, repetitions and similarities to help us find a suitable place for new information in the gaps between existing information within an established frame, or a place beyond the frame so as to complete or extend a harmonious picture. It is easiest for us to appreciate this when faced with mathematical problems such as filling the gaps in and extending a sequence of numbers such as 5, 7, 9, 13, 15, 17. We can see that 11 would fit nicely between 9 and 13, that 1 and 3 might precede the sequence and that it might be continued with odd numbers from 19 upward. Our ability to recognise such patterns isn't restricted to numbers, we can do it with everything: sounds, colours, shapes, words, emotions, etc. Whether we know we are doing it or not, creating and recognising patterns is how our brains work.

Emotions are the product of the electrical and chemical reactions triggered by the processing of other information. The purpose these emotional responses serve is to help guide our thoughts and actions so as to best satisfy our needs. If we put our hand in a flame we not only feel physical pain, the memory of which we might log away methodically for conscious reflection at a later date, there is also a strong emotional reaction that will prime our emergency responses and help us avoid repeating the experience when we next encounter a flame. When we help another person, we help them achieve something they might not have been able to achieve alone, and they are grateful to us, and a connection is made between us that makes it more likely we will benefit from reciprocation, that will make us happy, and this emotion will make it more likely we will seek to repeat the experience. Injuring ourselves physically is bad for survival prospects, cooperating with others, so that we make it more likely we will receive assistance when we might benefit from it, is good for our survival prospects. Being able to file emotional responses to thoughts, actions and experiences along with the thoughts, actions and experiences themselves, and then cross-reference these in such a way that we can group and connect things that promote similar emotions comes in very handy when it comes to creating a viable survival strategy.

While our appreciation of the world around us seems to be seamless and continuous, it is in fact a patchwork of memorised information brought together spontaneously to create the illusion of continuity. For instance, studies of the way our eyes scan what comes into our field of vision indicate we actually concentrate our attention on an area similar to the size of our thumb-nail when held at arm's length. We have some awareness of what's going on elsewhere, but, when we want to take in more of a scene, our pupils scan it rapidly and focus our attention on different parts, switching between keys points of interest. It is estimated that, at any one time, only 2% of what we perceive is real, in the sense it is a quasi photographic representation of what is being presented to us. The remaining 98% is created by our brain simply 'joining the dots' with memories that seem to fit and create a coherent picture.

This may seem strange but it is actually a very efficient way of going about things. If the brain relied on having to take in images, soundtracks and concepts as complete items, then not only would it be very costly in terms of the brain space such large 'files' would consume, but it would make it more difficult to cross reference information so as to synthesise new information and learn. Just as computers reduce all information to 0s and 1s, the brain represents information as neural pathways that share common routes and connections. Therefore, just as a computer needs only a sequence of ten 0s or 1s to account for every number from 0 to 512, rather than the 513 characters it would require if each number had to be stored separately, the brain can make best use of every brain cell by using each one as a component of many memories.

As well as being a great space saver, the repeated use of the same brain cells in different memories makes it easier for us to recognise similarities between the things we see, hear and conceptualise. This facility has enabled mankind to develop the high levels of intelligence required to invent things and gain ever deeper understandings of the world around us.

Invention and understanding are very closely related concepts. While invention implies the creation of something new and understanding seems to be more passive (the realization of something already there), as the old adage says: there is nothing new under the sun. Invention involves no magic. It does not create anything new so much as it involves rearranging things already there in ways not previously tried or thought possible.

Some things man has 'invented' have been invented previously by nature – e.g. the science behind glowsticks having previously been 'invented' by creatures from dinoflagellates to glow-worms - others, while novel in their overall construction, really amount to little more than improved applications of existing knowledge – e.g. computers more evolved use of electricity and material science.

Perhaps the reason why, for many of us, there is a gulf between understanding and invention, is the depth of 'understanding' that passes for understanding. We can know many things without understanding them. Just by having memories faithful to reality may be sufficient to enable us to give the impression our knowledge amounts to understanding. I know London is the capital of England. This piece of knowledge requires little understanding. I also know when I flick a light switch light will stream from a light bulb. This may be knowledge but it is a very limited form of understanding, and in itself there is little I may do with this information, other than figure out I may light many dark places by using similar light bulbs connected to an electricity supply and a switch. Deeper levels of understanding can be gained by an appreciation of the nature of the filament and how the flow of electrons that is electricity excites subatomic particles in it in such a way to cause photons to explode out of it and stream into our eyes, either directly (as a blindingly bright light in the direct line of vision to the filament) or having first bounced off other objects in the room (as apparently different coloured light). A deeper understanding would yield information on what these photon particles really are, how they are generated, how they react with the molecules in our retina, how this codes electrical and chemical pulses that we interpret as shapes and colours.

There is always a deeper level of understanding to be had. The deeper the understanding, the more connected the pattern of neural pathways that commits it to memory is likely to be and the greater the potential usefulness of the information. The greater the depth of one's understanding the more ability one has to invent applications for its use. As with the saying 'give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime', deep rooted knowledge provides us with opportunities for sustainable intellectual sustenance; enabling us to figure out a far greater range of applications than would be possible for more superficial, but perhaps more immediately practical and obviously useful, knowledge.

The flexible nature of our modular system of memory creation, and therefore of our ability to recognize and process information and create new levels of understanding, has its drawbacks. Flexibility implies an ability to bend more than one way and to assume more than one shape. Certainty and absolute reliability are sometimes casualties of flexible systems. What they gain in their ability to adapt to use in more than one situation they may lose in absolute accuracy. This is the principal reason why people are so different; why we see things in different ways; why we take different things from the same event; why we think in different ways and why we often disagree and find it difficult to see eye to eye.

In order to understand why we are different from each other it is beneficial if we can step back from looking at the differences themselves, and wondering where they came from, and connect the dots that led us from the evolution of matter, through to the evolution of life, on to the evolution of different life forms, the evolution of brains and the evolution of thought itself. Given the tendency of evolution to create diversity at every level it would be hugely surprising if we were all the same. The factors driving diversity remain the same at every level of evolution: genetic mutation and different environments. Every genetic configuration creates its own range of possible biological interactions for any given environmental encounter. The genetic traits that prove advantageous in one location, and accelerate the proliferation of the supporting genes in this location, may lead to the demise of the very same genes, and the proliferation of others, in another location. The greater the variety of environments encountered, the greater the ability for location specific specialization to develop, and hence the greater the potential for genetic diversity.

The human race has never been as mobile as it is now, and has never had such opportunities for racial and cultural integration, but until relatively recently even regional cultures within the same nations were able to survive relatively unsullied by external interference. Local accents and customs were preserved despite being separated from others by distances capable of being travelled in less than an hour by car. Geography is not the only factor separating people; appearance, social status, intellect, sense of humour and a host of other factors create other barriers that encourage specialization and thereby preserve and facilitate further diversity.

All these come into play in mate selection – who fancies who and who is thought appropriate for who - and would have done even within the tightly defined cultural enclaves of yesteryear: the prehistoric tribes. In modern times these barriers are preserved even as geographical and cultural boundaries are being eroded. Mate selection, whether conscious or involuntary, tends to pair people who share common traits, whether they relate to height, skin colour, intelligence, sense of humour, religion, social class or professional type. As a consequence of these preferences, boundaries are preserved, specializations are reinforced, and diversity is encouraged. Because these boundaries are not so strongly dependent on geographic separation, and will tend to cross over other boundaries periodically, each boundary-defined group will be subjected to different environments that will promote diversity within them.

Need

Diversity is beneficial; at least from the perspective of humanity as an entity worthy of preservation. The lack of diversity in the staple crop of Irish peasants, the lumper potato, enabled one disease to wipe out the entire national crop and led to a famine that killed up to 25% of the Irish population in the mid 19th century. Had the Irish potato crop been based on a variety of genetic strains, its potato harvest would have faired better.

However, diversity has its drawbacks. I speak no Chinese, therefore if I was to sit down with someone from China who spoke no English, we would have some difficulty understanding each other. Language is an obvious barrier to communication and integration, but all genetic and memetic diversity bring with them challenges to communication, understanding and integration. Perhaps in the future mankind will arrive at a complete understanding of the brain so all individual thoughts and experiences can be shared and perfect interpersonal communication, understanding and integration can be achieved. However, that day is still a little way off. We are now able to look inside the brain and begin to unravel its secrets in ways we could not of imagined a few years ago, but given our brains are fiendishly complex organs, the best we can do now is stand back and fit together the first jig saw pieces we are taking from their box in ways that make some sense when compared to the less than perfect picture pasted to the box's lid.

In order to better understand anything we are better to ask ourselves why before we ask how. There can be many answers to how but if we can understand why we can work out a whole host of hows based on a more complete understanding of the issues involved. As I sat in the bath yesterday evening cursing the fact my glasses were steaming up – a relatively new experience for me since I didn't previously need glasses to read in the bath – and was seeking an alternative to wiping them on a towel or peering around the edges (inconvenient and temporary solutions) I paused to ask myself not 'how' to best clear them but 'why' they were steaming up in the first place. The answer came to me: water vapour rising from the hot bath was condensing on the cold lenses, and would continue to do so until they were as warm as the water vapour. Solution: dunk the glasses in the warm bath. Bingo!

In order to understand how we might better achieve the levels of communication, understanding and integration that might make people happier, businesses more successful and politics more productive the best thing to do is begin, not by scratching our heads seeking the answer to how we might make things better, but by asking why do we think and behave differently. Why are we different?

We know the answer is genes and experience, but these are difficult to disentangle and more difficult to understand fully given the current limitations of neuroscience. The alternative answer is need. It is our needs that make us different. If we understand our different needs we can begin to build the desired bridges in communication and understanding to achieve greater integration.

We have to be careful about how we think about need. To ensure our understanding of need is consistent with what we understand about our genetic evolution we need to understand the limitations of need in the sense most of us might intuitively think of it. Most people will readily understand how need drives us, even if this understanding is rudimentary and is limited to breathing, drinking, eating and having sex. However, to be consistent with evolutionary psychology – i.e. psychology based on a fundamental understanding of 'why' – we must see continuity between need as we experience it and need as it might apply to the life forms from which we evolved.

We can appreciate that we, as a species, are driven by the need to survive and reproduce. That's because we have brains complex enough to allow us to be aware of ourselves, and to ask ourselves such questions as why are we here? What if we hadn't a brain? We share genetic ancestors with jellyfish and other more primitive life forms. They didn't have brains and therefore couldn't have been driven by need as we might understand it. What about inert matter? We evolved from inert matter, and if jellyfish aren't driven by need then certainly lumps of granite or pools of water aren't either.

I could restrict the concept of need as a driver to thinkers like us, chimps and dolphins, but rules with exceptions tend to have limited use. The unifying concept of need I am referring to must transcend such limitations. A lump of granite may not remain as such through will power, and a jellyfish may be entirely indifferent to its own death, but they continue to exist by virtue of mechanisms enabling them to be what they are. In order to be what they are they 'need' to satisfy certain performance criteria laid down by the laws of physics.

For a lump of granite, these needs are satisfied by electromagnetic forces binding the atoms in the mica, quartz and feldspar minerals in the rock so as to provide the rock with its distinctive qualities. If these are not satisfied it ceases to be a lump of granite.

For a jellyfish, these needs are satisfied if it remains immersed in water, with an energy supply (principally food) sufficient to power its cells and is able to evade predators long enough to reproduce. If these needs are not met the individual jellyfish will die, and if the collective of jellyfish fails to satisfy these needs, the species will die.

Mankind's needs are fundamentally the same as the jellyfish's: we both need to overcome the challenges of natural and sexual selection. The principal difference between ourselves and jellyfish, other brainless creatures and creatures with a brain but without consciousness, is we are aware of our basic needs, and are consequently able to develop personal, memetic strategies by which to satisfy them.

The fact that need, in the way we appreciate it, is something that does not exist for simpler life forms, is, to me, a delicious tit-bit providing a taste of how self-centred and biased our perception of the world and our place in the whole conundrum of existence is. The memes our genetically programmed brains come up with enable us to treat need as something tangible, yet the genes programming us are as indifferent to it as most other creatures and all inanimate substances owing their existence to the same processes.

So, by my slightly broadened definition, needs are the requirements an entity must satisfy in order to remain in existence. For all DNA based life forms, like us, the test of whether these requirements have been met or not is set by the exam board of natural selection, or if one is to be picky, the joint examination boards of natural and sexual selection. The pass mark for each generation creeps slowly upward as each new beneficial mutation presents new levels of competition for the rest of the gene pool, and changes when the environment presents new challenges to be overcome. Environmental change and gene mutation are the universal engines of evolution, the architects of need and competition strategy. For humans there is one further engine: memetic evolution; i.e. the evolution of ideas and the tangible things created by these ideas; i.e. technology, science, art, literature, architecture, etc.

The operating system upon which meme evolution is dependent is genetic. Therefore while memes appear to have a life of their own, and, unencumbered by a reliance on the slow, haphazard mechanism of genetic mutation, have enabled us to gain an advantage over other life forms by gaining an awareness of the rules of the game upon which survival is based – i.e. the game called need satisfaction – they are not able to entirely cut their genetic umbilical cord. They play a significant role in changing the environment surrounding us, and therefore have given the human race some influence over the examiner of natural selection. We simultaneously sit the exam and are able to bend the examiner's ear. However, we haven't gained control of our own destiny yet, and cannot escape the fact that it is not us as human beings that are being judged but our genes. Until we can engineer ourselves free of our genes, or our genes out of any crisis the environment might throw our way – disease, famine, loss of a breathable atmosphere – our memes will always play second fiddle.

Regardless of the age in which we find ourselves, it seems we humans rather over estimate our understanding and control of the environment and the physics defining us. Until the end of the 1960s Darwin's now universally accepted (by all rational people) 'big idea' of evolution wasn't even understood, let alone accepted. The coding of the human genome wasn't cracked until 2003, and even having achieved this doesn't mean by any means we understand how each gene works; we have just compiled a map of the sequence of compounds that define them. We are now beginning to understand some of the mechanisms of the brain, but neuroscience is said to stand approximately where chemistry was in the early 19th century. Therefore when it comes to psychology, the 'science' concerning the outputs of our brains, we are still chasing shadows. At least the shadows we can now examine are real and capable of being measured. Previously the shadows psychologists professed to see and understand were largely figments of their imaginations. Still these 'psychologists' walk amongst us, selling their snake oil to believers, so we still have a way to go to banish superstition and the acceptance of plausible nonsense.

So: to the essentials of need. What do we need to do to raise ourselves up to meet the challenges of natural and sexual selection? Let's start with the basics. The one ingredient upon which all life is dependent is energy. Even non-living things need energy. Energy is required to bond the elements in mica, feldspar and quartz (mainly silicon, oxygen, aluminium, potassium and sodium), which together make up granite. Once formed granite isn't too demanding in terms of its ongoing energy requirement. As long it doesn't get too much (so it doesn't heat up to 1215OC) it will continue to satisfy the defining requirements of granite. Water is a little more demanding. Once it has received enough energy to bond its hydrogen and oxygen atoms, it needs enough energy not to freeze and become ice, and not too much that it becomes steam. That said, left in a sealed container on your kitchen surface, water would remain water for centuries without needing anything else to keep it going. Humanity, and all other life forms are a little more demanding. We burn energy and therefore are dependent on maintaining a good supply.

In order to satisfy their principal energy requirements, life forms need direct energy in the form of light and heat (electromagnetic energy), food, water and (with a few exceptions) air.

Light is our principal source of vitamin D, which controls calcium and phosphate levels in our bones (without it our bones become weak) and while we make our own heat, we need just the right amount of heat from the environment. Too little and we cannot make enough to compensate – why Eskimos don't run around naked much of the time - too much and we can't balance our energy supply and dehydrate – why Bedouins don't run around naked too much. We also need light to see, which comes in pretty handy when we need to find food and water.

We humans have an energy conversion system. It is in our digestive system and in the mitochondria in every cell in our bodies. We take food into our bodies, convert into a purer energy form (glucose) and effectively burn this in oxygen (extracted in our lungs from the air we breathe) at cellular level, just as a struck match releases energy by freeing electrons from the phosphorus in its head as it burns in oxygen. No oxygen, no energy release.

In order for energy to be of any use to us, we need to distribute it around our bodies, and this is where water comes in. Lots of useful chemicals readily dissolve in it, including oxygen, and it also conducts electricity. Therefore, whether it is the water in our blood supplying oxygen to cells around our bodies, or water in our brains facilitating the transfer of electrical pulses between neurons, we are dependent upon it to live.

A brain is not a prerequisite for satisfying these components of need, and genes alone have evolved to create living things with a bewildering array of survival strategies: seemingly filling every conceivable niche in the available environments. Some animals require little or no light. Plants use the air to extract carbon dioxide so as to strip out the carbon to construct their bodies, and a brief contemplation of how many different types of plants you can find in any one area of countryside will give you an idea of the incredible range of solutions mutation and natural selection has come up with to exploit every environmental niche.

The foundations of life are laid with energy: heat and light. While air, water and food are more readily perceived as our basic needs, life is only possible within a certain energy range. For cold blooded animals the need to absorb energy from the environment is very apparent. For us this is a less obvious need in that, in the normal course of events, we are unlikely to die from cold or lack of light. However, for the homeless, poverty stricken and those who choose to expose themselves to some of the more extreme environments on Earth, lack of warmth is a serious threat to life. Heat is just infra red light, and it is not the only part of the electromagnetic spectrum we are dependent on. Lack of sunlight, as just stated, deprives the body of its principal means of generating vitamin D, and deficiency in this causes serious health problems that may result in the death of an individual.

If we are able to take an adequate energy supply for granted mankind's next most fundamental need is for air. It is said 3 minutes is the most time most people could go without air before seriously risking death. I can't manage even half of that, but I understand the record for holding one's breath is around twenty minutes - free divers have developed some pretty impressive techniques to achieve this. However, regardless of personal ability, lack of oxygen will get you in the end, and the end will not be long in coming. Next is water. The rule of thumb here is three days is about as long as one can go. Then there is food. The 3-3-3 rule of thumb has it we can go about three weeks without food before our bodies run out of fuel and mineral supplies. These are all generalisations. The exact length of time we could survive without satisfying these most basic needs would depend on our physical condition and the resources we started with, but the hierarchy of these needs would almost certainly be the same for each of us.

If we were gasping for breath we would not be motivated to act to drink. If we were really gasping for a drink our priority would be to drink, regardless of how long we had been without food. This is how need satisfaction works, we prioritise our needs in order of their importance to us; they motivate us to satisfy them sequentially.

There are processes going on inside our bodies that, if interrupted, might kill us more quickly than lack of water, but all of these are ultimately dependent on this holy trinity of needs being satisfied, and since they are automatic functions carried out at cellular level, without direct control from the brain, we can exclude them from the hierarchy of needs I am now building.

The next level of need in our hierarchy, as depicted in the above diagram, is sex. This need is a little different from the preceding in that we can go a whole lifetime without sex (apparently) without dying. I find this impossible to believe myself, and am glad I haven't devoted my life to obtaining proof, but there it is. Mad possibly, but dead no. However, the genes in our bodies are unique to us. You and I and all the rest of humanity share the same genes – the differences between us largely arise from the different combinations of different versions of the same genes (called alleles) we each have – and the only reason these genes persist is that, working as a cooperative group, they have programmed us to reproduce. Any of our ancestors that had genes inclining them not to reproduce did not pass their abstention loving genes on to the next generation. Because genes interact with each other to drive our behaviour in different ways, it is possible for homosexuals and sexual abstainers to share sexual preference related genes with active heterosexuals, but the exacting requirements of natural and sexual selection stipulate that sexual intercourse be prioritised as a very pressing need for most of us – as it is literally a matter of life and death for the human race and its gene pool, and our continued existence defines this need.

While these needs are ones we would be capable of satisfying without a brain, our brains have assumed some conscious control over their fulfilment. Breathing is pretty much fully automated, but we can at least take pleasure form taking conscious deep breaths or holding our breath to avoid inhaling something nasty. While we may find it difficult to ignore the demands of thirst and hunger, at least we have discretion over when and how we choose to satisfy their demands. Similarly with heat and light, while we may choose to endure temperatures outside our preferred range, we may only exercise this discretion within a very relatively limited range, and are strongly motivated to ensure we don't endure temperatures that make us shiver or dehydrate for too long. While our need for light is less firmly realised, the mood raising affect of a sunny day is commonly appreciated, as is the depressing effect of day upon day of dull weather, and few of us can resist the natural cycle of sleeping our way through dark nights and being active during the day. As for sex, well, it isn't the number one hobby in the world without good reason.

The more interesting needs we humans have find expression through our memes. While these higher needs are ultimately slaves to, or dependents on, our basic physiological needs, and only qualify as needs in the virtual reality world of our minds, nonetheless they are hugely significant to us. Indeed, given we are mostly able to take the satisfaction of our basic physiological needs for granted, it is these higher needs that dominate our thoughts; it is they that motivate us; it is the diversity of these needs that differentiate us and define us as individuals. Our brains use these needs, and the values that spin from them, as we might use a user interface/operating system like Windows or iOS to access a computer's inner workings.

The 'great leap forward' in man's evolution came around 70,000 years ago, when cave art and advanced tool making ability became evident, implying we had developed a complex language capable of communicating abstract ideas. From this date on came an explosion of cultural development. While 70,000 years may seem to us like a long time, in the context of the evolution of life on this planet it is barely a heartbeat. What facilitated this explosion was memes becoming the principal engine of human evolution. Where genetic evolution is slow and directionless, memetic evolution is fast and purposeful.
In all sexual species the effects of evolution are facilitated by social contact. A beneficial genetic mutation can only be passed on to the next generation when it occurs in the creation of the single cell from which a new life begins; only then will the new sequence of DNA be copied to every cell in the new being as the cell divides and divides again, and become the source from which the next the next generation's genes will be selected, whether by sperm or egg. The more sexual contact takes place, the more numerous and the further and wider the new gene will be spread. As the generations go by, new, improved genes will fan out and meet each other, and so the species will evolve to represent them fully. For human ancestors who might have had say, on average, four children surviving to reproductive age, each new gene would need 10 generations to reach a population of just a 1,000 people – 200 to 300 years; hardly a blistering pace by our modern clock watching standards.

Mutations are relatively rare and are more likely to snuff out life than enhance it. Also, the impact a single mutation might have could be quite small, say suspending the end date of the lactose intolerance humans apparently once universally experienced (and non westerners still do) at around the age of 4. In order to bring about the types of changes that separated us from chimps in our evolution from a common ancestor, a great many fitness enhancing mutations must diverge and spread so as to define a new species; and this takes ages – epochs even.

This all changed for our ancestors when their brains became large and complex enough to generate memes allowing them to record, recall and relay their experiences so as to enable conscious experimentation and shared learning. Having witnessed the effects of fire caused by lightning strikes, tasted inadvertently cooked meat, nuts and seeds and played with burning twigs, our ancestors could appreciate how useful fire might be, and how great it would be if they could make it for themselves. With communication it only takes one person to see something, or figure something out, for a great many other people to share the experience and combine this newly acquired knowledge with the fruit of their own experience. Shared experience, a capacity for experimentation and some rational ability can facilitate memetic mutation – the evolution of new ideas and beneficial ways of doing things – at a potentially limitless rate. While mutated genes may take a period of 20 years or so to double in number, a population of mutated memes could have experienced exponential growth in the space of an afternoon, or even a few minutes, even in an age where communication was dependent on one to one interaction. The meme factories our brains became have been churning out new ideas at an exponential rate ever since the great leap forward. That is why our ancestors wrought more change in the last 70,000 years than genetic evolution had allowed them in the preceding 700,000 years, and why our current capabilities make the technology of twenty years ago look as though it belonged to our grand parents' era.

Once our ancestors' brains acquired memetic capability we quickly became defined by more than just the means of our mating, hunting and gathering. Our most basic conscious needs, while still just ciphers for satisfying our basic physiological needs, relate to belonging, being loved, feeling secure and acquiring power. We are not unique in being driven by these needs, they are shared by a great many other life forms, but none realise them in quite the way we do, and our needs do not stop there. We also have more refined needs such as self-esteem, self-expression and self-transcendent contribution. Again, we are not alone in exhibiting behaviour that might seem to be driven by the same needs. A dog that is beaten gives every impression of having lost its self-esteem, with its ears, tail and held down; a bowerbird painstakingly adorning its ceremonial nest with pretty things appears to be expressing itself; and ants are certainly self sacrificing contributors to the greater cause. Everywhere one looks in nature there would appear to be manifestations of similar types of behaviour to ours. The difference in almost all instances comes down to the creature's lack of conscious control of its actions and the direct relationship between behaviour and purpose.

The ant does not contemplate a wide range of causes and potential beneficiaries for its acts of apparent altruism, or take itself off to serve another ant colony far away; it is not memetically but genetically driven; it serves a colony made of members closer to it genetically than many human parents and their children are. The bower bird's nest almost certainly owes its design more to genes than to memes, and serves as a direct advertisement to female bower birds; indeed it is the principal, mechanism by which females assess potential mates. While many an artist may seek to lure potential sexual partners to their garret with the promise of seeing their etchings, many more paint for their own amusement or to express their feelings. An abused child and an abused dog may both go on to develop low self-esteem, but perhaps only humans are likely to be driven to achieve by it.

With billions of neurons processing an effectively unlimited number of perceptions, memories, thoughts, sensations and emotions, the complexity of our memetic capability and its relationship with the satisfaction of our genes is too complex for us to understand in detail at this moment in time. However, while the jigsaw puzzle pieces remain largely in the box, we have over the last few decades been able to locate enough pieces to broadly see what is going on in various parts of the slowly emerging pictures. As our understanding of brain function has improved and we have finally grasped the veracity and significance of Darwin's great insight, we can begin to sort the wheat from the chaff in the shady world of psychology; shining the light of rational and experimental science into the dimly lit cellar of guesswork, fallible intuition and bullshit.

The hierarchy of needs depicted below echoes that suggested by Abraham Maslow in the 1940s. Based on his experiences he formed the view we were driven by our needs, and these needs had a hierarchical structure, with belonging needs at the bottom, esteem related needs above these (esteem of others first then self-esteem), self-actualization needs above these and finally self-transcendent needs at the top.

In an age before political correctness required professionals of every stripe to show sensitivity to their potential client base and wider society, Maslow referred to people driven by needs below self-actualization as being unhealthy; based on the idea that personal issues stopped them from fulfilling their potential as human beings. Maslow's ideas initially gained a huge following, although he has since become something of a shadowy figure standing on the sidelines of psychology; respected by many because his intuitions resonate so strongly with the experiences and thoughts of a great many people, but all that non pc talk of hierarchies and unhealthy people didn't sit so well in our supposedly classless society with its egalitarian comprehensive education system. Also, it didn't help that his assertion that our needs operated on a homeostatic basis – i.e. a lower need had to be satisfied before it ceased to drive ones motivational system and the next need up kicked in and took over – wasn't supported by research. What separates Maslow from many of his predecessors is he was at least on the right track.

Maslow might be considered to have more in common with Tycho Brahe than Copernicus, but unlike Tycho he didn't have the work of Copernicus to consider before coming up with his theory. Therefore, while he was mistaken in a fairly fundamental way and was oblivious to the true nature of genetics, his work stands as a useful stepping stone to our current state of knowledge.

Having been brought up in a family, and gone on to pursue a career in part of the business world, in which the 'science' of psychology was considered (1) largely bollocks, and (2) a subject to be taken at university by time wasters, the name of Maslow and his work passed me by entirely. I only discovered him some ten years after I had begun to set out my thoughts on the importance of need as a determinant of behaviour. At that time I referred to 'insecurity' as the driver, in that it appeared to me that people who weren't (in my eyes) genuine, honest and straight forward, and instead seemed to be wrapping themselves in the equivalent of behavioural camouflage, were attempting to seem something they were not because they didn't feel who they were was good enough. When I first read Maslow's Toward A Psychology of Being it almost felt he had been wandering around my brain helping himself to my ideas, albeit many years before I was born. My concept of insecurity linked into his of need in the sense that feeling secure to me meant having the things you need from an emotional standpoint. What I had never considered, or indeed heard about, was the study of values – being literally things we value. Being introduced to the work of Maslow and Shalom Schwartz changed all that.

Maslow attributed specific values to each of his need categories. So, if you were driven by his belonging needs you would value such things as security and family; for esteem: such values as achievement and self-respect; then for self-actualization: such values as beauty and truth. In order to satisfy a need we need to acquire things/achieve certain goals. We attach value to these things, and the more pressing a particular need the greater value we will place on the things we associate with them. These objectives, these things we value are 'values', and by cataloguing and measuring our attachment to these values we can begin to analyse our needs.

The needs below self-actualization Malsow referred to as D-needs – D for deficiency; meaning that any of these needs, if unsatisfied, left one feeling deficient; in deficit. Self-actualization and self-transcendence were referred to as B-needs – B for being or becoming, relating to acquiring states of aliveness, uniqueness and self-sufficiency.

Schwartz's work didn't concern itself with Maslow's hierarchical structure, but with the codifying of a complete and universal set of human values. He defined the concept of a value as follows:

Values are beliefs. But they are beliefs tied inextricably to emotion, not objective, cold ideas.

Values are a motivational construct. They refer to the desirable goals people strive to attain.

Values transcend specific actions and situations. They are abstract goals. The abstract nature of values distinguishes them from concepts like norms and attitudes, which usually refer to specific actions, objects, or situations.

Values guide the selection or evaluation of actions, policies, people, and events. That is, values serve as standards or criteria.

Values are ordered by importance relative to one another. People's values form an ordered system of value priorities that characterize them as individuals. This hierarchical feature of values also distinguishes them from norms and attitudes.

The hierarchy referred to by Schwartz is a personal one; i.e. I may place my values in a different order of priority to you.

The list of values Schwartz used in his early research was presented to sixty-thousand people from diverse cultural bases all around the globe. From this a list over 50 values were found to have universal meaning, and these became the subject of studies exploring what correlating relationships might exist; between each other and, in later studies, in relation to the types of thinking and behaviour exhibited by the individuals with different personal hierarchies. The result of this research was the creation of a values circumplex; a circular map onto which related values could be grouped to reflect their positive and negative correlations. The findings of this research have subsequently been confirmed by numerous independently validated studies featuring hundreds of thousands of people, and his system of values has been incorporated into such high profile socio-political research projects as the biennial European Social Survey, which surveys the social habits of tens of thousands of Europeans from around thirty countries.

The circumplex arrangement of the values allows one at a glance to see how values tend to support each other - so as to serve the satisfaction of similar needs, and therefore exhibit positive correlations, both in the incidence with which they crop up close to each other in personal hierarchies, and in relation to the behaviours they encourage - and oppose each other - so as to serve conflicting needs and exhibit negative correlations in the incidence with which they crop up close to each other in personal hierarchies and in relation to the behaviours they encourage.

For example ambition and preserving ones public image are two values that correlate positively, which seems intuitively satisfactory, in that ambition often aligns with a desire to achieve goals to lift oneself in the estimation of others. Similarly loyalty and honesty tend to correlate positively with each other. However, loyalty and honesty correlate negatively with ambition and preserving ones public image. If one looks at the relationship between honesty and ambition it is easy to see why this might be. If someone in a position to do you some good asks you for your opinion about something of personal significance to them, and your honest opinion is one you guess they may not like – for example you think their: new hairdo, latest idea, choice of boy/girlfriend, performance in a meeting, cooking, etc. leaves much to be desired – what do you do? Do you tell them the honest truth and risk upsetting them, making it less likely they will assist you – helping you realise your ambition by: helping, recommending, promoting or having sex with you, or do you massage the truth such that it either becomes inoffensive or what you think they want to hear. If you are generally inclined to tell the truth you probably place honesty above ambition. If, on the other hand, you are inclined to use your responses to curry favour with those in whose good books you wish to keep, then you are likely to place ambition above honesty.

Following this line of thinking, it is easy to see why loyalty and honesty should correlate negatively with preserving one's public image, and given what we have learned about the behaviour of our politicians and certain high ranking officials, it perhaps should not be a surprise that those with a vested interest in maintaining their brand image are inclined to lie and betray us when the occasion arises.

The above should not be taken to mean that one cannot be both ambitious and honest; of course one can. What the research tells us is it is significantly less likely that the desire to be both loyal and honest will result in a conflict of interests than the desire to achieve one's ambitions while remaining honest.

I wish to explore the ways in which our values work together and against each other in some detail a little later, so rather than explore these values conflicts here, I just want to use the above as a simple illustration of how values operate.

We all have an attachment to all of the values identified by Schwartz. Therefore for any of us to declare, for instance, that 'honesty is one of our values' is not significant, as it is stating the obvious. It may be honesty is one of our least strongly held values, and as a consequence we are generally considered by others to be one of the biggest liars they have ever encountered. That may well be, but honesty would remain one of our values. What is significant is where a value falls in our personal hierarchy, as this is determined by our needs. For those of us whose greatest need is to belong, the values facilitating this will tend to dominate our motivational systems.

Similarly, the frequently heard talk about 'the right values' is, for the most part, meaningless. Values can really only be considered right or wrong in the context of the need the person who holds them is trying to satisfy. It might be argued a person whose greatest need is to belong would not be well served by having autonomy as their number one value, but otherwise values are not inherently right or wrong, good or bad.

On this note it is perhaps worth pointing out all the values in the Schwartz system are positive, in the sense they promote positive outcomes for the person who holds them or the people to which they are directed. The seven deadly sins of hate, gluttony, greed, wrath, pride, sloth and envy don't get a mention. While one might infer that a very low placing of certain values might suggest a proclivity for these 'sins', it is assumed we humans do not directly seek to sin. When we do 'sin' in these terms we do so as an indirect consequence of the values we hold. Again, this is a matter we will explore a little further down the line.

The final general point to make about how these values work, before we start to look a little more deeply at them, is we all have an unconscious league table of values in our brains (in the medial frontal lobes of our brains as it happens), which serves as an emotional filter and guide by which to process our every thought. These league tables are not fixed - values may move up and down – but they are broadly stable. Traumatic events may rearrange our values in the short or even long term. As we move through life our experiences we tend to move our values around, and if we set our mind to it we may be able to consciously reorder our values, but, because they are deeply held, they do not change like the weather (at least as I experience it here in Britain). Because of this our values shape not just what we think on any particular issue, but define much that characterizes us as individual human beings.

Our colouring, the shape of our facial features, our height, what language we speak, our physical strength may all be hugely significant, but these are perhaps relatively superficial qualities, when compared to our values. Whether we are: kind or cruel, selfish or generous, curious or incurious, creative or unimaginative, a leader or a follower, interested in all sorts of things or have a narrow frame of reference, a believer or a thinker, prefer the novel to the traditional, like rules or abhor regulation, able to unravel complex riddles or limited to linear problem solving, etc. is determined by our values. In short, once the veneer of our physicality is stripped away and the light of accumulated experience is extracted, the boiled down essence of who we are is there to be seen in our values.

A Post Script Point Of Order About 'Need'

It is tempting to consider need only in the terms I have suggested above; i.e. that the overarching need is that of the individual life form (in humanity's case: each one of us): its need to survive and reproduce. While this may be largely true in the case of humans, it is not the case for all life forms, and because we share common ancestry with all Earth's life forms, it is not strictly true for us either.

It is only the presence of a brain that gives a life form an awareness of an identity beyond the cooperative group of cells that share a common DNA that it really is. The life form's DNA is itself nothing but a cooperative group of molecules called genes. While the genes themselves can in turn be viewed as a cooperative group of atoms, and the atoms as cooperative groups of sub-atomic particles, since it is genes that are the active units of reproduction, it is to them we must look to when seeking to identify the root of our needs as shaped by natural and sexual selection.

The reproductive success of our genes is not solely dependent on the reproductive success of the individual life forms in which they find themselves. It is quite possible for genes to flourish through a reproductive system in which individual life forms (gene 'vehicles' as Richard Dawkins describes them) are self-sacrificing. Some colony based insects, bees for example, have members incapable of reproducing, and exist solely to serve the greater good of the colony. Indeed the success of the colony is dependent on the self–sacrificing instincts (needs) of certain of its members. A gene's eye view of evolution judges success by the quantity of genes making it through to subsequent generations. It is immaterial whether this is facilitated by a large percentage of its vehicles crashing and burning like kamikaze pilots so as to protect and nurture a central gene repository (the queen). In the blind, mindless world of self-replicating patterns that is life, it is not the easily recognizable shapes (life forms, colonies of life-forms and entire eco systems) that ultimately drive the process of evolution. While these higher forms, including us, may seem to take on a life of their own, they are ultimately just vehicles for the genes from which they are constructed.

That we may not be aware of our self-sacrificing potential, and therefore are hardly likely to classify the giving of our lives to save another unrelated person as one of our needs, is not material. Many people who never previously regarded themselves as potential have-a-go heroes have put themselves in mortal danger to do just that, and died doing just that. They tend to do this without lengthy deliberations, on the spur of the moment, in response to a perceived emergency. The instinct driving such behaviour is written into our genetic code, just as it is written into the code of bees. Unlike bees we cannot all be relied on to act in this way. We have very complex genetic make ups and very large and complex brains, and we are not mechanically socially organized creatures in the ways bees are, but we are still social animals, whose rapid development from our ape ancestors was fuelled by our ability to cooperate with each other. The composition of our genes serves as testament that the cost of surrendering one's life is sometimes justified by the benefit of saving another's, even when this escapes the grasp of our conscious minds.

Defining need is not quite as simple as it may at first seem, but our values give us a pretty good set of handles to hold onto.

Values

While the values itemised by Schwartz provide a ready means by which to penetrate the inner world represented by the circumplex, ultimately it is the space they inhabit, or the fabric on which they lie, that more directly reflects the evolutionary forces at play.

Schwartz identified two sets of oppositions in which the values in one area of the circumplex promoted self-transcending thought and behaviour (cooperation), while those on the opposite side promoted self-enhancing thought and behaviour (competition), and at right angles to these areas were opposing values promoting openness to change (change as opportunity) and conservation (resistance to change/change as threat). These oppositions represent the possible outcomes of atoms and molecules colliding with each other mentioned earlier in this book.

When two relatively simple molecules encounter each other the possible range of outcomes are such that these oppositions are easily expressed: either molecules react or they don't, if they do the strength of the reaction can easily be calibrated and understood, if they join together without a fuss and the constituent atoms are preserved in tact they might be said to have cooperated, if they react with a swirling battle of electrons, with some atoms being displaced, they might be said to compete. When two people meet the possible range of outcomes is more complex, however, under all this complexity, the base processes remain the same: electrons are set into motion and where there come to rest is determined by the rules of quantum mechanics.

In trying to make a simple illustration of chemical and electromagnetic reactions I am aware there are layers of information I am ignoring, e.g. all chemical reactions drive the energy levels of the components to a lowest stable state, whether this involves the passive reaction (or lack of it) between two helium atoms or the more vigorous one between hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and therefore this weakens the distinction I am trying to make between competition and competition, and place these two oppositions as markers on a continuum of a single process. However, as the last diagram illustrates our values do map out on a continuum between the two poles, and if I denied myself the ability to make such distinctions it would be difficult to explain any of this stuff. I would then have to dive deeper into the fluid realm of quantum mechanics, and while I would love to go there, I am afraid I do not possess the breathing equipment, and neither, I fear, would many of my potential audience.

The fifty plus values defined by Schwartz populate the two dimensional space between these two oppositions and are sufficiently well dispersed and evenly distributed so as to enable us to reconstruct a useful representation of it, without necessarily being able to see every tiny detail.

When we listen to digital music or view a digital picture we are not hearing or seeing a completely faithful representation of the source. The image or sounds we perceive are little sampled fragments run together to give a recognizable impression of the original thing. If the samples are only taken from a part of the thing we cannot hope to reconstruct and represent the whole. If the samples are taken evenly from across the whole but too few are taken then the reconstruction will be too much of a disconnected patchwork to satisfy our senses: a jumpy piece of music or a low resolution, heavily pixellated image.

Because of the rather neat pattern of correlations existing between them, the values selected by Schwartz would appear sufficient in number and even in distribution to allow us to reconstruct a recognizable representation of the thing we are interested in, i.e. the mechanics of our motivational system.

In fact for most of the work we do with these values it is beneficial to aggregate neighbouring values into just ten super-values. From hereon in this book it is to these super-values I will be referring, and since the term super-values is annoying to me I will dispense with it, and from now on it will be to them I refer when I use the term 'values'.

So the 10 values we are left with are as follows:

Benevolence: preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is in frequent personal contact (the 'in-group').

Universalism: understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature.

Self-Direction: independent thought and action, choosing, creating, exploring.

Stimulation: excitement, novelty, and challenge in life.

Hedonism: pleasure and sensuous gratification for oneself.

Achievement: personal success through demonstrating competence according to social standards.

Power: social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources.

Security: safety, harmony and stability of society, relationships and self.

Conformity: restraint of actions, inclinations and impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms.

Tradition: respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas that traditional culture or religion provide the self.

These ten values arrange themselves in this order around a circumplex as shown in the DNA Motivational Map diagram that follows shortly:

Well, that's not strictly true. The original configuration of these values, that more accurately represents the inter-correlations between them (shown in the diagram beneath it), has tradition and conformity sharing the same slice of the cake, with conformity taking the bit closer to the centre and tradition taking the bit toward its edge; indicating conformity has a more positive correlation with all the other values (except the immediate neighbours) than tradition. For diagrammatic convenience, and for another reason I shall shortly reveal, I place conformity between tradition and security.

Dominant Needs Analysis (DNA) Motivational Map with Schwartz's 10 values

Schwartz's 10 Value Circumplex

In this arrangement the neighbouring values have the strongest overall positive correlations and tend to serve similar needs. For instance benevolence and universalism are concerned with self-transcendence, harmony and cooperation. Those on the opposing side tend to have a negative correlation and serve conflicting needs. For instance, opposite benevolence and universalism are power and achievement, which are concerned with self-enhancement and competition.

On the east-west axis of the motivational map and circumplex the values of self-direction and stimulation relate to openness to, and enthusiasm to create, new things, whereas the opposing values of security and conformity relate to conservatism: a desire to protect what one has and maintain the status quo.

These north-south and east-west divisions show the northern values to be concerned with morality: a code of behaviour in which the interests of all people is taken into consideration; the southern values to be concerned with competence: the ability of the individual to do something successfully; the western (left hand side) values to be contingent on belief: acceptance of information and customs not of one's own creation; and the eastern (right hand side) values relating to personally derived experience and rational thought.

The insights to be gained from staring into this crystal ball of values are many and considerable, but the circumplex has another dimension. The sequence of values is also faithful to Maslow's Hierarchy, and this linear ordering of the values has a rather pleasing evolutionary tale to tell.

These values, while genetic in origin, are expressed as memes. An evolutionary starting point for memetic evolution would be where the influence of genes and memes are indistinguishable.

Tradition is that starting point.

A gene is, setting mutation aside, a faithful reproduction of the gene from which it was cloned. Tradition mirrors this process of continuation by carrying forward the ideas that came before. Like genes they may mutate, but they represent a continuous thread through time.

While tradition wouldn't seem to need much in the way of memetic interaction (thought), or offer up much of use to the sentient being capable of making decisions for itself, life would be very tiring if it weren't for our capacity to believe in things. The workload life presents to our relatively tiny minds is huge. While we may not be aware of it, we make thousands of complex decisions every day; perhaps even by the time we have got out of bed, gone to the bathroom and made ourselves breakfast. Life is like a plate spinning exercise, with millions of plates spinning on bendy poles. To keep them all going, so we can get on with our lives, we have to concentrate our efforts on attending to the plates that look as though they might fall; the others we leave alone. Leaving things alone is at the heart of tradition – "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". Unfortunately real life is more complex and difficult to read than spinning plates, and sometimes we leave things alone that really do need fixing. However, when we encounter a challenge and haven't got a clue how to overcome it, we might be well advised to start by doing what's always been done. By following the traditional method we buy into the tradition, and if we continue that tradition without rationally deconstructing it we become sold on that tradition and become a believer in it.

Conformity is something one sees in abundance in nature. No meme generating brain is required, as can be witnessed when looking at field of grass or corn or swimming through a smack (apparently the appropriate collective noun) of jellyfish. Certain life forms, such as aphids, may occur in groups that are perfectly identical, and others, like us, for all our individuality, tend to conform to a very similar blueprint. I dare say the sheep in a single flock look very different to each other, but to us they all look pretty much the same. Fewer human flocks remain isolated in the way they used to, so now there are fewer nationalities that conform to the stereotypes of old: when I was a child I thought all Swedes had blond hair. Nevertheless, strip away a few cosmetic differences, and we remain a relatively conformist bunch.

However, while tradition wouldn't seem to be dependent on a brain, conformity has far more meme potential. Once a change takes place at gene level it can only spread through reproduction. So if I have been the lucky recipient of a gene preventing the deterioration of my eyesight and you haven't, you will not be able to conform. Your gene line may eventually pick up this mutation a few generations on, or in the next one if we get friendly, but for now I will have become non-conformist. However, if my ability to read is aided by the bright idea of my wearing glasses, you may also benefit from this idea, just as soon as you have picked up on it. Being able to see what is going on the world around you, to assess what others are doing, to be aware of what is different between them and you, and to be able to mimic their behaviour requires a brain.

So while tradition and conformity are strongly aligned, being in the same segment on Schwartz's version of the circumplex, perhaps as a consequence of its greater memetic potential, conformity is situated closer to the centre because we are consciously influenced by others and their values. In the hierarchical progression, reflected in my arrangement of the circumplex, conformity comes after tradition because it is a more developed value in an evolutionary sense: while tradition looks to the past for direction, conformity looks to the present, and therefore once an apparently beneficial change starts to take hold, our conformist tendencies afford us the opportunity to jump aboard the bandwagon before we get left behind, or stay within the protective body of the herd before we get left behind.

Next up is Security; again a value with a strong, pre-meme, genetic base. Security is concerned with the creation of boundaries, and rules by which to regulate what goes on within them. From the force field boundaries of atoms and the laws of quantum physics regulating the sub-atomic particles within them, up through the real boundaries of the billions of cell walls in our body, and the army of molecular regulators working away within to keep the cells functioning, nature is full of boundaries, rules and regulations. The memetic potential for creating new boundaries, rules and regulations is immense, and we humans can't seem to resist realizing this potential. Whether by creating informal, personally held moral codes by which we conduct ourselves, or through full blown written guidance notes, to-do lists, rulebooks, bye-laws, ethical codes, statutes, etc., humanity seemingly can't resist the opportunity to formalise ways of thinking and behaving for the guidance of the individual, the few and the masses.

In genetic evolution, mutations that stick around only do so because they are beneficial, or at least not harmful. Natural selection may be slow but it's sure. Memetic evolution is fast but it is also fallible. What may seem like a good idea at first can turn out badly. If a genetic mutation is harmful it is likely to prevent an embryo reaching maturity, whereas memetic mutation may create problems that have to be endured. So when genetic changes come about that would represent a break down of tradition and conformity in biological terms, they can only proliferate if they are beneficial. Consequently, from the perspective of creatures in the species affected, they would be deemed desirable, and no form of protection would be required. In genetics, diversity is almost always a good thing. The same cannot be said for memes, especially in the eyes of people with strong security needs.

Because memes can spread like wild fire without stringent quality control, a new meme could be more a threat than an opportunity. Consequently the value of security is there to act as a barrier to check the spreading of potentially dangerous memes. By throwing up barriers it creates manageable spaces in which the tried, tested and accepted customs of tradition and conformity can continue to do their good work without fear of disruption; providing protection for all those who observe their boundaries and adhere to their rules and regulations.

In so doing security acts as a banker for tradition and conformity. This illustrates the process by which each successive value in this hierarchical reading of their structure facilitates the realization of the aims of the previous values. Successive values relate to needs further up the Maslowian hierarchy, and satisfying needs relating to successive values should ease the satisfaction of needs relating to lower values, although the engagement of a higher value is not entirely dependent on the satisfaction of the value beneath it. In this Maslow was wrong. While there is some correlation with the idea that satisfying lower needs, and therefore giving a lower priority to the values that relate to them, should enable people to engage with higher needs, people can have still have unsatisfied lower needs, and therefore give high priority to related values as well as active higher needs. Of this more later.

Power may seem at first a very human value, or a distinctive characteristic of socially organized animals like lions and chimpanzees. This is true, but it is still a value with its genetic roots firmly planted in a pre-meme, brainless world. Concerned as it is with influencing and controlling others, power is a value with many parallels in the plant kingdom. A great many plants seek to impress other creatures in order to reproduce. Indeed their existence is dependent on their ability to do so. A brightly coloured display, a perfumed aroma and a succulent fruit are all inducements to attract animals, which are then duped into spreading their pollen or seed. Such displays are not confined to inducing animals to act as couriers. The venus-fly-trap uses similar displays to attract insects that are then ensnared and consumed by the plant. In any interaction between life forms, whether social or predatorial, an ability to influence and steer the behaviour of another to do something beneficial to you, so it incurs a cost to provide you with a benefit, is an invaluable asset.

We humans are pass masters in the use of power. Fear mongering dictators, mate seeking singles, advertisers and parents are just a few examples of those who rely on the ability to use power to their advantage.

As the next step along the values trail from security, power involves the individual in applying and enforcing its boundaries and regulations, even influencing and taking control of the decision-making process by which these are defined; in so doing ensuring these are set up and administered for maximum personal advantage.

Achievement has a more restricted definition in values speak than in everyday useage. It refers to achievements that, directly or indirectly, are measured by the approval of others, particularly of one's peer group.

As we have progressed down the suite of values on the west (left) side of the circumplex, the meme dependency of the values has gradually increased as their relative genetic dependency has decreased. Given its relationship with seeking the approval of others, achievement is clearly hugely important to organisms able to express their approval. This clearly gives it massive memes potential, and therefore creatures with a brain; however, not exclusively so.

If plants using colourful and aromatic displays to attract insects are motivated by power, they are ultimately judged by the approval of these insects and their ability to use this army of helpers to reproduce. The quality of their fruit and their ability to deliver it to their insect (and other) customers will determine how successful they will be in their quest to reproduce.

By doing that which wins the approval of others makes the realization of one's power driven aspirations easier. People who have won the approval of others may no longer need to assert their authority in order to have other's defer to them. If they are able to do this in such a way that they also satisfy other's needs for security, they may achieve a widely based, conformist support base that may, in time, enable them to satisfy traditionalists and have them 'believe' in them, and pledge allegiance to them on this basis. The ability to do this is not confined to religious figureheads and dictators. Steve Jobs appeared to have achieved a degree of commercial deification in his life-time, and many of us will have experience of having achieved very much more muted versions of such approval in our lives, or subscribed to the approval of another.

When we reach hedonism something significant happens. In moving from the west to the east hemisphere of the circumplex, we shift from values based on belief and equivalents in a brainless world into the realm of meme dependence and knowledge. Brainless creatures don't do anything for fun. You need a brain to experience fun, and not just any brain. As far as we can determine, only animals with large complex brains are able to have fun. Apes, monkeys, dogs and dolphins spring to mind as animals apparently capable of indulging themselves in play; whereas ants, earthworms and snakes seem less prone to doing things just for the hell of it.

The analog of hedonism in genetics is mutation itself. While a mutation isn't fun, it is experimental, it is a deviation from the formal script, and while risky from the perspective of the unknowing perspective of the organism that might otherwise wish to opt for a traditional gene, it is the key to evolution.

When considering the purpose of hedonism for humans we need to stand back a little. Our lives are so chock full of opportunities for pleasurable indulgence – pubs, clubs, sports, theatres, restaurants, games, etc. - it is something of a challenge to comprehend what evolutionary purpose, what need, hedonism could serve. In order to stand back we need zoom out in time to consider a period beyond modern civilization and its myriad opportunities for pleasuring oneself. The human brain hasn't evolved hugely in the past 30,000 years, so our capacity for pleasure seeking pre-dates our manufactured sources of pleasure and fun. In this context hedonism motivates us on the basis of 'if it feels good, do it'!

While gene dependency does not encourage experimentation, memes allow organisms to deviate from the genetic script when the opportunity, or necessity, arises. Out on the savannah of our ancestors we may have taste-tested an unfamiliar fruit in search of sustenance in unfamiliar territory. If it was bitter we might have spat it out, if it was sweet we might have swallowed. We have evolved to find things that are useful to us, in terms of enhancing our ability to survive and reproduce, pleasurable. If eating food and having sex were tedious and emotionally unrewarding we wouldn't bother with them too much, and death and extinction would draw closer. The savouring of meat and fruit as it stimulates our senses is deeply pleasurable and addictive, and as far as orgasms are concerned (apart from a spoof vox pop I am reminded of from Monty Python in which a Michael Palin, dressed as a middle aged woman, opines "I think sexual ecstasy is overrated") I think there is broad agreement about the pleasures of sex. The mutation that realigned the cells of an ancient ancestor's brain so as to make indulging in any of these life enhancing activities pleasurable would have bestowed a natural selection advantage on its host, and so would have proliferated.

The important distinction between hedonism and the preceding values is that it is experienced solely in personal terms. The fruit doesn't taste good and the sex doesn't feel good because others think so too. Hedonism is all about personal experience and judgement. No matter what I think of you, how highly I esteem your opinions, just because you tell me a drink tastes good will not determine whether I think so too. Whether I state my honest opinion or not will be determined by other values, but how I rate the drink will be a decision I make on my own terms dependent on how much I enjoyed it.

If we are to develop our potential beyond that defined by others, we need to become self-reliant, and learning to use the evidence of our own senses is a good first step. The sweet tasting unfamiliar fruit, once tried and tested, becomes just another resource we can rely upon. It extends our knowledge base and increases the potential range of our operation.

It makes sense that once one has achieved what one desired to achieve, or if one has become sufficiently proficient at achieving, one should be able to relax a little, devote less energy to achieving and allow oneself the opportunity to have some fun. If the freedom created is capable of generating new personal investment opportunities that open up new areas of potential, these have the ability to further ease one's ability to achieve, irrespective of whether achievement itself remains the primary focus of one's attention. This is the equivalent of a business being able to invest resources into research as well production and promotion. In the short term this makes no sense, as cost outweighs benefit, but, over the long term, such investment has the potential to reap significant rewards.

Stimulation can be seen perhaps as the more purposeful cousin of hedonism. It involves actively seeking out the new and potentially exciting. It is the desire to reach out and experience different things.

Hedonism and stimulation together oppose tradition and conformity across the circumplex. Where the latter promote continuity and a preference for doing what has always been done, and is being done by others, (thereby mimicking genes) hedonism and stimulation promote embracing experience on personal terms and a preparedness to try something new (propagating new memes). Together they create a need for activity, adventure (whether physical or mental) and an appetite to learn.

The purpose or consequence of this learning is to build an individual's ability to become self-reliant, to self-direct. Self-direction is an expression of an individual's confidence in their own abilities. While being driven by achievement may enable a person to achieve great things and stretch their capabilities, because it is contingent on the approval of others, it inclines the individual to work with known quantities, to operate within an existing framework on established procedures and observing established protocols. While there are many good reasons to do these things, achievement's progressive engine is more attuned to laying the next bit of track one place ahead of the last, or ensuring the track is being laid according to plan. Self-direction allows the individual far greater freedom.

I see the willingness to ask the question 'why' as being at the heart of self-direction. Tradition and conformity are not values associated with any questions; who needs to question anything when the answers are already there. Security, power and achievement revolve around the question 'how': the way forward is clear, it is just a question of how best to proceed; which of the available options should be pursued. When knowledge is complete and the established process is unbeatable, then maybe these questions are enough; but that's not how life is. Our knowledge is always incomplete and established process almost always becomes outmoded. In a world of change we are faced with a steady stream of new challenges, and even if changes aren't thrust upon us, our inquiring minds are always capable of creating change from new levels of enlightenment.

Hedonism and, more particularly, stimulation are more likely to give rise to the question 'what if'. These questions may open up new opportunities, but the engine driving progressive change is the question why: 'why do we do it that way?' and, more importantly, 'why does that happen?'

It is all too easy to lose sight of the purpose of our actions. I was struck by the responses I received when I asked the question 'why are you here – what is the purpose of your team?' when I first started working with people in corporate departments. I had presaged the question by trying to encourage them to see the 'bigger picture' in which their employer was placed, and so hadn't really expected them to reel off the specifics of their job to me. We are all too inclined to lose sight of 'why' and limit our horizons to 'how'.

A willingness to ask why and, either the ability to answer that question or the curiosity to seek an answer, are prerequisites for learning, innovation, creativity and effective problem solving. Perhaps we all unconsciously ask why when faced with any challenge, but too often it is a superficial why, and therefore the how is an ineffective solution. In the 'steamed up glasses in the bath' experience I previously relayed, I no doubt unconsciously asked myself 'why can't I read the words anymore?' and answered that with 'because they are misted up'. Every answer leads to another question, the trick to effective decision-making is to ask the appropriate number of 'why's to reach an appropriate level of understanding. Identifying misting as the cause of the problem I faced in the bath wasn't a deep enough answer, and another why was required. I could have asked myself another why and gone to the next level of understanding, that related to molecules and energy transfer, but answering that question wouldn't have resulted in a better solution to the problem given the circumstances.

For many people the question why never seems to be given top billing. For the truly self-directed person it tends to be the star of the show.

Self-direction directly opposes conformity and security, in that it promotes independent thought and behaviour while conformity, by definition, and security, in practice, inhibit these. Given conformist and prescribed solutions often have achieved broad acceptance through prolonged road testing, one has to be fairly confident of the virtues of an alternative, self-directed solution if one is to prefer it, especially if the stakes are high and the consequences of making the wrong choice are dire. To be an effective weapon in the decision-making armoury of the individual, the more self-direction is supported by a rational mind, appropriate research and relevant experience (i.e. intelligence and knowledge) the better.

If self-direction is the engine of self-actualization (realizing one's potential as a human being) and stimulation is its fuel, universalism might represent the size of the resource from which the fuel is being pumped.

Universalism is situated opposite security and power in the circumplex. So where security has us erecting boundaries and creating rules by which to regulate what goes on within them, and power has us doing the regulation, universalism involves removing boundaries so our field of reference becomes wider, more universal, all encompassing, and rather than seeking to regulate this environment we seek to understand it, to learn from it, to connect ourselves with the things living in it and all that goes on in it.

We erect boundaries for our own protection, to keep others at bay and to help us in the management of our environment. This implies we are motivated by fear, by a sense of our own vulnerability to, and inability to control, external forces. In this sense, universalism, with its razing of defences and desire to establish wider connections, necessitates our not feeling vulnerable in this way, and that rather than protecting us, these boundaries make us more vulnerable by virtue of isolating us so we become ignorant of the larger world of which we are a part.

I am old enough to remember playing on the seminal video game Space Invaders. In this game one moved a gun-station left and right, picking off an invading battalion of alien invaders one at a time. You could move your gun so as to keep pace with advancing edge of the alien pack, ducking in and out of falling bombs while unleashing shots with a big red button on the centre of the console. At the outset you were given four shelters, under which you could hide from the falling bombs. As a novice you would take full advantage of these, but when one had mastered the game one of the first things you did was to shoot away your shelters. What protected you as a vulnerable beginner became an unwelcome obstruction when you became proficient. This seems a reasonable analogy for our relative preferences for security and universalism: the more confident in our abilities we become, the more self-directed we become, the greater our confidence that we may drop these barriers without endangering ourselves, and the more we stand to gain from doing so.

Given a universal outlook affords one the opportunity to take in and appreciate a larger part of the grand picture of existence, it also makes it easier to pick out patterns from, and make connections between, parts of the whole that might otherwise escape one's attention. So whereas achievement inclines us to focus on the subject in hand, and if we are creatively minded, to seek incremental improvements, universalism, when coupled with self-direction, inclines us to look for and make the type of connections from which quantum leaps of creativity are born.

As explained in the earlier chapters of this book, all matter, and all the energy systems on this planet share a common set of building blocks. These can only be pieced together in accordance with the physical laws of nature. For example, the number of electrons in the outer shell of atoms determines the ways different they can fit together. Consequently, like any structure built from repeated use of a limited set of components, it is always possible to pick out common patterns between otherwise very different types of matter. Being able to see connections between apparently disparate parts of nature, science and human activity enables us to apply lessons learned in one to another. Through experimentation these connections provide the seed from which innovation and greater understanding grows.

Taking an interest in, and investing care and attention to, the world around us can pay enormous dividends; regardless of the form in which one wants to bank them; especially if we are curious enough to ask why, knowledgeable enough to answer the question or intelligent enough to dig deeper.

At the point at which we almost come full circle is Benevolence. In this hierarchical progression benevolence represents the fruition of the sense of connectedness and completeness that universalism and benevolence together provide. Once one is well on the way to realizing one's self-actualizing potential one begins to look outward less for the opportunity to learn and more to contribute further; if one's cup is full, one either has to stop pouring or keep going and find other receptacles to fill.

As a survival strategy giving to others so as to incur a cost would only seem to make sense if a reciprocal benefit is received. Otherwise the beneficiary of your largesse is handed a competitive advantage that may conceivably result in, or contribute toward, your demise. However, the evolutionary path that led mankind to dominate the globe was paved with the cooperation that is the defining characteristic of social insects and animals. Even at the simplest level, cooperation creates advantages in terms of efficiency, economies of scale and strength in numbers. We learn by sharing our experiences and standing on the shoulders of giants. Even our most competitive businesses are dependent on layers of cooperation without which they would grind to a halt. Without cooperation you could only possess an iPhone if you had mugged Steve Jobs to get it. I jest of course, because without cooperation there would be no iPhone, and no civilization through which its use might spread for that matter.

Even as a selfish survival strategy, for the person who has everything: financial, material and emotional abundance, benevolence is a good investment. The returns available from short-term reciprocal investments begin to have little real significance relative to one's starting position when one is fortunate to be in this position. Because one can afford to be very generous without impacting on ones ability to continue enjoying that from which you derive your pleasure, the cost of altruistic benevolence becomes negligible. The returns however have the potential to add to ones enjoyment of life. The simple act of giving to someone who benefits from your benevolence provides an emotional return, and the compound effects of such acts lead to a domino effect of goodwill and happiness that, in our increasingly interconnected world, should eventually feedback into the general environment the original benefactor inhabits, making it a safer, happier and more enjoyable place in which to live and bring up one's children.

Benevolence sits in opposition to power and achievement across the circumplex. So where benevolence promotes cooperation and the possibility of putting the interests of others before oneself, power and achievement promote competitiveness and prioritising self-interest. However, it is worth stating that all values, benevolence included, ultimately serve self-interest. It is just the self-interests of highly benevolent people are served by acts of altruism, without the expectation of short-term reciprocation, whereas those more motivated by power and achievement are likely to view apparently altruistic acts as an investment on which they hope to see a return in the foreseeable future.

Benevolence's position at the top of the needs and values hierarchy presents us with something of a dilemma when we try to complete the circumplex, since it is also the link between universalism and tradition. In terms of the definition given to benevolence by Schwartz, it relates to acts of kindness to members of one's in-group. i.e. the group (or groups) of which you feel a part. Therefore for someone who is high on universalism this in-group could be universal, and therefore potentially infinite. For someone with a strong affiliation to tradition this in-group is more likely to be confined to those sharing the same traditions; those relating to class, creed or religion for instance.

While tradition and universalism are on either side of a motivational divide bridged by benevolence, at heart they still seek to promote harmony. The difference between evangelists of religious and humanist or environmental persuasion may not be immediately clear, in that each seeks to make the world a better place in their own way. The traditionalist believes their way is the best way and seeks to encourage others into their fold. The universally minded evangelist seeks to enlighten through knowledge rather than belief, through an all inclusive cooperative vision rather than through a tightly defined in-group's vision of harmony that competes with other traditionalist visions.

Despite their differences it is striking that pretty much all the world's religions share very similar central tenets. Despite how the media may sometimes like to portray the faiths of foreign cultures, peace, love, compassion and understanding are at the heart of most major religions. The likely explanation of this being that religious codes were moulded by trial and error in much the same way as natural selection moulded humanity's physical form.

The secret of humanity's success lies in our ability to cooperate. Cooperating involves incurring a cost in return for a shared benefit. Competition involves incurring a cost in pursuit of a personal gain on a winner takes all basis. As many studies of behaviour based on the Prisoner's Dilemma (of which more later) have demonstrated, in group situations where the interests of many are interconnected, cooperative strategies produce the best outcome for all the individuals in the group, as well as for the group as a whole. Yet, when presented with any single opportunity to maximise one's gain by choosing between cooperating or competing with another member of the group, the best choice one could make is to compete. In groups in which some people always compete and others always co-operate, competitors will come to dominate. However, compare the relative success of a group of co-operators and a group of competitors and it is the co-operators that make the greatest progress, and, when pitted against each other in competition, it is the co-operators who come out on top.

The co-operative group is as valuable as it is vulnerable. Co-operation has repeatedly evolved in brainless, purely genetically controlled organisms, but it also evolves in the heavily memetically influenced world we humans inhabit, even without genetic assistance. Co-operative strategies make sense. As long as members of a group realize this, and are able to overlook the temptation to seek to gain a short-term personal advantage, co-operation can flourish. People motivated by benevolence and universalism are the most likely to identify, embrace and hold to co-operative strategies, but the group is vulnerable to abuse of their goodwill, especially from those motivated more by power and achievement, who find it difficult to see how taking a little more for themselves could possibly end up costing them and the group dear. Consequently it is in the interests of the group to suppress such tendencies by stressing the importance of tradition, continuity and adherence to the established moral code, and making it clear what the consequences of breaking with this code would be; i.e. rejection and isolation.

So benevolence is the hinge by which the door to co-operation hangs, with universalism and self-direction acting as its knowledge based supporters, and tradition, conformity and security acting as its belief based insurers; together forming an alliance to defend the moral high ground.

The Envelope of Needs and Values

The purpose of beginning this journey into the soul from the nuts and bolts of the sub-atomic quantum world was to demonstrate Mother Nature has nothing hiding up her sleeves. We have travelled from the smallest particles of matter and energy to see them gather into atoms and molecules, examined that most glorious of molecules DNA and its component genes, and travelled on to the creation of life and along the trail leading to humanity. In translating the criteria by which natural selection operates as need, I hope I have been able to frame needs and values analysis as the best 'big picture' means by which to examine all that shaped what we might understand to be the human soul: the essence of what it means to be human. On this basis, anything going on in our brains operates within a needs and values based operating system; including personality and intelligence.

Does this mean needs and values analysis can tell us everything there is to know about us? No, but it tells a great deal. The most obvious missing ingredient is experience. While our needs and values motivate and steer us, we have no control over where we are born, or what chemicals we are exposed to in our mothers' womb, and, when born, we have limited control over the people we come into contact with and the events befalling us. The swirling tableau of life is just too chaotic to allow any personally derived plan to be enacted to the genetic or memetic letter.

Our values will tell us little about the control we have over our body: how coordinated we are, how fast we can run or how far we can throw a ball. They won't reveal which language we speak, whether we can play the guitar, whether we are a comedian, a gardener or an investment banker, whether we have a voracious sexual appetite or drive a BMW.

However, they will reveal something about the way we play sport, how we use language, what sort of musician we are, what sort of sense of humour we have and the type of gardener or investment banker we are. They will reveal a great deal about the way we conduct ourselves in the bedroom and not only will they tell us why we drive a BMW, but if we are likely to have a personalised number plate on it.

Our values aren't good at telling us specific, superficial details of a life, but these are easily gathered through observation, conversation or presenting people with psychometric questionnaires asking such probing questions as 'do you like vegetables?' which generate reports that, with clairvoyant like insight, tell you are the sort of person who likes vegetables.

While the values questionnaire used in Dominant Needs Analysis (the commercial application developed from Schwartz's PVI) does at first glance appear to do something similar, i.e. by effectively asking you whether are the sort of person who values a certain characteristic, it is the interrelationship between the values, and the story revealed by this, that is important, not the individual messages relating to each value.

When I was young I used to think intelligence must be the most significant determinant of the type of person we were. I thought of intelligence as the ability to gather and assimilate information and use it to make decisions. The more intelligent you were, the more likely I thought it you would be able to gather the required evidence and then make good decisions based it. I took it that if you could demonstrate intelligence in one field, say mathematics, then you should be able to apply it to all others: relationships, sporting tactics, business strategy, entomology, you name it you should be good at it if you were intelligent.

But the brain doesn't seem to work quite like that, or at least not in accordance with such definitions of intelligence as IQ. On these bases people can excel in one exercise by which intelligence is purportedly being tested, yet not in others.

Defining what the best or right decision is in any situation depends on one's perspective. Even if one was able to gather every conceivable piece of information and analyse it so completely as to be able to predict with 100% certainty the outcome of all the options available, what would constitute the best decision would depend on your relationship with all the other players in the game. Broadly speaking the assessment of 'what is best' is dependent on whether you see yourself as being connected with the other players such that co-operation is more desirable than competition. If you take the view your best interests are served by damaging everyone else's, then you will pursue a competitive strategy, and be content with damaging their interests, even if this results in their removal from the game and you ending up alone. Defining 'what's best' for the individual can only be answered by the individual concerned, and only on the basis of their values: their survival strategy.

The 'psycho-killer' may be 'mad' in most people's books, but madness is a relative concept, and in a world of psychotic killers the 'peace loving guy' would be considered mad. In our 'sane' world what would be the 'right' decision from the psychotic killer's perspective would almost certainly be 'wrong' from most people's perspective. Intelligence is a slave to its master's script, and this is written according to his values.

We all know what we mean when we talk about someone's personality. A good personality is probably owned by someone who is: friendly, engaging, kind, clever and has a good sense of humour. But in reality what constitutes a good personality is a relative concept. Someone may be too friendly, or be engaging to the point of being intrusive, so overly kind as to make one feel uncomfortable, so clever you can't understand what they are talking about, and what is a good sense of humour to one person may be coarse or cruel to another. The broadly embraced measure of personality is the Big Five personality test; so called because it gathers a number of personality traits under the five headings of conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and extraversion.

While the Big Five test is considered to be a reliable measure of personality, I am not convinced it offers any insights deeper than those immediately apparent to the averagely sentient observer. Also, because they are not connected to each other, they do not talk to each other to communicate a deeper story; much of what they say must be taken at face value. Someone may score highly in conscientiousness and agreeableness than another, but because of certain differences in their circumstances, a broad consensus of third party opinion might strongly disagree with the relative placing of the two people, and some may find it difficult to see how the high scores are justified at all. I am aware that I, and many people I know, would be scored very differently by a range of third parties. When I am surrounded by like minded people I would guess I am a good deal more agreeable than I am when I am surrounded by those I would consider to be stupid, cruel, selfish or boring.

From my reading of personality, the key factors are determined by a combination of values and experience. If most people are seen to have stable personalities I would argue it is because their values and their environment are also stable. Personality would appear to be the most visible expression of our values, but it is just a projection and, especially when assessed in Big Five terms, fails to reveal the bigger picture.

Mental Processing

In his highly readable summary of a life examining how people make decisions entitled 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman interprets the findings of neuroscientists on how the brain functions in the light of his extensive experience as a psychologist and economist.

He describes the brain as having two modes of thinking. System 1 is our default decision-making system. It is intuitive; i.e. it makes decisions without conscious thought or reflection within milliseconds. System 2 represents our rational side; the system that consciously or semi-consciously digs up the data, correlates the information and does the maths.

System 1 is our default mode. Even in the slowest moving lives we are faced with a bewildering amount of information to process and decisions to make. As I tap out these words I am listening to music, which I have identified as being by Spriritualized; that I have decided gives me pleasure and reminds me of a particular time in London waiting at South Kensington tube station when I had it playing on my Walkman; that I have checked is being played at a comfortable volume, etc. All the while the ideas I want to express conjure up words from somewhere else in my memory, and the letters of these words are ordered and selected so my fingers are aimed at places where I recall the matching keys are to be found on the keyboard before me. My eyes scan both the keyboard and the screen to check I (likely) or the computer (unlikely) have not made a mistake, while I judge whether I am comfortable and, if not, what readjustment of my posture or chair is required, etc. etc. etc. Hopefully you get the point. Without a brain I would not be able to do hardly any of these things, and with a brain I am hardly aware I am doing any of them. System 1 is there to make life as easy for me as possible. I only need to pause to engage system 2 in order to make the checklist of activities I just have, and reflect on what point I want to make next.

Just as natural selection has enabled brainless creatures to automate their bodily processes, so it has set up our brain so it doesn't waste valuable energy on 'manually' processing functions that could be automated. The state in which system 1 remains in control is called cognitive ease. We find ourselves cruising on the auto-pilot of cognitive ease when: (1) we have encountered the same thing again and again (repeated experience); (2) the thing we are presented with is made clear to our senses so it is easy to comprehend (clear display); (3) we have been teed up to respond to a proposition in a particular way (primed idea); and (4) we are in a good mood.

If these conditions have been satisfied we feel at ease, and consequently whatever it is we are being led to do feels familiar, true, good and effortless. When all is right with the world there is no perceived need to worry, or trouble system 2. It is only when we are presented with something unfamiliar, or something we can't immediately make out, or something we were not expecting, or when we are in a bad mood, that system 1 refers the decision to system 2. System 2 then reviews the proposition and searches the memory banks for any information that might come in handy. It will either find all the relevant documentation it needs to approve the decision system 1 would have made had the alarm bells not started ringing, or it makes a rational decision and passes this back for system 1's approval and to be actioned. When the two systems struggle to reach accord this is known as cognitive dissonance. This results in a head and heart type conflict - when something makes sense but feels wrong.

Because we rely on our instincts so much it is very difficult to do what seems rational when system 1 makes us feel uneasy. System 1 will save our life if a mad axe wielding maniac or man eating tiger rushes us when we are out for stroll; if we spill boiling water it will, in milliseconds, have us spring out of the way to avoid getting burned; it has earned our respect but it is far from infallible. It has little to offer us when the challenge we face is novel and requires rational engagement, and it can easily be deceived. Just as many creatures are fooled by the displays of other creatures or plants into thinking they are about to get a tasty meal or a mating opportunity, only to find themselves being duped to facilitate the reproduction of their deceiver, or worse, to become their supper, so are we capable of being lulled into a false sense of security. When this happens we become blissfully unaware of the mistakes we are making.

Fortunately for us these mistakes rarely end up with us becoming food for another, but they may still be costly to us. We may be more likely to believe someone we respect who tells us something wrong, than someone we don't know, or has failed to gain our trust, who tells us the truth. When we have nothing else to go on then perhaps this makes sense, but we do this even when we have some knowledge of the subject, and, with a little bit of effort could have made up our own mind.

System 1 does not sit in a sealed compartment in our heads and it is capable of being reprogrammed. While system 1 is primed to function straight out of the box, as it were, it has the potential to be remodelled through life as its decisions are reviewed and lessons are learned. If, through repeated experience, for example, we find something that feels right often turns out wrong, then with each failure we are likely to feel less good about it, and as an alternative demonstrates its worth it's feel good factor will rise. This is part of the learning experience.

When we are presented with an entirely new challenge for which we have no particular prior feel, our first faltering experiences of it are likely to be reliant on system 2. If presented with a guitar to play, for example, we will have to concentrate hard to relate any instructions we are given to the strings, neck and fretboard and then put them into practice. Placing different fingers on different strings on different frets will feel awkward and uncomfortable. The experience is unlikely to generate any sense of cognitive ease. In fact it will likely feel so uncomfortable that we will not want to repeat the experience. In order to find the motivation to overcome this hurdle we must have a greater need; a perceived benefit we value more highly than the cost of overcoming system 1's complaints. As long as we are able to do this we retain the ability to learn, but when we give in to system 1's complaints we stop.

Eventually the repeated experience of the learning process will make everything feel easier and, ultimately, will become so familiar that it will require little or no system 2 involvement at all. When we become fully competent, playing a guitar will feel good, and may even become a source of comfort.

If new experiences are avoided, or abandoned early, then system 1 will not change a great deal. While it may be possible to learn using system 2, these lessons will not become rooted, and therefore will likely be lost or overruled by existing system 1 prejudice. However, the more open we are to new experience, the greater our capacity to embrace it, the more accepting we are of the information it brings us, and the greater our ability to challenge our pre-existing assumptions, the more able we are to learn, and consequently the more reliable our system 1 becomes.

The repeated reference to the word 'feel' above reflects the importance we attach to our emotions. If things feel good we are more inclined to do them. If things feel bad we are likely to avoid them. We feel good when things fit with our values and needs, and feel uncomfortable when they don't. We make all our decisions within a needs and values framework, whether system 1 or system 2 is engaged in the process.

The values of tradition and conformity incline us to stick with what we've been given and seek the comfort of the consensus. They are therefore the values that provide the least incentive for us to seek out new experience and, once it presents itself to us, to immerse ourselves in it. Consequently they are the values least likely to remodel system 1. It will likely continue to function as it did when the major learning period of childhood came to an end; based on the same beliefs and prejudices.

As one progresses anticlockwise around the circumplex the values gradually open us up to new experience, however, it is only when we get to hedonism and the other values on the right hand side the values actively promote the opening up of oneself to new experience, to challenging existing beliefs and allowing system 2 more free reign.

Security, with its predilection for ordered procedure and working with existing boundaries, inclines us to take a cautious approach to new experience. Power, with its preference for control and not appearing foolish, also inclines us to adopt an overtly measured and conservative approach when dealing with new experiences we might not be able to master and could trip us up. Achievement, while more progressive, is still contingent on the approval of others and, at the very least, meeting their expectations. This means potential new experiences offering clear and unambiguous opportunities for success are going to be preferred; i.e. most likely those closely related to experiences we are familiar with. This outlook promotes learning, but only on incremental and linear bases. Hedonism and stimulation promote opening oneself up to new experiences and the possibilities they offer, while self-direction and universalism actively promote the challenging of assumptions and connecting oneself through a broad range of experience.

A rather nice demonstration of how easy it is for us to allow system 1 to lead us up the wrong path is the following question, originally dreamt up by Shane Frederick of MIT as part of a cognitive reflection test.

Q. If a bat and a ball cost $1.10 and the bat costs $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

It is reported that 50% of a Harvard test group answered this question wrong. I have used this question in workshops and found a similar failure rate. The question is an interesting one because of its simplicity, the ease with which one can check one's answer and the intuitive attraction of what 'feels' to be the right answer. The intuitively appealing answer is 10c, but a moment's rational contemplation of this answer will show it to be wrong. If the ball costs 10c the bat would cost $1.10 (10c + $1.00) and together they would cost $1.20. 5c is the right answer, because $1.05 + 5c = $1.10. It does not take a mathematical genius to work this out; almost all people have the ability to work this out, yet a great many supposedly intelligent people are quite content with the wrong answer, even if they are encouraged to think about it.

Maths problems are useful because we can prove whether the answers we come up with are wrong or right. In the wibbly-wobbly world of differing opinions and perspectives, i.e. the one we inhabit, it can be very difficult to ascertain the absolute truth, and even when we do there may still be those who refuse to accept it. The principal demonstrated in this question is universal, and not confined to the realm of mathematics. All decision-making involves a similar process and presents a similar pitfall. It should alert everyone to how unreliable their feelings and intuitions are, how useful system 2 can be, and how easy it is for us to become complacent and self-righteous.

Daniel Kahneman's next most significant consideration in the decision-making process is framing; i.e. the size of the frame of reference, or the amount of information we draw upon, to make a decision.

The most significant error we make when framing a proposition is to ignore pertinent information: to frame the proposition too narrowly. A great example of how we are prone to do this is illustrated in another maths question.

There is an epidemic of a potentially fatal illness. It turns out that 1% of the population has been infected. You participate in a nationwide screening process. The test you undergo is known to be 99% accurate. You receive a letter from the screening authority informing you you have tested positive for the infection. Based on how likely it is you are infected with the illness, how worried should you be?

You may care to reflect on this proposition before you read on.

The intuitively satisfactory answer to most people is that you have a 99% chance of being infected and therefore you might well be very worried indeed. However, if we pause to reflect on the information we have been given, we will see our intuitive response ignores half the information we were given: we have narrow framed the proposition inappropriately.

Let us start with a convenient assumption of how many people were involved in the national screening process. Let us say 50 million for ease of calculation. The number chosen isn't important, it just gives us something to hang the percentages on. If 1% of the population is infected 500,000 people will have the illness and 49,500,000 will be free of it. If the test is 99% accurate then 495,000 of the infected people will test positive and be sent the letter you receive. However, this will not be the only group receiving this letter. Because the test is only 99% accurate, 1% of the people who are free of the illness will also test positive and receive the letter. 1% of 49,500,000 is also 495,000. So, if you receive a 'you have tested positive' letter you are as likely to be free of the illness as you are likely to be infected, i.e. 50%. While this may still be a cause for concern, it should give you more hope than at first seemed warranted.

While it is possible to train oneself, by repeated exposure to problems such as this, to discipline oneself to be more thorough and rational, such training is likely to create a specialisation in a particular type of task or proposition. Generally the values inhibiting wide framing are the same as those inhibiting rational engagement, and encourage ill founded confidence in one's intuitions. The values of tradition through to achievement are biased toward specialization and a sense that all the information one needs to satisfactorily complete a task lies readily to hand. Whereas the values from hedonism to universalism open us up to see the bigger picture: hedonism on an experience by experience basis, universalism on a wholesale basis.

Perception

In order to make a decision we need some information to go on. Without a means to gather information we cannot be aware of the question, let alone come up with an answer. We have five senses by which we gather information: we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our nose, taste with our tongue and touch with just about every part of our bodies.

We may have internal 'senses' of foreboding or excitement, but these are not senses in the same way. These are intuitive reactions to information already gathered by our senses.

These senses are all electromagnetic. We are only aware of what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch because the photons hitting our retinas, the pressure waves hitting our eardrums, the molecules going into our nostrils and hitting our tongue and the contact of other things on our skin generates electrical impulses, which are channelled through the wiring system of our nervous system to our brains, and processed there to generate our sensory perceptions.

While the evidence of our senses can seem so definite, so certain, so reliable, it is just a personal representation of the barrage of assorted information presenting itself to us. A colour-blind person may not be aware they see things any differently to anyone else. Synesthesia is a condition enabling people to sense things in unexpected ways: tasting shapes or seeing colours when they see numbers. Other animals see a different range of the electromagnetic spectrum to us: some seeing infrared (heat) and ultraviolet light, and see our visible spectrum in a different way: having more or less colour sensors. Some animals, like bats, 'see' by echo sounding, others, like catfish, by tasting the water passing around them, while others, like scorpions, have senses of touch enabling them to hear as much as they feel with their feet.

The demands of the environment in which we live shape our needs and those of every creature, and in turn these shape our perception of the world as it presents itself through our senses. While it is clear different species have different sensory perceptions, from the knowledge we have of people who are colour-blind or have synethsesia, we know there can be substantial variation in sensory perceptions within a species. Even if we have not been diagnosed as 'suffering' from either of these conditions, it would be unreasonable to assume we all have identical senses. While we may have very similar sensory perceptions, the likelihood is we all have quite distinct capacities within a range, and this would be the case even if it weren't from the changes the ageing process foists upon us.

The common thread linking all these senses is electromagnetism. Ultimately these senses generate pulses of electrical information that either act as prompts for immediate action or are recorded for later reference, like bytes in a computer. Perception therefore has two components, the sensing equipment used to gather information and that used to process and record it. Our eyes and ears are the equivalent of video cameras and microphones. While different models may differ in their sensitivity, the information actually recorded and acted upon is also affected by the quality and design of the wiring and processing systems passing the information from these receivers to the recording mechanism.

While it would seem we all share a common brain configuration, in which the areas dealing with emotion, recognition, visual signals, smells, etc, are located in corresponding areas, once the electrical signals from our senses have been sent to the appropriate department, how they are processed from thereon, while similar, is quite individual. Once again, the precise manner in which this electrical information is channelled and processed is governed by our needs. Our genes set up our brains in accordance with a recipe that, while recognizable as being one for a human brain, and therefore shaped by generic human needs, is quite particular to the individual, and therefore is shaped specifically by a person's individual genetic needs as defined by the coding of their DNA. Then, because brain function is plastic and adaptable, and is continually updated as experiences satisfy or add to our needs, the manner in which information is processed is constantly evolving: new routes opening up, some channels being enlarged and reinforced, others growing weaker and being cut.

Therefore, through the interaction of many factors, individual perceptions of the same events can be highly variable. We may be able to read words and recite them so another person could accurately reproduce them without seeing the original text, but how we actually perceive the meaning and significance of the words can vary greatly.

Even people sharing the same experience with sensory apparatus of equal quality are likely to perceive it differently. Our eyes, for instance, do not take in the entirety of the scene before them. If we fix the position of our heads we have to swivel our eyes and scan the field of vision before us to take it all in. The part strictly in focus and receiving our full attention at any one time is small. In order to gather information from the entire scene we have to scan it. When we do this we do not follow identical scanning patterns or pick out identical features for closer examination. The manner in which we scan our field of vision and the types of things we are likely to concentrate our attention upon are governed by our needs.

These needs may be shaped by many factors. Our fight or flight reflexes give us all a similar sensitivity to anything that might endanger us; so if there happens to be a lion walking toward us in our field of vision, pretty much all of us are going to be giving it our full attention, at the expense of other things that might otherwise have caught our eye. Then there is the focus we give to completing a very specific task. The well known video exercise in which we are asked to count the number of times a basketball is bounced by players wearing white or yellow amongst other players dressed in black, and in so doing miss the man in the gorilla suit walking through the scene, is a striking example of how we take only what we need from a scene when we are faced with sensory overload, and are dumfounded and disbelieving when we are told we missed something so strikingly incongruous, because as far as we are aware we were watching the entire scene throughout and therefore couldn't have.

Because our brains rely primarily on fast responding intuitive reaction to information, our perceptions are set up so as to quickly identify matters of the greatest potential interest to us, in order that our finite resources can be devoted to these while other items are set aside. While the appearance of lions and basket ball players will tend to unite us in our perceptions, when the scene before us contains no such universally acknowledged danger as a lion, or when we have not been given a very specific shared task to perform, there is likely to be greater variance in the importance each of us might attach to different parts of a shared vista. Different objects may be of special interest to us because we are plant lovers, fashionistas or adolescent men, or there may be subtle differences arising from more nuanced differences in our needs. Some people may be attracted by a range of features across the scene, which they seek to analyse in search of patterns resonating with those already stored in their memory, others may be drawn to familiar objects resonating strongly with things and places with which and in which they feel most comfortable.

Paul Simon sang "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest" in the Simon & Garfunkle song The Boxer. What we 'want' is ultimately determined by our needs, even if the thing we want doesn't initially appear to satisfy the definition of a necessity.

The influential 19th century psychiatrist/psychologist Carl Jung considered our mental processes could be divided between perceiving and judging. He took the view our perceptions relied either on intuition or sensing, and in judging we relied on feeling or thinking. The hugely popular MBTI psychometric tool develops this idea by claiming that, not only does each of us habitually favour either intuition or sensing, and feeling or thinking, but we also lean more heavily on perceiving or judging.

In his terms, our perceptions rely either on the immediate intuitive reaction an experience triggers in us, or on the dry evidence of our senses. The information gathered by our perceptions is then, according to Jung, judged either by logical assessment or the more abstract concept of feeling. While there is some parallel to be drawn between Jung's view of mental function and our current understanding of the process, in which system 1 relates to intuition and feeling and system 2 to thinking, the idea that each of us habitually favours any of the processes, regardless of the situation in which we find ourselves, is wide of the mark, and the subsequent Myers Briggs invention of a preference between perceiving and judging is entirely fanciful. Since intuition and feeling are effectively the same thing and perception is the only information gathering process available to us (and therefore incapable of being favoured over judging in the decision making process) the continuing credibility MBTI has in the professional world is quite alarming – testament to how little people seem capable of gathering information for themselves or making sense of it.

In reality we all rely on our senses to gather information. Without them we would have literally nothing to go on. If the information we are presented with is familiar to us it is unlikely we will devote as much attention to examining its detail as we would if it is unfamiliar, and therefore has unknown potential to harm and/or reward us. Things familiar to us, or presented in such a form as to induce cognitive ease, will be sensed with a cursory scan to create a quick outline we will fill with intuitively satisfactory content from memory. More challenging information will require more detailed examination and assessment.

In making the involuntary decision of how to perceive any given piece of information we are guided by our needs, and the relevant information (memories) we can readily associate with the initial burst of information from our senses. If this suggests there is little in the scene likely to satisfy our needs, and therefore appeal to our values, it is likely to be ignored. In reality this means it will have been perceived, but on such a limited basis that it was rejected before any proper examination, perhaps to the degree of our having no conscious record of it ever having been perceived. In making this split second decision we are of course steered by our genetic needs and our evolved needs as shaped by experience.

Experience plays a big role in shaping what we perceive to be important. We may be hungry and have a real need for food, but if the food put before us is not recognised as such we will disregard it. If this is the only food available and we do not recognise it as food we will starve unnecessarily. Insects can make a nutritious and apparently tasty meal, but since few of us have been educated to see them in this light we would ignore an abundance of them while searching for something we recognise as food. This is an extreme example I am using to illustrate a more subtle point: experience plays a significant role in determining the means by which we seek to satisfy our needs, and this experience will determine how effective the need satisfying strategies reflected in our values are.

There is an expression 'things aren't always what they seem'. As with the example of insects as food this is true, but as far as most of us are concerned the opposite is true: 'things are what they seem', at least inasmuch as 'the truth' is what we take it to be; subjective rather than objective. If we are working on inaccurate or incomplete information and our perceived needs, as defined by our values, are such that we misinterpret the information presented to us, or inappropriately select only part of it, then we will be blissfully unaware of our inability to understand this information and make informed and effective decisions. Few people intentionally make the wrong decisions. When we do, we may not ever become aware we have done so. Frequently the explanation for this isn't just that we are ignorant or don't have the rational capability to add two and two to make four, it is simply that our needs and values steer us to frame propositions in such a way we don't take in the whole picture, and make judgements based on the bits grabbing our attention. Daniel Kahneman describes this tendency as WYSIATI – What You See Is All There Is, and this resonates with the expression 'you don't know what you don't know'.

Deciding What To Do - Taking Action

As may have been implied in the above, it is very difficult to separate the raw information we gather from the process that decides what to do with it. Our perception of reality is affected by our needs and the resources we have available to commit to its gathering and processing. We unconsciously start fiddling with the data before we consciously fiddle with it. Since the origins of these two fiddling processes are the same: our genetic programming, they have much in common and they serve the same ends; while we may attach huge significance to our ability to be rational, we arguably attach more significance to our largely unconscious intuitions, and when we think we are being rational we are, all too frequently, not. We are merely dancing to the tune of our intuitions.

That said, because we do have the ability to take control of the conscious part of the decision making process, and, in so doing, reprogramming elements of our unconscious intuitions, this is an area of tremendous importance to us.

Why do we take decisions? To what end do these decisions lead us? The answer to both questions is the same: to satisfy our needs. While real to us, ultimately these needs are an illusion (or a virtual reality) created by the genetic programming equivalent of hindsight. Because the combined generational sieve of natural and sexual selection allows only the fittest to pass through it, and the consciousness we enjoy is just one of the many by-products of countless survival enhancing mutations, we are 'designed' by trial and error to optimise our chances of survival and to perceive this as a necessity. Therefore maximising our chances of survival and reproduction are our fundamental needs.

But can this be true? If we make decisions based on a desire to survive why would we bungee jump, drive fast cars or commit suicide? We are not perfect. We were not designed to be so, because we were not designed at all. Our brains are hugely complex and, while they have catapulted humanity to a different level of sophistication than our living peers on earth, they are not faultless. The secret of progress is the ability to take risks and survive. This is what evolution is all about. While not intentional, evolution is dependent on the 'willingness' of DNA to take risks: to try something new. In order to give me the ability to write this, and you to read it, nature took a hell of a lot of risks. This willingness to take risks has its roots in our preconscious ancestry, and in our genes. Just as 'need' is an illusion when viewed from a gene's eye perspective, so is risk. Yet, because both are real to us, and have served us very well in the past, they are compelling forces.

The evolutionary process only rewards successful risk taking. Consequently our brains have evolved to help us manage risk. While it is difficult to eliminate risk entirely from our existence, generally speaking, the simpler a proposition and the more established the process with which we tackle it, the less risky it will be, and therefore the greater the chance it will be dealt with successfully; i.e. the greater the benefit and the lower the cost. Turning this statement on its head: the greater the complexity and the novelty, the higher the risk. However, what separates mankind from other life forms is the degree of complexity and novelty it is able to deal with. Our brains enable us to unravel and make sense of complexity, and we are unique in being able to innovate: to create the novel from the established.

When confronted by new information or a new experience, i.e. a change in our environment, we immediately carry out a sub-conscious risk assessment. We compare it to information stored in our memories, do the equivalent of apportioning it a score on a familiarity scale and then classify it as being of interest or not. If it is very familiar to us and does not have relevance to the satisfaction of a perceived need it will not be classified as being of interest. At best it will be noted as consolidating evidence for something we already know, at worst it will be ignored and forgotten. What interests us most are things related to our needs: whether directly to our primary needs of survival and reproduction, or our secondary needs as defined by our values.

We are interested in threats as well as opportunities: threats we want to neutralise or avoid; opportunities we want to maximise and encourage. Sometimes threats and opportunities are distinct, familiar and easy to identify, sometimes they are not. Things we have never seen before may be a threat or an opportunity, and, if we are to know how to treat them, they will need to be investigated. Other things may appear to be one thing but turn out to be the other; some plants and creatures have evolved to give the appearance of being an opportunity when in fact they are a threat.

It is to the challenge presented by this array of possibilities our brains are set. We memorise information and associated emotional responses so, when we are confronted with something new, we can compare it with our recollections and use these to better predict 'what next' and guide our actions accordingly.

If something is familiar and evokes pleasing feelings we will be inclined to indulge ourselves with it. A beautiful view, the sounds and smells of a summers day or the sight of an attractive member of the opposite sex may speak to us of pleasing opportunities, and so we may be inclined to linger on their appreciation or seek to interact with them.

If something is familiar and repellent we will be inclined to back away from it or destroy it. A spider, a nasty smell or a hostile individual speak to us of danger and a need to take avoiding action.

In either of the above situations, while we may be conscious of our actions, we act pretty much as we might if we had no brains. The greater the familiarity we have with the new information, the more automatic our response to it. This needn't diminish the conscious intensity of an experience, but it is not the conscious evaluation of it that drives this experience, it is an intuitive response, which in many instances will have been hard-wired into our genes.

The less familiar we are with a new experience the more we have to engage our rational and analytical minds. Whatever new information we are presented with there will, almost certainly, be familiar elements in it. It is these to which our attention will be immediately drawn, and between which our brains will seek to make connections that might better help us understand what to make of it. Sometimes it may be all we need to do is connect a few familiar elements we hadn't previously seen together and had no reason to see as connected concepts, but on other occasions we may need to rely on a more analytical approach, in which propositions have to be taken apart before they can be reconstructed and understood. Ultimately the processes involved are the same in each instance, but that's not quite how it seems.

An example of the first type of scenario might be the recognition of a concealed character or animal from what appears at first to be a random array of printed splodges or patterns on a page. It doesn't seem as though we are calculating anything or working things out, but actually we are. We are scanning the distances and relationships between the printed components until we find matches with things we have stored in our brains, then, once we start to find a few matches, we quickly summon other information to go with them, and suddenly the character or animal leaps from the page.

An example of the second type of scenario is different because it presents itself as a rational proposition. A problem such as how long would it take to fill a bath of known dimensions from a tap of known cross section with water flowing from it at a fixed rate is not one likely to be solved in a flash of inspiration, as in the case with the first example, however, the only difference is the size of the components one uses to solve the problem. In mathematical problems we deal in the fundamental concepts of numbers. These enable us to deconstruct and construct scenarios to and from their basic building blocks. When we do this we are more conscious of the calculations taking place, yet, ultimately, our brains are doing something very similar to the first type of scenario, it's just that we haven't deconstructed the problem to its most basic building blocks.

Our brains seek the shortest route from A to B, the easiest and most cost-effective solution to a problem. Mathematical problems are often framed so as to prevent us taking short cuts, but the problems we face in every day life present themselves in ways that encourage us to take short cuts, and make it difficult for us to do otherwise. The virtue of a short cut is it saves us time and energy. The virtue of working with basic building blocks is the opportunity it gives us to make certain and steady progress. In mathematics we can prove whether we are right or wrong, in life our confidence in the rightness (or wrongness) of our decision-making ability is often unjustified.

The more we are able to deconstruct information to its most basic building blocks, the more we are able to bring the full force of our rational minds to bear, and the more reliable the knowledge we accrue. Conversely, the more we rely on short cuts, on piecing together large chunks of untested information, especially in unfamiliar situations or relationships with each other, the less rational we become and what passes as 'knowledge' is in fact not knowledge but belief: information we rely on as if it were fact without personal verification.

If the assessment of risk, of new things and change is the first dimension of decision-making, this reference to personal verification brings us to the second. Our brains are not just calculating machines locked away in the perfect isolation of our skulls. They are communication devices linked to our senses. We can communicate through our words, gestures and actions. We not only share common genes in every cell of our bodies, we share our thoughts and experiences and coordinate our actions collectively. Exactly the same gene that drives me to do something may also drive you. It may drive us to succeed in doing something together we might not have done had we worked independently. A great many social insects cooperate as if they were components of one greater organism, but we are not wholly social creatures, we have a personal agenda too. Yet the importance of the collective to us is immense, and if it weren't we wouldn't have evolved to use language in the way we do, and the invention of the book, radio and TV would have never come, let alone the Internet.

I may learn from my own experiences but if I can share the experiences of many others I may learn much more. The great thing about being able to communicate with others is I may learn of opportunities that wouldn't otherwise have crossed my path, and of threats that would. In so doing I can get one step ahead of my own experience. The downsides of communication are: (1) it is not perfect, and (2) in taking information from another I cannot test its validity. If you use language differently to me I may misinterpret what you say. If you erroneously, or mischievously, tell me you have encountered something dangerous where I was intending to go, you may deprive me of an opportunity.

In the above we have the ingredients of decision-making and therefore the conscious components of our survival strategies.

Firstly, there is belief in things, other people or one's intuition versus independently verified and rationally tested knowledge. Belief and intuition speed things up, enable us to take short cuts and benefit from the experience, thoughts and effort of others, but they are potentially unreliable and enable others to take advantage of us. Rationality is more time consuming and demanding, but it offers greater certainty and self-reliance, and the knowledge we acquire through it enables us to make the most of any information we gather independently, and to test and verify information we receive from others.

Secondly, there is the tried and tested reliability of established procedure and received wisdom versus the riskiness of new experience, ideas and practice. In the former we find the promise of safety, of continuity, of familiarity, of a life free of nasty surprises. While in the latter lies the promise of discovery, of innovation, of progress, of entirely better, safer, less energy consuming ways of doing things, of enlightenment and freedom. Innovation brings about change and change erodes the desirability of relying on the tried and tested ways of old, as they become relatively burdensome and uncompetitive. As a helpful genetic mutation endows creatures with the potential to gain a competitive advantage over those without it, so does the memetic mutation that is the new idea.

Then, if we consider these two sets of opposition we see they are connected. The tried and tested ways of belief and intuition, that are our default settings when it comes to minimizing risk and effort, pitched against the more demanding, yet potentially more rewarding, lure of the new experience, the new discovery, the new idea that moves us as individuals ahead of the pack but is based on personally verifiable knowledge – too risky if we are not rational but manageable if we are.

The third component is the dynamic between competitive strategies (e.g. misleading others in the dissemination of information or seeking to acquire knowledge, ability, resources and experience that others do not to gain an advantage over them) and cooperative strategies (e.g. sharing knowledge, abilities, resources and experience in order that the collective of which we are a part benefits as a whole, and thereby magnifies the rewards for all).

This third opposition also has its alter-egos: cooperation is connected with the concept of morality, with its assumption of a collective consciousness, community and shared responsibility, and a 'big picture' view of the world, in which perspectives other than our own are considered important; competition is connected with notions of advancing personal competence relative to others and taking a more focussed interest in areas of particular interest to the individual.

Our allegiance to these oppositions are profoundly significant in terms of the way we make decisions and handle ourselves, both personally and as groups. In broad terms, the values on the left hand side of the values circumplex are concerned more with belief and maintaining the status quo, while those on the right are concerned with knowledge and an enthusiasm for change. The values in the top half relate to cooperation, morality (i.e. what is in the best interests of 'us' as a collective) and the 'big picture', whereas the values toward the bottom relate to competition, personal competence and a focussed approach to life.

While all of human life can be considered in terms of these oppositions there is more interest and more illumination to be found in the next level of detail, in which we look at these forces in terms of the ten values. At this level the contradicting and reinforcing relationships between values, and the perceived needs they relate to, can be better explored, and through this comes a more complete understanding of what it is to be human.

Values – An Evolutionary Perspective

When Abraham Maslow came up with his Hierarchy of Needs in the 1940s it was believed that while we inherited certain traits from our parents, our brains were effectively a blank canvas; somehow our brains were free from the genetic influence that shaped every other aspect of our being. Therefore in coming up with his, perfectly reasonable, idea that in order for the next level of need to kick in, the previous need would have to be satisfied, he was blissfully unaware of the extent to which our brains, like our faces and hair colour, were shaped by our genes. Unlike our faces and hair colour our brains can change as the specific challenges they face change. As our needs change so we are able to rewire our brains to better meet them. So rather than follow a strict hierarchical progression our values are a mix of nature and nurture. How this mix affects the way we perceive, think, develop and generally go about things we will consider shortly, but first I would like to explain a little more about the nature of these ten values, and how they appear to form a hierarchy in evolutionary psychology.

Tradition

This represents the starting point of evolutionary psychology. In many ways tradition represents the memetic equivalent of meiosis – the process by which the genes of the parents are copied and combined so as to create a single nucleus from which the next generation will begin, and the foundation of genetic evolution. DNA divides and is replicated so as to form a perfect copy of itself. If no mutations take place the genes in you and I are direct copies of genes donated by our parents. Similarly tradition replicates the memes of the previous generation and carries them forward into the next. The similarity does not end there. Like genes, traditions are relatively stable. By 'relatively' stable I mean they may mutate slowly over many generations. Therefore, over a great many generations traditions may become very different from what they once were. Also, like genes, traditions had to start somewhere. Once upon a time they were not traditions; they were innovations. Traditions are innovations that have stood the test of time, so far. Like genes, just because they have done this, it doesn't mean they are perfect; it just means that holding them instead of an alternative has not disadvantaged the holder so as to bring about their extinction. No tradition has always been with us; they all had to start somewhere, and, eventually, all traditions come to an end.

Just because a tradition remains with us doesn't mean to say it provides us with any real benefit. Unless traditional practices continue to perform a utilitarian function, and can be judged in their efficacy against competing alternatives, it may be they are allowed to linger long after their sell by date. The core function of many traditions may have been taken on by more recent innovations, leaving the tradition with little more than a ceremonial role. The role of religion in the West has certainly changed significantly over recent centuries. Once upon a time it was the basis of government and almost universally valued, now it is an irrelevance for a large percentage of the population, yet it persists, and its festivals are observed by nearly all. Tradition goes deeper, and shallower, than religion though. Traditions can take hold in a matter of days, be observed by just one person, or they can last centuries and be followed by just about everyone. They can affect the way we do business, how we speak to each other, when we eat, what we eat, where we go on holiday, etc.

Anything can become a tradition when we do it without thinking. We do it because our parents did it, or because people like us have 'always' done it, or just because we have got used to doing it that way. A tradition is something we do without thinking or referencing others. Thinking about things is time and energy consuming. If we can get by without thinking, by doing what we have 'always' done, then why wouldn't we? Tried and tested practices tend to serve us well, particularly when the world in which they have become established remains unchanged. The tradition of wearing a wristwatch has served people well for around a hundred years at the time of writing, and following the same route on my run has served me well for the last seven years. However, when the world changes our traditions may not serve us so well, and we may preserve them at our cost. Young people tend not to wear watches because they carry a mobile computer, which is a phone, a watch and many other things, and, when it rains very heavily, the fields I normally run across become water logged and I have to run a different route.

In an ever more fast changing world the number of traditions that continue to serve us well are diminishing. Some traditions, like the wearing of a wristwatch, may fall into disuse, seemingly without anyone noticing. Others will be clung onto even when there is good evidence to indicate they have become injurious. This is when tradition becomes a problem. There are two main reasons why this happens: cultural indoctrination and negligence.

Cultural indoctrination is one of the key functions of tradition. It binds people together and makes them one. In so doing it gets everyone facing in the same direction and marching in step; it is a mechanism by which to optimise efficiency. Also, when a new initiative takes hold requiring the cooperation of all the people within a group, and anyone who defects from this bond of cooperation, like the tax or fare dodger or the insurance claim cheat, undermines the efficacy of this initiative and harms everyone else. Cultural indoctrination, and the fear of becoming an outcast should it be resisted, serve to maintain high levels of cooperation irrespective of the personal judgement of the individuals within the group. All behaviours benefitting the collective, or those assuming power over the collective (which help manage the collective), will tend to persist, and in so doing become traditional.

Because the survival enhancing benefits bestowed by collective continuity of this kind have been hard wired into our genes, it should not be a surprise to learn tradition is the platform on which our rational capabilities are built. In terms of a hierarchy of needs, tradition is the base value of the base needs of survival and belonging – sustenance needs.

However, the usefulness of tradition is undermined by change. As we innovate and come up with improved ways of doing things, the traditional alternatives become redundant. Writing down our thoughts with a pen has served us well for hundreds of years, but now it is too slow, too inflexible, and increasingly we prefer to tap out messages into a computer of some description, letting it suggest words to us to speed up the process and then allowing it to distribute these words to anywhere in the world at the press of a virtual button, copy them into other documents or file them away, to be accessed from anywhere in the world when we choose.

Change is not the only factor undermining the utility of tradition and the cultural uniformity it encourages. When the group of which one is a part is relatively small the more likely it is that a uniform approach to the challenges presented by the local environment will be useful. The larger a group becomes, the greater the diversity of its people and the challenges they face become. Consequently the less effective the 'one size fits all' nature of a shared tradition becomes. When faced with a choice between abiding by a traditional code of conduct that harms you as an individual (and/or the sub group of which you are a part), or breaking with that tradition, one has to weigh the potential benefits of independence against the costs of being excluded from the group. Inevitably, the larger a group becomes the greater the likelihood that its traditions will cease to serve the best interests of all its members, and as the interests of different members and sub groups diverge, like the defining gene combinations of different species, traditions will diverge and evolve separately.

Until relatively recently in human evolution we lived in relatively stable small communities, and technological progress was such that the traditions of one generation served the next, and the next, and the next, quite well enough. Now, as we become increasingly mobile and culturally integrated, and our communications, leisure activities and modes of doing business become increasingly international, even if it weren't for the blistering pace of innovation, the costs of tradition would increasingly outweigh its benefits. The reason why it still exerts such an influence on us is due to our genes. The genetic hard wiring of successfully tried and tested mutations has ingrained in us a predisposition to keep the faith with tradition, and an inability or, perhaps more accurately, an unwillingness to allow ourselves to fully utilize the rational capabilities evolution has so recently (in the context of our 4bn year evolution) granted us. If we truly are rational beings, this amounts to negligence: an apathetic attitude to making the most of what we've got. An in-principal preference for traditional ways rather than a fully considered, open minded weighing up of the potential of alternatives amounts to negligence, and negligence is often at the root of man made disaster.

In case you, as a reader of this, are inclined to think tradition is not something you are burdened with, think again! We are all affected by it. Even if you have abandoned religion, stopped sending Christmas cards and wearing a suit to work, there will almost certainly remain countless little things you do because you've always done them. Sometimes these things will be difficult to pin down. Just because a traditional way of doing something has worked out OK in the past, and doesn't seem to be harming us now, doesn't mean it isn't holding us back.

Even such an apparently admirable traditional quality as 'accepting one's lot' has its downside. If one's lot is to be on the giving or receiving end of pain for instance, accepting one's lot is not a good thing. If something is wrong, or could be bettered, then a reluctance to consider change, let alone the willingness to make a change, is a bad thing. Blind acceptance of what has been laid before you can have negative consequences for the individual and all who interact with them; like the person driving at 30mph in the centre lane of a motorway, oblivious of the effect they are having on other motorists, whose presence leads to local congestion, impatience and a collision. At the heart of tradition is a reluctance to critically evaluate, let alone challenge what one takes to be the norm.

Traditions are beliefs or expressions of beliefs, and beliefs either remain constant when all around them changes, or mutate slowly to lose their roughest edges. While they all originated from new ideas, in order to survive long enough to become traditional, they have to become largely impervious to the impact of new ideas. When the flow of ideas and the resultant pace of innovation were slower, belief in received wisdom was less of a concern. Whether mankind accepted the traditional view that the Sun circled the Earth or entertained the new idea that the reverse was true would have made little difference for two thousand years, but if we still believed this now it is likely that little of the technological advances we revel in today would have taken place.

Where outdated beliefs were once an impediment comparable to wearing last season's colour or last year's width of trouser leg, now the pace of change is such that even comparably progressive folks can inadvertently find themselves keeping alive customs as comparatively up to the minute as human sacrifice. The problem is two fold: not only does adherence to last year's model leave one further behind the curve in terms of your belief being so much less useful than the latest idea, but also, because new ideas no longer need such broad acceptance before early adopters start to benefit from them, there is an increasing divergence between the haves and have-nots of the information age; a stretching of the fabric of society if you will.

Traditional Beliefs Viewed In The Context of Exponential Increases In Knowledge

The above is not intended to be taken as an exhortation that tradition is bad and should be avoided at all costs. Just because something is traditional doesn't mean to say it is not fit for purpose or beneficial. Traditional beliefs are part of our intuitive system 1 brain function, and as such help us to decide on a course of action with minimum effort. If something worked for me yesterday why not use it again today, and tomorrow. If every day I weighed up all the options and made a fresh decision this would take a great deal of time and potentially waste resources better invested elsewhere. Traditional practices can often be the best available, but as we are continually developing and innovating it makes sense to review the efficacy of all we think and do from time to time, whether traditional or not.

Traditional practices, such as lime plastering and lime rendering on stone buildings, are not just visually appealing to those with sympathetic aesthetic leanings, and acceptable to those bodies responsible for policing the refurbishment of our historic buildings, they have advantages that can be measured scientifically in terms of the energy required to make them, their greater flexibility and ability to allow buildings to breathe and avoid moisture related deterioration. These practices feel good to us because they are traditional, and seem to provide a degree of comfort in reinforcing our sense of belonging and being connected with our past, and are good because they serve a useful purpose beyond this.

The problems only arise when traditional practices become self-justifying; i.e. they are held on to solely because they are traditional. When this happens we make fools of ourselves and build up a store of fuel by which to feed the flames of potential conflict. Our most scared traditions almost always seem to revolve around religion. Religion is seen as more than just something that works and therefore should be maintained, it purports to be derived from and attached to fundamental and immutable truths explaining why we are here and how we should conduct ourselves. However, unlike other things we take to be true, religious belief cannot be tested to establish its continued validity.

If I am told something is true, like a flame will burn my hand if I place my hand over it, I may choose to believe it, never test it and tell my children the same. It therefore becomes a traditional belief for my family, but unlike belief in a god, if one of my great, great grandchildren should one day have cause to doubt the truth of this traditional belief, they can put their hand into a flame and test it, and in so doing validate a belief as knowledge. This is not possible with religion because our gods don't speak to us or do what we ask them to; in short they offer us no evidence of their existence, and we can find no evidence of their existence. There are those who say they do speak to their god, and their god does answer their prayers, but they can provide no evidence of this, and what's more their stories tend to conflict with each other. If they were really plugged into this immutable truth, one might expect consistency at least.

Traditions depend on being passed on from generation to generation. As they are passed on they tend to mutate, like genes and Chinese whispers. If religion was immune from this intergenerational mutation, because each generation acquired it through a direct relationship with God, rather than a personal misinterpretation of what they had been told, religion would remain constant, would not evolve and would not diverge. However, that is exactly what it has done. Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Methodism, Sunni Islam and Shiite Islam all have a single root; they all evolved from a single faith. At various points in history the precise meaning and purpose of the religion has become a source of confusion, disagreement and dispute. When this happens, without the ability to test the rights and wrongs of the argument by asking God, or testing the validity of the competing assertions, the religion divides like a growing tree, sending up two or more new branches, which, in time, will divide again.

When a truth is being sought what tends to happen is the opposite of this. One of three things happens: unity is found between two or more disparate concepts, one concept is found to be true and the others false, or pre-existing ideas evolve and are replaced. In all cases we tend toward achieving a greater consensus as to what the nature of the truth is. Once there were many theories as to what kept us alive and how we breathed. Now we know we are surrounded by a gas we call air that has this stuff in it called oxygen our bodies use to convert food into energy. There is no argument about this. No one clings onto the beliefs held prior to this breakthrough in our acquisition of knowledge; no one gets angry when they are told this; no one wants to fight others or go to war over it; and no one comes to any harm because their beliefs make them to think they are not dependent on oxygen. This state of enlightenment was achieved through the sharing and testing of information. Unfortunately the only way for two competing sacred traditions to free themselves from dispute is for the people who hold one to destroy the people who hold the other.

While religious disputes may seem sad but irrelevant to those of us who do not hold them, apart from the difficulties they create for us in this ever interconnected world, they serve as a good example of the damaging effect traditional beliefs can have, and how easy it is for them to become embedded into our ways of thinking if we do not discipline ourselves to question all the things we do without thinking from time to time.

Conformity

If tradition mirrors the vertical replication of our genes witnessed in meiosis, then conformity mirrors the lateral replication of mytosis – in which DNA divides, and replicates itself into new cells, spreading identical DNA to every cell of our bodies and, through multiple births and mating, spreading near identical genes throughout our species.

The close cousin of tradition, conformity is the next step up on the evolutionary psychology ladder of survival strategies. Tradition works well enough when nothing changes, but when change comes along tradition doesn't have the answers. If you don't have the answers your best bet is probably to do what others are doing. Even if no one knows what they are doing, the ones who get it badly wrong probably aren't around long enough for you to follow their lead. As change takes a hold of a world in which nobody knows what to do, and everyone else is deciding what to do randomly, the population will increasingly become dominated by those who got it right. As this happens the more attractive conformity becomes.

Conformity brings with it safety in numbers. If danger comes along and you are unable to defend yourself, unless the danger is so extreme it affects everybody, you are more likely to survive if you embed yourself in a large group. This is why fish swim in shoals and wildebeest roam in packs. Predatory sharks and lions seek to separate individuals from the group and then pursue them. If it weren't for conformity, or herd instinct, the sharks and lions would have an easier time of it; part of their work would already have been done by the time they arrived on the scene.

As social animals, conformity is hugely important to us. The reason we don't socialize with gorillas, lions or wildebeest is they don't conform to our idea of good company. They don't speak our language, they don't share the same interests as us and they can smell a bit funny too. The greater the difference between us and other creatures (and people) the less we are likely to understand them. The less we understand about another creature, person or thing, the more likely it is they will do something we don't like: eat us, poo in our house or steal our money.

In common with tradition, conformity requires no independent thought. In choosing to do as others are doing we are implicitly deciding they know better than us, and therefore it is in our best interests to follow their lead. However, this is sometimes harder than it seems. In large groups of people there is bound to be diversity. This diversity may not be as great as that which separates different species of animals, but it would seem our tribal instincts are such we find it difficult to feel entirely at one with a large number of people, and therefore we unconsciously identify with the people most like us. Once we are aware of diversity within a group we cannot simply conform with the group as a whole. If people were as simply differentiated as Smarties or M&Ms, by colour, determining which sub-group we belong to and with which we conform would be easy, but we are so alike each other and so different in so many ways. We are men and women, tall and short, red heads and black, dark skinned and light, blue eyed and brown, conservative and liberal, etc. Each type is its own club and the membership of each overlaps. Faced with a choice of where our allegiances lie we are likely to make an intuitive judgement based on genetic influence. It is likely the reason why racism, sexism and social prejudice are so deeply ingrained is that, for the vast majority of our evolutionary history, the people/creatures around us were racially identical, and their usefulness to, and hence relationship with, us was determined by their gender and relative social status.

Conformist decisions are usually guided by tradition or other tribal factors. We are likely to feel more comfortable following people like us; people who look like us, dress like us, have similar backgrounds, etc. Therefore the choice we make in deciding which group to conform with isn't really a choice at all; it's more like a roll of a loaded dice.

It is remarkable how little independent thinking we do and how much we rely on taking our lead from others and following convention. Even when trying to engage with each other on rational matters we are quite inclined to roll out an argument we have inherited or adopted, and, when the detail of that argument is questioned, we are quite likely to experience some confusion, especially when the case against it is one we cannot rationally fault. There have been countless occasions when I have encountered a look of sheer bewilderment in the eyes of another when I have presented an unexpected yet (as far as I could determine) perfectly rational opposing argument to a point they were making; a look if seen in an animated cartoon or staged farce would be accompanied by open mouthed babbling. In these situations, rather than present a counter counter argument, the bewildered person usually responds by repeating their assertion, presumably in the hope that in doing so they can wind back time.

If one is driven by conformity then 'fitting in' becomes like a comfort blanket, and being placed in a situation in which one does not fit becomes very uncomfortable. We don't like feeling uncomfortable. Just as when a piece of grit gets into our shoe or eye, its removal becomes our highest priority. However, the irritation experienced as a consequence of a piece of grit is a way more reliable indication we are being harmed than the discomfort caused by non-conformity. In fact there are many instances where non-conformist discomfort is a false alarm causing us to do something harmful.

In the meme free world plants and many animals inhabit conformity arises spontaneously, serves the interests of the group and involves no leadership. The behaviour to which all conform has been 'decided' upon by trial and error over countless generations as the best means by which to satisfy the demands of natural and sexual selection. We humans often choose to follow the precedent set by others, or sometimes, just one other. If we follow, someone else is usually leading. Leaders may use a range of tactics to induce others to follow them, but exploiting the conformist inclinations of others is high on the list. If an instruction is issued, request made or an inducement offered in a particular way, it is surprising how difficult we find it to say no and how easily we may be led; how easily we will conform.

A landmark study into the effects of conformity* was carried out by Yale professor Stanley Milgram in 1961. He reportedly initiated the experiments to explore the possibility that ordinary people could be made to terrible things to each other without being forced against their will, prompted by wondering whether it really could be possible the Holocaust was solely the responsibility of sadists, psychopaths and vicious racists.

*Nominally the study concerned obedience, but obedience is one of the sub-values of conformity.

The experiment involved a number of volunteer 'teachers' who were required to read a list of word association questions to a 'volunteer' 'learner' and punish them with an electric shock when they got a question wrong. The pretext of the experiment, as far as the volunteers were concerned, was to explore the effect of punishment on learning. The learners weren't volunteers but actors hired to perform the role of poorly performing learners. The true volunteers drew straws with the actors to determine which role they would have (teacher or learner) but this draw was rigged, so all the volunteers ended up as teachers. Teacher and learners sat in separate rooms connected by microphones and speakers so they could communicate with each other. The teachers had an array of switches in front of them marked 50w to 300W, and with each successive wrong answer each learner gave their teacher flicked the next switch to administer a shock 15W larger than the last. In order that the teacher should be under no illusions about the effect of the shocks they received the 50W shock themselves at the outset, the experience of which they did not find pleasant. Before each session started the learner shared with the experimenter (a man in a white coat who remained in the same room as the teacher throughout), in the company of the teacher, the purported fact that they had a heart condition. In response to this the experimenter offered the assurance that, while uncomfortable, the shocks would not be life threatening. The experiment then kicks off: the learner starts getting answers wrong and the teacher delivers shocks of increasing intensity. Before reaching 135 V the learner begins to shout out in pain and asks for the experiment to stop. The teachers are told to proceed and so the pattern repeats – wrong answer, electric shock, screams of pain, demands made that the experiment should stop - until the learner stops making any response to the questions; whereupon they are given further shocks when they fail to answer each successive question within the prescribed time. For the latter part of the experiment no sound comes from the learner's room.

The teachers are uniformly concerned about the condition of the learner, and are visibly upset when they are asked to proceed. When they relate their concerns to the experimenter and appear to not want to carry on, they are given the following instructions – always the same and in this order: 1) please continue, 2) the experiment requires that you continue, 3) it is absolutely essential that you continue and 4) you have no other choice, you must go on.

Despite their misgivings 65% of the volunteer teachers were prepared to carry on administering all the shocks, right up to the final 300V. Despite the initial assurance of the experimenter that the shocks would be uncomfortable rather than fatal, the teachers could have been under little illusion they were at least causing the learner considerable pain, and probably endangering their life, if not actually killing them.

In the video I watched one distraught teacher asks the adjudicating man in the white coat who is going to take responsibility if the learner is killed. On being told by that he, the man in the white coat, would take responsibility the teacher proceeds.

This seems a hugely revealing experiment. Its results were supported by subsequent studies using volunteers from different backgrounds, and illustrates how easy it is to induce others into performing acts they might otherwise resist by the appropriate use of authority. 65% of the ordinary people who acted as volunteers were effectively prepared to kill another person because they had been requested to do so, in all but name, by a white coated official working within one of the United State's most respected and prestigious universities. When Millgram, ahead of the experiment, polled 40 medical psychiatrists from a medical school as to the percentage of people who would be prepared to administer the 300V shock, they averaged a prediction of less than 4%.

The extreme nature of the act the volunteers were being asked to perform only serves to show just how conformist we are. If we are still prepared to conform when we are aware what the consequences of our conformity may be, it is a good bet we would be even more complicit in committing acts that harm others, and even ourselves, when we are not made fully aware of the consequences of our actions.

Our conformist tendencies make us extremely vulnerable to being swept along with the tide of popular opinion and fashion; oblivious of where it is we are being swept along to, who might be doing the sweeping and what they seek to gain in so doing.

In an increasingly interconnected world there will always be those who seek to gain a competitive advantage by exploiting the conformist tendencies of ordinary people. As anyone young enough to remember the crazes they participated in at school, or old enough to have had their children do the same, it should be easy to appreciate how much money can be made from millions of children wanting to collect the latest conformist necessity. Children want to fit in and so do we. We may have grown out of Pokemon, plastic toys and online gaming collectables, but we still are all too inclined to seek out the 'in' places, the latest must haves and make decisions based on the recommendation of friends than take the time to conduct our own detailed research.

Security

(Lyrics To Not One Of Us by Peter Gabriel. A song that reflects the conflict between the values of security and universalism)

As touched upon before, as the numbers of people in any group increase, even without the effects of geographical dispersal and technological innovation, diversity increases and conformity becomes a more challenging business. Because cooperation is such an important aspect of maintaining social groupings, and conformity is very helpful in assuring their continuity, being able to make distinctions between those who are 'in' or 'out', one of 'us' or 'them', are very important. Security is all about defining boundaries and coming up with rules and regulations, so as to create manageable islands of conformity amidst an ocean of uncertainty.

Boundaries are everywhere in nature, as are rules and regulations governing what goes on within them. They define the stable units that make up our world. From the nucleus of the atom, outward toward the atomic city limits described by their electron fields, the molecules that make up most matter, the cells in our bodies, our vital organs, our bodies, our families, our houses, our villages, towns, cities, countries and continents, we move from one boundary to another, each with its own rules governing the interactions of the units within it. Within each is a stable state upon which the stability of the higher cooperative groups is dependent.

The boundaries and rules defined by nature have been defined by billions of years of trial and error. Consequently they are robustly fit for purpose and inviolable. When we define boundaries and devise rules and regulations for their governance we are prone to get them wrong. When I say 'get them wrong' I mean our boundaries sometimes create unhelpful prejudice and separate us from that which might benefit us, or, reciprocally, prevent us from being sufficiently discerning, allowing defectors into our cooperative enclaves. Our rules and regulations too often either fail to maintain order as we had hoped they would, or adversely affect things we had not intended them to.

Nature's rules and regulations have the advantage of not having been invented. Regardless of whether we have yet discover or understand them, they predated the world and boundaries within it because they created and underpin them all. Just as the rules set out in our DNA determine where our brains will be located and how they will work, nature's more fundamental rules determine where and how everything in the universe will operate. No matter how well constructed the rules we make are, their ability to control how everything in their intended jurisdiction will operate is limited. The rules of man can only be implemented within the boundaries nature has already created, and may only be superimposed on the rules nature used to construct them. No matter how robust they may appear to us, few may hope to stand the test of time. As with sailing a boat across an ocean, regardless of the care taken in planning the voyage, and in implementing the journey plan, success is dependent on no unforeseen circumstances arising. One tanker collision, hurricane or errant whale is all it takes to thwart the best-laid plans of the mariner.

That we should seek to define boundaries, rules and regulations is inevitable. If we each had unlimited ability to gather all the information pertinent to any given situation, process this to come up with strategies perfectly attuned to protect us from danger or make the most of opportunities, and then an unfettered ability to enact them, we wouldn't need the protection they afford us. However, as soon our memes began to change the world around us, and create even greater diversity amongst us, the ability to set boundaries and regulate behaviour through rules became very useful.

When our ancestors first captured, kept and learned to make fire in their settlements it is quite likely that some people, especially children, would have been burned by it. Rather than let everyone learn the lessons for themselves that fires are hot and getting too close to them can be dangerous, it would have been beneficial if the children at least were told to abide by the rule 'don't get touch the fire', maybe supplementing this mental barrier with a physical barrier around the fire to stop infants crawling into it.

The more curious, innovative and adventurous we became, and the more complex and interconnected our social structures became, the less our genes prepared us to manage the things we created. Every cultural and technological leap forward – language, fire, smelting bronze and iron, engines, electricity, flight, nuclear power, computing, etc. \- has brought with it a tide of countless unforeseen effects. As with each successful genetic mutation of the brain, the benefits brought about by each memetic step forward are multiplied by the brain's ability to seek patterns and find parallel uses for every new innovation. It is easy to create effective boundaries and rules when things are simple and interactions are few, but the more complex things become, whether by the sheer number of: ingredients, involved parties, inter-relationships and forces coming to bear or the sheer pace of change taking place, the more difficult it is to define useful boundaries and make effective rules.

Thinking up illustrations of how the boundaries and rules we come up with fail us is not difficult. These are just some examples that readily spring to mind.

Our love of motoring and our dependence on the car presents us with numerous blessings and costs. The direct costs of the vehicles, the fuel to make them go and the roads to drive them on are essential costs we all understood must be borne. However, that the car inadvertently causes us to kill and harm others, pollute the environment, contribute to global warming and redefine where and how we shop, work and choose to live, are just a few of the side effects not foremost in the minds of those who first invented and then put cars on the road. What was initially just a means by which to transport a few people from to A to B a little faster than one could by horse and carriage soon became a key driver of social and environmental engineering.

Let's just look at the killing and harming of others and how we have chosen to set boundaries, rules and regulations to prevent this happening. Presumably based on the logic that a car travelling slowly is easier to control, gives people more time to see it coming and causes less damage when it hits you, we decided that setting a speed limit would be a good idea. Then we decided it might also be a good idea to separate where people walk and cars drive, so we built pavements with curbs built up at the sides of the road to mark a clear boundary between the realms of the motorist and the pedestrian.

The first problem with rules and regulations is, unlike the immutable rules of nature, we don't have to obey them. People are most likely to obey laws if: (1) they fully support their aims and recognise the limitations they impose as those they would voluntarily impose upon themselves; (2) they don't want to get punished for breaching them; or, (3) they do so as a matter of courtesy.

As far as point (1) is concerned, I have never mugged anybody; because to do so would be morally reprehensible to me; whether it was legal or not, I would not do it; therefore I obey the law making it a crime because I agree with its aim, and the restrictions it imposes upon me are aren't really restrictions at all. As far as speeding is concerned, while I agree I should not drive at such a speed as to endanger others, I do not accept the fixed, statutorily prescribed speed limits are appropriate to me, my car and the conditions I encounter. When I am driving on an empty motorway with good visibility in dry weather I feel safe driving at speeds of up to 100mph. Given I can see a half a mile ahead at any time, even in the highly unlikely event I lose control of the car, the only person I am likely to injure or kill is myself, so I am inclined to break the law that says thou shalt not drive faster than 70mph. When the motorway is busy, and conditions are not so favourable, I voluntarily drive slower than the speed limit permits. Therefore the rule I would prefer to abide by when driving is my own. This runs as follows: drive as fast as you see fit given the conditions but ensure you do not endanger others.

Given I am far from being a lone lawbreaker when I exceed the motorway speed limit, I guess many other people share my point of view. Of course the other speeding cars could be being driven by people who really don't care whether they kill or maim others, or by those hell bent on defying authority wherever they encounter it. The law assumes my fellow lawbreakers and I are incapable of sound judgement when it comes to judging the appropriate speed to travel on the motorway, and therefore is not content with a making a law for our general guidance, it enforces it with police patrols, speed cameras and court actions. Given people like myself and the law makers don't see eye to eye on this matter, we end up playing games with each other. Drivers obey the law when they see a police car, speed check or camera, but not otherwise. In other words there is a complete disconnect between the law and our sense of morality. We tolerate the game of cat and mouse without any great animosity, until we are caught and punished; then some of us become annoyed. We are annoyed because we feel we have been subjected to an injustice by the state. This is more problematic than it may first appear, because it creates an us and them boundary between the parties through which we compete when we ought to be cooperating, and it undermines, not only our confidence in the ability of the state to manage our roads, but our confidence in its ability to manage our affairs full stop. Once primed we tend to look for the signs of injustice elsewhere, and when we think we've found them, we seek them everywhere.

Apart from the compromised situational appropriateness and inflexibility of the speed limit, there is a rather more fundamental problem with it. No one has ever died or been injured from driving too fast. Speed doesn't kill. Well, to be more accurate, the types of speed likely to be encountered when driving a car don't kill. Hitting things and being hit by things are almost always the reason why people die in road accidents. I and other road users would be safer driving at 140 mph along the motorway if we kept a suitable distance between us than we would driving at 60 mph too closely to each other. The proximity of other vehicles and other potential hazards determines the appropriate speed limit we should set ourselves, given the response times of individuals and vehicles. The reason why lawmakers don't use these criteria as the basis of regulation is they are variable, difficult to define and difficult to police. So what we end up being subjected to is a law enforcement system that effectively says "we don't care what you think – we know better than you - you just do as we say or we'll punish you." For many of us this is highly objectionable. For those of us who concede that, while we may be able to make such sensitive judgements for ourselves, many people aren't, it may be we are prepared to accept we can do no better than a one size fits all policy. The third category of people are those who agree with the implied message of the law enforcement system; i.e. those who accept the state knows best, and are consequently prepared to do what they are told.

People who play by the rule of law as the lawmakers seem to want us to, as the non-negotiable, state endorsed essence of moral guidance, may feel utterly relaxed doing whatever they want to as long as they do not break the law. Effectively, they can switch off their own moral compass safe in the knowledge they can do no wrong. The dangers of this approach are manifold, and manifest themselves in all human affairs, but traffic management is as good a reference point as any other. When we drive a car we are separated from the outside world and, more particularly, other people by the body of our car; we are in our own little cell or cocoon. This separates us from other road users. We are further separated from pedestrians by curbs and road markings. These barriers incline us to think and behave as if we are isolated from each other, as if we inhabit different planes of existence. For those of us who allow ourselves to think in this way, while driving faster than the speed limit will increase the threat we present to others, the more significant threat is posed by our detachment from others.

Once one has embraced the idea that rules and regulations help keep us safe, then one is likely to instinctively believe more rules will add to our safety and less will endanger it. However, this is not always the case. As numerous experiments have shown, when the distinctions between road and pavement are removed, motorists have to engage far more with their surroundings, effectively breaking down the barrier between themselves and pedestrians. They slow down, and in so doing reduce the risk they will kill or severely injure anyone. As long as such environments are set up in such a way that neither pedestrian or car driver is encouraged to assume they have priority, people accept greater responsibility, both for themselves and others.

This is one of the major problems with rules: they cause us to disengage. They inhibit our ability to effectively question and challenge the nature of things, to be curious, to endeavour to come to a deeper understanding and allow this to be our guide. They tend to reduce us toward behaving like automatons. Sometimes this has its advantages. If I want to drive a long distance I am hugely grateful for the boundaries that define motorways, prevent other cars leaving and joining them every few hundred meters and keep those going in the opposite direction separate from me. I am also grateful for the rules preventing people stopping, reversing or turning around. All these enable me to drive at high speed safely. These boundaries and rules create safe and efficient motorways, however, they do not translate so well to the places where people live.

As rules become established they increase and reinforce conformity and may eventually become traditional. When this happens they become very difficult to change, irrespective of whether they work or not. It may seem difficult to understand how a law that doesn't work could prove sufficiently popular that it goes on to achieve a level of acceptance equivalent to tradition, at which any attack on it is treated as if it is an assault on the glue holding society together, but many laws have gone on to achieve this status despite being fundamentally flawed.

One example that springs to mind concerns the restriction of drug useage. Currently the law in the US, the UK and in large parts of the rest of Europe restricts or prohibits the use of drugs such as marijuana, ecstasy, heroin, tobacco and alcohol. For the most part it is legal to supply and consume alcohol and tobacco if you are of a certain age, but illegal to supply or consume marijuana, ecstasy and heroin. Despite their illegal status, marijuana, ecstasy and heroin are widely supplied and consumed. The problems associated with drug use include the impact they have on the health of individuals, the cost they impose on the healthcare service and the social costs associated with drug addiction related crime.

In terms of the impact on the health of the individual there are reasonable arguments backed up by good evidence to suggest marijuana is less of a health risk to the individual than either alcohol or tobacco. The cost to the public healthcare service and to business (in terms of working hours lost) related to these two drugs dwarfs the cost of the others. One could argue that, because the other drugs are illegal, their useage is much lower than it otherwise would be, and therefore the impact on healthcare and business is bound to be lower. However, statistics comparing marijuana use in the Netherlands (where it is legal to use marijuana) and the US (where it isn't) shows user rates are more than 50% higher in the US than the Netherlands. Drugs related crime is a serious issue. The two greatest problems being alcohol induced violence in the home and on the streets, and gang crime and muggings associated with illegal drugs. While one might argue the toss about which is more significant, the likelihood is many people fear drug related crime more because, as far as most people are concerned, it involves the frightening prospect of being mugged by someone seeking to pay for their addiction, while alcohol related crime is more visible and easy to avoid, since it generally involves drunk people fighting with each other or causing damage to property at kicking out time. From this one might argue it would be beneficial to reverse the status of alcohol and addictive drugs like heroin and crack. This way alcohol related crime would disappear because its social criminals would be easy to catch, and fewer heroin and crack users would need to steal to fund their habit as they would be able to access cheaper legal supplies.

The test of a good law is whether it achieves the fundamental objective it was designed for without significant unwanted side effects. The flaws in drug law begin in the definition of the objective. If this was the eradication of drug consumption, then the exception of alcohol and tobacco suggests inconsistency. If this exception was based on these being much less serious drugs - less addictive, less of a health risk – then that would make some sense, but tobacco is more addictive than marijuana and ecstasy and a proven cause of cancer and lung disease. Deaths from both tobacco and alcohol related illnesses are common, while marijuana and ecstasy related illnesses are relatively rare, even relative to user numbers. According to the BBC website death rates per annum per user in the UK in 2011 were 0.0054% for ecstasy and 0.00003% for marijuana (i.e. if you are a dope smoker you have a 3 in 10 million chance of dying in any one year), compared to 0.1% and 1.14% for alcohol and tobacco respectively. The dangers of tobacco are thrown into striking relief by the 0.23% figure attributed to heroin. So, according to these statistics, if you are a tobacco user you are four times as likely to die in any given year as you are if you are a heroin user.

Marijuana is often cited as being a gateway drug; i.e. one that leads users onto harder drugs such as heroin. Given the supply of marijuana is illegal, if one wants to buy it one cannot go to a supermarket, as one would for other soft drugs such as coffee, tea and chocolate; one is forced to do business with an unregulated, criminal drug dealer. Just as supermarkets benefit from spin off sales – go in for a newspaper and buy a bag of sweets too – so do illegal drug dealers, except they are playing for higher stakes.

The above wasn't intended to be a pro-drugs lobbying statement, but merely an illustration how laws are difficult to draft and enforce. Drugs law is confused and contradictory, and its aims are not supported by the significant numbers of people who choose to use drugs; therefore it is ineffective. Yet drug prohibition has become traditional. Renouncing drug prohibition in any way, or realigning the law so that either alcohol and tobacco were made illegal, or marijuana and ecstasy were at least legalised, are perfectly sensible considerations governments find difficult to consider, for no other reason than they fear a majority of people would be aghast. In the minds of those addicted to the rule of law, any relaxation of a law intended to keep people away from drugs would inevitably lead to an increase in drug use and therefore should not be considered.

Making laws that achieve their end without unwanted side effects is very difficult to do. To illustrate this you might want to try to think of all the things you would like to make laws to control. You could start with the Ten Commandments perhaps and then go on from there. The likelihood is you would struggle to come up with 100 things needing a law to control. The Labour government in the UK created over 3,000 new criminal offences in its first 9 years in office from 1997-2006. I have no idea what the laws say, yet as a UK citizen I am presumably bound by them. Because laws are very difficult to draft successfully they are almost always faulty. Either they create unexpected side effects necessitating some measure of repeal of existing laws or new laws to clean up the mess, or they don't quite do what was intended and need more legislation to paper over the cracks.

The patchwork of legislation we end up with becomes so complex and imperfect it creates employment for countless lawyers and accountants to fight over disputes in its interpretation, and to find loopholes for their clients to jump through. In the twisted maze of regulation all independent sense of morality, sense and purpose tends to get lost. If it's legal it's OK, if it's not it's not.

The 2012 media storm in a teacup that blew up over UK comedian Jimmy Carr's tax affairs serves to perfectly illustrate what blind adherence to the law deprives us of. It came to the attention of the press that Jimmy Carr, despite being a millionaire comedian who lampooned millionaire bankers for their tax evasion and general impropriety, had instructed his tax advisors to arrange his affairs so as to take advantage of tax avoidance schemes enabling him to pay 5% tax in place of the prevailing rates of 40-50%. These schemes were legal because they took advantage of loopholes in the law, but were against the spirit of the law, in that the financial arrangements mimicked arrangements the government felt would encourage a form of investment beneficial to the national economy, but failed to deliver the desired benefits or expose Mr Carr to the risks such investments usually entail. When the story broke Mr Carr was portrayed as a grubby tax avoiding cheat by press and government alike. He vowed to stop using the tax avoidance scheme at the heart of the scandal. However, it would seem that before the press storm he thought paying only 5% tax was perfectly acceptable, when the people in his audience, unable to afford the services of a skilled tax consultant, paid 40-50% of their less substantial earnings to the government for the collective good.

Rules and regulations are not just concerned with the law. They are fundamental to the operation of many of our organizational systems. Here the problem remains broadly the same, the more complex the subject matter the more difficult it is to come up with effective regulations. David X. Li, a mathematician working in Wall Street in the 1990s came up with a formula known as the Gaussian Copula Function. This was effectively a rule enabling investors to better assess the value of bundled baskets of risky investments. One area of investment in which it was seen to offer great benefit was that of mortgage lending. The problems with mortgage lending when considered en masse, include: the borrowers are a very mixed bag, their financial destiny is difficult to determine; the loans have a variety of end dates; defaults are difficult to predict; borrowers may choose to repay their loans at unexpected times – in short: it is difficult to have a high degree of confidence in any risk assessment. The Gaussian Copula Function looked to take care of this.

This formula was embraced by financial institutions with such gusto they effectively disengaged their brains. The result being lenders became enthusiastic, very enthusiastic, to lend money to people who would previously been considered bad credit risks. By packaging difficult mortgage debt with other debt and insurance packages investors were able to create new investments they could sell on to others, generating more fees and profit.

What was not included in the rule was what would happen if the application of the formula itself created a boom in lending to people with bad credit ratings and this led to a boom in house prices as demand for housing outstripped supply, and a boom in house building as developers sought to keep up. As house prices soared and ever more unsuitable buyers were offered mortgages to enable them to get on the property ladder, the only thing supporting the housing market was mortgage finance effectively conjured from thin air by the sale of previously issued mortgage debt. If this wasn't bad enough, lenders started offering purchasers mortgages greater than the value of their houses – motivated by the desire to get the deal done and the promise of greater turnover and profit, and justified by the likelihood rising market values would soon cover the debt.

Ponzi schemes and chain letters are nothing new, yet it would seem the highly paid executives in charge of this cyclical lending were either blissfully unaware that this is what they were creating, or were aware but did nothing to stop it. Negligent, stupid or criminally exploitative? You pays your money and takes your pick! For those familiar with Ponzi schemes and chain letters, what happened next should have been no surprise. What did happen next was the housing bubble burst, the economic growth it had been feeding went into reverse, people stopped buying houses and the things they put inside them and the cars they parked in the garages attached to them; people lost their jobs, repayments on house loans stopped, houses were repossessed, house prices collapsed as supply exceeded demand, investors had no idea which mortgage debt had been bundled up with which securities, so had no idea where the 'toxic debt' was and who was holding it. It was as if we had all been drawn into the financial equivalent of an orgy in which some of the most enthusiastic participants had HIV; nobody knew who had been infected and what the impact would be. The sale of the packaged debt had created investments bought by just about every investor on the planet; by large commercial organizations as well as the banks and pension funds. Suddenly the world was plunged into the deepest and most widespread recession the global economy had seen since the plague. All this because people followed the rules.

All the above should not be taken as my advocating we should avoid rules and regulations wherever we might encounter them, but it is intended as a cautionary note that rules and regulations should never become our masters. They are almost always imperfect, and ultimately they are never a substitute for knowledge and rational decision-making.

Whether rules and regulations are written down or boundaries formally defined we cannot avoid them, and nor should we wish to. If we didn't set our own boundaries, and devise rules to enable us to function within them, we would walk into lampposts, off cliffs and into fights. I know very little of the law but I am relatively confident I am a law abiding citizen, and very rarely does my behaviour cause others injury or hardship, as far as I am aware; and if it did I would be mortified. The laws I am aware of I use for guidance. I try to connect with the purpose they were intended to fulfil, and my adherence to them is governed firstly by the degree to which I subscribe to this purpose, secondly the severity of the punishment I will receive if caught disobeying, and thirdly the likelihood of being caught and punished. I know the law is imperfect, as is the judgement of the people who make it.

In order for a law, rule or regulation to be as near perfect as we might wish, it either needs to be very simple or align itself with the fundamental laws of nature. When playing a game or sport for instance, the rules are simple, easily understood and define the nature of the game. Not only are they desirable they are essential. Without them the game is rendered meaningless. The more complex games we play in our everyday lives, those of managing our societies and economies, require a far more profound understanding of the underlying mechanisms at work.

As the title sequence of the X Files used to proclaim, "the truth is out there", but when it comes to the laws of nature, the truth is difficult to get to. We are constantly getting closer to it, but we never quite get there because there always seems to be another layer of understanding just out of reach. Isaac Newton said of his work "I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." The discoveries he made in his lifetime, and the formulas he came up with over 300 years ago, so as to enable us to calculate the effects of gravity and the movement of objects, were sufficiently accurate to enable mankind to send men to the moon and satellites to the far reaches of the solar system for rendezvous with distant planets, but they are just approximations. Einstein later produced calculations that have since been shown to be more reliable, and a better approximation. Newton's calculations were fine within certain limits, but proved unreliable when our ability to look deeper into the universe became greater. Einstein's extended those limits, and others continue to push the boundaries of our understanding. The deeper our understanding becomes the wider the range of applications to which we may put the knowledge we acquire. Like following branches of a tree away from its canopy to its trunk, the further we go, the closer we get to the lines of supply that feed the entire tree. In terms of understanding human affairs, this path must take us back down through the canopy of current experience, back through history, back through many layers before we get close to the trunk from which all branches have developed. Gaining a greater understanding of our values is an essential component of this, because, as we have seen, they spring from our needs, the satisfaction of which our whole being is 'designed' to overcome.

When we have a high attachment to the value of security, while its is true we will almost certainly be more predisposed to abide by the rule of law, and seek to follow the established procedure more than those whose value priorities are elsewhere, the effects of our boundary seeking and regulation loving outlook have many more subtle forms of expression. We are more likely to have difficulty in throwing ourselves into things body and soul, in expressing ourselves and just going with the flow. We are likely to be somewhat more buttoned up than we might be. We err on the side of safety and avoid placing ourselves in danger's way. Sometimes so much so that we let opportunities pass us by in ways that defy logic and so undermine our best interests.

When our intuitions are bent toward playing it safe, and we haven't allowed ourselves to probe beyond the boundaries we have set, we are guided by intuitions that sell us short. The analogies I frequently use to describe the effect of this are (1) how novices approach skiing, and (2) how people might cling to the rails of a cross channel ferry during a crossing.

When we first learn to ski the experience of being put on slippery ice and snow in slippery skis on a sloping mountainside can be somewhat unnerving. Our intuitive reaction is to lean back away from the fall of the slope. When we do this we obey the rules our intuition gives us; rules laid down over millions of years of evolution during which hominids didn't ski, and during which the intuitive response to falling down a slope was to lean back, so as to ensure that, if we fell, we fell backward into the mountain, not forward toward death or disaster. However, when skiing, in order to control your skis you have to put your weight forward onto their leading edges, so you can push them into the snow and carve out turns. In order to learn to do this you have to throw one rule book away and come up with a better one; one based on your experience of something new. Once you have done this you realise the new rule you have made works better, and so it slowly becomes part of your intuitive sense of self-regulation. However, unless you are prepared to take the risk you may fall down and hurt yourself, that you may lose control, that you may look a fool, you will never learn that lesson, you will never redefine your boundaries, you will never be able to realise your potential.

Similarly when one finds oneself on the deck of a ferry on a rolling sea, one may be inclined to hang on to the handrail. Doing so may keep you upright, but restricts you to moving only where the handrail accompanies you, and slowly at that. If you release your grip and experiment with getting your balance independently of the rail, you risk falling over, but with a little practice you will find you can move wherever you want to, you will have both hands free to do what you will with them, and, should you ever need to reach out for greater stability, you will have the confidence you can find a way to stop yourself getting into trouble.

The blanket effect of a security driven, boundary erecting mindset is it inclines us adopt a blinkered and inflexible perspective in every aspect of our lives. We learn to do, or become familiar with something as if that thing was disconnected from all other things. Therefore we find it difficult to translate the knowledge we have acquired to other things. Boundaries, rules and regulations tend to be superficial: formulated and applied at surface level to address certain immediate behavioural concerns. Because they are built from the top down they address the symptoms not the cause. When our learning takes place in this way we effectively learn by rote. Therefore, rather than being able to understand, translate and apply the fundamental rationale behind a skill or piece of knowledge we have acquired to a related area of knowledge or activity, we feel as though we have to start from scratch if we want to acquire a new skill or develop knowledge in this area. Given all things are connected, this failure to make connections makes us unnecessarily inflexible and causes us to waste considerable resources in learning afresh that which we could have synthesised for ourselves.

Before moving on I would like to quote the bard of Salford, Morrissey, who sang eloquently on the related theme of shyness – shyness being a way of playing it safe socially, and therefore a manifestation of security.

Shyness is nice, and

Shyness can stop you

From doing all the things in life

You'd like to

### Power

At the centre of every cell is a nucleus of power regulating it. In the literal sense of our biological cells this nucleus of power is DNA; the genes sequencing and marshalling the electrical and chemical reactions that make us us. For the social cell that is every human being the nucleus of power is the brain. In the social cells of the family, the sports team, the business team, organization and the government, the nucleus of power takes the form of parents, the captain, the team leader, the CEO and the president or prime minister. The power centred universe extends outward with each planet being the nucleus for its planetary atmosphere and system of moons, each sun being the nucleus of its stellar system, etc., and inward with each atom having a nucleus in which virtually all the atom's mass is centred and around which its electrons orbit.

The boundaries and rules governing the conformity within these cells can arrive spontaneously in the natural world, but in the world of memes in which we live, somebody is usually beating out a rhythm for us to follow. In the fluid system of starling flocks power flows from any bird that first senses a reason to change direction, and the entire flock swirls and changes direction to follow its lead, only for another bird to set the next precedent. In the human flocks power tends to be pursued by some more than others, and power tends to be given to some more than others. Those who both pursue power, and are deferred to by others, tend to accrue a great deal of it, and, as a result, may do more or less what they fancy and, more importantly, get others to do it too.

Power is the next step up the ladder of survival strategies. The most powerful can become the lawmakers, the governors of conformity and the stewards of tradition. While few of us will rise to become the masters and mistresses of all we survey, we can enjoy the benefits of power. And what's not to like about power. As a survival strategy it would seem to offer many advantages. Not only do you get to benefit from your own endeavours and personal resources, in getting others to do your bidding you multiply your ability to get things done and reap the rewards. When risks need to be taken and there is the possibility things could turn out badly, far better to let others take the heat in order that you can better judge whether to proceed or not. Whether you are a general in the army or a CEO of a major organization, there are many advantages to not being on the front line.

The value of power is all about control, gaining influence and improving one's status, and, as importantly, avoiding doing anything that might diminish one's influence and status. All of this is contingent on relationships with others and resources. One can only enjoy high status if others have lower status. You can only gain influence if others are influenced by you. You can control yourself, but power driven people are often more interested in controlling others and resources.

Broadly there are two ways you can gain power: getting others to defer to you voluntarily or asserting your will by force. Often the power driven individual uses a mixture of the two, seeking to make best use of the resources available to them. Obtaining power without force can be achieved through political manoeuvring or through actions perceived to add value to those whose approval and support is sought. Again a cocktail of these two ingredients is often used.

The central point about the value of power is that it is not concerned with the means by which control is obtained, influence is increased or status is enhanced, that is the concern of other values; it is only concerned with control, influence and status as ends in themselves, and the ends will justify the means.

Power holds an allure yet can be a poisoned chalice. As with King Midas's wish come true, its promise may prove difficult to realize. I write this on the day of Margaret Thatcher's funeral. Baroness Thatcher, as she became, was the longest serving prime minister of the 20th century in the UK. She was the first female prime minister. Her place in history would have been assured even if it hadn't been for the extraordinary passions her leadership stoked up in different parts of the electorate; an electorate that gave her and her Conservative party three consecutive general election victories.

To some she almost single-handedly dismantled the old boy network and the economically disastrous protectionism of post war governments that had seen Britain slip from being a world power to 'the sick man of Europe'. She took the ownership of loss making car production, steel production, telecoms and other utility companies out of public ownership, and sold off shares in them to the public to democratise share ownership and inject some private entrepreneurial zeal into their management. She deregulated the City of London's financial markets to open them up to market forces. She enabled millions of ordinary people to own their own homes. She acted decisively to protect British citizens and reclaim British territory from invasion by the Argentine dictatorship of the time. She stemmed the haemorrhaging of power and money to a nascent and unaccountable European government. She oversaw a miraculous economic and social revolution that saw prosperity, social mobility and personal freedom make quantum leaps forward and, in the process, buried the feckless idealism of socialism, as it then was, six feet under.

To others she was the heartless witch who cared nothing for the miners, manual labourers and other employees of the state owned industries she closed down, and was solely responsible for the destruction of the communities upon which these industries depended. She deepened the divisions between the prosperous, service driven south and the industrial and manufacturing dependent north. She antagonised our European neighbours with her refusal to join in the building of a new, unified Europe. She said there was no society, just the individual. She set us on the path to becoming a nation of self-centred, greedy, money grubbing, materialistic zombies who care nothing for each other, and in so doing sowed the seeds of the financial crash that befell us in the early 21st century.

On the one hand, the vast majority of us look to be led. On the other hand we are suspicious of those who lead us; following their lead but waiting for the day when we can say "I told you they were no good."

The old adage of 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' is something we are seemingly all aware of and in some measure of agreement with. If we set our leaders off on a voyage of hope with fanfares and bunting, we also tend to bring them back to port with a "come in no.5 your time is up", and then do our best to ensure they walk the plank before they come ashore.

So why would anyone want power, and why is power so often a poisoned chalice? In addition to the evolutionary advantages of maximising benefits and minimising costs as outlined at the start of this, there is also the satisfaction of need argument put forward by Maslow. Power would have fallen into his need category of 'esteem of others.' We want or need the things we think we do not have enough of. If the resources we seek are in short supply we will likely have to compete with others to ensure we get what we need. If we feel insecure, disadvantaged, less able or at the mercy of others it would seem natural to take direct action to remedy this state of affairs.

The powerful have less need for strategies that seek to raise or assert their status, control and influence. These are commodities they are likely to enjoy by default. For those of us who feel vulnerable as a consequence of perceived deficiencies in these departments, it would reasonable for us to (1) be extra sensitive to potential threats, and (2) deploy compensating strategies; i.e. doing things that make us seem more powerful than we are or perceive ourselves to be.

In nature most threatened animals run away, defend themselves or attack, while those at the top of the food chain can afford to be more relaxed. While many species advertise their ability to cause others harm - red frequently being an advertisement of an ability to inflict harm along with yellow and black stripes - there are also those who have evolved to give a warning yet have nothing to back it up: all mouth and no trousers. Sometimes it is enough to give the impression one has power to raise one's status and influence and gain a greater measure of control over one's destiny.

The value of power is another example of memes imitating genes. However it is expressed, its purpose is to improve the individual's ability to compete with others.

Power makes us very conscious of others. It engages us in a game in which we have to decide who can help us get where we want to go, who stands in our way, and try to figure out what it is we have to do to get them on our side or out of the way. This makes us politically savvy but can lead us to be seen as rather mercenary; seeking to make a good impression with those we deem to be above us, who might be able to smooth a path for us, and those who might serve as our foot-soldiers; keeping those who might rise to compete with us firmly in their place; and being seemingly disinterested in those who don't appear to represent either a threat or an opportunity. People whose paths don't cross with ours serve as reference points to how well we are doing; who's ahead, who's behind, what have they got we haven't. With power we are climbing the mountain of humanity, or our own little corner of it, and it is on, through and up people we climb and against which we measure our progress.

As we have seen in the previous chapters, rules and regulations are not to everyone's taste, especially those adversely affecting one's personal interests. Those driven by power are no anarchists, in fact they fear a lack of order; what they want is an order that suits them, and, rather than leave this to chance, they set about making it so. When you set the boundaries and are in control of the rules and regulations governing what goes on inside them, there is less likelihood of your receiving any nasty surprises; you tend to get what you want, and can more easily build a cocoon of apparent safety around yourself.

Those who are most inclined to defer to boundaries, rules and regulations implicitly concede that the rule makers know better than they do. Power driven people are keen to demonstrate they do know better than others. This can make life stressful for them. Being seen to make mistakes, admitting failure or impropriety, losing an argument, making a fool out of oneself, having others make jokes at your expense; in short, exhibiting you are only human after all, can be very difficult for the power driven. When the thing one craves most of all is the respect of others one is often inclined to try too hard to maintain one's public image. What one does behind closed doors and away from the eyes of those whose good opinion you court is another matter.

A strong security drive can make people pursue an overtly 'safety first' attitude to life. The power driven are similar in that losing is not an option they want to consider, and is something they will go to great pains to avoid, but in their desire to win they realize they cannot simply play it safe. Consequently they are particularly attuned to seeking and pursuing strategies that maximise return and minimize risk. Any means available to them to load the dice in their favour are likely to be considered.

The drawback of power is it either demands very high levels of competence if mistakes are to be avoided and others are to be impressed, or considerable energy being devoted to managing one's PR; avoiding gaffes where one can, and covering one's tracks when one can't. One has to be ever watchful, ever on guard for a critical observer or a challenge that could prove difficult to overcome. Bad news has to be censored and the unflattering story spun in such a way as to lessen its impact.

The rising challenges of the modern age are magnifying the possible advantages to be gained by learning and cooperating with others. As the pace at which human knowledge is being acquired increases, access to information becomes easier and technology moves our society into unknown territories, and the more important it is for us to learn quickly. Also, because the acquisition of knowledge is helped by sharing information and resources with others, it is highly beneficial if we feel able to freely cooperate with others. These can amount to unassailable twin peaks for the power driven. Experimentation, the acceptance of the possibility of failure that goes with it, and the admission one has much to learn are foundation stones for a learning mind set. One should be prepared to have others challenge your ideas, and be willing to recognize the weakness of ones arguments, if one wishes to advance quickly.

The intuitive responses power offers us when we face a challenge we perceive may get the better of us is to erect defences, become evasive or go on the offensive – fight or flight. In the more stable, less changing world of our ancestors, it is likely the demands of staying on top of things and others were not so great, and willpower alone could arm one sufficiently to see off all those who would challenge one's authority and social standing; at least long enough to allow one to regroup, make good the defences and launch a counter offensive. As the breadth and depth of available knowledge gets larger, and the ability for ordinary people to freely mine this precious resource becomes greater, the more difficult it becomes for the power driven to stay on top. Where once the social armour and weaponry associated with the power value imbued individuals with a competitive advantage, they are becoming more and more unwieldy.

In a largely conformist society power is the value with the greatest leadership potential. Those who want to be led (in a conformist society, the majority) are willing to support strong leaders who espouse similar, if more selective, views to their own, and those who want to do the leading have a captive audience of potentially willing followers to impress. As will be discussed later, this is the type of society we had in the UK until the 1960s, and the type of society still predominant in large parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The power driven are still to be found in the seats of power in the West, whether they be political or commercial, but one senses we are on the brink of a major cultural change, when it will no longer be the power driven who lead us. Given power is the only value that drives us to seek positions of leadership, this is likely to have an interesting effect on the way we govern ourselves; but more of that later.

In the foregoing I have made much of the limitations of power as a dominant value. This I have done because it is clear that the power driven still enjoy positions of influence, and the benefits of this are diminishing in our fast changing world. The hubris of business and political leaders was a significant factor in the financial crisis from which we are still reeling. In Britain we have recently experienced a wave of stories concerning corruption at senior levels in the press, the police and with hospital leaders. There have also been serial revelations of sexual abuse by senior figures in show business and the Catholic Church. At the highest level in society, the abuse of power by dictators and leaders of supposedly democratic countries is bringing about massive and unnecessary hardship for people all over the world. The momentum of change that would otherwise carry the people of affected nations forward is being resisted brutally by those who cannot concede the possibility it would be better for them to stand aside, and let the future find its own course. However, in less turbulent times and in more humdrum settings power is hugely valuable. If it weren't chimps, lions, elephant seals, bees, ants and a host of other creatures wouldn't have evolved hugely successful power driven, hierarchical social systems.

From village fetes to international humanitarian efforts, from boy scout jamborees to military interventions, from the local shop to multi-national companies, we are dependent on the willingness of people driven by the value of power to stand up, seize the initiative and, with competitive zeal, organize others into hugely beneficial cooperative ventures. Without the desire to influence others and win their approval that the power value provides, there would be very much less reason for any of us to stand up and make a contribution. If the cost of an action is to be justified there must be a reward, and with power the reward is the approval of ones peers.

The challenge for us in our increasingly meme driven world is to put the genetically driven power drive in its place. Power is hugely useful when it comes to delivering leadership, but it is often a barrier to gathering and understanding the range of information now needed by leaders. In the past power driven leaders had time to adapt to new information and new ways of doing things; they could learn by example and emulate the successful strategies of others. Now it is increasingly important for leaders to be able absorb and process new information independently, to cooperate freely and make decisions requiring rather more lateral thinking than the power drive allows.

Achievement

By our achievements are we judged. If we do that which our peers value they will think better of us; we will rise up in their estimation. Without achievement our ability to influence others will largely be dependent on coercion, political manoeuvring or perhaps by playing on their goodwill or sympathy. With achievements under our belt, others are far more likely to defer to us; we will have proved our worth, and when others need something doing for them, or seek guidance on how to do it for themselves, they will turn to those with a track record of achievement. Achievement, as far as power is concerned, is like money in the bank; an investment able to offer a steady return, that eases the need for a person to work at gaining the approval of others. Achievement brings higher status. Whatever our achievement, whether it be a qualification, a promotion, an award, getting the girl/boy, winning the match, surviving an ordeal or signing the deal, we will likely be seen as more useful than we otherwise would have been.

The value of achievement is therefore the desire driving one to perform to ones best, and know that one has achieved a required level of success in relation to widely accepted benchmarks. Similar to power, in the sense that it aims to satisfy the need of gaining the esteem of others, it differs in that it seeks to do this indirectly; rather than seeking the direct or implied approval of another or group of others, it involves doing something perceived to be of value to one's peer group, or the group to which one aspires to become a member.

In order to maximise the chances of winning the approval of others one has to be clear about what it is they want. Like buying a birthday gift for a loved one in the hope it will please them, it is important to focus on the wishes of the intended recipient. A football lover may be extremely pleased with tickets to a cup final, but annoyed to receive tickets to the ballet if there is an expectation that they should go and enjoy it. Achievement requires a focussed approach to goal setting and the means of achieving it.

In this respect achievement inclines us to look at propositions as if they were a track event. There has to be a well defined track, a finishing line and the promise of approval once the race has been run; the greater the audience, the greater the approval, the greater the desirability of the achievement. In order for the achievement to have value it needs to be special in the sense it involves being seen to involve doing as well if not better than others; while there may be an achievement in completing a race, winning the race is a far greater achievement; history remembers the winners not the runners ups.

Getting to university is an achievement itself, in that many fail to do so. Getting a 2nd class degree at the end of it is an achievement greater than gaining a 3rd or no degree at all. A 1st is the greatest achievement of all. The graduate with a 1st may have failed to get the girl or boy and, therefore, while a winner in one race is a loser in another. In life there are many races to be run, so we are all almost guaranteed to find ourselves winners and losers in various races at some time or another. Achievement pushes us toward running only in the races we can win. Competing only to lose and be perceived as a loser is the worst outcome possible for someone driven by achievement.

This focus on winning tends to promote a focussed or blinkered approach to problem solving and life. These are forms of narrow-framing; i.e. the tendency to respond to challenges in such a way as to pursue what appears to be the obvious quickest route from A to B, and devote one's attention only to information obviously relevant to the matter at hand. There are clear advantages to doing this when it results in the avoidance of wasting time on factors unlikely to impact on the outcome, and in concentrating one's energy on the things that matter. As with power, the evolution of such a strategy has its roots in genes and has served us well in the past. While in many instances it still does, due to the increasing pace of change, the greater volume of information at our disposal and the more interconnected nature of our world, we are ever more likely to be presented with challenges requiring a more wide framed approach; where more information needs to be gathered and understood, and decisions need to be made in the pursuit of longer term goals.

When translating values to the meme free world of our ancient ancestors, achievement is the end goal, the ultimate value. Tradition is the equivalent of genes being passed from one generation to the next. Conformity is the equivalent of identical and near identical genes being spread out across a population. Security defines the boundaries of cells, the cooperative groups of cells we know as organisms, and the cooperative group of organisms we know as colonies, and the genetic coding that keeps them functioning together. Power represents the central control mechanisms to be found in these structures. Then achievement is both the purpose of the foregoing and their enabler. Achievement is the equivalent of getting food, overcoming environmental challenges and predators, of finding a mate and reproducing. It is the end game and the instigator: exodus and genesis.

The next values encountered on the hierarchy have no direct equivalent at organism level in the meme free world. Without ideas and the ability to learn from experience and develop, they are meaningless concepts. The values from tradition to achievement are not dependent on new information; they concern making the best of what's already known. It is fair to say they are belief based. While this is explicitly the case with tradition and conformity, security also does not involve taking on board new information; it is about partitioning known quantities. Power involves control of this process and achievement excellence in the management of the control process.

In a progressive environment, in which new information arrives on a daily basis, an achievement drive will inevitably push one into the territory of newly acquired knowledge, however, the drive itself is not dependent on new information. Someone highly driven by achievement, working in an area such as science and technology, is quite likely to be pushing at the boundaries of knowledge, and therefore may be opening up new territory, but the achievement drive relates to gaining the approval of others, and this approval generally comes from doing the thing that gained them a reputation. Giving people what they want rarely involves giving them something unfamiliar. It may be that something unfamiliar soon becomes something people want, but achievement as a value seeks gratification directly, and therefore prefers a more risk free approach to its satisfaction.

These d-need values (i.e. those Maslow felt addressed a deficit in emotional needs; of feeling incomplete) require no new information and culminate in the value that relates to the satisfaction of the essential, physiological goals in life: to win in the games of natural and sexual selection. This gives them a sense of completeness in themselves; in a word: insularity.

It is interesting to note how many people who are driven strongly by these values seem to look at life as if this was the case; as if the values from hedonism to universalism in particular are superfluous to the satisfaction of need, and therefore people driven by these needs are in some way superfluous: dreamers detached from reality perhaps.

People who are driven by power and achievement are those most likely to talk in terms of having 'made it', speak in admiration of, be guided by, or aspire to be like, those who have 'made it'. The implication being: once you have hit the highs of power of achievement - made a lot of money, bought a big house, own a flash car, gained a seat on the board, are going to the 'best places', belong to the right clubs, send ones children to the best schools, etc. – there is nowhere else to go; you have hit the top and had to stop.

However, our brains give us another suite of values arising from their ability to generate memes. The memetic potential of the values increases slowly from tradition, where it amounts to a romanticising of things past so as to embed them and give them permanence, to achievement, which works just within and pushes at existing boundaries, in areas where new memes are constantly encroaching and laying down paths into formerly unexplored territory.

One can look at these values therefore as being a memetic training/proving ground: the place where we learn how to behave toward each other, gain familiarity with all that has gone before and develop our competence at managing the resources at our disposal. Once we have demonstrated our competence and earned the respect of our peers we are ready to move on the next phase of our personal journey, the one in which we seek to unleash our full memetic potential, to move toward what Maslow referred to as self-actualization – becoming and being what are capable of being. Having hopefully gained a greater measure of self-confidence, through a process of investigation, discovery, experimentation and rational analysis, we are then able to extend the boundaries of our knowledge, and further open up the divide between ourselves and the other life forms on our planet.

Hedonism

Hedonism is all about doing what gives you pleasure; trusting your senses: if it feels good do it. As a strategy by which to give oneself and evolutionary advantage it doesn't immediately sound too promising. While those more driven by achievement are hitting targets and doing what needs to be done, hedonists are having fun. However, there is something very significant about this step from achievement to hedonism. Hedonism, having fun, is something you can only afford to do if you have spare capacity; if not all your energies have to be devoted to the acts associated with just getting by. Just as people living in a poverty trap are disabled from making investments in things with the potential to give them an easier life and a brighter future: a better education, appliances that would free up time from domestic servitude, transport by which to access cheaper food than that available at the local store; people living in the emotional equivalent (i.e. one in which achievements fall short of baseline requirements) are trapped in a cycle in which all their resources have to be spent on these more basic necessitities.

The rewards of hedonism are also distinctly different from those associated with the previous values, in that the only person's opinion we are interested in is our own. I cannot gauge what is pleasurable to me by deferring to your opinion. A strawberry is pleasurable to me only if it pleases my senses. Many people love marzipan and cricket. Given I find the first disgusting and the second tedious, it is difficult for me to imagine the number of people in the entire world who like both marzipan and cricket could number more than eight. However, regardless of whether I was the only person in the world immune to their charms it would make no difference to my inability to enjoy them. I might pretend to enjoy them just to avoid becoming an outcast, but I would still quietly spit out any marzipan offered to me as cripplingly tedious over succeeded crippling tedious over, crushing my spirit between stifled yawns. Hedonism is the first step toward independent decision-making.

Hedonism almost certainly evolved as a means of encouraging us to do that which improves our chances of surviving and reproducing, and avoiding those things likely to do us harm. The life form first benefitting from a genetic mutation making nutritious food more pleasurable, and therefore more attractive than an alternative with less nutritional value, would gain a competitive evolutionary advantage over those without it. If red fruits were twice as nutritious as green fruits and tasted great to individuals with mutant DNA, in a lean year in which there wasn't enough fruit to go around, the mutants would more likely survive because the pleasure they took from the red fruits would cause them to prioritise eating these, while non-mutants would eat red and green indiscriminately. This would necessitate their having to eat a third more fruit than the mutants, and, since the red fruit would disappear more quickly, because the mutants would always choose red over green, if there was a shortage of fruit, the non-mutants would end up fighting among themselves for the last of the green fruit while the mutants could get on with the joyous business of mating with each other. Consequently creatures with the mutant DNA would prosper and come to dominate the species until all members shared the mutation.

This is why we have evolved to enjoy drinking, eating and having sex. If we didn't enjoy the first two we mightn't live long enough to experience the latter, and if we didn't enjoy that it would be less likely our 'indifferent to sex' genes would find their way into the next generation.

Out on the savannah, where our ancestors still lived at a time when the genetic programming for the human brain had substantially reached its current level of complexity, hedonism would not have had to contend with the many dubious attractions of modern civilization. No alcoholic beverages, few recreational drugs, no daytime TV, no ten-pin bowling, Angry Birds or chocolate. However, other than the familiar sources of pleasure to be found in the company of other members of our tribe, when we encountered something unfamiliar we would look to our intuitive sense of pleasure or displeasure for guidance. If the unfamiliar berry looks good and tastes good we will likely eat it. From then on when we see that berry we will see it as a useful food source, to be sought out and relied upon rather than experimented with as potential emergency rations. The bitter tasting berry we spit out. If its bitterness indicated poison or lack of nutritional benefit, as it most likely would, we would save ourselves loss of life, illness or, at the very least, the wasted effort of picking and eating it.

In allowing our pleasure seeking, fun loving side greater licence we open ourselves up to the possibility of discovering something new and giving ourselves an evolutionary advantage over those who are more conservative in their tastes. Where previously evolutionary advantage could only be acquired by gene mutation, hedonism unleashes the power of meme mutation, enabling the individual to create an advantage for itself out of thin air, hold on to this and pass it on as it sees fit, in doing so enhancing the potential to be seen as an achiever, trend-setter and person of influence.

The advantages bestowed by hedonism have been somewhat obscured by the tendency of modern (power and achievement driven) business people to seek out and exploit every opportunity that comes along and squeeze the commercial lemon dry. If something gives us pleasure we are inclined to indulge ourselves with it, and now we are able to create a supply of pleasure inducing activities in an abundance nature can't match, we spoil ourselves with choice. Also, because we are now able to extract the pleasure inducing components from foods and activities and supply them independently, thereby breaking the bond between them and the benefit inducing components to which they were once inextricably linked, we have inadvertently undermined the usefulness of hedonistic pleasure as a guide to survival value. Precious resources that used to be difficult to acquire, and therefore highly valuable desirable and pleasurable, have now become plentiful and easily available.

Energy giving fats and sugars were once only available from animals and fruits that had to be hunted or gathered in highly competitive environments. Now fat and sugar are cheaply produced fillers. Time spent relaxing was once a rare commodity, earned by a day's hard physical labour, and even then only something that could easily be justified by lack of light. Now many people's lives have been stripped of hard physical labour; even when we work many of us sit down. Hedonism is now as likely to lead us to obesity, tooth decay, heart disease and cancer as it is to expand our horizons and make us more self-sufficient.

Our success in giving ourselves spare capacity above and beyond that required to meet our basic survival needs, presents us with something of a double edged sword. We can choose to invest it or spend it. If we invest it we expand our horizons and increase our self-sufficiency going forward. If we spend it we may grow fat and complacent, in so doing eroding our ability to develop and making us more vulnerable. If it weren't for mankind's collective success at creating spare capacity, natural selection wouldn't have allowed us to spend. In nature every cost can only be borne if it is paid for by a benefit, and surplus tends to be eroded as it concedes competitive advantage to another. Mankind cannot get around this. If each of us stood or fell by our own endeavours - always competing never cooperating – we would never develop spare capacity to invest. Only because we are social creatures, who cooperate with each other to achieve more together than we could apart, have we been able to develop spare capacity at all.

As soon as we were able to catch, find or grow more food than we needed, protect ourselves from attack from other animals, and free ourselves from fear of being attacked by others in our group, we would find ourselves with some spare time and surplus energy. Initially this spare capacity would have been small, but any chance to take a break from completing the tasks at hand gives us the opportunity to take stock, think about what we are doing and maybe experiment a little; even if we do so just to amuse ourselves. No surplus, no investment, no progress.

In our societies, as long as we collectively invest more than we spend, we are likely to improve our chances of survival. However, if sufficient numbers of us indulge ourselves with self destructive practices to the extent that the investments of the forward looking can no longer subsidize the spenders, economies and eco systems begin to break down and spiral toward extinction. It is testament to mankind's ability to innovate and invest that we are able to come up with sufficient new, value adding ideas to increase the ease with which we can maintain healthcare, food production and meet our survival needs that so many of us can afford to sit around making little or no contribution to meeting these needs. A few hundred years ago most of us worked on the land growing and harvesting the food we ate, now only a small percentage do. Most of us are employed in 'industries' involved in the management of our surpluses, whether financial or recreational, and many of us are unemployed, and make no contribution to either the creation or management of the surplus, just to its erosion.

The choice between investing and spending may seem a clear one; especially if you are able to compare, say, the activities of someone who is unemployed and spends all their time playing video games* with those a farmer. However, when one looks at the individual choices we make the picture is not so clear. Is eating a McDonald's an investment or an indulgence? Its burgers and fries provide us with meals we didn't have to make ourselves, leaving us time to invest elsewhere and creating employment for others and income for our economy. Whatever the haters may say, the McDonald's burger and fries combo is a tasty meal that triggers our pleasure sensors. Hedonists would be inclined to give it a big thumbs up. However, by loading it with fat, salt and sugar, it is not a healthy meal. As an occasional energy boost it may be OK, but as a regular source of nourishment it falls short. Indulging our hedonistic tendencies through a staple diet of fast food creates a range of physical problems that undermine our ability to survive. In terms of natural and sexual selection they are more likely to contribute to our extinction than our continued existence.

*I am not implying this is what all or many unemployed people do

Hedonism is no longer the reliable guide it used to be. However, it is still hugely important to us. Enjoyment is key to our survival, and because we have brains to understand how our senses work, we can review the evidence they present us and weigh up how reliable this is. If we are able to differentiate between the false positives we experience when dealing with some man-made pleasures and the true positives we are more likely to encounter elsewhere, we can pretty much feel free to indulge ourselves and be guided by the evidence of our senses.

Having passed over the half way mark of the progression from tradition to benevolence, and moved onto the right half of the DNA motivational map, we can start to appreciate the oppositions between values facing each other across the circumplex. Where tradition is concerned with doing what has been done before and, with conformity, restrains us from letting our hair down and doing what we fancy, hedonism and stimulation are concerned with the very opposite. They promote the letting down of hair and doing what we fancy, whether for the sheer hell of it or toward some greater, as yet unknown, purpose. Where tradition and conformity promote continuity and playing it safe, hedonism and stimulation promote change and opening oneself up to risk.

Stimulation

The close cousin to hedonism, stimulation promotes a more purposeful attitude to experimentation and discovery. Where hedonism is more about a carefree, unconditional pursuit of pleasure from which we may accidentally expand our horizons, stimulation is the purposeful pursuit of new things in the hope that pushing ourselves to our limits will help us redefine our existing boundaries, see life from a different perspective and gain some new level of enlightenment. Consequently it promotes adventurousness, novelty and discovery.

As with hedonism, it is an instinctive drive with the potential to put us in harm's way as well as to open up opportunities for our advancement. While there are plenty of man-made diversions for the novelty hunter, thrill seeker and adventurer, the threats they present us with are not concealed. Unlike the fast food gourmet, the bungee jumper, parachutist, sailor, skier and mountaineer are far more aware of the risks they are taking, and are unlikely to feel any resentment toward those who facilitate their getting injured in the course of their stimulation. Stimulation presents a more subtle challenge to us.

I see stimulation as analogous to a climbing plant that has become taller than the support against which it was originally grown. As the slender stem of the climbing plant grows its stretches up and twists and turns in search of further support while being guided by the sun. Stimulation causes us to twist and turn, to reach out and to try different things. If the plant doesn't find a support it becomes vulnerable and may break. In our case stimulation, while pleasurable in its own right, can be seen as a search for the support self-direction provides.

Hedonism and stimulation motivate us to experience new things for ourselves and make independent judgements. Consequently they lay down the foundations on which we may build our own self-supporting structure: one that enables us to reduce our reliance on others, established procedures and systems. If we are unable to use our appetite for stimulation to build a stronger sense of self-direction it has the capacity to make us restless but directionless, doing things for the sake of doing them but never quite achieving any real sense of fulfilment. As with hedonism, and all the previous values for that matter, there is the possibility for us to become addicted to stimulation. We become accustomed to and dependent on the emotional hit we receive from it, and like any drug on which we become dependent, it tends to place increasing demands on us while delivering diminishing returns. As an addiction to power can be eased by achievement, and an addiction to achievement can be released through hedonism and stimulation, an addiction to hedonism and stimulation can be released through self-direction.

Self-direction

Self-direction represents the destination of stimulation's voyage of discovery; the repository for the knowledge of self, others and the world around us gathered with the help of the foregoing values. It is the value from which our self-confidence is built. It is the part of us that is self-reliant. Its position on the circumplex opposite conformity and security reflects this. Where the opposing values relate to being led by others, precedent and the rules and regulations laid down by others, self–direction is all about independence, being prepared to establish precedent and make and observe one's own rules.

It is not directed towards non-conformity or anarchy in any way, although these are possibilities it opens up. Self-direction is about doing the right thing. It encourages us to examine, to question and to personally verify the worth of ideas, customs, attachments and material things, rather than rely on or parrot received wisdom. It inclines us to do things differently only when we find fault with convention. The drive to appear non-conformist relates to making an impression on, and eliciting a reaction from, others, and is therefore more likely to have its roots in power than self-direction.

The extra layer of protection self-direction promises us lies in its ability to provide us with alternatives. While we may be happy to follow the crowd for most of the time, the self-directed person understands the crowd is not always right and conventional wisdom is sometimes flawed. It therefore gives us the ability to judge whether it is better to conform or do our own thing. The confidence to do our own thing is not easily won. We are programmed to avoid doing things we fear will harm us, and, as social animals, we are also programmed not to stray too far from the flock. We are often able to achieve a measure of independence by walking along our own path running parallel to that followed by the flock. To branch off and take an entirely different path takes a great deal of conviction. If this conviction is not to result in putting ourselves in harm's way, the more information we have on where the path will lead us the better. This is why the most important question for the self-directed person is 'why?'

If we don't ask 'why?' all we can do is what we are told or have been shown; we can only follow and never lead. If we ask why and accept the answer without further question we are still conforming not self-directing. The deeper we dig with our whys the deeper the understanding we may acquire. If individual pieces of information are like leaves on a tree, then the asking of why is a means by which to travel down to where the leaves meet the point on a branch from which many leaf stems issue. Each successive why takes us to down to where the next two or more branches meet, until, finally, we reach the trunk of the tree, where all branches come together: symbolizing the source of all connected knowledge. The trunk of the metaphorical tree of knowledge, like a conventional organic tree, is constructed of cells containing all the information (DNA) required to build an entire tree, but in the tree of knowledge these cells are more like stem cells, in that they can actually be used to construct any part of the tree.

The account I gave previously of my glasses steaming up in the bath and solving the problem by dunking them in the warm bath water was intended to illustrate this point. Having never used swimming goggles to swim, I had never been shown to do this, and the parallel only struck me when I was telling this story to a client who exclaimed 'aha' when she made the connection. She having always done this with swimming goggles as a matter of course having been instructed to do so when young.

The point of the illustration is: self-direction inclines us to seek a deeper level of understanding, and in so doing enables us to link the lessons we have learned, or the experiences we have had in one environment, or part of our lives, to another. Therefore, rather than having to rely on specialist knowledge acquired in prolonged exposure to a single set of circumstances, and therefore be limited in one's effective operational orbit, one is set free to adapt to a wider set of circumstances. I think this chimes with the comment I recall Stephen Fry making some years ago, when he said he was saddened the British educational system seemed to be veering toward training people rather than providing them with an education.

I was struck, when watching a video of the Milgram experiments I referred to earlier under 'Conformity' of a man who would not continue administering punishments. When he became uncomfortable at what he was being asked to do, he suggested the experimenter should check on the condition of the learner before they proceed. Despite being told to continue he held his ground; responding to the final instruction "you have no other choice, you must go on" he calmly disagreed, saying he had plenty of choices. Given this experiment was conducted at a time when there was much greater general deference to authority than now, I find his refusal to continue until the well-being of the learner had been established exceptionally moving and inspiring.

Authority is not always to be bent to and convention is not always to be followed. In order to make a contribution that amounts to more than mindless adherence to (often invisible) authority it seems to me we must be capable of self-directing.

If self-direction is to be valuable to us, independence cannot involve isolation. The more isolated we become the higher the potential for us to become self-deferential and self-deluded. Self-direction feeds on gathering information from others and testing the validity of the conclusions we reach. Whereas power inclines us protect and expound our views as if we were revered trustees of sacred truths, and deal with those who would challenge them as if they were heretics, self-direction welcomes challenges as a means to test and verify opinions. The reason why we favour independent (rather than in-house) inquiries when acts of apparent wrongdoing are uncovered in public life is we are all too prone to ignore evidence that doesn't fit with or support the case we would like to make. Having a third party examine the evidence, interrogate us and judge us ensures we are not allowed to get away with this. While the self-directed person remains the final judge of their opinions, since self-direction (as an independent value) only concerns itself with establishing the truth, the self-directed person is less likely to succumb to such bias, because it is ultimately self defeating; it may achieve a short-term saving of face but only by incurring a long-term cost.

Self-direction is therefore about being curious, challenging, open, self-effacing, inquisitive, flexible, freedom loving and independent, which makes it the strongest basis for learning and leadership.

Universalism

Universalism opposes security and power across the circumplex. Where security advocates the setting of defensive boundaries and creating rules, universalism advocates removing boundaries to create connections and, rather than setting rules, implicitly recognizes, and seeks to work with, the underlying laws of nature as if they were the warp and weft of the fabric from which the universe is woven, and of which we are a part. Where power places the greatest importance on the individual, and sees others as if they were competing players in a game, universalism sees the individual as a component of an interdependent collective.

Universalism is significant in determining how big our perceived world is. The more we feel connected with people in general, ideas in general and the world around us in general, the bigger our world will tend to be.

Universalism is the medium through which self-direction is able to accelerate our ability to learn and amass wisdom. To continue with the perhaps ill-advised tree metaphor I used in 'self-direction', universalism is the understanding that the stem cell information we gather in the trunk of the tree of knowledge can be applied to all things. Breaking from metaphor to return to the fundamental origins of the existence of all things we discussed at the outset of this book: all matter and energy is made from, and held together, by the same subatomic particles; all in accordance with the same fundamental laws of nature. Therefore it should not be surprising to see common patterns emerging between manifestations as apparently distinct as the weather, rivers, flowers, flies, people and financial systems. These common patterns open us up to the reality that we are all just different manifestations of the same things. We share a common ancestry. As life forms share a common DNA, all things share a deeper, more fundamental set of building blocks. Therefore it becomes clear that knowledge gained in one area can be applied to another once one can clearly establish congruity between patterns. While common patterns are not proof of anything, and therefore, just because we discover, say, that some property of the grapefruit seems similar to one of the brain, we should not leap to any conclusions about treating brain disease as we might a diseased fruit, they do flag up points of interest worthy of further investigation.

One hugely powerful illustration of this, which literally represents the usefulness of pattern recognition, is provided by the Mandelbrot set. Benoit Mandelbrot observed certain patterns in nature that appeared to look the same when viewed on any scale, in that the same form was repeated in their construction. A tree viewed from a distance looks much the same as one of its branches when scaled up. A complete river delta looks the same as a smaller area of it. The same could be said of lightning, the bronchi in our lungs and broccoli. Mandelbrot set about deriving a basic formula that would serve as the DNA for creating such shapes. The fruit of his labours was a relatively simple reiterated formula that, when plugged into a computer, created a beautiful, complex and potentially infinite image that looked the same at whatever level of magnification one chose to look at it: x0.1, x1, x10, 100, x1,000 etc.

Fractal Patterns In Nature, The Mandelbrot Set & Toy Story

The Mandelbrot set inspired Loren Carpenter, then a programmer working for Boeing, to explore the possibility of using similar formulae to generate similar self-replicating triangular patterns to shortcut the laborious process of creating backdrops for flight simulators. This he succeeded in doing and later translated this work into enhancing the process of creating sophisticated computer graphics for cartoons, co-founding Pixar, which went on to produce such movies as Toy Story using fractal geometry's mathematics to create incredibly realistic computer generated images that look as though they have been sampled from nature rather than generated by machine.

This tale serves not just to illustrate the utility of universalism, but as a prime example of how self-direction and universalism work together as the engine of innovation. Innovation is something we are all capable of, in that one could say it just involves creating something new. My sons say new things all the time. While some are ground-breaking for them, they would unlikely be regarded as such for children of their age generally. There is a world of difference between ground-breaking rock albums such as Sgt. Pepper, Dark Side of The Moon and OK Computer, and the millions of more run of the mill albums released by a host of popular artists that nevertheless comprise original material.

Nothing is new under the sun, in the sense we cannot create matter or energy only transform it. All mankind can possibly hope to do is connect and combine existing things to do what they would always have done if they had been connected before. Sometimes what is new to us is not new to nature – we didn't invent electricity or nuclear power, sonar or the wheel, because nature got there first. If I draw a picture of a plant I have created something new, but it will not be the first picture of a plant ever made, and it will likely be not that different from previous plant drawings, and ultimately it will be little more than a poor attempt to represent something already in existence. Every day scientists make breakthroughs which push us further down the road of knowledge and capability: increasing the life of batteries, making something smaller or more powerful, reducing the side effects associated with one drug by replacing one set of chemicals with another. Even the biggest innovations in mankind's history – Euclidian geometry, Newtonian Physics, the combustion engine, Darwin's Theory of Evolution, radio, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, the computer and the Internet – didn't come out of the blue. In all cases it could be argued they were just an improvement on, a refinement or rearrangement of, known concepts.

Arguably the measure of an innovation is determined by the apparent disconnect between its ingredients: the further apart these leaves were on the tree of knowledge, and how far down the branches one would have to travel to reach a common connection. The greater the distance apart and the further we have to travel between the two, the more unexpected the connection appears, and the more we realize the potential to make further connections in this area of the tree. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was some achievement in its own right, but the doors it has opened up in terms of our understanding of the universe and the applications we could put this to, from mapping the universe to the invention of 'the bomb' and nuclear power, has multiplied its significance manifold.

Universalism may be facilitated by a deeper appreciation of the underlying, root connections between superficially different concepts, but it manifests itself with the ease and willingness with which people are able to empathise with others and connect with the wider environment. The higher our universalism, the greater the potential we have to understand and feel connected with others, and the greater our potential to feel at one with the universe.

Consequently people high on universalism are likely to care more about others (regardless of their race, religion or values), nature and the environment in general. Perhaps it might be truer to say that, while it is likely they may generally care more than others, what is more significant is they will be more consistent in their concern for others and environments regardless of their direct personal relationships. Therefore someone who is high in universalism is more likely to value a stranger as they might value a member of their own family: be less biassed and more equitable. If they are passionate about protecting their immediate environment they are more likely to extend the same passions to protecting someone else's environment.

The same applies to ideas. So whereas the opposing value of power inclines us to attach special significance to our ideas just because they are ours, and therefore makes it difficult for us to drop them when a better idea comes along, or another person finds fault in them, universalism encourages a less protectionist outlook, in which ideas are reviewed on merit even-handedly, enabling ideas that aren't working out quite as hoped to be abandoned and better alternatives to be adopted in their place.

Maslow made reference to self-actualizing people feeling they were at once infinitely small and infinitely large. When I first read this the meaning I took was that in seeing ourselves as fully connected components of an infinitely large universe we recognize both how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, and also the limitless potential we have to connect with ideas that span the vastness of all existence. I have not had cause to revisit this reading. In more prosaic terms one can understand this in terms of how self-direction and universalism go together to drive self-actualization.

The drive toward perfecting self-direction is dependent on our accepting there is always more to learn; that our knowledge is always incomplete, and the more we know the more we realize our knowledge is incomplete. If our ever-expanding knowledge base is pictured as the equivalent of an ever-expanding geographical kingdom, our awareness of the vastness of the territory beyond becomes ever greater as the length of the perimeter boundary we have to look out from increases. Therefore any illusion we might have been under that we were approaching a destination state of complete knowledge would have faded away with every step forward. With every answer come further questions. With enlightenment comes humility.

If we develop a depth of understanding (tracing knowledge toward the truck of the tree of knowledge) to go with our increased breadth of knowledge (the area of the canopy we have covered), then every new piece of information we acquire has the potential to have increasingly universal applications, with every step down connecting us with the common root of an increasingly large area of surface knowledge. With this increased connectivity comes the sense we are at one with all things, and therefore all the things and people we encounter can be viewed as if, in some way, they are extensions of ourselves. In this sense we may also come to think of ourselves as being infinitely large.

The mighty Wikipedia states the following under its explanation of Maslow's state of self-actualization.

"A self-actualizer is a person who is living creatively and fully using his or her potentials. In his studies, Maslow found that self-actualizers share similarities. Whether famous or unknown, educated or not, rich or poor, self-actualizers tend to fit the following profile.

**Efficient perceptions of reality**. Self-actualizers are able to judge situations correctly and honestly. They are very sensitive to the fake and dishonest, and are free to see reality 'as it is'.

**Comfortable acceptance of self, others, nature**. Self-actualizers accept their own human nature with all its flaws. The shortcomings of others and the contradictions of the human condition are accepted with humor and tolerance.

**Spontaneity**. Maslow's subjects extended their creativity into everyday activities. Actualizers tend to be unusually alive, engaged, and spontaneous.

**Task centering**. Most of Maslow's subjects had a mission to fulfil in life or some task or problem 'beyond' themselves (instead of outside of themselves) to pursue.

**Autonomy**. Self-actualizers are free from reliance on external authorities or other people. They tend to be resourceful and independent.

**Continued freshness of appreciation**. The self-actualizer seems to constantly renew appreciation of life's basic goods. A sunset or a flower will be experienced as intensely time after time as it was at first. There is an "innocence of vision", like that of an artist or child.

**Fellowship with humanity**. Maslow's subjects felt a deep identification with others and the human situation in general.

**Profound interpersonal relationships**. The interpersonal relationships of self-actualizers are marked by deep loving bonds.

**Comfort with solitude**. Despite their satisfying relationships with others, self-actualizing persons value solitude and are comfortable being alone.

**Non-hostile sense of humour**. This refers to the wonderful capacity to laugh at oneself. It also describes the kind of humour a man like Abraham Lincoln had. Lincoln probably never made a joke that hurt anybody. His wry comments were gentle proddings of human shortcomings.

**Peak experiences**. All of Maslow's subjects reported the frequent occurrence of peak experiences (temporary moments of self-actualization). These occasions were marked by feelings of ecstasy, harmony, and deep meaning. Self-actualizers reported feeling at one with the universe, stronger and calmer than ever before, filled with light, beautiful and good, and so forth.

In summary, self-actualizers feel finally themselves, safe, not anxious, accepted, loved, loving, and alive, certainly living a fulfilling life."

Self-actualization offers the individual all these perks of existence and those relating to enhanced creativity mentioned before. In so doing it not only gives a person more potential to contribute to the greater good, it also enhances their ability to satisfy all the needs associated with the previous values.

All things become a potential source of stimulation in terms of the opportunities for adventure and learning. We increase our ability to experiment, go with the flow, extract fun and have enjoyment regardless of the environment in which we find ourselves. Because of the knowledge and wisdom we have accumulated, and the self-assurance we have that permits us to play with information on the leading edge of human understanding, we are likely to be capable of high achievement, and with this comes the potential for influence, status and control associated with power. The comfort and stability promised by security comes effortlessly. Where the security driven individual seeks stability by leaning on the crutch of rules and regulations, the self-actualizer seems to have inherent stability. Similarly the senses of being safe and of belonging provided by conformity and tradition come as standard without the need for conscious affiliation; the self-actualizing person is at one with the past and present, and feels connected with all things without feeling the need to expressly follow or mimic prescribed or widely accepted opinions or codes of conduct.

While it may appear that self-actualization is the destination to which we might aspire to arrive at, Maslow saw self-transcendence as one step beyond, and the structure of values as revealed by Schwartz is consistent with this. Universalism, by enabling us to empathize with others, helps us engage with others and thereby cooperate with others. Therefore it is a key psychological ingredient in our being able to function cooperatively, and since cooperation is one of the two keys to humanity's success, it is hugely significant to us, and is set to become increasingly important given the challenges ahead of us; for which we will all have to perform at the top of our games.

Benevolence

Self-transcendence is the product of universalism and benevolence. To the universal sense of being connected with, and therefore being able to empathize with, others and other things, benevolence adds the desire to do something about it; to advance the interests of others and the world others inhabit before our own.

This sort of ideology might seem to be the type of dreamy nonsense espoused by hippies who 'right thinking' conservatives would once have had birched. However, what might at first appear to be contrary to the evolutionary principle of survival of the fittest does in fact make perfect sense.

Cooperation is at the heart of mankind's success as a species. Without it we wouldn't have needed language; we could have frightened predators by making loud incoherent noises as many other beasts do. Language gives us the ability to share ideas and to learn, direct others and receive direction, record what we learn and pass it on to benefit our offspring; offspring born and raised with the cooperation of at least one other person, because we are born immature, defenceless and reliant on extended support from adults to an age when other animals have long since reached maturity.

Cooperation involves incurring a cost and sharing a benefit in order that we may make better long-term gains. In any situation where two or more parties come together looking to take benefit from a limited resource they are presented with a simple choice: compete or cooperate. And because evolutionary pressures tend to drive organisms to exploit any niche created by an abundance of any resource, surpluses are usually short lived. If there are more fruit in the jungle than the animals can eat, animal numbers tend to increase until the surplus disappears. Consequently, in the long run, all resources tend to end up being limited so as to ensure people have to do one or the other; they cannot quietly help themselves and hope to carry on doing so without repercussions.

Competition always seems to offer the prospect of the best immediate outcome, but only if one comes out on top. Losing may leave you with less than you need or, worse still, nothing. Competition is rarely risk free. By the same evolutionary process that ensures resources are always stretched, a competitor able to win easily over lesser competitors will soon find their dominance creating a niche attractive to others more able to compete on equal terms. In competition, while losers may live to fight another day, they must at least accept the likelihood of not getting a return on their investment. Even for the winner, the costs of victory may be significant; the more closely matched their competitor is the greater these costs will be, and therefore the lower the net benefit of victory will be.

Cooperation involves sharing available resources voluntarily, and thereby accepting a worse outcome than might otherwise seem available. Cooperation obviously looks more attractive to potential losers than potential winners, and therefore one might think cooperation would be unlikely to evolve, but cooperation actually offers the best outcome in the long run. It minimises costs and wasted investment, so after many rounds of a 'cooperate or compete' game, parties who share a resource cooperatively end up with a larger share than they might have through competition.

The benefits of cooperation go beyond the better management of limited resources; cooperation enables the parties to achieve things they could not independently. Ants, termites, wasps and bees are social organisms, and, despite not being endowed with huge intellects, they have developed abilities to do things competitive organisms such as lions, eagles, butterflies and frogs have not. They have developed: systems of communication that enable them to share precise information about the location of food; air conditioned cities with specialised accommodation for different labour groups within their societies; farming processes in which fungi or other creatures are nurtured and managed so as to create a readily accessible food supply; all in societies in which individuals put the interests of the collective above their own.

Cooperative groups once established begin to accrue strength that does not accrue through competition between individuals, but in order to maintain this they need to be protected from competitive internal elements. They achieve this by protecting their outer limits so as to keep intruders out, and in so doing create outwardly competitive entities. This is both what every ant colony is and what every individual ant is. In fact every living organism is a cooperative entity comprising millions of semi-independent cells. Ants have evolved to live in colonies because this gives them a competitive advantage. We seek to maximise our competitive advantage by creating cooperative entities larger than ourselves: the couple, the family, the group of friends, the village, the company, the country, etc. Many of our smaller groups, the couple and the family in particular, are gene driven, others are meme driven: i.e. we have created them because we have consciously decided they are the best strategy by which to achieve certain goals, and satisfy certain needs.

While we are not quite as cooperative as ants or bees, we are nevertheless primarily social creatures. What we lose out on as a consequence of our competitive instincts we make up for with the impressive functionality of our brains. Not only are we capable of benefiting from cooperation as a result of a genetic predisposition, as ants do, we can rationalise the benefits it bestows upon us and develop consciously cooperative strategies accordingly. This is why benevolence wears two hats: why it sits between universalism and tradition in the circular arrangement of values, yet is also the last value to be reached in an equivalent of Maslow's Hierarchy. It exists as a genetic trait requiring no brain, and therefore enjoys a place adjacent to tradition as one of the founding elements of our psychology. It is also the ultimate distillation of our conscious survival strategies, which, when allied with our ability to look at change as an opportunity, provides us with our optimum survival strategy, and the fullest realization of our human potential.

The adjacent location of tradition and benevolence on the values circumplex betrays one of the central functions of tradition (and conformity): the embedding of socially desirable thinking and behaviour. Given the potential for individuals to be lured by the siren calls of their competitive genes to stray from the path of cooperative righteousness, tradition and conformity provide an additional incentive to keep people on the straight and narrow: the fear of cultural isolation; which security, power and achievement seek to further reinforce.

All of the above may seem an overly flamboyant, or, dependent on your viewpoint, academic way of looking at benevolence; a value that essentially means being nice to others, but that's what it's all about. If we look at two of the key sub values of benevolence: honesty and forgiveness, we can quickly see how they fit with the above.

Being honest with another person is something you only do to be cooperative. By telling someone the truth you give them information that may help them at a cost to yourself. Information is knowledge and as such is an asset. Even the smallest truth may enable another person to gain a competitive advantage over you. It may be the missing piece of a jigsaw enabling them to do that which you cannot. It may enable them to manipulate you because they know more about you than you do about them. Key to gaining the upper hand in all competitive sports and games is the ability to take the opponent by surprise: concealing or deceiving them as to your intentions. Dishonesty is an essential element of any successful competitor's tactics. The competitor who can afford to honestly tell their opponent what they are about to do next, allow them time to react and still win is really one to be feared.

At the time of writing there has been a tragic story on the news concerning a teenage boy who, enticed by an online relationship with what he thought was a teenage girl, performed what I guess were explicit sexual acts in front of a webcam, only to find himself being blackmailed by someone who had been masquerading as a teenage girl. Rather than face the perceived humiliation he took his own life by jumping off a high bridge. What a tragic waste of life. What was effectively a cooperative act – i.e. the sharing of an intimate sexual experience with another person – was abused by a competitor out to maximise personal gain. How much better it would be if the world this boy lived in openly acknowledged that what he was doing was in no way embarrassing or shameful. Then he would have been able to laugh off the threats of the deceiver and be indifferent to whether they followed through on their threat or not. Sadly that is not yet the world we live in, and people do feel vulnerable when they are honest and open, even when they have done nothing wrong.

The upside of honesty is that it enables efficient, transparent communication. What I say I will do I will do and therefore you can rely on me doing it. What I say describes the situation does, in fact, accurately describe the situation, and therefore you can rely on this when thinking what should be done in the situation. Part of the reason why computers solve problems very quickly is that the information they process is 100% consistent from input to output. Part of the reason why large organizations are comparatively inefficient is that information is interrupted, withheld and distorted as it passes from person to person. The more honest we are the more trustworthy we become and the more capable the organizations we build become.

Why do we forgive people? To better enable us to cooperate with them. In forgiving another person we are acknowledging that, despite their having done us down and acted as a competitor against us, we are not going to retaliate, but instead are going to wipe the slate clean so as to encourage them to cooperate with us in future, without fear we will exact our revenge or get even. To refuse forgiveness is to shut off one particular avenue of trust, and so restrict our intention to cooperate with them in the future.

Competition has chiselled its impression on our DNA. Our genetic heritage will not be denied, and this is why sports and games are so attractive to us, and have such a cathartic effect. While we may give no quarter to the opponent we seek to destroy on the board, court, pitch or screen, we are able to do so on a sustainable basis because this competition represents a kind of virtual reality played out in a cooperative framework. This virtual realm seems very real while we are in it, but as soon as the game is over we shake hands, have a beer together and arrange when we will do it all over again.

For competition to produce the best result for us it has to be played against an opponent with whom we have no co-dependent relationship; i.e. a win can be secured without any fear of the loser coming back to bite us; the winner wins, the loser loses and that's the end of it. We can achieve this in a virtual world, but in the real world our ability to do this is largely an illusion. In order to avoid negative feedback, not only must the loser be obliterated, all the allies and sympathisers of the loser must also be obliterated. As you can learn from watching The Godfather or The Sopranos, if, after you have acted against another party, anyone is left to think harshly of you they will probably come back for vengeance. The competitive drive of our empire building ancestors in previous centuries only avoided storing up repercussions for a later day when the loser was obliterated, or assimilated, which ends up being a similar thing. As it is, the exploitation of resources (human and otherwise) in Africa and the Middle East, in particular, by the nations of the West has resulted in an imbalance that has paved the way to the troubles that continue to plague the region, and are increasingly coming back to haunt us. In our increasingly interconnected world the repercussions of the competitive pursuit of short-term gains no longer take decades to rebound on us. Whether it is political interference in Iraq (aimed at neutralizing a potential enemy/competitor) or the widespread commercial expediency that led to the global financial crisis, the simple desires to do better than others and ensure they don't do better than us can get us into great trouble.

The roots of benevolence lie in reciprocity, whether direct or indirect. Without any form of reciprocity it could not evolve. For anything to continue to exist the costs of existence have to be at least matched by the benefits. As a puddle of water evaporates in the sunshine its molecules are given up to the air until there are none left, whereupon it ceases to exist. A lake continues to be a lake as long as the quantity of water flowing into it matches that flowing out and evaporating. The benevolent person can only continue to give to others as long they have the resources to do so. Either their pool of resources must be so great they can afford to give and never receive at a measured rate for the duration of their life, or they must be the recipient of resources from others.

From the perspective of the most isolated and narrowly defined in-group, this reciprocity would be direct: each party would show kindness to the other (or others) in the expectation such kindness would be returned – "you scratch my back...". From the perspective of someone driven by universalism, their sense of connectedness would enable them to have a potentially infinite in-group. In any group whose numbers are such that the members do not know, or may not even be acquainted with, each other, the reciprocity has to be indirect. While individual kindnesses may not be paid back, the moral bookkeeping of individuals is such that their primary interest lies in giving and not counting the cost, ensuring that cooperation is maximised, group interests are enhanced as a priority and all members of the group are beneficiaries of their own collective benevolence.

The intriguing interplay between competition and cooperation has been the subject of much research involving the so called prisoner's dilemma – a game in which two players decide whether to cooperate or defect simultaneously, with maximum reward going to the person who defects when the other player cooperates (say 5 points), the worst outcome being delivered to the player who cooperates when the other defects (0 points), the second best personal outcome and best collective outcome is shared by two players who cooperate (3 points each), and the worst shared and second worst personal outcome going to two players who simultaneously compete (1 point each). While a supremely simple game, it represents a great paradigm for the way we live our lives in an increasingly interconnected world. The best outcome, and therefore the biggest lure, in the short-term is competition, but in the long-term cooperation always wins out. I would heartily recommend the pithy summary of this subject given in later editions of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene entitled Nice Guys Finish First, and, for those with a greater appetite, an entire book entitled Super Cooperators by Martin Nowak.

In the developed world we juggle our benevolence and our selfishness, just as life on earth has juggled cooperativeness and competitiveness for 4 billion years. Our sometimes unconscious cooperative instincts have enabled us to advance to a level where we take the benefits of cooperation for granted. As a collective we are in the black when it comes to generating a reserve from which to fund our benevolence. The complex array of social groupings in which we are entangled can give rise to a somewhat unpredictable pattern of reciprocity, and therefore the expression of our benevolence can seem a little confusing; making it possibly the most idiosyncratically expressed value of the ten.

In Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs mankind reaches the pinnacle of its potential by moving beyond self-actualization to self-transcendence. Perhaps a self-transcendent society was the utopian dream in the minds of the pioneers of communism. However, for such a utopian dream to be made real all the participants must share in it, and what's more, recognize they need it. By substituting an ideology based on rules enforced by a central power base rather than self-transcending values, the pioneers of communism sought to impose what cannot be imposed, and replaced one form of power based leadership with another.

Those who demonstrate against the selfish agenda of large corporations, rail against the ills of the competitive free market, and yearn for the creation of a benevolent, self-transcending utopia, might be interested to learn what the analysis of values based trends suggest our free market economy is cooking up for us next. A matter I will turn to in a little while.

Using Values To See What Makes Us Tick

As with genes and fingerprints, our values distinguish us as individuals, yet are made of the same ingredients. The lines on our fingertips are spaced similar distances apart and at first glance look similar. On further examination we find they arrange themselves in different patterns called whorls, arches, tentarches, loops, double loops, pocked loops and mixed; and within each of these pattern types there are a myriad variations of form. And so it is with values.

While values neatly arrange themselves around the circumplex and have broadly consistent correlating relationships, they are not fixed in our personal hierarchies. We each have a broadly stable system of values in which different values are given different priorities one to another. In these, while it is commonly the case that the value to which we ascribe the greatest significance is backed up by the values on either side of it, this needn't be the case. Therefore while it might seem likely someone for whom stimulation is their most important value (i.e. the value most related to the satisfaction of their dominant need and the most influential in determining their outlook and behaviour) should have hedonism and self-direction as their next most significant values, it is by no means exceptional for this not to be the case. Similarly, while one might expect the values on the opposite side of the circumplex to a person's dominant value to be the least important to them, like tradition in relation to stimulation for instance, it is not that uncommon for opposing values to come first and second in a person's hierarchy.

All of this makes little sense when one considers values as rational survival strategies, or looks at them as Maslow did, as things we attach importance to satisfy our experiential needs progressively. If one values self-direction above all others then it is rationally inconsistent to also highly prize conformity, as the latter tends to thwart the former. In Maslow's hierarchical terms it is also difficult to explain how someone could prioritise both of these values, because, according to the homeostatic process he visualised, in order to have developed a need for self-actualization (which self-direction addresses) one would have to have satisfied one's need for belonging (which conformity addresses). The mistake Maslow made probably arose as a consequence of his ignorance of how evolution has shaped our brains; how the construction and operation of our brains are determined by the mixed genes of our parents. While they evolve further during our life times, as experience and rational thought rewrite part of their programming, the structural framework upon which our values are built is anything but rational. While we may not mate entirely at random, the variables involved in mate selection and the random selection of parental genes to form a new human embryo have enough of a lucky dip element to them that no one should be surprised to see all sorts of patterns emerging in our personal value hierarchies.

Indeed, given this backdrop, it is surprising we see as much consistency as we do. I would estimate around 80% of the values profiles we examine have the semblance of a bell shaped distribution, in which a line of best fit can be drawn across a graph of the ten values, so as to rise to a peak and then fall away on either side like the profile of a bell or hill. If one chooses to look at this from what might have been Maslow's perspective, this would fit with the idea that values given the highest priority would relate to the most active area of need, while those to the left of the peak would become progressively less important, because they progressively relate to needs that have been sequentially satisfied, and the values to the right increasingly relate to needs yet to be fully realized, and therefore engaged with. Consistent with the circular pattern of values depicted in the circumplex, one would expect neighbouring values to be given similar priorities, so the most important value would be next to the second and third most important, which in turn would neighbour the fourth and fifth, and so on, with the values given the lowest priority on the opposite side.

The tendency for closely related values to crop up together in personal hierarchies underpins our ability to sensibly combine the 50 plus sub-values into the ten we use in DNA. In order to give a high score to any one value one must have assigned high significance to its sub-values in the responses to the questionnaire. If you think honesty is very important, then it is quite likely you will also think being forgiving is important. While the two concepts aren't inseparable, if one is strongly of the belief one should tell the truth all the time, it makes sense to have a sympathetic policy on forgiveness. In a world in which it is possible to make mistakes and do the wrong thing, if people are to be honest it places some pressure on people to either refrain from making mistakes and do the right thing, or be forgiving when they do. Failure to do either will create work for those who seek to punish or otherwise seek recompense from those who fail to meet the required standard. Since people don't like being punished this will make it more difficult for them to own up to their transgressions. If honesty and forgiveness don't go hand in hand then the result is an increased cost to the social group to which individuals belong. As discussed previously, costs are something natural selection seeks to minimise, therefore survival strategies based upon high requirements for honesty and low capacities for forgiveness would tend to be eliminated.

The weaker the sympathetic relationship between two values in the formulation of survival strategies, the further apart they will tend to be located relative to each other, until values with the least relationship between each other will find themselves located far away from each other on axes separated by 90O.

Moving beyond 90O from the axis of any particular value, the values then encountered should start to exhibit negative correlations; i.e. they would start to create friction with each other if used as part of a mixed survival strategy. Therefore when we look at how a sub-value such as ambition (part of achievement) could interact with honesty, we can see how it is likely to create friction, and lead to the type of inefficient survival strategy natural selection seeks to eliminate. While the two concepts aren't mutually exclusive, in that being honest shouldn't necessarily prevent one from realizing one's ambitions, in competitive environments it may be that honesty is not always the best policy. If I am able to tell you something that will incline you to think better of me than of someone else with whom I am competing, then I will gain an advantage over a competitor who is hamstrung by only being able to tell you the truth. If you are a potential sexual partner who is known to value a particular thing or attribute (fast cars, cats, foreign travel, athleticism, money, etc.) whatever the credentials of my competitors, if they are limited by a policy of honesty, I may be able trump their claim regardless of my real credentials. With stealth and careful planning it may be possible for me to add verisimilitude to my flagrant lies, give credibility to my claims and win the sexual prize I seek.

In this world of positive psychology dishonesty isn't considered a value. Dishonesty is the high-jacking of honesty by ambition in a bid to gain a competitive advantage in a cooperative environment. Honesty is the lynchpin of social behaviour, and without it humanity would not have been able to evolve as quickly as it has. If news of discoveries were not communicated and shared honestly, then technological progress would be impossible. Each new discovery could only be developed by the discoverer within their lifetime; unless others came upon the information by stealth. On their death any discovery not recorded honestly, or made into a piece of technology that survived them, would be lost. With honest communication every new discovery can be made known to others, thereby giving us the opportunity to develop it further, and so advancing technological innovation on a ratcheted, forward only basis.

The value of ambition relates to self-enhancement: gaining a competitive advantage over others. In the service of ambition honest and dishonest information may be dispensed as required. Honesty, while capable of contributing to the best long-term advancement of a social collective (and therefore the members of that collective) always has the capacity to place an individual at a short-term disadvantage to someone more driven by ambition. Hence the reason why the two values oppose each other across the circumplex.

One might have thought mankind would have evolved perfectly competitive and/or perfectly cooperative strategies, and perhaps divided into two groups or even two species, the cooperative group advancing quickly with the competitive group launching periodic attacks with their outmoded technology and inept attempts at social infiltration, until the two became too distantly related to interbreed. However, that's not the way things are; in values terms we are a mixed society. While there is a tendency for people to be attracted to those who appear to have similar values to themselves, or similar levels of intellect, our success as a species, and the variety of environments in which we are now able to flourish, is such that when we mate we can get away with rolling the genetic dice in ways perhaps other species cannot. In the combined rolling of genetic dice that is mating we tend not to roll pairs; a one and a six is as likely as a one and a one. This means a child is as likely to be genetically predisposed to develop an efficient motivational system in which values are arranged so as to avoid conflicts, as one predisposed to conflict.

No other species is or can be as tolerant of inefficiency as we are. Our technological advancement has given us sufficient slack to enable us to carry individuals who make little or no contribution to the well-being of the collective. We even tolerate those who seek to damage the collective. In other social species, such as ants and bees, every individual pulls their weight. In more competitive species, in which there may be those who seek to undermine the interests of the collective for personal gain, competitors circle each other in a finely balanced system in which would be losers conform or perish and would be winners have to step up to the plate. While it wasn't always the way it is now, we have developed a social conscience, and this makes it difficult for us to exclude non-contributors. Therefore, with our cooperative hats on, we hesitate to come down too hard on those who seek to take out more than they contribute. Why we do so can be partially explained by the complex nature of our interactions and the social systems forged by them.

The worker who toils all day in the field, never pausing to stand and stare, may be more productive in the short term, but human technology hasn't evolved as quickly as it has because of our devotion to manual labour. While the worker who habitually takes extended breaks to watch: the birds swooping over the fields, the crops swaying in the breeze and his fellow workers toiling away, may incur the ire of some of his or her fellow workers, and harvest less per day, if, as a result of their ruminations, they come up with an idea that scares the birds away or enables workers to harvest twice as much they have done previously in a day, then the benefit to the collective of supporting daydreamers could vastly outweigh the costs – one person's idea perhaps comes at the cost of a 30% drop in their personal crop gathering over 5 years, but the benefit to the collective could be a 200% increase in the collected harvest from hundreds of thousands of people in perpetuity.

Even if it weren't for the potential for daydreaming spongers to turn innovators, as mankind has developed ever greater specialized forms of employment at an ever increasing rate, so it has had to acknowledge there is an increasing likelihood that people with one skill set will no longer be required, and it may be difficult for them to find alternative employment. If we as a society were to adopt a ruthless 'let the unemployed starve' policy the result would be to incentivise very high levels of interpersonal competition and protectionism, which in turn would stifle innovation. So, we do our best to juggle competitive and cooperative strategies.

If we could look at a version of our society hypothetically freed from the disruptive effects of innovation and freeloaders, and blessed with full employment, we would still cultivate a mixed culture in which people with different values, and hence different survival strategies, would be needed to flourish. Such is the diversity of roles in our society, differently motivated people are needed to perform them: cooperative people, competitive people, innovative people and people who prefer to follow procedure.

The other factor separating us from other species is the complexity of our brains and our meme generating capacity. More than any other species, we are able to transcend our genetic predispositions with brains able to reprogram themselves in response to the stimuli we receive from our environment. Our brains change as wave after wave of experience crashes over them, and so too do our values. While we are young we are moulded by our parents' ministrations, the environment in which we find ourselves, our teachers, class mates and friends, and, as the influence others have begins to wane, when we become adults, we become able to steer our own path, examine and amend our values.

All of the above contributes to the melting pot of value generating genes and memes that is humanity.

Consequently, while there are selection pressures steering us toward having the type of non-conflicting value systems theory might reasonably predict, there are also many factors throwing spanners into the works, and these are responsible for the infinite variety of values profiles we encounter.

We are some way off being able to analyse the neural detail of how our values work, but the principals are clear, and from the individual value spectra we gather from the data produced by responses to our questionnaires we are able to gain valuable insights as to how our values affect our thinking and behaviour.

What we cannot do with the information we gather is know definitively what a person will do in any given situation. Even with a full and accurate representation of their values system, the variables at play are just too great. Likewise, we cannot know from observing any single behaviour what values were responsible for it, because behaviours have many possible root causes. No matter how strongly driven by benevolence a person is, without knowledge of other events going on in their lives or of recent events, we would not be able to confidently predict whether, on an individual encounter with another person, they would act benevolently toward them.

If they have been experiencing considerable stress, are being distracted, or have had negative previous experiences with this individual, it is more likely their behaviour would be atypical of a highly benevolent person. Similarly, if someone is seen to be helping another we cannot be certain they are doing so altruistically or benevolently; they may just be strategically deploying behaviour likely to build trust and loyalty in order they might exploit any privileged position they develop for themselves.

What we are able to do with values analysis is identify likely patterns of behaviour from what we see in the values profiles of individuals' motivational systems, and also infer the types of value profiles likely to be responsible for a broad sweep of behaviours.

When it comes to considering individual events - what might happen in any one given situation as a consequence of the values of an individual - while values analysis cannot serve as a fully reliable crystal ball, it does provide some valuable insights. These become ever more useful when we look to predict broader patterns of behaviour, and are able to review evidence from past events.

The most easy to interpret values driven attitudes and behaviours relate to people with values systems in which neighbouring values support each other (i.e. are similarly placed in their personal hierarchies), with dominant values opposed by the lowest ranked values. With these people, the greater the disparity between the importance attached to the highest and lowest ranking values, the more likely it is they will display what might be considered the typical behaviours of their DNA need type: particularly SD, OD, TD & ID. These people are the ones who most conform to Maslow's idea of needs types.

An Individual's Motivational Map

The red and white dots indicate the relative importance of the 10 values (the further away from the centre the more important the value is to the individual) and red and black marker indicates the centre of their motivational system (the further away from the centre the more strongly aligned their values will be with the DNA motivational type – in this example the ID type)

The same (ID) personal values profile expressed as a bar chart

SDs

People for whom the most important values are those of tradition, conformity and security are driven most by a need to belong. In DNA we call this group of people SDs (sustenance driven – being the terminology used by Stanford Research Institute in their Maslow based work). These people tend to attach greater importance to tradition and the generally accepted beliefs, standards and behaviours of their group – whether this group (or groups) is (are) defined by race, religion, class, age, gender or any other definition by which people are deemed to belong or not. The tendency is for these groups to evolve ways of group thinking, in which certain ideas are seen as good (i.e. they are perceived to serve the cooperative interests of the group) and then become enshrined in customs, expectations, regulations and law. These eventually take precedent over all other ideas, even if these other ideas are closer in spirit to the ideas from which the regulations and laws evolved in the first place.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for those who place the need to belong above all others is to retain an individual, objective and rational perspective. The subjugation of individuality is a central feature of most religious and cultural clubs: in order to belong one must conform to its rules, subscribe to its philosophy and acquiesce with the wishes and demands of its leaders. To hold dear such value concepts as personal restraint, obedience and humility is helpful in this respect, as they create barriers to picking up any new and potentially destabilising ideas and behaviours. The values of least importance to SDs are those belonging to TDs and IDs on the opposite side of the circumplex, i.e. those promoting personal pleasure, excitement, variety, independence, curiosity and broad mindedness.

While TDs are the polar opposite of SDs in values terms, when viewed in relation to the linear hierarchy, it is IDs that appear to be the people having the least in common with SDs. From the perspective of what values seek to achieve in terms of cooperation, SDs and IDs have more in common than SDs and TDs. The sub-values of social justice, forgiveness, honesty, equality and meaning in life have something of a biblical, religiously approved feel to them. This is because they are supportive of cooperation and evolved as cooperative strategies evolved. However, for SDs these sub-values are applied through religious or other cultural filters according to a prescribed code. So where IDs hold these values directly as the means by which to achieve greater levels of cooperation, the average SD has too much humility to believe they have the capacity to make such judgements themselves, preferring to follow those better placed to make such judgements; those who place themselves, or find themselves in positions perceived to be, closer to a god or other group figurehead. Therefore the linear opposition between SDs and IDs arises not from the purpose their values evolved to serve, but the behaviours and thinking they promote in a changing environment. If nothing ever changed, including our collective knowledge, SDs and IDs would have a great deal in common, but as the pace of change increases as technology raises our ability to do things more effectively and quickly, SDs and IDs will find their positions at the opposite ends of the spectrum of belief and reason more significant.

The result of this may be that an SD and TD would be more likely to find common ground than an ID and an SD or an ID and a TD, because, while the ID and SD might share more cooperative and collective 'purpose in life' ideologies, the willingness of the ID to find and embrace new ways of realising their aims would be so resisted by the SD that the SD position might have more in common with the more competitively motivated and therefore more restricted thinking of a TD.

Typically SDs tend to be the most resistant to change, the least adventurous, the least open minded and the least prepared to allow their rational capabilities free reign. Well defined SDs (i.e. those whose conservative values strongly dominate their motivational system) have a very strong sense of right and wrong and, while they may not be the most confident of people in terms of assessments of self-worth, they are likely to be dogged in their defence of what they believe to be right. Their behavioural codes have a very strong moral dimension, having been distilled through generations of religious or other traditional teachings, but the manner in which they are applied may be hugely inconsistent, both between individual practitioners, different adherent groups and in relation to the wider philosophical aims in respect of which of which they were original conceived.

On the basis of the above one might expect SDs to be the most likely to: give their children traditional names, go to church, go to the same place on holiday every year, be faithful to a brand or product, have the same political allegiance as their parents, oppose gay rights, divorce and abortion, be conservative (with a small 'c') in their tastes generally and the least likely to become a highly creative artist or ground breaking scientist.

SDs are also the most reliable, predictable and community loving of people. Finding comfort in routine and stability and the promotion and maintenance of law and order, they are the 'salt of the earth' foot soldiers of society.

ODs

Moving on around the circumplex, those people for whom power and achievement dominate, and benevolence and universalism are the least significant, are known as ODs in DNA (from SRI's outer directeds). Developing upon the belief based way of thinking of SDs, the OD's values relate to gaining a competitive advantage over other members of the collective. Therefore while they are likely to espouse the importance of cooperative values such as the need for social order, national and family security, politeness, honesty and loyalty, whether consciously or unconsciously, these are subordinated to the service of status related concepts such social recognition, ambition, success, authority, wealth and social power.

The irony being those who tend to rise to positions of leadership and influence in conformist societies and large businesses, both contingent on cooperation, are the least cooperatively minded. Senior politicians and the directors of major corporations are likely to be ODs. Those who reach the top tend not to be reluctant leaders being pushed forward by others. They are more likely to be people driven by the prospect of acquiring the status, influence and financial rewards that go with these positions, and therefore the people least likely to experience a conflict when weighing up their personal interests with those of the collective. In order to represent their electorate politicians know they have to appear honest, loyal and motivated to create high levels of social justice, yet these are all values likely to be the least important to them; good to espouse but often inconvenient to live by if one is highly competitive.

ODs are the most competitive people, yet because their status related goals evolve from and are dependent upon a relationship with the collective, they must behave in a manner that does not undermine this. An overt expression of competitiveness may be acceptable as long as it doesn't obviously conflict with the cooperative goals of the collective. Regulating competitive behaviour is what our informal behavioural codes, rules, regulations and laws are all about. "You may seek to gain an advantage over others through hard work or taking greater personal risk, but you cannot take what others have without their permission or be so reckless in your risk taking you endanger others." This is effectively what our laws are saying. Therefore those who seek to satisfy their status related ambitions through murder, injury, robbery, deception, driving at 120mph or supplying certain addictive drugs will find themselves on the wrong side of the law and cast out from the collective. However, advertising and offering incentives (which stretch the definition of honesty) and supplying addictive drugs such as alcohol and tobacco (which put others at risk) are deemed acceptable, as is imprisoning (or, in some parts of the world, killing) and fining those we deem guilty of an offence.

The conflict between the competitive drivers of ODs and the cooperative demands of society is an abundant spring from which the river of the daily news is fed. Whether its greedy bankers, child-abusing celebrities, rogue builders or lying politicians, at the heart of many an eye catching headline is an OD going about their business.

One shouldn't infer from the above that ODs are bad people. Firstly, because 'bad' is an entirely subjective term, and secondly because most ODs never break the law in any way the majority of us would consider significant. Good and bad only have meaning when considered from a particular perspective. What is good for the lion may be bad for the antelope, especially if the lion eats it. From the perspective of the species of lion and antelope one could argue the catching of a fleeing antelope is good for the lion and the antelope, promoting more healthy and vigorous species through the survival of the fittest. In the context of the meaning of good and bad as most of us might understand the terms, ODs are not bad. It just so happens people belonging to this needs and values group are those most likely to do 'bad' things when viewed from the cooperative perspective of the collective. In order to secure a competitive advantage competitive people are more likely to use every conceivable resource available to them. This makes it more likely they will stretch the boundaries of play and sail as close to the wind as they dare. Footballers may 'inadvertently' handle the ball or challenge another too vigorously hoping their actions will escape the referee's attention; marketing executives may be a little too generous when describing the virtues of their products and a little too shy when it comes to drawing attention to their drawbacks; while we ordinary souls may be less than brutally honest when it comes to writing our CVs.

The competitive drive of ODs, while arguably the most destabilising force in society, is also largely responsible for our all being able to share in the advances that have benefited mankind through history. Because an OD's ability to satisfy their personal needs is contingent on the approval of others, they are always mindful of what others want, and seek ways in which give others what they want in order to reap reciprocal rewards. This is the engine of the market economy: give the people what they want and they will reward you; fail to do this on the best terms possible and someone else will do it and reap the rewards in your place. Up until very recently, every new innovation with a proven ability to give people what they want, more cheaply or more conveniently, has been distributed to the people of the world by an individual or business driven by OD values.

The fine balance between mankind's competitive and cooperative instincts has been instrumental in our success as a species. Technological progress would have originally been fired more by our collective competition against predatory animals, those we hunted and our environment than with each other. And long before we ever came to think about technology, or even think at all, competition was at the heart of that most cooperative component of existence: mating. The observations and persuasive arguments forwarded by Geoffrey Miller in The Mating Mind illustrate how the oppositions of competition and cooperation come together in courtship, sex and mating. Whether it's male bower birds bidding for the attention of females with their elaborate show nests, or female techniques for making the act of congress as challenging as possible, or for selecting between competing sperm suppliers, it seems there is no shortage in nature of evidence that males and females indulge in what amounts to little short of sexual warfare in order to get the best genes on the most economic terms. Yet from what can appear sex's brutally competitive game play is born the fundamental acts of cooperative investment that are gestation, giving birth and raising the next generation; the individuals of which will have only 50% of one's own genes.

ODs are the first to put their hands up when leadership is required. They enjoy taking responsibility for ordering the world around them. They are often more than capable of being cooperative and benevolent, as long as the costs involved do not frustrate their status related aims. All humans are motivated by self interest, the difference between ODs and, say, IDs is that ODs are instinctively drawn to do that which will result in self gratification quickly and directly, whereas IDs take a more long-term or wide-framed view. Reciprocally they are also more likely to be motivated to avoid doing that likely to result in their incurring social costs such as humiliation, loss of influence and authority.

At the time of writing, here in England, a senior MP and his ex-wife have ended up in court over her alleging he had, some years ago, forced her to receive the penalty points he should have received after being caught speeding in his car. Given what came out in court later, he must have known that not only was there plentiful evidence showing he was the driver of the car, but also she was firmly intent on extracting her 'pound of flesh' from him subsequent to his betrayal of their marriage vows. However, rather than respond to the allegations by accepting he did take the points and apologising for his indiscretion, he declared his innocence and intent to fight her in court. A few weeks later, once the court hearing had commenced, he decided to admit defeat. Had he come clean initially it is quite possible he would have escaped with a telling off, a substantial fine and a short soul-cleansing sabbatical away from politics. What he received was a prison sentence that ended his political career.

While he never submitted himself to DNA's formal needs and values analysis, his conduct, his position in his chosen career and the personalised number plate shown on the photo of his speeding car were all consistent with him being an OD. Motivated by such sub-values as preserving public image, social power, authority and ambition, rather than ID sub-values such as honesty, loyalty and forgiveness, his decision illustrates just how values based feelings can override rational thought. In choosing to fight initially he presumably felt compelled to compete with his ex wife and avoid admitting to indiscretions he felt would damage his career, yet in doing so, in the absence of a miracle, he simply deferred the inevitable: incurring punitive levels of emotional interest payments in the process.

This tale should provide a salutary if somewhat over simplified lesson for ODs everywhere. ODs tend to narrow frame propositions and think too short-term. In accordance with Daniel Kahneman's principal of AYSIATI (all you see is all there is) ODs are vulnerable to proceed all steam ahead in pursuit of their desired outcome, while paying too little attention to relevant factors outside their immediate frame of reference and the many layered consequences of their actions.

In terms of circular and linear (Maslowian) value oppositions, from the OD perspective, IDs are the group with which they have the least in common. Their values directly oppose each other across the circumplex and ID values are situated the furthest away from theirs in the hierarchical arrangement. So, while more likely to think rationally and adopt less narrow framed perspectives than SDs, they are likely to have more in common with SDs in both these respects when compared to other types; in that the ID values promoting rational thought and wide framing are further away. Also consistent with what one might expect, given the needs base of values, ODs are better able to understand SDs because they recognise their needs as needs, albeit ones they perceive they have broadly satisfied. However, because the values of IDs relate to considerations ODs have difficulty recognizing as needs, because they don't experience them as such, they have difficulty connecting with ID motivations, and therefore have difficulty relating to and accommodating them. While TD values are also beyond the OD part of the spectrum, their proximity is such that, to ODs, they do not seem so very different; TDs are perceived perhaps as just less competitive, more energised and adventurous versions of themselves.

TDs

Rather overlooked by Maslow were those motivated primarily by the pursuit of fun and adventure. In terms of the space occupied by hedonism and stimulation in a faithful mapping of the values circumplex (as distinct from the graphically pleasing version DNA uses) the TD domain is Portugal to OD's Spain. However, if this is the case, it is a relatively densely populated space, as England is compared to France perhaps. Whether this is a reflection of the (from a historical perspective) plentiful nature of the times in which we find ourselves I cannot say, but from the evidence of our surveys TDs are very far from being an endangered species.

TDs can be thought of as coming in two types: adventurous ODs or restless, would be IDs, dependent on whether the chief supporting roles go to the OD values of power and achievement or the ID values of self-direction and universalism.

If criminals motivated by personal material gain are most likely to be ODs, then people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law as a consequence of their love of hedonistic, self-indulgent, risk and thrill seeking are most likely to be TDs. Motivated by the desire to experience new things and push the envelope of their existence in the pursuit of meaning, or perhaps to escape having to contemplate meaning, TDs are usually engaging and enthusiastic, open minded and up for a challenge. Less motivated to compete than ODs, their principal interest in others lies in having someone to spark off and share good times with.

In study material from Shalom Schwartz I noted TDs were found to be the most likely to engage in 'risky sex.' I have yet to receive any corroboration of this from the TDs I have spoken with, but it makes sense.

In terms of value group oppositions, for TDs, SDs are the group they have least in common with, in that they have values in polar opposition across the circumplex and those furthest away on the linear hierarchy. So while TDs may recognize SD needs as needs, they are more likely to have difficulty being sympathetic to their ways of thinking. IDs may seem like inhabitants of a difficult to comprehend, yet not so distant land. While the relative proximity of their values makes it easier for TDs to connect with their aims than may be possible for ODs, the fact that ID values relate to needs TDs do not perceive as needs limits their ability to fully connect with them.

IDs

If self–direction is the value representing the peak toward which those who seek knowledge for the sake of independence climb, the ID suite of values including universalism and benevolence might represent the sunlit upland of enlightenment lying beyond it. If we all progressed up through Maslow's hierarchy of needs as we toiled through life on a Zen like journey perhaps this would be true, but given our values' roots are genetic as well as experiential, it is quite possible to have these values dominate one's motivational system without being enlightened. While an innately independent and curious disposition linked to a sense of being at one with the world may offer certain advantages if one seeks to be enlightened, ironically it is the forging of this cooperative set of values in the heat of competitive environments that is most likely to result in true enlightenment.

If human evolution was exposed to the full frontal assault of natural selection such that individuals could not hope to survive if their decision-making was flawed, then self-direction could only evolve if the strategies springing from it were optimised for survival. However, as discussed previously, humanity is able to carry dead weight like no other species. Therefore the more protected, the safer the environment in which a self-directed person finds themselves, the more latitude they will have to develop flawed ways of thinking. Protected from the abrasive edge of competition and challenge in ways independence sometimes allows (when enabled by a privileged upbringing for instance), some IDs are free to wield swords of truth so blunt they couldn't cut candy floss. The 'dippy hippy' with their well intentioned notions of peace and love, and fascination for alternative remedies, spirituality and mysticism, might be the stereotype of this type of ID.

IDs who develop their thinking progressively through rational discipline and by exposing their ideas to the criticisms of others are those most likely to manifest the characteristics of self-actualization as described by Maslow.

Whether self-actualized or not, IDs will tend to be more cooperative, broad-minded, inclusive, honest and loyal, concerned with the environment and the world beyond their doorstep than others. They are the most likely to be at ease with themselves, philosophical about life, accommodating of others (regardless of their sex, age, status or race) and become campaigners and activists for righteous causes. Their open mindedness, curiosity, desire to seek out patterns in nature and behaviour, and capacity for independent ways of thinking, gives them high creative potential, whether this is expressed in thought or deed.

Given IDs are likely to recognize the needs of all other types of people as needs, albeit largely satisfied ones from their point of view, IDs have the greatest opportunity to imagine how life looks like through the eyes of others, regardless of their motivation. The dominant values of ODs tend to oppose their own, consequently IDs have the greatest capacity to be frustrated or disparaging about the OD outlook and behaviour. While IDs have a certain affinity with SDs because of their appreciation of community values, the narrow framed, belief based foundation of the SD outlook is so very different to that of IDs the two groups have the least potential to see eye to eye on the best means to achieve an agreed end.

MDs

The above characterisations represent stereotypes of people driven strongly by the values in their part of the circumplex, and very much less so by the values in other areas, especially those on the opposite side. In order to divide the circumplex into distinct areas we inevitably have to draw boundaries. As with any dividing line, these boundaries are helpful in enabling us to quickly apportion labels to different parts, but less helpful when it comes to understanding and relating the areas around their margin. If one was to take place 100 dots in a circle around the DNA Motivational Map to represent the location of 100 differently motivated people, neighbouring dots straddling a boundary between two DNA type domains would belong to people with very similar value sets, with more in common than those of two people who belonged to the same DNA type but with dots placed further apart. The most stereotypical SDs, ODs, TDs and IDs will be people with dots placed on the mid points of the arcs of these segments of the DNA Motivational Map, and toward the ends of these arcs the value sets of the people to whom the dots belong will become more of a hybrid.

The greater the relative influence of values other than the two or three that dominate each segment, the less influence these dominant values will have. In terms of mapping the central balance of a person's motivational system, the more even the spread or divided the influence of values the more their dot will be drawn in from the circumpherence toward the centre of the circumplex. While the net effect of any competing values will be to create a more complex and mixed motivational system, manifesting itself in muted or more idiosyncratic character traits, as long as there are certain allied values exerting some level of dominance over the others there remains a justification for allocating a person to one of the four outer DNA types. Anecdotal evidence from my own assessment of people who I get to know and later complete the DNA test has demonstrated to me that it is possible to allocate people to the right type with reasonable accuracy by eye as it were. The people I used to have problems allocating to a type turned out to be those with dots in the centre of the circumplex.

More Conflicted (or balanced) Personal Values Profiles (left = moderated ID; right = MD)

Once a person's value set becomes so full of conflicts that no one set of neighbouring values can be seen to dominate the others, the dot representing the centre of their motivational system moves into the centre of the circumplex. People whose dots are in this area, unlike those with dots placed close to the boundary of two neighbouring segments, may have affinities with three of four outer DNA types or an equal affinity with two opposing types. For these people it serves no useful purpose to allocate them to one of the four outer types, and with this in mind a fifth type, the MD (or moderated drive) was born.

Unlike other types, MDs cannot be so easily stereotyped. The possible combinations of conflicting values through which no dominant set of sympathetic values is allowed to emerge are too many to allow this. From my observations the one characteristic many MDs do seem to share is that of being contemplative and considered. Such observations hardly amount to scientific evidence but they do resonate with what one might expect from what we know about how values affect our thinking and behaviour. If two conflicting values are equal in strength then, broadly speaking, they will disincline a person from being habitually: competitive or cooperative, open to change or resistant to it, taking in the big picture or concentrating on the task in hand, relying on received wisdom or thinking for themselves. Consequently one might anticipate MDs would have more cause than most to reflect which of the competing modes was most appropriate to the situation at hand.

One might also expect MDs to find it easier to empathise with people of all types, since fewer of their values have to stay hidden in the background while others take the limelight. So while ODs are likely to be better able to empathise with ODs (because they share similar dominant values) and have more difficulty empathising with IDs (because the most important values to IDs are likely to be among the least important to ODs), MDs are quite likely to have an equal ability to empathise with ODs and IDs.

Interpreting Mixed Value Systems

When it comes to reading the likely significance and impact of mixed value patterns, i.e. those without single, well defined peaks and bell shaped distributions, matters become more complex. While the highest value will generally have the most significant influence on thinking and behaviour, because different values are engaged in different situations, if, say a person with a single dominant peak at self-direction should be presented with a proposition involving a tradition versus stimulation dilemma, say whether to go on a white water rafting holiday or rent a cottage with one's family, then the dominance of self-direction might well, dependent on the detailed circumstances, be less significant than the relative priorities for tradition and stimulation.

Guessing how people with mixed values systems will respond to single events is more challenging than it would be for people whose dominant values are restricted to one half of the circumplex. Given most situations engage opposing sets of values (one for and one against), people with one side dominant values systems are more likely to be guided by these values. Whereas for mixed value systems, slight variations in the nature of a challenge, may switch the most engaged value from a dominant one to a subordinate one.

The more tightly focussed and simple a challenge the more likely it is it will engage particular opposing sets of values, and the easier it will be assess the likely response of an individual. However, values analysis is likely to provide greater insights into thinking and behaviour when it is used to consider long-term patterns relating to the mix of challenges we face in the course of our lives generally. The more challenges encountered across the range of competition vs. cooperation, wide framing vs. narrow framing, openness to change versus conservatism, belief vs. knowledge, the more likely it will be to see the relative influence of the values.

Values given a much higher priority than others will be seen to have a marked and leading effect on thinking and behaviour; with values having similar scores enjoying similar levels of overall influence. Lower scoring values have less of a steering effect: the lower their scores relative to the other values, the lower their influence. In circumstances where a group of neighbouring values (i.e. those that support each other, relate to similar needs and promote similar thinking and behaviour) are closely ranked in a secondary tier (i.e. outside the top two or three but above the lowest scoring) the significance they will have will be magnified as they stand more chance of supporting each other when a proposition engages the values in their part of the circumplex. So, for example, there will be a point of balance at which similar scoring security, power and achievement values would be as influential overall as a single higher scoring power value, because there will be propositions that particularly relate to security or achievement but less so to power.

Developmental Patterns

Apart from yielding information about the general balance of a person's motivational system, the hierarchical structure of the values can be used to assess developmental patterns. While value patterns are influenced by genes as well as by experience, the developmental logic underpinning their relationships is useful when considering what makes a person tick, and how they might be able to address certain developmental issues. Given each successive value, once engaged, provides a more efficient means of satisfying needs associated with the previous value, and, as it is satisfied, opens up the potential for the next, less short-term, need to be engaged, one might expect to see a bell curve shaped values profile develop. When this is absent, or is disrupted by dissenting values, a discordantly high score implies that a particular perceived need is not being satisfied, despite the person having engaged a higher need. While this defies the logic of Maslow's homeostatic process of progression through need satisfaction, and likely illustrates the influence of genes, this does not alter the purpose these values serve and the effectiveness of the strategies they spawn in any given environment.

A discordantly high score for, say, security, set against a bell shaped curve peaking at hedonism, would suggest that, because of the amount of energy being devoted to achieving and having fun, the person might be expected to have their more basic security needs largely under control. Therefore the question arises 'what is the reason for this feeling of vulnerability and need for additional regulatory control?' The possible reasons are manifold, and are unlikely to be revealed by the value scores themselves. However, they provide a marker for enquiry, which may lead to a revelation such as a major unsettling event having occurred that caused the person to drastically review their ability to do things other than by the book, or that in their upbringing they were conditioned to play by the rules and not expose themselves to unnecessary risk.

Every picture tells a story, and so it is with value profiles. For example a high score for tradition almost certainly indicates a strong religious or quasi religious upbringing, and a double bell shaped curve pattern with an SD peak and another 'higher' peak speaks of a religious or other strong culturally conformist childhood followed by values later developed by experience acting on a genetic base – nurture and nature.

The Evolution of Cultural Values

Where to start? When did culture begin? When did mankind begin? Given the impossibility of naming a date, it might be just as well to start at the beginning of life. At this time, while no values would have existed, because no brains existed, given the prime mover for the continued existence of life was gene replication through cell division, continuity of what went before and consistency between extant life forms were the defining characteristics of life, one might say the dominant cultural values of life were dominated by the pre-meme equivalents tradition and conformity.

So at this stage in our evolution it seems reasonable to place a marker in the red/orange 'SD' area of DNA's Motivational Map to represent the central location of the dominant values of the culture. In order for the marker to begin to move it would be necessary for security related needs* to increase. While the challenge of locating the centre of our cultural values is a difficult one, necessitating a fair bit of artistic licence, given the time spans involved I think I can grant myself this. Until our ancestors had evolved brains, I cannot see any strong reason to move the marker much at all. Only then would the dynamics of group decision making begin to kick in to an extent that the cultural impact of boundaries, rules and regulations would have been felt.

*'needs' and 'culture' in the loosest possible senses, given that this genetic equivalent of need would predate any conscious awareness of need and we usually think of culture as being a human invention

While, one has to acknowledge that equivalents of security, power and achievement are present even in the ordering of the most basic cellular processes, I would contend that, in the early stages of the evolution of life, they are dancing to the tune of the equivalents of tradition and conformity and therefore cannot be said to define the culture.

Even though we can see clear evidence of security and power driven behaviour in animals less intelligent than any hominid ancestors of ours, they can hardly be said to dominate their culture*. Security is perceptibly more significant to prairie dog culture than it is to bacteria culture. Prairie dogs stand on their hind legs to look for danger and, when a territorial intruder is seen, a signal is given which triggers all the other prairie dogs running for cover. Bacteria, as far as I am aware, do not have such a collective security system. Lions have a well developed power structure, but I am not sure one could say it dominates their culture.

To put things in perspective it might help to zoom out so we can see the whole of human evolution as a line whose both ends are visible - from the creation of the first cellular life form to the present day - and then consider where the central values of culture have moved to in recent history. While there have been no shortage of cultures with a significant central power base, from ancient Egypt through Roman times up to 20th century dictatorships in Europe, I would say the dominant cultures in all these remained in the SD area of the motivational map. While the increasing importance of security, power and achievement slowly pushed the marker anticlockwise, these power bases were ultimately reliant on their subject's fear driven, stability seeking needs for tradition, conformity and security. Until relatively recently it was difficult to separate God from science. Mankind's understanding of the mechanisms making the world go around were such that deference to God and those who spoke on His behalf was almost universal, and, whatever else God is, He is a staunch traditionalist!

Cultural Evolution In The UK

The slow anticlockwise passage of the cultural marker in the UK didn't, in my view, reach green OD territory until the 1980s. While the shift to a culture dominated by ambition, materialism, brand and achievement seemed to lurch forward with the arrival of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, Thatcher didn't will this culture into being, she merely removed the boundaries, rules and regulations constricting the British economy. The forces of self-enhancement have been clearly at work right throughout recorded history. Robbers, merchants and all others with an eye on making things better for themselves seem to have been a significant presence in most of the societies I have learned about, whether Roman, Elizabethan or Victorian.

So, in my eyes, it took almost all of our 4 billion year evolution for our culture to move out of the SD zone and slip away from being dominated by the basic collective need to belong or be safe, whether under the watchful eye of God, oblivious to any such deistic notions or free from any notions at all.

Cultural evolution is really the memetic evolution of mankind over the past tens of thousands of years, and has been driven by factors that together contribute to a cycle of innovation. Before memes human evolution, and therefore innovation, was governed by genes. Memetic evolution is far more rapid. Just as genetic evolution ultimately depends on combining existing atoms to create new combinations in our genetic DNA, memetic evolution depends upon combining existing ideas in new ways and seeing if they take flight. Consequently, the pace at which it evolves depends on the prevailing amount of base level information available, the ability to broadcast or share this information, the ability to access it, the ability of those who access it to think of something new and useful to do with it, and their ability to do that useful thing – to make their ideas real.

In the early days of experimentation and of sharing our experiences through communication, the information or knowledge we had to go on was necessarily small; one has to start from zero after all. Our ability to share this information would have likely been restricted by the simplicity of a language evolved to communicate fairly basic concepts such as "watch out", "help me", "go around there" and "you grab it, I'll hit it". Also, with only an ability to communicate when face to face, and the probability that we would only want to share valuable information with members of our own clan, information wouldn't have flowed very freely. As for being able to turn ideas into action, our limited technological capability would have likely given even the most creative minds a sobering reality check. The Ancient Greeks may have dreamt of flying to the sun, and Leonardo may have doodled helicopters on his jotter, but they couldn't do much to get their ideas off the page.

In the 19th century, the only form of long distance communication available was the posted letter, and the only forms of mass communication were newspapers and books, and since education wasn't freely available, not everyone could read them, even if they had the time or money to do so. Half the population (women) weren't even considered eligible to have a say in how they were governed, and therefore their education wasn't considered a priority. So, while this was a far more innovative culture than had ever previously existed, from our perspective, it appears to be concerned with limiting and controlling the flow of information, and the power that springs from it, more than distributing it.

In the 1970s, despite our having developed the means by which to speak to people on the other side of the world, broadcast to each other via radio and television, and even send men to the moon, our culture was still more conservative than revolutionary. Access to the very latest thinking was limited to people in the higher halls of learning, and society remained largely deferential to the established seats of power: the government, the church, other large institutions public and private. Even the firebrand representatives of the underrepresented working man and woman, the unions, weren't fully democratic and had established traditional, institutional power bases in their own right. Boundaries, rules and regulations were everywhere: the class system was alive and well, government and industry was still dominated by the old (public school) boy network, the nascent permissive society did battle with an old order bound by Victorian attitudes to sex; there were frequent 'work to rule' protests by workers who felt their 'rights' had been infringed, phone calls would be interrupted by 'the pips' telling each party their time was up, etc. British industry had been largely nationalised, with electricity, coal and gas production under government control, along with steel production and telecommunications, a large part of car manufacturing and the rail network.

If the intent of nationalisation had been to create a nation in which people pulled together to drive it forward in one huge coordinated cooperative endeavour, then it had failed. Instead the dead hand of tradition and conformity lay across the collective consciousness, and the effects of security were similar to bindweed growing unchecked in a country garden: smothering and constricting growth rather than channelling it.

By the end of the 1970s Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party were elected to govern at a time when Britain was bedevilled by strikes, three day weeks, power cuts and industries that lost more money than they made. What Thatcher effectively did was set about digging up the institutionalised bindweed post war governments had seeded, and then let nature take it course.

One of the most significant and totemic removals of bindweed involved the deregulation of the trading activities of the City Of London's financial markets. Once the preserve of old school tie stockbrokers doing business on archaically convoluted terms, it became a free market place where people more suited to buying and selling – stereotyped as East End 'barrow boys' – came to the fore. Computer trading systems replaced those based on paper and handshakes, and analysts with Oxbridge degrees scoured the market for information on which to make more informed buying and selling decisions. Simultaneously the government sold off the creaking nationalised industries to the public; raising public funds, distributing their ownership amongst the general public (or the middle class section of it) and, in relieving these organizations of public subsidy, incentivised their leaders to quickly make them profitable. These new leaders would either be rewarded by, or incur the wrath of, shareholders looking for a return on their investment, rather than be allowed to take refuge in protectionist relationships with their sponsors.

The cultural revolution this sparked saw the UK economy lurch forward, not as a consequence of any innovative initiatives taken by the government so much as the removal of years of accumulated restraints. Their release catapulted the national culture forward into the OD zone. Increasingly large numbers of people felt they could become high achievers, and the material rewards for achievement seemed to become more abundant by the year. More people found they could own their own homes, in which they could put colour TVs, hi-fis, dish-washers, fridge freezers, etc. Holidays abroad became the norm, whether in the Spanish sun or on Alpine ski slopes. Essential goods such as clothes and food became subject to fashion and status in ways they had not before (at least not for 'ordinary' people). Designer brands and luxury foods, previously the preserve of the upper classes, were not only desirable but accessible to vast swathes of a burgeoning middle class.

Social mobility made status more important to a host of ambitious people looking to improve their standing in society, grab a piece of the good life, be successful, make money, make their mark and have some fun.

The relatively sudden development of an OD culture in Britain arrived as if a coiled spring had been released. In other countries the experience would have been different. In Germany, the combination of Hitler and the allies had, to some extent, wiped the slate clean in these cultural terms, and, perhaps, as a consequence it experienced a more gradual transition into the OD age. In the US, a less distinct class structure and a post war boom may also have helped smooth the transition. However, in free market economies across the world we have witnessed cultures broadly based on the competitive OD values flourish over the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first of the twenty first century.

Where the SD culture that preceded it sought to assume a moral high ground based on centuries of tradition, the OD culture assumed morality was something every right thinking person had, and gave little further consideration to it. Laws, rules, regulations and customs took care of keeping people on a moral track so people could focus on making money.

OD thinking has an interesting take on morality. I think it can be illustrated with reference to that paradigm of organizational development football. In football two teams of 11 players compete against each other in a game defined by simple marked boundaries and moderately simple rules. If one ignores such niceties as the offside rule, the rules of football can be summed up as follows. The object of the game is to send the ball into the opposing team's goal more times than they do in 90 minutes. The team scoring the most wins. Players may play the ball with any part of their bodies but their arms and hands. Players may tackle members of the opposing team to win the ball, but must do so by playing the ball not the player (i.e. they must not kick or trip them, hold on to them or push them with their arms). Only one member of each team, the goalkeeper, may touch the ball with their hands, and even then only in a marked area around their goal. In the event a player breaks the rules regarding use of hands or fouling an opponent, a free kick will be awarded to the opposition; at which no member of the opposing team may come within 10 yards of the ball until it has been played.

Competitive footballers all recognise and value these rules, as without them there is no game. They implicitly acknowledge the challenge and joy of the game comes from playing within its boundaries and rules. If punching opponents or using machinery to propel the ball into an opponent's net were not forbidden and accepted as inappropriate there would be nothing to stop the game developing into open warfare. However, despite this, players cheat. They do occasionally handle the ball, kick or handle an opponent, claim they have been fouled when they have not, and claim the ball has not crossed a boundary when it has. The justification for this seems to be: the referee is there to enforce the rules of the game, and if the referee doesn't see an infringement then, officially, it has not taken place.

Therefore it is not the rules of the game that are significant as much as the referee's ability to enforce them. If one can gain an advantage by playing outside the rules of the game, but within the margin of error allowed by the referee, then one must do so to maximise competitive advantage.

If there is morality in football then, to my eyes, it exists in playing to the letter of the rules of the game. While rules don't necessarily square up very well with morality in the wider world, in football the rules aren't mankind's attempt to create order in a chaotic world, but the very definition of the game itself; once one steps beyond its boundaries you are no longer in the realm of football. If football's rules are broken then football morality breaks down; in that the game itself is rendered meaningless.

In real life the rules are nature's laws. They are inviolable. They define the totality of existence as far as we are capable of relating to it. In the virtual world of football its rules define it, and need to be treated as if they were inviolable.

This translates directly to the OD perspective on collective culture. Morality is openly declared to be of great importance, yet the game is played not by strict adherence to, or even a general presumption to abide by, a broadly understood moral code, but rather so as to maximise competitive advantage whilst avoiding being caught for transgressing the letter of laws devised in an attempt to give definition to the moral code. Given the enormous complexity of the human activities in the modern age, our ability to create rules that are effective, easy to define, interpret and enforce, could be likened to trying to catch eels by stretching individual lengths of string across a river rather than using a net. Each law addresses a specific concern, but due to the interconnectedness of all things, there is always a way to avoid it. Those who do not wish to play strictly by the rules, and do not concern themselves too much with the spirit of the law, will find ways to get through.

The effects of the OD performance culture in business have affected wider social culture. Given most people work and we are all dependent on business for our food, water, healthcare and entertainment this was inevitable. However, it may not be obvious how these effects manifest themselves. While they are fairly transparent in the performance metrics that now abound in healthcare (time taken to treat certain illnesses, recovery times, length of waiting lists, etc.), law & order (re-offending rates, prosecution rates, crime statistics, etc.) and education (SATs, percentage in tertiary education, literacy rates, etc.), they have a more insidious effect upon how we perceive and conduct ourselves.

A concentration on measuring performance usually results on an over simplified assessment of how a system works. Because of the complex nature of most organizations, let alone the systems within which organizations and their functions operate, and the web of interdependent relationships within them, it is more difficult than one might think to identify simple means by which to measure their performance, and then, against these measurements, enhance their performance. If one measures the success of a commercial organization by the profit it makes, then this may incentivise its management to save costs to boost short-term performance at the expense of sustainability. The same applies to measurements relating to productivity and share price, and would even apply to measuring employee happiness.

As Daniel Kahneman's work has demonstrated: people aren't faultless when it comes to making relatively simple decisions requiring no prescience. Taking decisions that produce good and sustainable outcomes is very tricky because it involves differentially weighting a great many interests and predicting how changes in one area of the system will affect another. Even if good old-fashioned self-interest wasn't warping the lens through which such systems are examined, as chaos theory demonstrates, even small deviations in one area may end up having massive unforeseen consequences in another... the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil... a tornado in Texas.

OD's love targets. If you don't know where the track and finishing line are how can you possibly know when you've won, let alone how you are doing in comparison with others? Competition is certainly a great motivator. Our continued existence is dependent upon it. Even the least competitive of us are dependent on it. Almost all of us compete for sexual partners and employment, and for most of our evolution we competed directly with other animals for life itself. However, what is good in simple win or lose situations, or those with a single desired outcome at the end of a linear path, can be less than helpful in more complex situations.

An analogy: if it was possible to see the improvements we are tasked to make in the performance of any system as the equivalent of being tasked to make a baby elephant grow, and we have to measure our performance, it may seem a simple thing to do, because all we would have to do would be to take some photographs of it against a fixed backdrop and weigh it. However, for the type of systems we are talking about, this is not possible. They don't have a physical form we can easily capture in a photograph and, for the reasons given before relating to measuring happiness, profit and share price etc., they don't have the equivalent of weight as a simple defining quality.

Deprived of the opportunity of seeing the equivalent of the whole elephant or weighing it, what we seek to do is place some sensors on our allegorical elephant's body and take readings from time to time. This would be fine in the case of a real elephant because our control over its growth is limited. If the sensors on its trunk and body are all gradually moving apart then we know it is growing OK. However, in systems of human creation the connections between the various components are flexible and capable of being disjointed. We can influence the growth of individual components without any guarantee what we do for one part will benefit others. When presented with performance targets we tend to focus on hitting those targets and judge our performance accordingly. If our system took the form of an elephant our endeavours would tend to create a beast with large, pointy mounds under the areas covered by sensors and skeletal depressions between. If were able to stand back and see our system as we could a real elephant, it would be clear this wasn't a healthy elephant, but deprived of a view of the entire elephant/system we might not realize the problems we were creating until it collapsed and died.

A real life equivalent of the above might be to seek to measure the effectiveness of the national health service by the length of waiting lists; the logic being the shorter they are, the quicker sick people are receiving care and the more effective the health service is. However, if hospital administrators and governments are rewarded in relation to such a target, they are free to do whatever it takes to hit these targets regardless of whether they are in tune with the spirit of initiative: changing the rules that would allow people onto a waiting list in the first place or sending people home from hospital early to increase patient turnover. Such measures help with hitting the target but actually make the health service less effective.

Back in the allegorical world of elephants, a better solution might be to place sensors on every single part of the elephant's surface, so as to help stop Peter being robbed to pay Paul, but even this wouldn't be enough, because our man made systems tend to lack the internal integrity of elephants, and our efforts to grow an allegorical elephant/system may result in a largely hollow entity in danger of popping like an over inflated balloon.

The only means by which to ensure we develop sustainable and high performing systems is to monitor every part of them; i.e. to take a holistic approach to performance management. This is what elephants do. Actually this isn't what elephant's do, it is what the cells of an elephant do. As with all multi-cellular organisms, there is no elephant god/king reigning over its cellular subjects; the elephant is the creation of a cooperative group of cells working with a shared interest, oordinated by their identical DNA. Truly cooperative systems are fully integrated and manage themselves so each part receives the resources it needs to optimise the performance of the whole. When one part breaks this bond then all pay the consequences.

As Martin Nowak illustrates in his excellent account of cooperative systems 'Super Cooperators', cancer is an example of some cells switching to a competitive, non-holistic strategy, consuming more than their share of resources and reproducing at the expense of others.

So, given the flaws in the OD system why hasn't a more cooperative culture developed? The answer lies in how creative people were able to bring about innovations that moved society, business and general culture along. Creative people couldn't just turn their ideas into innovations that would change the world with a click of their fingers, or with the flash of inspiration from which they may have been born. Lacking the finance, technology or business apparatus to make their innovative ideas real independently, they had to turn to the establishment. The further back in time one goes the more intransigent this establishment becomes. With power vested in relatively small groups of people, and with these people exerting greater influence on the culture of society, the more these people had to lose by encouraging innovations that might bring about a reshuffling of the cultural deck.

If one imagines a situation in which you and a few of your friends, who represent just 1% of your local population, own over 90% of the wealth (money, land and other property) – the remaining 99% of people sharing less than 10% of the wealth – how likely is it you would welcome any new innovations that might change the way things are done. As common sense should, and Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize winning work on Prospect Theory does tell us, in such circumstances you have relatively little to gain from change and an awful lot to lose. This meant there wasn't much of an incentive for those with the power to empower others: when you've already got all the cake you can eat, the offer of more cake from someone currently without cake isn't so enticing; and even though one might think the thought of someone else taking your cake if you didn't take theirs first might stir you into action, people are generally inclined to underestimate (1) how likely change is, and (2) how change might impact on them.

Then, as now, people, even those in power, would not have identical value sets. Some would have been more philanthropic, more open, more conservative or more ambitious than others. Without a strict union binding the upper classes not to break ranks from each other, occasionally one of them would have supported someone with a bright new idea, or would have had a bright idea themselves. With each and every innovation the world changed a little, and with some it changed a lot. The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions opened up a world of opportunities for many more people, creating new employment and more affordable goods, better healthcare and heralding major social reform as power and money began to flow more freely around the economy.

In every wave of innovation came new discoveries, greater knowledge, improved communication and cheaper, more effective ways of making things. So innovation becomes the mother of innovation, promoting cycle after cycle of exponential growth. More knowledge is acquired, more people are able share it more quickly and more effectively, more is added to it, more is able to be done with it and more knowledge is acquired, etc.

The road from an SD culture to one based more on the ID values one might associate with innovators seemingly had to pass through the OD zone of targets and self-enhancement. Had the technology we enjoy today arrived all in one hit fifty years ago perhaps we might have by-passed OD culture, but given the consequential effects of innovation at societal level tend to flow more like a river than come in a series of holistic explosions, things inevitably moved more slowly.

Once upon a time we were conformist as a consequence of our genes and an absence of memes. When memes became more important any potential for greater non-conformist individuality was limited by our dependence on the hand to mouth nature of our existence. We may have begun to think about the stars and our place in the universe but we were tied to the land and our struggle for survival. While we may have been free men and women, with the potential for independent thought and action, our needs were simple, nearly identical and hard to satisfy. Consequently just as lions, polar bears and eagles are conformist, so were we.

Then, just as we developed some limited capacity for divergent thinking, those with greatest capacity for this assumed positions of power over us and started to impose their order upon us, either directly or through the cipher of imagined gods.

As technological advances kept coming we were drawn into greater cooperative endeavours. Building monuments, pyramids, towns, cities and places of collective worship required a massive collective effort. By the time of the Industrial Revolution fewer peoples' lives revolved around growing crops and raising livestock to feed themselves directly. We began to work in large factories in which our shared endeavours produced goods that were distributed by other groups of people to far off lands, and sold to unseen folks whose money flowed back into our pockets, from whence it flowed out again to the reduced numbers of people who worked on the land, aided by machines, producing food on our behalves.

As our memes became more potent in their ability to shape our lives in ways our genes alone could not, our individuality was suppressed by our dependence on large organizations and their need to have us working in a highly regimented fashion toward a common goal. While much has changed since the Industrial Revolution, we are still heavily reliant on large organizations: the employment they bring, the goods they manufacture and deliver, the services they provide and the conformity they and we demand. In a competitive yet broadly conformist world it is the values of the OD that will tend to dominate the culture. The ID values may promote creativity, innovation and cooperation but they also promote independence, and independence is something large organizations struggle to accommodate. Non-conformists operating within a competitively conformist organization create friction, and friction slows down the process, is inefficient (when viewed in the limited context of an organization) and makes an organization less competitive. But here's the rub: innovative people are increasingly free of the need to go to the established centres of power, finance and market access to make their ideas real and give them wings.

While we are superficially dependent on large organizations such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and their suppliers, these giants of the global economy liberate everyone who uses their services, and these liberating effects outweigh the conformist tendencies felt by those who work for them. All commercial organizations throughout history have played this dual role of liberator and regulator, it is just that now the balance has changed: the cultural impact of the liberating forces is beginning to outweigh that of regulation.

Henry Ford and the other motor manufacturers may have created vast production lines in which people performed their roles with mechanical conformity, but they also created a product that freed their customers to travel further than they had ever dreamt possible. A Ford motor car can make your dreams come true if they involve going somewhere in driving range, or living somewhere further away from where you work. A computer, an internet connection, Google and a few of their suppliers now enable someone to write and publish and sell a book, design an office block, animate a movie, arrange a gala event, get an education, become involved in espionage, or design (and, with a 3D printer, produce) a prototype of their invention and send it off to a manufacturer on the other side of the world. Increasingly if you can imagine it you can make it happen from the comfort of your own home, and on a budget somewhere between the cost of a single Ford motorcar and the cost of filling it's tank.

Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I am not sure I ever agreed with him, but perhaps in his time it might have been true to say that, in order to produce a work of genius with the potential to change the world in some small but significant way, it required a great deal more perspiration than inspiration. While there can be no fire without a spark, and therefore inspiration is essential, in order to make something of one's inspiration there has to be a great deal of work.

Since Edison's day technology has been progressively reducing the need for perspiration. Whether in looking after a family or manufacturing goods or delivering services or finding the fuel for inspiration, technology is increasingly make it no sweat. The balance is shifting toward inspiration. Those driven most by the values of curiosity, independence, freedom, broad mindedness and the search for wisdom (DNA's IDs) are the most likely beneficiaries of the liberating effects of this phase of the technological revolution. The liberating effects of technology present the organizations that produce and distribute it with an interesting dilemma. The more successful they are, and the more they grow, the more they may be tempted into creating the type of conformist environments hostile to independent and creative IDs, and so the more attractive they make it for IDs to go it alone.

It would seem to me, as technology progresses, we will move toward a culture in which people become more of an autonomous collective. By this I mean we continue to create more open source systems accessible to all, which benefit all and are maintained by all. This is consistent with the developments we have witnessed over recent years, and is supported not only by the economics of easy innovation but the close relationship between the values of creativity (self-direction and universalism; Maslow's self-actualization values) and those that promote a world in which social justice, inner harmony, loyalty, environmental protection, unity with nature, forgiveness, honesty and loyalty are prioritised (the values of universalism and benevolence; Maslow's self-transcendence values), which together suggest this is where our culture is heading.

Given that innovation would appear to be the engine of change in our culture, drawing culture's marker on the DNA Motivational Map progressively toward self-direction and universalism on the circumplex, it is interesting to consider how our culture could move beyond these values, toward the self-transcending summit of Maslow's Hierarchy and the completion of the anti-clockwise progression of values from genetic heavy tradition to meme driven universalism and the perfect marriage of memes and genes that is benevolence.
While it is sometime dangerous to put too much faith in patterns, and use them to prophesise the future*, there is a good reason to think this might happen.

*Pattern recognition is at the heart of our intelligence. Being able to use it to predict the next number in a sequence or the next note in a piece of music are at the heart of our ability to make sense of the world around us, be creative and enjoy the creativity of others. However, our desire to see patterns is such that we may easily deceive ourselves. One's ability to see patterns in a random pattern of dots is often seen as a sign of creativity, but it does not make the dots any less random. Seeing a pattern may serve as a useful clue to prompt further investigation, but ultimately in order to establish a pattern is being generated by an unseen mechanism, learning what is driving that mechanism and how the pattern is likely to develop requires more than superficial observation and guesswork. As evidenced by our belief in pattern related myths as astrology, numerology and 'bad things always coming in threes', we are all too prone to seeing significance in patterns no more significant than those found in tea leaves, spilt salt grains and ink blots. For anyone interested in learning more about the ways we mislead ourselves by our inability to process information I would recommend 'Innumeracy' by John Allen Paulos.

As I hope the previous chapters will have shown, there is nothing of divine perfection about the human brain. It serves us very well but it is not the ultimate thinking/information-processing machine. It is, to date, far more capable than anything we have been able to design ourselves. That said, there are many things a computer can now do that the human mind cannot. If I asked you to add up a thousand, randomly generated six figure numbers in your head the task would take you a very long time. If you didn't give up after the first few additions, the chances of you not making a single mistake along the way would be fairly small. Even the humble and aged PC I am tapping these words out on now could perform this task with 100% accuracy in less than a heartbeat. The processing speeds and capabilities of computers are growing at an exponential rate.

One of the current barriers to further growth is the heat generated by chips being asked to perform ever more functions in the small spaces allowed in the compact devices we demand. This requires more energy to be devoted to heat distribution and cooling mechanisms or else the chip breaks down, and these require space for both the fans and the batteries supplying them with energy. However, work is progressing on printing chip circuitry on super-conducting materials that generate almost no heat at all. At the time of writing it is not possible to have superconductivity at room temperatures, but scientists are gradually closing in on this goal. Where once a few years ago these materials needed to be cooled to temperatures below anything likely to be encountered naturally on Earth, superconductivity can now be achieved at temperatures similar to those to be found in domestic freezers. When room temperature superconductivity is achieved it is thought the effects of the explosion of computing power will be similar to that experienced when the PC and Internet age began.

Ray Kurzweil, the futurist, inventor and engineering director at Google, predicts that computing will achieve superintelligence (i.e. intelligence beyond the capabilities of the human mind in or around 2045). Whether he is right or wrong about the date will be for history to record, but that this point will be reached is beyond all reasonable doubt. All the brain does is store and make connections between bits of information so new information can be created and stored. This is what computers do too, and every day we extend the boundaries of what they can achieve. While the capacities of our brains are limited by the size of our skulls and the number of brain cells that can be crammed into this space, computers suffer no such limitations. Freed of the need to be housed in a small container on a carbon-based life form, computers have a great deal more potential for growth. Once a computer is able to do anything our brains can do, from that point on human innovation will no longer be the engine of cultural change. Whatever we currently do, from this point onward a computer will be able to do it better. When this happens we will literally have developed a self-transcending culture.

It may be the only way in which we can prevent complete self-transcendence is by uploading the complete contents of our brains to a computer so we may live on within its circuitry, thereby extending our capacity to self-actualize, albeit virtually from the perspective of 'real' life based on organic chemistry. For the parts of humanity that choose to plod on in carbon form there would be no needs to satisfy other than amusing oneself. There would be no need to work or have others come and do work for us. We might want to have friends around and socialize, but eventually they may come to seem rather boring, and the effort required to meet them unjustified given the quality of virtual relationships available and the ease with which we might engage with them. Why would you want to have a real person come around when they are less interesting, talented, funny or good looking than your virtual friends? This paints a mind boggling and not entirely comfortable vision of the future.

The challenges such a future might present to us are still a few decades away it would seem, and there are plenty of challenges facing us today that make widespread self-actualisation, let alone self-transcendence, some way off. If one ventured to suggest that many parts of the 1st world are edging into the TD zone on their way to an ID culture, what does this really mean and what could we say about the rest of the world?

As the class divisions of yesteryear become more indistinct there is potential for a new breed of have and have-nots to develop. As people gain the ability to free themselves from the strictures of conformist learning and working, people will be free to develop at their own pace. At one end of the spectrum will be those whose curiosity and open mindedness enables them to mine the limitless resources of information available to them at a blistering pace, creating new opportunities for themselves and other like minded souls as they go. At the other end will be those who are committed to beliefs and conformist teachings that censor and block a bewildering tide of information perceived to threaten all they hold most dear.

We are beginning to get a sense of the uncomfortable realities of what it means to live in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent global society with mixed value priorities. Just as religion is releasing its grip on most of Europe, and the West's preparedness to continue supporting or turning a blind eye to brutal dictators in Africa and the Middle East in order to keep the last embers of former empires glowing, is coming to an end, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is holding back the kind of cultural revolution that might hasten the end of these SD cultures. The elastic limit of tensions between the nascent ID cultures of Scandinavia and the embedded SD outlook of Islam was highlighted by the repercussions of the supposedly blasphemous cartoon featuring the prophet Mohammed's head on a dog's body drawn by Lars Vilks. Only in an SD culture is there so little room for manoevre in how one expresses oneself that one risks insulting millions of people and receiving death threats by drawing a funny little line drawing of a man who lived and died centuries ago.

And then there is the USA. At times it seems as though it might be the most liberal ID culture in the world, yet on others there doesn't seem to be too much separating it from the Islamic fundamentalists its government seeks to neutralise. In New York, LA and San Francisco anything goes, yet in its heartland, in the vast swathes of Middle America, God looms large in the lives of ordinary people. In the same country are some of the greatest minds in the world pushing the boundaries of science, making discoveries revealing how the universe began, and a huge population that still believes God created the world in seven days, just as it says in the bible, and for whom Charles Darwin is little more than a dead blasphemer (if his name or work means anything at all).

Not that it was any easier when all the societies of the world had what we might now consider an SD culture. For all the cherishing of togetherness and unity, of respect and order, because these concepts were considered in a very narrow context, the cultures they promoted were also divisive, inconsiderate and chaotic. In order for people to be recognized as belonging to an 'in group' first that in group needs to defined. In so doing all who are not defined as being 'in', by default, become outsiders beyond the insiders' perceived duty of care.

In the rose tinted 'simpler times' of yesteryear, whether by dint of class, race, gender, sexuality, age or nationality, you were not deemed 'in' it was quite possible you would be treated as if you simply didn't matter at all. In SD cultures people look after their own; tending to see outsiders as either a threat or an irrelevance; if they see them at all. People of different race were (and still are) often treated as animals; men treated (and still treat) women as they might treat dogs (as commodities, service providers, working animals or pets); and people of different nationalities and religions were (and are) treated with cautious circumspection, whether as potential business partners or potential enemies - at least until they are classified as enemies, from which point on there is little hope they will ever be reclassified.

Any impression that life was somehow better, and people were more caring, in our SD past is arguably an illusion sustainable only if one's perspective is constrained within the conformist bubble one feels bound by. Outside the bubble of our SD forebears there was war, inequality, callous disregard, short-term opportunism, ignorance and cruelty aplenty. These are not inventions of the modern age. Wherever the in-group is most tightly defined and managed, wherever pride in membership is the strongest, wherever strict adherence to traditional codes is most observed, are you likely to find the biggest barriers to peace, unity, tolerance and understanding.

OD culture, for all its short-term, opportunistic, amorality is more interested in winning than losing, in moving forward than staying still. It is more its high-spirited self-indulgence and competitiveness that leads it into conflict with others. While its focus on realizing personal ambitions, and lack of interest in the philosophical considerations that encompass the collective, tend to make it seem backward looking, in that it isn't overly concerned with dismantling the moral legacy of the SD culture that went before, this is perhaps more as a result of indifference and negligence than active support for it.

Because the TD values are not in themselves productive, it is unlikely that a TD culture could emerge in its own right. I would guess right now, at the time of writing in 2013, despite the lingering recession, our culture is a TD tinged OD culture. While there is much lip service paid to big picture thinking and inclusiveness, we remain as short-termist and target focussed as we ever have been over the last thirty years, but perhaps now there is more of an expectation life should be fun and a realization there might be more to life than work.

It will be interesting to see how the ID age takes hold. That greater influence will pass to the freewheeling, more broad-minded, creative IDs is inevitable. But since their approach to life, coupled with a reduced need to employ and manage large workforces, will tend to reduce the influence business leaders intentionally seek to have over 'their' people, it is possible the ID age will facilitate the proliferation of a different kind of multiculturalism; the dangers of which would arise from the aforesaid stretching of the difference between the forward looking 'haves' and the backward looking 'have-nots'. In an ever fast changing, technology empowered world, the possibilities opened up are likely to present all sorts of difficult challenges for those hooked on traditional notions of what it means to be alive. The potential of opening up a portal into a 'virtual' world every bit as inhabitable and rewarding as the 'real' one we live in, but with many possible advantages – immortality and freedom from environmental collapse being just two – while difficult to fully imagine, is a proposition that will, by comparison, make abortion, homosexuality and embryo selection seem like no big deal life preferences in the eyes of the SDs.

Soul

The title of this book suggests 'soul' is the destination of this narrative. The foregoing hopefully explains where we have come from, how our values evolved and the nature of the societies we have built and continue to build with them, but perhaps the most interesting things about humanity are to be found in the everyday things we think and do: the things that reveal our soul.

We talk about people being 'good souls' or even having 'dark souls'. In my mind I hear "you got soul" being sung repeatedly by someone who sounds remarkably like James Brown. I think he means it as a compliment. "You've got no soul" is certainly not a compliment. I take a soul to be the imaginary repository of our human essence, presumably lying somewhere between our metaphorical heart and brain.

We are said to have a soul but machines don't. Given computers make decisions but don't have emotions, perhaps our ideas of our having a soul are based on the complex and intertwined nature of our emotions and thinking. Because emotions seem to come from nowhere yet are so powerful in guiding our perceptions, thoughts and behaviour, they seem to have a magical and, to some, indefinable quality to them. Actually the reasons why we have emotions can easily be explained by the processes of mutation and natural selection covered previously. Nevertheless it is interesting to look at the range of emotions we have.

The following emotions are those listed by the mighty Wikipedia: affection, anger, angst, anguish, annoyance, anxiety, apathy, arousal, awe, boredom, confidence, contempt, contentment, courage, curiosity, depression, desire, despair, disappointment, disgust, distrust, dread, ecstasy, embarrassment, envy, euphoria, excitement, fear, frustration, gratitude, grief, guilt, happiness, hatred, hope, horror, hostility, hurt, hysteria, indifference, interest, jealousy, joy, loathing, loneliness, love, lust, outrage, panic, passion, pity, pleasure, pride, rage, regret, relief, remorse, sadness, satisfaction, self-confidence, shame, shock, shyness, sorrow, suffering, surprise, terror, trust, wonder, worry, zeal and zest.

If you look at them as a whole you will see how each has a different role to play in guiding our perceptions, thoughts and actions in relation to the axes of 'open and willing to change' versus 'hesitant or resistant to change', and 'cooperation' versus 'competition'. Ultimately they all relate to change: whether we are up for it and how we respond to it. Contempt, distrust, envy, hatred, hostility, jealousy and loathing have a clear correlation with competition; affection, love and trust with cooperation, but all can be plotted somewhere on the pro-change or anti-change axis: curiosity being a willingness to explore the potential of change through new information; regret indicates a wish to turn back time and undo a decision made in relation to a change or potential change; terror being a fear of impending change.

Some of the emotions might be plotted in different places according to the circumstances in which they are generated, and others difficult to place full stop. Suffering implies a resistance to change, but this could take many forms. We might suffer with an illness and do our best to resist the adverse changes it imposes on us, but alternatively we might willingly suffer discomfort in order for us to overcome a barrier to our making changes we deem desirable to improve our lives. At first glance loneliness may seem a fairly difficult emotion to map at all, but it is a negative emotion we experience to encourage us to make a change in our lives; i.e. to reach out and make contact with others, to cooperate in friendship, gain their support and make a reciprocal contribution, and thereby make ourselves happier. As explained previously, such emotional responses are beneficial as they encourage behaviour favoured by natural selection and consequently the genetic programming behind them is reproduced preferentially.

Rather than go through each of these emotions, what I thought I'd do to explore the soul is cherry pick just a few of the things we treasure, some of the things we'd prefer not to dwell on and some involuntary expressions of thought and emotion revealing something about what it means to be human, and then consider how environment and values conspire in their creation.

When I reflect on what it means to have 'a soul' and how this manifests itself I am immediately drawn to the world of art, music and beauty, and savouring the majesty of the world around us, both man made and natural. All hugely important to me, but given I am an ID led by the values of self-direction, universalism and benevolence this is hardly surprising, since beneath these values are the sub values of 'world of beauty', 'protect environment', 'meaning in life' and 'unity with nature'.

This illustrates something of the problem I face as I seek to show how our values reveal our soul; not a problem inasmuch as this is difficult to do, but more in terms of how do I do this without merely stating the obvious. While there is no value entitled 'music' in Schwartz's list of values, the function it serves and the values to which it most clearly relates give it a strong connection with the purple, open to new information and cooperation section of the DNA Motivational Map. Fortunately there is more to music than this in terms of what it does for us, since, as a form of communication, it is an expression of our values rather than a direct function of any particular set of values. However, for most of the other aspects of the human soul we need to look no further than the values Schwartz listed in his initial studies. Honesty, loyalty, helpfulness, social justice, responsibility, wisdom, broad mindedness, daring, ambition, wealth, social recognition, obedience, politeness, humility and the other values do a pretty good job of describing many of the ingredients of our souls, and therefore the picture our value profiles paint of our mixed preferences serve as a window on our souls.

While I could elaborate on the roles played by each of these sub values, I am inclined to believe the commentary already provided under the ten value headings conveys the bulk of the useful information I might wish to convey. While some detail is missing, the broad principles involved are discernable.

Consequently I will refrain from providing any further commentary on these and confine myself to music (as a representative of communication and artistic expression) and then cherry pick some of the most significant of the remaining aspects of what it means to be human that do not seem to be explicit expressions of our values; namely our tastes in food, drink and sex, stress, anger & aggression, competitive sport, guilt, humour, morality and personality.

Much of what follows are just my thoughts. Where I am aware of research I will mention it, if not I will try to back up my assertions with reasonable arguments, but these are still early days in the unravelling of the secrets of values, and until the research data comes in to prove me right or wrong they are little more than the ramblings of my wandering, but hopefully logical, mind.

While I am interested in all forms of communication, whether they be considered as part of 'the arts' or merely the humdrum conveyance of everyday information, I have chosen to write only about only music. The thoughts I express could equally apply to visual art, to literature or even to everyday conversation. I hope you will excuse my laziness and that you may even gain some small amusement in drawing parallels with these other expressions of our desire to communicate with each other.

Music

I love life in general and a great many of its constituent parts, so picking out a favourite is difficult, but I pick music as my first stopping off point on this tour of the soul. I think perhaps why I love music so much is that it crams vast amounts of super concentrated human essence into easily digestible parcels that explode in one's brain, and in so doing simultaneously:

transport you to other places and dimensions;

enable you to see things you've never seen before;

embed you in the place in which you find yourself more deeply, while affording you views of it, its people and other worlds from many different perspectives;

share in the warmth, desperation, hope, euphoria and other emotions of people you have never met before - both intensely and light heartedly;

tap into your own emotions and give them wings;

to make your body move; move you to tears or into a trance like state;

be comfortingly predictable and uncomfortably jarring;

etcetera, etcetera. I could go on. In summary: all life is here, and more.

Never a day goes by without me listening to it. I listen while I work, while I run, while I drive, while I make meals and while I eat. As a teenager I used to lie on my bed in the dark listening to it, intently, living it. Now adult life's many demands press in on me it is more often going on in the background. But it's not just me. Music is important to most people. Even my wife, who is repeatedly asking 'can we have some silence' when we share the same space, has been known to play the odd CD.

So why do we like music? Why do we need music? Given that the evolution of our brain function is needs based, what possible evolutionary advantage could possibly be gained from making and listening to layered, rhythmical sounds and words of varying pitch?

In trying to understand how the extraordinarily slow processes of evolution might have given rise to something around today we too often make the mistake of trying to imagine that the thing we are looking at today is the specific form or destination to which evolution was heading all along. This is both wrong, as previously explained, and unhelpful.

I was recently given a book entitled 'A Brief History of Everything' by Ken Wibur. Ken is a 'spiritual' 'thinker' who states in this book that "absolutely nobody believes... the... neo Darwinian explanation of natural selection... anymore.... this... simply selects those transformations that absolutely nobody understands." He attempts to justify his claim with the illustration that it is impossible to have something that is half a wing and therefore wings had to have evolved in a single leap from which they could then be improved by natural selection. The alternative being "mind boggling" apparently.

He appears to assume winged animals like eagles would look a bit stupid with half wings sitting up there alone in their eyries in a world bereft of other half winged eagles to mate with. The mistake he makes is to assume creatures with 'half wings' would be 'half eagles' having to bide their time in the waiting room of evolutionary history until their eagle wings were ready for fitting. If he had but eyes to see he would find 'half wings' everywhere: on penguins, chickens and flying squirrels to name but three. Their half wings, whether evolving from full wings or from no wings are sustainable in relation to the lifestyle of their owners at that moment in time, and none are used for flying as eagles use them: penguins swim, chickens flap up in to low branches and flying squirrels glide from tree to tree.

Things seem 'right' to us only because that's what we have got used to. Given we usually live less than 100 years, and most creatures evolve relatively little in a hundred times that period, we do not realise we are just passing through a microscopic window of time, in which thousands of species will go extinct while others go on to evolve into something creatures of another age will see as the norm. The duck billed platypus doesn't look quite like the finished article to our eyes, but it is as finished as we are. The tyrannosaurus rex may look pretty damned silly to us, with its tiny arms contrasting with its massive legs, tail, jaws and fearsome reputation, but that didn't stop it being the top predator of it's day.

Music was hardly likely to have emerged as a fully fledged art form overnight: one day our ape ancestors were dragging their knuckles and howling atonally at each other, the next knocking out four part harmonies while banging on hollowed logs with a syncopated rhythm. Music likely has its origins in language: in the slow evolution of sounds to communicate intent and share experience. As soon as one has the ability to make and listen to sounds and interpret their meaning one has opened more than just the door that leads to conversation, the studio from which the radio drama is being broadcast and the library in which the words of conversations and dramas are recorded, but also to the music room.

Animals tend not to be monotone. They do not drone on in the same frequency. They vary both pitch and volume to better communicate their message. Cats purr quietly to share their pleasure with a limited audience yet mraowl loudly at a competitor, dogs growl through bared teeth to give a targeted warning and bark loudly to broadcast a greater state of agitation, and birds twitter agreeably and melodically to each other when all is well, yet screech and squawk loudly and discordantly when their young or nests are threatened. It is not hard for humans to tap into the emotions being transmitted by these musical languages. While we don't usually think of animals as being musical, that we refer to whale and bird communications as song illustrates the connection.

Just as the complexity of our brains mirrors the complexity of our cognitive ability, decision making and the variety of ways in which we work together, so does the range and depth of our vocabulary. Some birds may have a few hundred sounds or songs at their disposal. There are over one million words in the English language alone. The potential number of messages we can create with this resource is beyond our ability to comprehend, and that's without having to think about pitch, volume, tone and timing.

The beauty of being able to combine pitch, volume, tone and timing with word combinations is that this allows us to communicate more with less. One word may be expressed in many different ways to convey different meanings: permitting not just additional range and detail to be expressed, but also for this to be done with greater economy of effort. The ability to achieve more with less is one of the prime drivers of evolution. Music does just that. This is especially easy to appreciate when it is accompanied by words – my preferred form, although I am not immune to the wordless pleasures of Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno and Aphex Twin – as the coincidence of different musical sounds and rhythms add further permutations and combinations and layers of meaning to the spoken word. With music a single word may say as much as a whole book of words, sometimes saying it to greater effect and with more lasting impact. This being the case there would seem to be no additional mystery concerning the evolution of music as a distinct form of expression to that of language.

However, when I think of primitive music (i.e. the type of music I associate with tribes people, or even the classical music, which I cannot help but see as more primitive than the popular modern music I listen to (despite the comparative complexity of classical music's construction)) I think of music without words. Given that musical instruments capable of making tones of a definite pitch are relatively sophisticated and would have come along later in music's evolution (flutes dated to around 43,000 years ago have been found in Germany), early instrumental music would likely have been purely rhythmical – beat out with handclaps, thigh slaps, stomping feet and foraged objects such as shells, husks, tree trunks, etc. before instrument manufacture began with animal skin drums and simple woodwind.

So why would rhythm be so appealing to us? Two things immediately occur. The beating of hearts and the padding of feet. The regular rhythm of a heart beating is the first sound we get used to hearing/feeling in our mother's womb, and it stays with us for the rest of our lives emanating from somewhere within our bodies and resonating in the blood being pumped around the vessels near our eardrums; a constant and comforting rhythm providing the beat to the soundtrack of our lives; becoming louder and faster in times of danger and excitement. As a boy the most fertile ground for the cultivation of the many songs I composed, hummed and sang was that covered when walking our Jack Russell Kim. The regular beating of my feet served as my metronome as it might have for our ancestors as they hunted and gathered many tens of thousands of years ago.

We didn't invent music. We couldn't avoid it.

So much for music's evolution, what about it's soul?

Regardless of our values we are predisposed to like music in some form, just as we are predisposed to like language in some shape or form. It is just another medium with which to communicate. It therefore follows that people with different value priorities will perceive, enjoy and create music in similar ways to the ways they perceive, enjoy and create language.

I would expect SDs to be the most conservative; preferring music that has associations with their being socially embedded in particular environments. Therefore music enjoyed with friends at school or with parents at home would more likely remain their preferred choice throughout life: either the same songs by the same artists or, for the more adventurous, of the same genre. Music is a means by which to be comforted rather than challenged or excited.

At the other end of the spectrum, I would expect IDs to be the most adventurous. While not immune to the pleasures of reminiscence and comfort listening, I would guess they are the most likely to look to music to stimulate them, to take them somewhere new, to move them and stir them up. The ID's relationship with music is much less likely to be frozen in any particular moment in time. Music new to their ears was what got them into music in the first place, and it is probably still the thing that excites them the most now; whereas for SDs new, unfamiliar sounding, culturally alien music is something to be avoided like the plague.

Given that creativity is a quality most associated with IDs, one might think musicians are most likely to be IDs, and relatively few SDs will play or compose music. I don't think research would back this up. Creativity is a very broad concept. We are all capable of creating things of great beauty, but only the most creative people are able to create things that challenge the senses and present us with art to take us somewhere we have not been before; or at least take us somewhere familiar but by a different path. I would hazard a guess Lennon & McCartney was an ID match made in music heaven, and many of my favourite bands and artists (Radiohead, XTC, Pink Floyd, Yes, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Morrissey, Kanye West & Macklemore) were/are driven by ID values.

I am quite partial to the occasional Gary Barlow composition, but when a Gary Barlow song moves me it does so in much the same way that eating a well crafted meal, or looking at or using a well constructed piece of furniture does. The end result is very pleasing, but one can see it was built by a competent craftsman* rather than an artist whose genius lies in their ability to synthesise and unite disparate and previously unconnected elements into truly inspiring new compositions.

* Sometimes I lose patience with the modern convention of de-gendering occupations - replacing 'man' with 'person' at every opportunity. Why have females who act become actors? What was wrong with the more informative actress? Are we still allowed to refer to male ducks as ducks or should we always call them drakes, or should all ducks be known as drakes on the basis that the female denomination is always inherently derogatory.

One of the greatest challenges for A&R executives at major record companies is/was the ability to recognize artists capable of selling big and then being able to sustain their success. Given the commercial pressures bearing in on such people, it is easy to understand their penchant for artists who make a good job of sounding just like currently successful artists. Only this afternoon I listened to a track I could have sworn was a track by Green Day only to find it was by a band by the name of Billy Talent. The game changing artists most represented in the 'best albums of all time' lists tend to be those that challenged convention with material that wasn't always initially to everyone's taste. Beatles albums such Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and even their swansong Abbey Road ripped up the rule book to offer something new. In terms of their desire to keep pushing out their creative boundaries, Radiohead and Kanye West are good examples of current artists who are more interested in repeatedly ripping up and starting again than trying to repeat their success. For artists, as well as A&R executives, the joy of success and the allure of more success induces both complacency and caution, which limit future artistic endeavour to the production of what are effectively no more than sequels of past glories. This is what the siren voices of power and achievement incline us to do, and therefore those most able to resist their call and consistently steer a course of discovery and invention are those more driven by self-direction and universalism.

This voyage of discovery may manifest itself in many ways. For Radiohead, like Talk Talk before them, it started with a conventional indie-pop sound that evolved into something more individual and characterful that captured many more listeners' attention and generated both sales and critical acclaim. Rather than attempt to recreate their successful template, or even slowly mutate it, they used the platform of success to take a giant leap into new territory. This involved creating far less commercially accessible material, i.e. music that stretched the definition of what could pass as pop/rock. Many people who had loved the previous albums could not easily engage with this, which resulted in a falling off of sales; many buyers presumably thinking they had 'lost it'. For listeners such as myself, the quality of the previous material inclined me to have patience with the new material, and this patience was rewarded as this more challenging material gradually opened itself up to me. Clearly I was not alone, as subsequent albums by these artists garnered both critical acclaim, and in Radiohead's case, continued mass sales and widespread adoration, despite producing music apparently crafted to please themselves rather than their audience. For an artist such as Madonna, who I would guess is driven by power and achievement as much as she is by self-direction and universalism, innovation has come through collaboration with others, with the intent of keeping her riding on a breaking wave rather than moving away into water of her own.

An artist with which I have become increasingly fascinated with over the years is Andy Partridge and his band XTC. Unlike Radiohead, XTC's sound, to my ears at least, never strayed too far from familiar territory. This territory was effectively defined by The Beatles more than ten years before XTC released their first album. Rather than move away from it XTC did something no other band has, to my knowledge, pulled off successfully. They created an extraordinary catalogue of music that never repeats itself, yet is familiar, drawing from a simple palette of musical ingredients. Within the constraints of the 'three minute pop song' XTC produced songs that were distinctive, memorable and endowed with the magical quality of revealing more of themselves, and advancing their relationship with the listener (with this listener at least), over years of repeated plays. By having something new, heart felt, amusing and thought provoking to say in simple rhyming verses backed by catchy tunes played and structured in interesting ways, XTC are pretty much the only band I can listen to all the time without getting over familiar or bored with. Like meeting up with an interesting and amusing friend, I find XTC both relaxing and challenging. Through his work with XTC Andy Partridge demonstrates what can be achieved with a truly innovative mind, even if this mind rarely leaves its home territory. Whether reflecting on life as a teenager in early albums, or as father, lover, divorcee and love struck middle-aged man, his music is refreshingly direct, insightful and captivating. Whether as a political commentator, disillusioned music business professional or lover of the natural world and countryside, Andy was able to provide an enthralling running commentary on what it means to be alive, that never fails to illuminate and enliven.

Creativity is always concerned with connecting existing concepts in novel ways. Usually we associate the most creative acts with connections that seem to connect outside the boundaries of the established pattern, as if two branches of a tree has grown to create a new canopy, but Andy Partridge's work seems to be more about making new connections within the established pattern where one would have expected connections to already exist but didn't.

While artists may become more proficient as players, as singers and even as composers through practice, this proficiency seems not to extend to creativity. Proficiency seems to demand practice in one activity, whereas true creativity is about creating new activities. While a creative pianist does not create a new activity in the sense that he or she is still playing the piano, their creativity creates a new activity in the sense they introduce, however subtly, a different way of playing. Whereas a highly proficient pianist, driven more by achievement, is more limited to reproducing the work of others, but perhaps doing so with greater accuracy and reliability and consistency of timing. As an ID music fan who is not a proficient musician, I marvel at the musical accomplishments of those who are able to play instruments well. I am more than happy to spend time watching proficient players – reconciling the alarmingly complex finger movements of pianists and guitar players with the beautiful music hitting my ears overpowers and fascinates me – but when I listen to music at home proficiency is only of interest to me when it serves to better realize music with revelational potential.

Whilst writing this I am reflecting on my relationship with proficiency. While I am quite proficient in lots of things I am a master of none. I am a creative person and always have been. As a child I built things with Lego and card, I invented games and sports to amuse myself and friends (but principally myself), I drew and painted, I composed songs, I designed houses, boats, planes, I invented things, I took pleasure in cobbling together electrical devices to make them work, I wrote 'amusing' scripts and invented virtual worlds to inhabit. I thought all children did this, and while to a greater or lesser extent they do, I now realize my appetite for creation was greater than most. In these creative acts a certain level of mastery was required otherwise things didn't work; whether this meant pictures not making sense, buildings that wouldn't have served their purpose, scripts that didn't make people laugh or virtual worlds which were difficult to inhabit. However, I have never been moved toward perfectionism. The whole 10,000 hours practice thing of Malcolm Gladwell may well create high levels of proficiency, but it leaves me cold. If the price of high level proficiency is labouring away at something I have already acquired an acceptable level of accomplishment in then the price is too high. For me the learning process is part of the creative process, therefore I instinctively prefer to teach myself rather than be instructed. The things I have become the most proficient in are the things I have been forced to do out of need – shopping, making food, cleaning, making and mending – and those that I enjoy the most – football, art, conversation, playing with words. The things I most enjoy tend to be activities in which there is a world of variety. I reflected on this today while watching my sons play cricket (a game I have never loved) and considered the reason why I love football is the variety it offers. No matter what position you play in (apart from goalkeeper – I've never wanted to play in goal) you are free to do what you like within reason. There are no rules preventing a defender from taking on every member of the opposing team and scoring a goal, or preventing an attacker running back to head the ball off their own goal line. One is free to pass the ball, or dribble around opponents at one's discretion, to compete or cooperate and choose the manner in which you do so. One is aware of a responsibility to the other members of your team, but ultimately that responsibility is to ensure the best outcome for the team as a whole; of which you are apart. Therefore one is free to self-direct, to show off, to do one's duty, to be brilliant or be steadfast. Whereas in cricket one's options are a little more limited; especially if one is waiting in the clubhouse to bat, or for interminable hours in the outfield waiting for a ball to come your way.

The specialisation and focus required to perfect a single act are the enemies of creativity. The more time one devotes to pursuing a linear track the less one has available to explore other avenues, and since connecting different avenues is the essence of creativity, it follows that expertise in one area is acquired at the cost of acquiring knowledge in many. Single subject expertise is the type of thing people more driven by achievement are inclined to acquire. Therefore the virtuoso instrumentalist is less likely to become a creative powerhouse, whereas the creative powerhouse may become an accomplished player if their principal means of composing new tunes is by working them out on an instrument.

In common with language, art and other forms of communication, music seems to have evolved as a just another means to share information and ideas. That it has now evolved so as to sometimes seem to have transcended this utilitarian function, mirrors the evolution of the thing which created it: the brain. Just because it makes me deliriously happy, want to dance, strut around like Freddie Mercury, move me to contemplative sadness or philosophical reflection or transport me to other places real or imaginary, doesn't prompt me to look for a different explanation for its magical qualities. I don't just enjoy music as an abstract concept, I enjoy and benefit from how it connects me to others. Where books and TV programmes are good as replacements for concentrated conversations, music serves more like an emotional wormhole* through which vast amounts of information can be downloaded in seconds in a coded language that is barely comprehensible when analysed rationally, but our brains seem able to decode subconsciously quite satisfactorily.

*I am thinking more of Star Trek than Gardener's World here.

As with all such highly evolved traits, music seems to relate little to the raw survival enhancing mechanism from which it must have first evolved. In his book The Mating Mind, Geoffrey Miller considers art as having evolved in the same way as the Peacock's tail, i.e. as a measure of fitness by which to attract a mate. As an expression of our values, I see music as still serving our primary survival needs, albeit at a highly refined level, but there is no doubt music also serves as a fitness indicator. Unlike the Peacock's tail, which I would guess is universally judged on the basis of the bigger and the more colourful the better, music is judged relatively and sympathetically according to our experience and values. I would contend a potential mate who shares similar musical tastes to ourselves would be judged more favourably than one who didn't; particularly someone with a fondness for artists we felt were unlistenable. As a fan of The Smiths, Radiohead and Kanye West I am not drawn to people who are big fans of Chris de Burgh, Nickelback or One Direction.

Our musical tastes reflect our values and experience, which in turn inform our intelligence and the experiences we seek. Therefore we might expect a person with similar intelligence, values, future hopes and expectations would, all other things being equal, be more attractive to us than someone with whom we had less in common. While I am sure there are plenty of couples with different musical tastes (I am part of one) this needn't undermine this assertion. We humans have so many criteria by which we judge potential partners the number of permutations in which the various traits might be combined is so great that it is almost inconceivable we could ever meet someone who matched our preferences in every way. While music is one of my greatest loves, my love of it is personal and my relationships with the artists who make it and communicate with me through it are personal. Therefore the fact I cannot share my love of many artists with my wife is a fairly small fly in the ointment of coexistence.

Perhaps one day our tastes will become so refined and segregated through evolution that, while people with different musical tastes will still be able to mate biologically and merge their genes, the memetic differences between different groups of people will have become so great that such interbreeding will stop, and, as a consequence, genetic mutations in one group will not spread to the others and eventually different species rooted in their historic musical preferences will emerge. I jest of course, but it is not impossible.

Tastes in Food, Drink & Sex

The drives to eat, drink and copulate come from an older part of our brain than that which has evolved to process the 'higher' aspirations graded by our values. However, since our values evolved as a means by which to enhance our ability to satisfy our basic needs and reproduce, there is a link between these basic and higher needs.

Drinking water when we are thirsty is pretty much the only time when our values don't seem to come into play. As soon as we are afforded any flexibility as to how we choose to satisfy our thirst, our values start chipping in. The more dominant the SD or belonging values are to us the more likely it is we will drink the same drinks and brand of drinks our parents drank, or perhaps a different brand embodying the same ethos as the brand we drank as a child; whether that be the recognised, leading and most trusted brand or the most thrifty. If we are driven by the OD, esteem of others values, we may be more inclined to drink whatever is fashionable or aspirational; be it a branded soft drink, variety of wine, beer or spirit. Perhaps TDs will be the most likely to give anything a go, whether it's snorting cocktails through their noses or merely trying an unfamiliar brand. IDs are the most likely to pursue their own agenda; being open to trying new things but also happy keeping faith with things that work for them. While not anti-conformity, in the sense they think if everyone else is doing it must be wrong, IDs are likely to be the most sensitive to feeling brands are attempting to dupe them into conformity through marketing hype, or that the principal reason others are doing something is they are following the crowd, and therefore are highly mindful of quality issues that satisfy needs other than those relating to feeling part of a club or social movement.

The same factors come into play with food, but extend more beyond the world of brands into actual food types. If you are an SD child of SD parents it might be expected you are far less likely to have been exposed to the broad range of foods now available. The SD diet might be expected to follow tradition or the path of least resistance described by well-established socially conformist trends – fast food, chips, beans, etc. The OD diet might be expected to follow more fashionable trends, which, for people on lower incomes, may equate to the same socially conformist trends followed by SDs, but for higher income ODs will likely take in the latest premium branded foods and the type of things they have seen used by celebrity chefs. TDs are the most likely to see something new and want to give it a try, and IDs are the most likely to have developed an independent relationship with food based on whatever need it fulfils for them. For some it will be an area of great interest, and so they will look to explore new foods and combinations and new ways of creating exciting new meals, or pursue diets with other benefits, such as health. Alternatively food may be consumed thoughtlessly as fuel, with less likelihood that any particular food will either cause disgust or delight.

I think it almost certain we would find a strong correlation between the variety of foods people exposed themselves to and their motivational types. I would expect SDs and ODs to have exposed themselves to less variety, and TDs and IDs to more. The values of tradition to achievement are likely to steer people to eat what they know or what is deemed aspirational. SDs are the least likely to travel abroad and experience foods from other nations and cultures. While ODs are more likely to travel abroad, they remain essentially conservative in their tastes; staying in the types of places where they can experience the type of food they get at home or whatever is deemed aspirational tourist fayre. TDs and IDs are more likely to be curious about the foods and cultures of foreigners, whether they experience these at home or abroad. Where ODs are more likely to stay in hotels popular with their fellow countrymen, TDs and IDs are more likely to immerse themselves in the local culture and eat what the locals eat; for good or ill.

Then we come to sex, glorious sex. How could it be that in the animal pleasures of satiating our carnal desires our values could influence our behaviour? Well, while I have no proof, I am fairly confident experiment would find a clear link. In terms of the two oppositions against which all human behaviour can be judged – cooperation vs competition and openness to new experience vs. caution – how each of us approaches sex will almost certainly exhibit biases similar to those finding expression in all other aspects of our relations with others.

SDs driven by tradition, conformity and security are likely to be the most conservative, both in the number of partners they have sex with and the manner in which they express themselves during sex; which is likely to be cautiously. ODs are the most likely to see sex competitively; whether as a performance from which they want to prioritise their own immediate sexual gratification, or to be seen as 'good at it'. One might expect TDs, driven more by hedonism and stimulation, to be the most care free and experimental, indulging themselves and their partners with (not necessarily gay) abandon. IDs driven by self-direction, universalism and benevolence would seem the most likely to be considerate lovers; taking equal pleasure from pleasing their partner as satisfying their own immediate sexual desires.

If we were to examine the detail of people's sexual preferences I think we would find correlations between certain behaviours and values. For example I would expect to find conformists favouring whatever sexual positions and practices they felt were 'normal'; i.e. deemed acceptable to the perceived moral majority; more missionary dependency than working through the Kamasutra. I would also expect to see the power driven favouring positions in which they retained control and avoided any perception they were being used. No being tied up or taking it up the rear thank you very much!

It is interesting to note from Masters & Johnson's research into the sexual behaviour of homosexual and heterosexual couples, they noticed a marked difference between the ability of the two groups to satisfy their partners. Homosexual (or 'gay' as conformist pressure would now have me say) couples were considerably 'better lovers' than heterosexual couples, taking great care to indulge their partners so as to maximise their pleasure. One can readily appreciate gay couples have an advantage in terms of understanding the general sexual preferences of their own gender, and therefore are more likely to give their partner what they want, because it's what they want. While heterosexual IDs are deprived of this gift, they are the most likely to seek to understand the needs of their partner. Self-direction gives them the curiosity to find out, universalism an enhanced ability to make empathic connections that reach across the gender divide, and benevolence a heightened desire to give pleasure without demanding immediate reciprocity. IDs are also the group least likely to be bound by convention, and are therefore the most likely to practice sex in whatever way they feel will give themselves and their partner pleasure.

In terms of the broader social context of sexual relations I would expect IDs to be the most likely to enter into non-conformist sexual relationships, i.e. those in which social expectations regarding monogamy, fidelity and frequency are set aside freely by those involved without deceit or pressure from one party. I would expect fidelity and monogamy and other 'socially desirable' practices would be given the highest priority by SDs. In terms of identifying the 'bad' boys and girls of sexual behaviour, while I would expect TDs to be the most open to temptation, I would expect ODs to be the most likely to be unfaithful; putting their personal satisfaction above all else and concealing their conduct from their partners so as to have their cake and eat it.

While I hesitate to include this in the same chapter as 'normal' sexual behaviour, I would guess the same power driven traits that would make ODs the least faithful and honest group, would also make them the most likely to spawn rapists and those who indulge in violent and exploitative sex. This is not to suggest all OD males are just an erection away from committing a sexual crime, it's just that if one was to profile rapists I think you would find a higher representation of ODs than any other motivational type.

Stress

We all feel stressed from time to time, but what is stress? 'Pressure or tension on a material object' is the answer my Google search has just yielded. Sometimes we can feel tension in the material objects that are the muscles in our arms, neck and back, but the material object that has to deal with the stress most of us think about when we say the word is the brain. The opposite of stress is ease, and the brain experiences stress at times when it is deprived of cognitive ease; i.e. when things feel strange, when they don't feel right, when we feel bad and when we feel we are working very hard.

The much respected Daniel Kahneman cites 'repeated experience', 'clear display', 'primed idea' and 'good mood' as drivers of cognitive ease. Therefore, reciprocally, the causes of stress would be new experience, unclear display, new idea and bad mood. What type of experiences are likely to induce these feelings, and to what degree, are almost certainly going to be affected by our values. SDs are the most desiring of repeated experience and TDs the least. IDs, as a consequence of their curiosity and desire to make connections, are the most likely to feel primed to respond positively when they encounter any new idea, and because they are the most likely to have broken free of a reliance on pleasing, controlling and influencing others, or abiding by customs that restrict their behaviour, they are the most likely to find themselves in situations that make them happy.

Therefore in the fast changing world in which we find ourselves, it is SDs who are forced out of their comfort zones that are the most likely to encounter stressful situations involuntarily, and ODs, striving to impress others and avoid making mistakes, the most likely to find themselves habitually in a state of stress.

This may be an area in which those least stereotypical of people, DNA's MDs, may also be highly represented. While the stress experienced by SDs and ODs arises as a direct consequence of the reaction between their environment and their dominant values, for MDs the stress, while triggered by external events, is more likely to be experienced as a consequence of two or more opposing values, giving the MD a feeling of being torn. For example, a person who has conformity and self-direction as their two dominant values is likely to feel torn when facing any situation in which they have to choose between keeping their heads down and going with the flow and striking out and doing their own thing.

Internal conflict isn't constrained to MDs, as anyone can experience value conflicts, but since the more conflicted a person's motivational system the closer their marker is drawn into the centre of the DNA motivational map, value conflicts are likely to be more pronounced in MDs.

It seems possible to imagine that for some MDs every aspect of life must present unavoidable stresses and strains. While an SD may escape the stresses of a fast changing world to some extent by embedding themselves in their communities and close relationships, some MDs will likely have to get used to experiencing stress even in their most treasured relationships and pastimes.

Anger & Aggression

When we are stressed we are likely to experience changes to our personality. While I am not particularly prone to stress I am aware I can become depressed, humourless, quiet and withdrawn when upset, when I think I have made mistakes and/or inadvertently caused problems for others and isolated myself as a consequence. However, since depression can be a rather more complex and deep seated condition than that prompted by stress, I want to concentrate on two other possible responses to stress: anger and aggression. While we don't seem to relate these two expressions of our dark side to stress I think they have much in common; the principal difference between the other responses to stress: irritability, withdrawal and, to a lesser degree, panic, is anger and aggression often appear in a flash and subside almost as quickly. What they appear to have in common is the trigger of having one's needs frustrated.

Whereas our needs are generally long-term in nature, and our experiences generally cause little short-term turbulence in our prevailing personality, anger and aggression appear to be triggered by experiences that threaten our most basic needs or kick away the emotional crutches upon which our values incline us to lean. Therefore if we perceived our most basic needs are under threat (our physical well-being, our family and our homes), or our most treasured items, we are likely to respond angrily, and, if the source of threat is before us, aggressively. When it comes to emotional crutches it is the values on the left side of the circumplex: tradition to achievement, we look to lean on. This fits with Maslow's idea of these values being related to deficiency needs; i.e. things without which we don't feel complete, as these would relate to our fundamental belonging needs (family, those with whom we share tribal allegiance and friends), security needs (home, country, savings, etc.) and esteem of others needs.

While all these values have the ability to provoke anger and aggression, power plays a particularly important role. Given it is concerned with protecting one's status, increasing ones influence over others and asserting control over resources and one's environment, and avoiding damage or diminution in any of these areas, one can easily see how it might be engaged by the types of events most likely to trigger an angry or aggressive response.

Married couples, when not getting heated romantically, generally find themselves flirting with meltdown in disputes over responsibilities and whose rules should preside. Road enraged drivers become so because another person has cut them up, hooted their horn at them or in some other way disrespected them. When arguments become too heated it is generally because one party or another feels the other party is being unreasonable in not yielding to their position. People get angry at work when they are subjected to disagreeable authority or have to bow to another person's wishes when they would prefer not to. People can get angry when their work is criticised or their authority is questioned, when they are held responsible for something they feel they had little or no control over, when their grip on something slips and this result in disaster. Pretty much all the triggers for anger and aggression involve control or status related issues.

We are all capable of getting angry and becoming aggressive if we are pushed, because we all have power as one of our values. There is almost certainly going to be a strong correlation between a person's propensity to get angry and become aggressive and the relative strength of their power value. Therefore those for whom power is one of their most influential values are likely to be the most prone to angry outbursts or other expressions of anger.

Anger can be expressed in a number of ways. Wikipedia divides anger into passive and aggressive anger. As examples of passive anger it mentions: dispassion (e.g. giving someone the cold shoulder or a fake smile), evasiveness, defeatism, obsessive behaviour, psychological manipulation, secretive behaviour and self-blame. For aggressive anger it offers: bullying, destructiveness, grandiosity, hurtfulness, manic behaviour, selfishness, threats, unjust blaming, unpredictability and vengeance. All of these can be seen as expressions of the value of power, of seeking to increase personal control or evading the control of others, of seeking to assert one's higher status or evade the possibility of having one's status lowered, either at all or further.

What many of these expressions of anger exhibit is a strong correlation with competitiveness. As such they are emotions stirred up by events that are either perceived as inflicting some form of defeat on us or threatening to defeat us. For example: dispassion is something we might show to someone we do not wish to engage or cooperate with; similarly evasiveness. Defeatism is something that sets in when we have been subdued by perceived defeats and inclines us to disengage before more losses lay us even lower.

Obsessive behaviour seems more concerned with control than competition. However, it has a performance dimension to it, in that obsessive behaviour is usually directed at maintaining a particular type of order in the belief that failure to do so would have an adverse effect on the individual. Since the reference points for such a judgement will most frequently be other people, even apparently self-centred obsessiveness can be seen as competitive.

As with all emotions, anger and aggression perform a function with proven survival enhancing virtues, as otherwise they would have been eliminated by natural selection. This in no way recommends them though. When expressed toward another person they have negative consequences. As with all competitive strategies, anger may create short-term wins but these cannot be sustained in the long term and always generate long-term costs. While aggressive people are more often able to assert their ideas, win arguments and gain control of organisations than more evenly tempered individuals, they do not buy the trust of the people on the receiving end of their aggression. While fear may buy something resembling respect, it tends not to buy the type of loyalty and willingness to contribute that cooperative, even-tempered people are able to generate on comparable levels of basic competence.

Given the above, anger (especially when expressed toward others) and aggression are most likely to be expressed frequently by ODs driven by power, and therefore are signifiers of people with impaired abilities to learn, adapt and develop; i.e. not really the best sort of people to provide leadership.

Competitive Sport

Given the competitive nature of sport it should be no surprise that power and achievement are its key values – power to assert one's control over the ball/shuttlecock/boat/arrow/etc. and opponent, and achievement to win the contest, score goals, hit the target, record the highest score or fastest time, etc. – but there is more to competitive sport than power and achievement. The more to which I allude is not the cooperation involved in team sports, although this is a very significant component, and one worthy of further comment in a few paragraphs time, the more I am particularly interested in is that of belief.

These days my active sports life is confined to football (jogging is not a sport in my mind), and while belief is still an important component in football, in my game its significance is negligible compared to the challenge I have in keeping my aged body mobile for 90 minutes. Watching the Wimbledon tennis recently on TV reminded me of the vital role played by belief in sports such as tennis, and transported me back to occasions when I felt alternately empowered and enfeebled by it.

Momentum and the confidence it builds when it appears to be with you is a very significant aid in a game such as tennis. While either player may win the match until one wins three sets (in the case of men, two in the women's game), and there is everything to play for until that last point is played, as a match advances the upper hand may appear to alternate between the players without necessarily going to the player in the lead. A player who manages to establish a lead may feel momentum is with them, and the confidence this inspires may push them forward, but they may also feel they have in some way been gifted the lead by circumstances beyond their control. Perhaps their opponent is making some unusual mistakes; perhaps they are hitting shots they wouldn't normally or being more consistent than usual. In such circumstances they may form the opinion that their 'luck' might not hold. It becomes as if they believe they are being favoured by the tennis gods, but this favour may not last, and perhaps the gods have decided their fate might lie elsewhere. Therefore, should a couple of key points not go their way, and their opponent takes a game against the run of play, their perception of the way the game is going suddenly changes. It can be as if the balance of the entire match has changed, and now, rather than looking forward at how many games they need to win, they start looking back at the gap between them, which has just started to close; their frame of reference changes. As the balance shifts their play is likely to change. Perhaps they will become more cautious or defensive; becoming unwilling to make mistakes, or perhaps they will hit out as if trying to shock themselves back to life and break the pattern. Either way the result may be to make their opponent's challenge somewhat easier.

Similarly, when a player finds themselves facing a match point, or in a final or facing a feared opponent, they are more likely to become overawed by the apparent enormity of what lies before them, and more likely to play hesitantly; apparently more concerned with making a fool of themselves than trying to win, or feeling as they don't belong, or are not worthy; not destined for such things. This is why commentators so often refer to how much easier it seems for players to win big tournaments when they have won them previously. Many players who one might have thought should have won a handful of big tournaments never did, and choking while squaring up to overcoming the biggest challenge seems to be the commonly cited reason. At Wimbledon Ilie Nastase and Ivan Lendl are the two players that come to mind, and given the collective hopes of millions of Britons, that is why Andy Murray's victory over Roger Federer in the Olympic final at Wimbledon was such a big thing, and appeared to give him a surge that took him to successive victories at Flushing Meadow and at Wimbledon proper the next year.

All of these fears are status related, in that confidence ebbs and flows in relation to the player's perceived status relative to another player and/or the occasion. Status is the realm of power, and power is firmly in the realm of belief, along with the other values on the left side of the DNA motivational map.

The mantra professional sports stars increasingly come out with these days is they take each point or game at a time and don't think about anything else. The reason they say this is because they are aware how damaging loss of belief can be. Winning a point or a game is well-defined goal that may be achieved with appropriate skill, tactical know how and commitment; winning a championship is an altogether more difficult goal to get to grips with; one that seems to demand more than tactics and skill. Once faith is invoked there is always the possibility it will be shaken. Once faith is diminished in any way there is the temptation to flail around hopelessly in its wake.

As with other activities, being successful at sport requires one making accurate assessments of the situation in which one finds oneself at any one time, being aware of one's capabilities, making the right decisions as to one's next move and executing this to the best of one's ability. If players were sensorially, mechanically and intellectually perfect, as well as having perfect knowledge of their opponents' capabilities, then it would be possible for them to play consistently to their best, and the most capable players would always win. However, as it is, it is the imperfections of mankind that make sport so exciting.

Who knows how efficient professional tennis players are at optimising their performance at any one time. Perhaps we could say that the all time greats such as Roger Federer, Pete Sampras, Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver, Serena Williams, Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King played at between 92%-95% of their best for 90% of the time whereas lesser mortals played between 80%-95% of their best for 80% of the time. The problem for some of the lesser mortals wasn't necessarily that they weren't as capable as the greats, but more likely that they weren't able to shut out the potentially dangerous voices in their head capable of undermining their self belief.

As with most other aspects of life, the more we are able to self-direct, the more deep and stable the confidence we have in our abilities will become, and the less prone to attacks of self-doubt we become. That said, while self-direction may lead to us to develop every nuance of our game to its highest potential and relieve us of belief related issues, it doesn't necessarily drive us to win. This is where power and achievement come into play in a positive way. The competitive drive they bestow is hugely significant because winning simply matters more to people driven by these values, and if two players are technically as competent as each other, this will likely be the differentiator determining who will win.

The dynamics of the competitive drive are relatively simple when it comes to considering one on one sports such as tennis, but in team games where cooperation is as important as competition, and there are specialised roles to be played, the interplay of values should be more interesting.

Because football is the game I love and know the best it is the one I am instinctively drawn to illustrate how different value priorities will play out in team situations. There are a number of ways to express excellence for outfield players above and beyond being able to kick a ball and other aspects of physical prowess: awareness of others, communicating, decision-making, following instructions, organising others, taking and exercising responsibility, etc. While there is a structure to the way a team is set up to play the game, players have the flexibility to do what they want. Partly this arises from the team's need to adapt to the opposition's tactics and the freedoms afforded to its players, and partly to allow your team the opportunity to take the opposition by surprise and adapt to exploit their weaknesses.

As with the components of another competitive structure, the fortified castle, there are distinct elements to a team designed to attack or defend. The thick and high walls of the castle defend and the archer's slits and battlements conceal forces ready to attack. In football these elements are present, and have to be located where they are needed, but, unlike the castle, they are not fixed. Defenders have to line up somewhere between the ball and their goal to repel attackers, and attackers need to be situated up the pitch closer than others to the opponent's goal so they are available to receive the ball and make a quick attack on it. Between these forces are the midfield players whose role it is to support the defence and attack and provide the link between them.

In broad terms the demands the team makes of defenders relate to creating the equivalent of a moving but impenetrable wall; they must always be in place to block attacks. While they also need to be able to feed the ball away from the goal to the midfield players, their primary responsibility is to respond to the opposition in a highly coordinated and dutiful fashion. Individual flashes of inspiration are not generally required or encouraged. Therefore abilities to follow the plan, commit to a greater cause and accept a place away from the limelight are the qualities one looks for in defenders. In values terms these qualities are most likely to be found in SDs.

Conversely, the role of attackers is to do that which the opposition does not expect. It is an advantage for attackers to be creative, able to read the plan of the opposition's defence and come up with a strategy by which to defeat it. They also need to be able to accept personal responsibility and take the initiative to act alone, since only one person puts the ball into the opposition's net. This presents an interesting challenge for attackers. Football is a team game. Attackers rarely act alone. It is more common for a team to have two or more regular goal scorers. In the approach play it is rare a team has a player of such creative ability that they are able to dribble and dance their way through the opposition's defence unaided. Sadly for spectators, who love to watch them, players with the skills of George Best and Lionel Messi are few and far between. Attackers are more frequently hugely dependent on collaborating with others: passing the ball to move and get around defenders while probing for the chance to open up a scoring opportunity. This approach play is highly cooperative, but taking it upon oneself to attack the goal is highly competitive, and, since the lion's share of the glory goes to the goal scorer, and the highest status is usually given to the person who scores the most goals, this makes the role of striker irresistible to some ODs. As a footballer myself, while I am these days no longer able to kid myself I enjoy the high status of being the man people look to for goals, I can personally attest that nothing compares to the joy of scoring a goal, especially if it involved beating other players or shooting from a distance.

The competitive instincts bestowed by power and achievement are the obvious drivers for this desire to show one's abilities and seize the crown, but given any attacker who places too much emphasis on going it alone is likely to incur the wrath of their team mates, unless their selfishness sees them score from more opportunities than those where they miss or give the ball away, those who habitually go it alone when they would have been better to pass the ball to another soon find themselves out of the team.

The perfect attacker would be one who is capable of accurately assessing the probabilities of success for the many options presenting themselves, and then always making the right decision about whether to shoot, dribble or pass. This awareness of all possibilities and a dispassionate approach to deciding whether it would be best to have a go oneself or pass the ball to another are qualities someone motivated by self-direction and universalism is likely to have, and since IDs are also the most creative, this suggests IDs (all other things being equal) may make better attackers than ODs.

Similarly the flexibility and all round awareness required of midfielders are also qualities more likely to be found in IDs. I suspect the players credited with an almost telepathic understanding of their team-mates, who have an innate ability to pick out a pass into space that the opposition cannot defend but a team-mate can run into without deliberation, are likely to have higher self-direction and universalism than most.

However, the wonderful thing about football is, because of the limitations created by the pitch and the rules, it is easier for people of all value dispositions to acquire the skills and disciplines necessary to become good players. This being the case, the competitive drive to win of ODs may become the most valuable psychological asset a player can have. This is why football represents such an enticing paradigm for the possibilities of effective management. The challenges faced in the wider world, including the worlds of business and politics, are greater because the rules are not so simple and the pitch is not confined to 115 x 75 yds. In such a limited space the ODs tendency to narrow frame propositions and fail to see the bigger picture can more easily be overcome, and the consequences of inappropriately competitive behaviour are immediately experienced so as to place the team at a competitive disadvantage. In the big wide world, with its complex interplay of different causes and effects, such discipline is not so easily developed because the consequences are not so easily experienced, and, when they are, it is less easy for individuals to accept responsibility.

Guilt

Do you feel guilty? I know a lot of people feel guilty quite frequently. Catholics are born feeling guilty I'm led to believe. I know what guilt feels like and it is not something I can tolerate. I'm not sure I've felt guilty since university.

Guilt generally arises when one feels one has done one thing and ought to have done another, especially if, in doing so, we have hurt, let down or taken advantage of another person.

Sometimes this might arise because there is something we want and we just take it without perhaps fully considering the impact this would have on others. If there are only two chocolates left and six people who might want one, and we really want one, if we take one we have cause to feel guilty. We don't always need to involve others though. If we are trying to lose weight and have sworn off foods with a high fat or sugar content, but when passing a bakery we notice a pile of sugary, jam filled doughnuts and can't resist, later, at home, when the pleasure has gone, we may feel as though we have let ourselves down.

People for whom self-direction and universalism are leading values are more likely to take account of all options as best they can and make themselves aware of the impact their decisions will have on themselves and others, therefore when they do something they are more likely to find themselves at ease with their actions. This is no guarantee they will get things right of course. We can inadvertently do the wrong thing and bring about a situation that creates a problem for ourselves and others, but this shouldn't give rise to feelings of guilt if we do what we feel is right given the information available to us, the situation in which we find ourselves and the time available to us. If we are not selfish, negligent or reckless we are unlikely to find ourselves looking back at the wreckage we have caused and be given cause to feel guilty.

Given what we do and what we feel are driven by our values, we should easily be able to predict who is likely to experience feelings of guilt and when.

People who are most driven by the SD values of tradition, conformity and security, while conscious of the importance of doing 'the right thing', are vulnerable to feelings of guilt as a consequence of the limitations of: doing what has always been done, doing what other are doing or expect from us, or following the rules. As discussed before, tradition, conformity and security are not helpful when it comes to self-awareness, seeing the bigger picture, analysing all relevant factors and adopting a flexible attitude to change. Consequently, when presented with a situation in which following the rules and doing what is expected seems likely to create a bad outcome, SDs in particular find themselves in difficulty. If they do as their values are pushing them to do, they may feel guilty they have been responsible for bringing about a bad outcome, if they act against their values and play an active role in avoiding the bad outcome, they may feel bad about breaking the rules and defying both convention and the expectations of those whose good opinion matters to them.

Following the same rationale, IDs would seem the least likely to experience guilt. While also wanting to do 'the right thing', their version of 'the right thing' is more likely to be self-defined, and, if unencumbered by tradition, conformity and security, is more likely to be capable of being defined in relation to the specifics of any situation. Therefore, whatever the ID chooses to do it will be 'the right thing' from their perspective; and since their perspective is the one they rely on, the possibility of internal conflict is much reduced.

While it is true that really pronounced SDs, driven by very deep seated religious or other behavioural codes, are likely to be less inclined to allow personal factors to interfere with their adherence to the rules, fortunately most of us aren't immune to feeling guilt when we have to weigh up the apparent inconsistencies arising from trying to abide by such moral imperatives as 'do not kill or harm other people' when our spiritual leaders are telling us "actually it is OK because if you interpret the revered rules this way these people aren't people at all."

At the extreme end of values driven behaviour, where a person's value system is so focussed on one, or a small group of, neighbouring values, it is more likely that feelings of guilt will be kept at bay because the dissenting voices of other values will be lost in the mix. At the most extreme end of this spectrum we might expect to find psychopaths, who experience little or no remorse even when they have committed acts that would have most people in tears.

Reciprocally, people with flatter values profiles and conflicting values, MDs in particular, are possibly the most likely to experience guilt as a consequence of acting in accordance with one value or neighbouring values only to have an opposing value or two pipe up with "you shouldn't have done that, you know that, don't you?"

For ODs, and OD inclined TDs, guilt is perhaps most likely to arise from iterations of the 'taking one of the last two chocolates' scenario mentioned above; i.e. in situations where their competitive drive inclines them to assert themselves and beat others to a prize only to reflect on the justice of this at a later date. That said, because the world we live in is so attuned to the OD culture, the potential for such reflections is reduced by the normalization of the 'me first' and 'you are not my responsibility' attitudes to life. When OD bankers and consumers reflect on their responsibility for bringing about the financial crisis, will they experience guilt? Perhaps, but there again, perhaps not.

Humour

We all like to laugh. Some more than others and at different things, but a good sense of humour always seems to feature highly in the desirable attributes we seek in a potential mate, whether they are mates in a mating sense or in a 'throw another shrimp on the barbie mate' sense, but what is humour?

We tend to find humour in things provoking an emotional response somewhere in the spectrum from a slight smile to uncontrollable laughter. These can be intentionally humorous things such as a comedy or a joke, designed to make people laugh, or things one might think shouldn't be funny at all but are; like somebody, possibly even ourselves, suffering some kind of misfortune, or experiencing a combination of events that don't make sense or add up as we might expect them to. On closer examination we will find the jokes and comedies we find amusing involve the latter; the only difference between the two being: the former is presented for our amusement, whereas as the latter is not; indeed when we witness an event being presented as if real, but we realize it is being staged for our benefit, it ceases to be quite so funny. Therefore it seems as though the key ingredient in humour is our ability to relate to a situation as if it is real. The skill of a good comedian or of writing or performing a good comedy is to create a context in which we are prepared to suspend our disbelief, and so relate to the events as if they have some reality relative to the environment in which they occur.

The elements of humour that occur to me as I write this include: (1) rather you than me; (2) I recognize that as being true yet I hadn't before; (3) by twisting what I take to be true/acceptable/conventional you have challenged my perceptions and thinking in a surprising and interesting way; (4) that makes no sense yet seems to become more right the more often it happens; (5) I am really impressed, amazed in fact; (6) fond recollection.

All of the above can be experienced with others or without; even 'rather you than me'. This is achieved if we are able to separate ourselves from ourselves so we can laugh at ourselves as if in the third person. As daft as this may sound this doesn't require a split personality, just the passage of time, even a very small amount of time. I have never heard of anyone who laughs at themselves at the time they hit the ground after losing their footing or walking into a lamppost, but all it may take is a few seconds in which to realize no serious harm has been done for the situation to become open to humorous reflection. For 'fond recollection' too the passage of time is, by definition, an essential ingredient, and one that can turn something that wasn't seen as funny at the time into something humorous.

The common link between all these would seem to be 'that wasn't what might have been expected and my life is a little bit better for the experience'. We tend not to find humour in expected truths or routine, experiences that make us fearful, or when we are worrying about something bad happening to us. An apparent exception to the last two might seem to be what is known as 'gallows humour', but I would argue this arises when we manage to escape the fear momentarily by willing ourselves to make a leap of perception, probably with the assistance of others sharing in or empathising with our predicament, such that we laugh at ourselves in the third person on a 'rather you than me' basis.

This being the case, what purpose could humour have? What need does it satisfy? It would seem to me that humour is a relatively sudden positive emotional response to an unexpected event that makes our lives a little bit better. Just as we generally get an emotionally positively response from having sex and eating chocolate, humour is an evolutionary advantageous response to something making a positive contribution to our ability to survive and reproduce, making it pleasurable and so making it more likely it will be repeated.

(1) rather you than me

If we walk into an unseen lamppost and are able to laugh at ourselves, it is because we have just learned a lesson that will help us avoid such potentially injurious collisions in the future by reassessing the relative importance of staring into space or reading as we are walking. If we laugh at someone else walking into a lamppost we may share in their learning experience without getting harmed ourselves. The degree to which our sense of humour is sensitive to the injuries of another in such circumstances presents another dynamic. Most people do not laugh at another's serious misfortune. Perhaps only those with psychopathic tendencies, whose value systems are so dominated by power, have an unfettered ability to see the extreme misfortune of others solely as a positive, survival enhancing experience. While we are all somewhere on a sliding scale in terms of having either a hostile or non-hostile sense of humour, most of us draw the line at death, serious injury or illness. Why we do so would appear to be explained by our social conditioning as evidenced by mankind's broadly cooperative culture. Mankind would never have made it down from the trees to building the interconnected world we inhabit today without our genetic drive to cooperate.

Maslow cited having a non-hostile sense of humour as a characteristic of self-actualizers. Given that universalism gives IDs a greater capacity to empathize with a wider range of humanity, it follows they should be the group least likely to derive comfort or pleasure from the misfortune of others. Reciprocally, one might imagine those for whom power is a dominating value are the most likely to enjoy a joke at someone else's expense.

(2) I recognize that as being true yet I hadn't before

Many times I have reflected on comedians such as Billy Connolly making use of this line of humour. Maybe the 'hadn't before' isn't entirely necessary and could just as easily be replaced with 'mightn't want to admit that to others'. What it would seem to do for us is provide a release mechanism or safety valve allowing us to share something that may have become something of a guilty secret; we do it because we want to but we think others mightn't approve. As to how this sort of humour is likely to be enjoyed by people with different values, I would have thought this would depend on the subject matter. While the safety valve would appear equally attractive to all types of people, there are some matters more conservatively minded people are likely to find difficult to admit to regardless of the apparent permission being granted by the situation in which they find themselves. SDs are the least likely to find humour in, let alone laugh out loud at, any behaviour that breaches accepted behavioural codes, and therefore, even if they have lapsed themselves, they are the least likely to want to make any implicit acknowledgement of this in company.

While I would guess the range of subject matter that people would find funny under this heading would increase as one moved from SD to ID, this would be offset to a degree by those toward the ID end of the spectrum finding little humour in certain subjects amusing to people more toward the SD end of the spectrum. Things likely to fall flat for IDs but generate a laugh for SDs would do so because they do little more than state the obvious, and therefore fall outside this category of humour. The guilty little secrets SDs might feel able to share and gain a small sense of release are likely to be of a type IDs would not feel guilty about in the slightest and therefore wouldn't conceal.

(3) by twisting what I take to be true/acceptable/conventional you have challenged my perceptions and thinking in a surprising and interesting way

Under this heading would fall satirical and absurdist humour. In the former category would fall such programmes as Spitting Image, which featured caricature puppets of politicians and celebrities, and memorably had the puppet of Margaret Thatcher in a restaurant with her cabinet placing an order for steak, and in response to the waiter's question "and for the vegetables?" she responds "oh, they'll have the same as me." In the latter category Monty Python will always remain most prominent in my mind. I quoted liberally from Python in The Good Book, so rather than repeat any of the sketches that first leap to my mind I am now reminded of the sketch in which Thomas Hardy is shown writing the first few words of his 'new' novel The Return Of The Native in front of a "good natured bank holiday crowd" as if it was a major sporting event, with commentary to match.

Announcer: "And the crowd goes quiet now as Hardy settles himself down at the desk, body straight, shoulders relaxed, pen held lightly but firmly in the right hand, he dips the pen...in the ink and he's off! Its the first word, but it is not a word..... oh no, its a doodle way up on top of the left hand margin. It is a piece of meaningless scribble, and he's signed his name underneath it... oh dear, what a disappointing start, but he is off again and here goes the first word of Thomas Hardy's new novel, at 10:35 on this very lovely morning, it's three letters, it's the definite article and it's 'THE', Dennis"

Dennis: "Well, this is true to form; no surprises there. He started five of his eleven novels to date with the definite article. We've had two of them with 'it', there's been one 'but', two 'at's, one 'on' and a 'Delores'. Oh, that, of course, was never published."

Announcer: "I'm sorry to interrupt you there, Dennis, but he's crossed it out. Thomas Hardy on the first day of his new novel has crossed out the only word he has written so far and he's gazing off into space....Ohh! Oh dear, he's signed his name again."

Dennis: "It looks like Tess of the d'Urbervilles all over again."

...and so it continued. I can still visualise the sketch after all these years and it still amuses me.

While this type of humour may be scaleable to all sorts of differently motivated people, my guess would be the more toward the ID end of the motivational spectrum you find yourself, the more humour you will find in absurd and satirical comedy.

Recently my sister in law brought my brother and I to tears of laughter over dinner when describing a woman of their acquaintance when we both thought she had said, very seriously and with great emphasis, "she's a very successful bin-woman." She had apparently said 'business-woman' rather than bin-woman, but the unlikely conjunction of 'very successful' and 'bin-woman' being uttered in awestruck tones was too much for me; I even cried quietly to myself half an hour later when replaying the moment in my mind.

Given that looking at things in new and fresh ways and making surprising connections is very much what IDs are all about, it is unsurprising to me that new comedy of this type generally only appeals to a relatively small section of the potential audience in its early days, and gathers momentum to become 'a classic' further down the line as it becomes normalised. I would guess the response to this category of humour bears a positive correlation with the importance of the ID values of self-direction and universalism, and a negative correlation to the values of tradition, conformity and security. The more you respect and desire prescribed order the less likely you are to laugh at such things.

(4) that makes no sense yet seems to become more right the more often it happens

This type of humour seems to appeal to children, who seem to delight in repeating nonsense time and time again, finding it ever more amusing with each repetition. Over the last twenty years it has seen something of a blossoming on TV as well, with Vic & Bob being pioneers in the field with such catchphrases as "you wouldn't let it lie", "let me see those fingers" & "marzipan's a private matter", swiftly followed by The Fast Show and its seeming cast of thousands repeatedly uttering such catchphrases as "you haven't seen me, right", "....which was nice", "suit you sir...oh!" & "Chris Waddle". Said once these phrases would generate little more than consternation, especially as they are not punch lines delivered so as to provide a twist on what has gone before, but when they are used repeatedly in sketches, or even as stand alone items, they give us pleasure and become funny. Why? Possibly it has something to do with their becoming something like badges of membership. Heard once they are just words, said repeatedly they become a shared secret, appealing to all our desire to belong and feel a part of something. They become simultaneously comforting and humorous, firstly because we recognize the absurdity of getting pleasure from such a thing, and secondly because we recognize the absurdity of finding something that is not in itself funny funny. It is possible this category of humour could again fall into the 'IDs-most, SDs-least' spectrum of affection, on the basis that IDs are the most likely to appreciate the unlikely and pointless nature of the source material, and SDs prefer their humour, like everything else, to be conventional. However, given this type of humour involves no element of laughing at anyone as much as it involves laughing at oneself, it may be that power driven people are in fact the least likely to find this amusing.

(5) I am really impressed, amazed in fact

While not a staple of the world of comedy, I have frequently surprised myself wanting to laugh out loud when I am confronted by someone who can do something amazingly well in front of me; playing an instrument for instance. While the reaction provoked in me comes close to pure happiness, independent of humour, it definitely causes me to laugh, which I take to be evidence of humour. While this fits with the theory of humour being a positive emotional reaction to something that might enhance one's understanding/appreciation of what we are capable of, I am not sure I can find any reason to suppose this type of humour is triggered by any particular value, or what variations in it are likely to trigger different values. If there was no correlation this would imply the roots of this type of humour are to be found in our older, so called, lizard brain, but that doesn't seem right on the basis it appears to be a very human reaction; i.e. one that requires a bigger, more sophisticated brain. Perhaps research will show this reaction relates to particular interests we have, and demonstrations of a particular ability or quality we have a special interest in acquiring for ourselves, which would then relate back to our values.

**(6) fond recollection**.

Less a different type of humour than a review of events with the involvement of one of the previous ingredients. In values terms I would guess this type of humour is more important to those who find comfort in things remaining the same and are therefore inclined to look backwards (particularly SDs but also ODs) than those who look forward (TDs & IDs), but we are all attracted to this type of humour as a source of comfort and as reminders of things we might have forgotten. As far as the type of things we are likely to fondly recall, it might be expected these will tend to follow our values driven preferences as described above.

Morality

'Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour'. This is the definition given in the Oxford English Dictionary for morality.

Good and bad and right and wrong. They sound so definite, so certain. Yet what is good for me may well be bad for you, what is right in one situation may be wrong another. Religious leaders, who often seem to see themselves as custodians of an objective morality, might point to a set of standards transcending personal or even Earthly considerations. However, morality has a much more solid foundation than this, despite it being a little more subjective than some might wish it to be.

Morality concerns what is good and right for the collective. It brings together and is the distillation of all cooperative strategies. While only we humans consider ourselves to be moral, the founding principles of morality or cooperative strategy apply to all organisms. When we do so we can more easily see just how subjective they are.

At the edge of all cooperative entities, whether they be a person like you or me (a cooperative body of cells) or a society (a cooperative body of people), there is competition, and beyond this boundary there is either no moral code or a very different code of conduct. If I should kill another person I would be considered immoral, as my actions would threaten to destroy the cooperative fabric of the society in which my victim and I live. If I should kill a pigeon to eat I would not generally be considered immoral. The pigeon is not part of the cooperative collective covered by our current sense of morality. However, for some vegetarians, the definition of a cooperative collective would be extended to include pigeons, and therefore meat eaters such as myself would be considered immoral.

While all life on this planet is part of the same ecosystem, and is therefore interdependent, an unusual take on cooperation and morality is required to afford pigeons the same moral rights we extend to other people. First we can't eat them; next thing we'll have to give them the vote!

If I give my time, my expertise, my labour, my possessions to another person to ease their suffering without expectation or hope of payment or reward I am probably going to be seen as having a strong sense of morality.

When I was recently called by someone at the garage repairing my car in relation to an insurance claim, and asked whether two faults he had identified had arisen as a consequence of the accident for which I was claiming, in admitting both faults pre-existed the accident I think I demonstrated my morality.

If I were to promise to mend your roof, took some money in advance to pay for the work and then disappeared without trace, you would almost certainly consider me to be highly immoral.

These examples make morality seem a fairly black and white affair, but what about the fuzzy middle ground.

If I invent a new product that does whatever it does better than any alternative already in the market, and I put this out there for people to buy with a fair and true description of what it does, I am probably behaving in a morally acceptable way. I mightn't be a saint, as I am not giving it away, but I have worked on something that will benefit wider society and am offering it to people to buy if they so wish.

What if I have a product in the market that isn't as good as some of the competing products but I use my wealth and market position to make people think otherwise, and so continue buying my product in preference to the others. This sounds a little immoral. It certainly doesn't appear to be in the interests of consumers in general. This is what most commercial organizations do though.

Two of my recent favourites in the 'immoral but commercially acceptable practices' department include the "10% off a future purchase" offered by the train company First Direct when my wife had bought some train tickets online. The offer I think was offered as a 'thank you' for her custom. The large print trumpeted these aspects of the offer, however, in the small print she didn't read was an agreement she was being asked to accept that bound her to pay a significant monthly subscription to a 'partner' of First Direct for the privilege of being able to visit its website and purchase a limited range of goods at unexceptional prices, all charged to the credit card she had just used to buy the train tickets by direct debit. I had already been caught by just such a scam myself and, like my wife, the first we knew of it was when we checked our credit card statements. In my case this was six months later. While apparently legal, because all of the terms had been laid out in the small print we hadn't noticed, it is clear that such a business makes its money on the premise of deceiving its 'customers'. Hugely immoral.

The other one a friend and I were gnashing our teeth over the other evening concerns the practice film companies have adopted of putting advert after advert, trailer after trailer at the beginning of DVDs that you cannot skip past. This is the equivalent of car manufacturers selling cars that you couldn't drive until you had listened to a succession of advertisements relating to other cars in their range; the ignition key only turning over the engine once the last one had been played. These are DVDs we have bought. We bought them to own because we wanted to watch the film. What gives the seller of the DVD the idea it is OK to subject us to their adverts every time we want to watch the film we have them paid good money for. Presumably spurred on by the fact that we already accept ad-breaks on commercial TV channels (acceptable because the ads enable us to watch programmes for free), are subjected to ads on websites (the websites are free to view and we can skip the ads) and have got used to magazines full of ads and direct marketing flyers (we can ignore them and pour them into the bin) the film companies seem to think this is morally acceptable, when it is not.

The consequence of immoral, or competitive, behaviour in such circumstances is to send out a message to the customer that the seller is not on our side, it is seeking to take advantage of us, that it is in competition with us, and so it makes it more likely we, the customer, will be more inclined to treat all future offerings from it with suspicion. Such behaviour involves an easily discernable short-term advantage/profit being taken at a less easy to appreciate long-term cost.

The key to understanding what should be deemed moral or not lies in the definition of the boundary between the cooperative collective and external competitors. We usually have no difficulty behaving morally, i.e. cooperatively, with those we perceive to be one of us. Once we edge over the boundary into 'them' territory we tend to become more competitive, and in competition morality changes, and may become irrelevant. Commercial organizations in particular struggle with defining and observing the boundaries between cooperation and competition. Is a customer one of us or one of them? Should we see the customer as a resource to be exploited or a fellow traveller with whom we share what we have? Most companies would claim the latter. Few companies would be able to demonstrate this was true. Given that companies are loosely affiliated groups of individuals urged to hit competitive targets, they struggle to operate as a cooperative entity at all. With many staff acting competitively against each other like cancerous cells in a multi-cellular organism, it should not be a surprise to find many organizations struggle to behave consistently let alone morally.

Self-transcending, cooperative virtues such as honesty, forgiveness and social justice are at the heart of our collective sense of morality, and the values of benevolence and universalism are at the heart of this. As one moves away from these around the circumplex our values become less moral. Tradition and conformity seek to copy and paste moral behaviour and embed them in groups and societies, but in so doing they weaken the responsibility any individual bears for being moral. Traditionalists and conformists follow a prescribed code of behaviour in the belief it is moral, whereas universalism and benevolence promote cooperative and therefore moral behaviour without reference to a rulebook written by others. Security seeks to embody a moral code in a set of rules, but due to the difficulty we have in defining and enforcing rules that are fit for purpose, it tends to make us amoral, driving us to abide by the rules even when they obviously frustrate the cooperative interests of the collective.

When we move onto the competitive values of power and achievement morality ceases to be a priority. Since morality serves the interests of the collective and competition serves the interests of the individual within the collective, morality has the capacity to frustrate competitive aims, and when it does it will be set aside. Competitive people driven by power and achievement espouse moral values because their ability to flourish in the collective is conditional on their remaining a part of it. Consequently those who proclaim their moral outrage the loudest, or set out their stall as moral standard bearers, are often the people most likely to frustrate the cooperative aims of the collective: take a step forward countless showman preachers, business leaders and politicians.

The values of hedonism and stimulation are amoral. They promote self-gratification, but unlike power and achievement this is not necessarily to be acquired at the expense of others, indeed it is more often shared with others. Self-direction in itself is amoral, but as it comes to dominate a person's motivational system it is likely it will deliver a greater understanding of the performance advantages of cooperation over competition, and as such is the gateway to true cooperative self-transcendence as represented by universalism and benevolence.

As suggested elsewhere in this book, it is not that people driven by power and achievement are necessarily immoral, it is just they are more likely to act in ways others will judge as being immoral.

Morality is the currency of trust used to effect interpersonal transactions in a cooperative environment. We know where we stand with people who are consistently honest, transparent and considerate in their dealings with us and with others, and are therefore more willing to establish relationships with them. People driven by power and achievement are more open to temptation to introduce a counterfeit moral currency in order to enable them to complete transactions; in so doing eroding the trustworthiness of the currency, just as counterfeit notes and coins erode the value of money.

An individual's ability to identify what is morally counterfeit or not, and therefore who is trustworthy or not, is again largely determined by their values. As with most other skills, while practice and experience will enhance an individual's ability, our perceptions are affected by our values. Therefore while dedicated fraudsters may develop a nose for trusting and honest cooperative people they can exploit with competitive strategies masquerading as cooperative one, Maslow's notion that self-actualizing people have an enhanced ability to see the real and the fake fits with what one might expect from people driven by self-direction and universalism.

Personality

Personality is the catch all term we use to describe what we are like: how we appear to be. Much of the work carried out in defining the ingredients of personality was brought together in the creation of the 'Big 5' personality traits of agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion, openness and conscientiousness. This model was derived from the merging of contributions of many researchers working independently in the field. The first published model was aired in the 1960s, but didn't become fully established until the 1980s/90s.

The five headings comprise a number of correlating sub-traits as follows:

Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. cold/unkind) – compassion, consideration, cooperativeness, preference for social harmony, friendliness, generosity, helpfulness, and optimism.

Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident) – emotional stability

Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved) – breadth of activities (not depth), dependency/stimulation on/from external activity/situations, enjoyment gained from interacting with people, action-orientation, visibility, talkative and assertiveness.

Openness (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious) – vocabulary, imagination, ideas, comprehension, reflectiveness, abstract thinking, appreciation for beauty & art, emotional awareness, adventurous, curiosity & variety.

Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless) - self-discipline, sense of duty, achievement against external standards, planning, control & regulation.

Certain aspects of personality have been demonstrated to be heritable, i.e. capable of being passed on through our genes, and it has been possible to associate certain aspects of personality with different areas of the brain – we have even been able to establish correlations between certain genes and personality traits - but still we don't have a full understanding of what personality is and where it comes from.

Given my foregoing analysis of brain development being needs driven, it goes without saying personality must be needs related; indeed, many of the above psychological traits are direct expressions of need. If we relate all needs to all values, whether physiological (air, water, food and sex) or psychological (tradition, conformity, etc.) then it must follow that personality must be values driven.

Research into correlations between values and personality was summarised in a paper by Parks & Guay in 2009. This recorded that positive correlations were identified for: conscientiousness with conformity, security and achievement (as well as a negative correlation with stimulation); openness with stimulation, self-direction and universalism; agreeableness with universalism, benevolence and tradition (as well as negative correlations with power and achievement); and extraversion with achievement, hedonism and stimulation (negative with tradition).

In my opinion, in order to fully establish the relationship between values and personality, in addition to looking at the sub-traits of personality rather than the five headings, the research will also need to take account of experience, i.e. the events a person with a particular set of values encounters. In my opinion this is likely to show it is the reaction between experience and values that determines the personality traits expressed.

Phenotype is a term used in evolutionary biology to describe the observable traits of genes; i.e. direct or indirect expressions of an organism's genes. The existence of hair on the human head and its colour, and the human body itself for that matter, are fairly direct examples of phenotypes, in that they were created as a consequence of genes acting directly on the soup of chemicals from which all cellular material is constructed. However, the phenotypic effects of our genes extend way beyond our bodies. In Richard Dawkins book The Extended Phenotype he cites the dammed lakes created by beavers as being examples of extended phenotypes; the beaver having been genetically programmed to construct such dams in the same way spiders have been programmed to create webs and whales have been programmed to trawl the oceans for krill with their open mouths. While the spider's web is more indirect than the whale's method of catching food, they both serve the same purpose and evolved in the same way. Similarly, while the lake created by the beaver's dam is an even more indirect expression of the beaver's genetic need to survive, ultimately its purpose is the same: the dam creates a controlled environment which enhances the beaver's ability to catch food, mate and raise offspring.

When it comes to looking at the phenotypes of mankind, one can observe a network of effects extending out into all corners of the world. Where a social organism such as a termite may have an extended phenotype that includes its air conditioned mound and parts of the landscape around it, for a social organism as outward looking as ourselves, there are few places left on earth where the phenotypic effects of our existence cannot be observed or felt. However, the purpose of the above introduction to phenotypes was not to look so far outward from the gene, but to draw attention to the fact that our genes find expression at many different levels, and all relate back to the satisfaction of need. Therefore, like governments, corporations, marriages and football teams, we can look at personality as being just another human phenotype. While it exists to serve our need to survive, it is just another tool at our disposal 'designed' to help us get what we need.

Experiments with rats documented by M Szyf, P McGowan and MJ Meaney have demonstrated rats that receive the most love and affection as babies go on to be the most resistant to stress; i.e. are less agitated by environmental inconveniences and threats.* This appears to mirror what I have observed in my encounters with some people who exhibit strong SD characteristics associated with the values of security, conformity and, to a lesser extent, tradition. Experiences in early life which gave these people a sense they were missing out on parental devotion, or that their siblings were getting more affection than they were, fit with the idea that their need for belonging and affection was not being satisfied and this left a legacy of a perceived deficiency in this area. Being loved and feeling as though one belongs relate to a sense of being protected, and as children remain needy and potentially vulnerable to lack of protection until relatively late in life compared to other animals, it is easy to imagine how a prolonged deficiency would lead to the development of an adult with a more nervous disposition (or personality). The more one is given a secure environment in one's early years, the more confidence one develops in that environment, and the more adventurous one might be expected to become in experimenting at the borders of that environment. As long as the child is allowed to continue experimenting in the knowledge safety is not far away, logic would suggest it will be able to build a greater capacity for self-reliance, and, once the child becomes an adult, and has cut this metaphorical emotional umbilical cord, it should be as prepared as it can be to take the hurdles life presents in its stride. However, in the absence, or perceived absence, of such protection in early life, it seems reasonable to assume this would leave a child feeling vulnerable, and therefore being more alarmed or stressed by events that it would, by extension, feel as though it may have to confront alone without the full protection of its parents. If this conditions the child for later life it would follow they would be more susceptible to becoming stressed.

The experiments carried out to evaluate the impact of licking (love & affection) on baby rats demonstrated the calming effects bestowed proved to be heritable; i.e. female baby rats who are licked heavily are more likely to become heavy licking mothers themselves. Given the licking does not alter the sequencing of baby rats' DNA this might seem surprising, but it has been discovered the licking at this early stage in life brings about a heritable epigenetic effect. Rather than changing the genetic code, the experience pulls a chemical trigger that changes the way certain genes express themselves, and, if this is stabilized, its effect can be passed on to the next generation.

The potential cocktail of ingredients, both genetic and experiential, is so vast it would be unreasonable to expect to see this pattern of personality development replicated so clearly that a perfect correlation could be established though a simple research exercise. However, the experimentation with rats establishes the validity of the basic idea and the connection. Given the complexity of human genetics, memetics and experience, the experimental conditions would be difficult to control sufficiently to exclude chaotic interactions muddying the water. Anecdotal evidence of children who lacked loving environments, but went on to develop a swashbuckling attitude to life would appear to weaken the validity of the connection, but even then, perhaps not, because it may be that the person is given something in their upbringing enabling them to create an emotional cocoon for themselves in later life. If their ability to manage stress would appear to contradict what might have been expected given their upbringing, this might be conditional on their being able to maintain the integrity of their cocoon, and, should this be compromised, their underlying tendency toward becoming more highly stressed than others in similar circumstances would only then be revealed.

The above scenario has some resonance with my mother's relationship with stress. She felt she was second favourite to her sister in her mother's affections, and that both her father and mother were particularly lacking in the affection department. My mum will cite the perceived uselessness of her mother as being the reason why she became so self-reliant in later life, and indeed my mum has been a veritable whirlwind of do-it-yourself activity all her life. Yet it was noticeable to me that once the cocoon of her family began to breakdown - with my brother and I leaving home, the death of my father, and, further down the line, the death of her subsequent partner, and finally the onset of old age - the extent of her inherently nervous disposition became more fully expressed. Looking back now I can see this was always there, but she had created a cocoon for herself in which the potentially worrisome things in life could be kept at a distance.

Examining cause and effect more scientifically is fraught with difficulty due to the complex web of ingredients and, consequently, the apparently chaotic nature of their interactions. Assessing the point at which parental protection becomes too great, and weakens a child's ability to learn to fend for itself in later life is difficult to establish, especially as parental love and affection is not a single, uniform commodity. Physical affection, stability, ability to communicate, emotional transparency, parental neediness, emotional generosity and even distribution amongst children are just a few factors springing to my mind as I am writing this. I am sure I could think of many, many more. Given many of these variables are likely to move independently of each other, it would be necessary to analyse parental love and affection not as a single entity, but in relation to a spectrum of components.

On the effect side of the equation there are similar complications. The nature and incidence of manifestations of insecurity will vary according to the particular nature of the cocoon the individual finds themselves in, and, since this is as likely to be manufactured by the individual as it is inadvertently encountered, the number of possible interactions are too numerous to allow a broad overview to pick out the detail and the correlations hidden therein.

To further muddy the waters there is the matter of genetic variations in our propensity to develop certain values. Children born with a predisposition toward self-direction for instance are likely to respond differently to another when they are exposed to similar environmental conditions. Given the ability of 'higher' values to help satisfy the needs associated with 'lower' values, children with different value predispositions will react differently to identical experiences, and their needs and values will develop differently and find expression in different personality traits.

Given the above, one might wonder why there is an apparent link between personality and values. The link is something of a 'no brainer' in the case of the personality trait of openness and the values of stimulation and self-direction. When one looks at the sub-values of varied life, daring, exciting life, creativity, etc., its existence hardly needs explaining. The correlation between self-direction and openness is the strongest of those between values and personality traits at 46%. For others the correlation is weaker. For example Parks & Guay mention a 2% correlation between the value of security and the personality trait of neuroticism.

In looking for a reason for the disparity in correlations between personality traits and the other values it seems to me one has to stand back and take in the broader view. When one does this one sees that personality and values are entirely different things. Personality as a concept developed as a means to describe what one sees in the behaviour of people. It deals with the visible, and as a consequence it deals with a mixed bag of superficial expressions of something deeper, as well as those deeper things expressed more directly. While values may change, and even be impacted upon by personality as it effects the ways individuals interact with their environment, values more directly relate to those deeper things; the foundations of the human psyche, to the human soul.

When I look at people, while I am obviously aware of their different personalities, I also see through personality as if it was a translucent, or even transparent layer, and see beneath the values pulling the strings. When I do, I see values expressing themselves fairly directly in areas other than openness. When people recoil from criticism as if it has bruised them, whether it is implied, explicit or humorous, or exhibit pride or indulge in any type of self-promotion, or a seemingly cosmetic enthusiasm to agree with a higher status individual so as to ingratiate themselves, I see power. In personality terms one could see such traits as: cooperativeness, preference for social harmony, helpfulness (reciprocal expressions of these sub-traits of agreeableness), emotional stability (reciprocal expressions of this sub-trait of neuroticism), assertiveness (sub-trait of extraversion), self-discipline, control & regulation (reciprocal expressions of sub-traits of conscientiousness) as being expressions of power. If one dissected all the ingredients of personality and examined them individually in relation to the circumstances in which they find expression, I would expect clearer correlations to emerge.

It would seem to me that personality, i.e. the way we appear to be, is fashioned by experience acting on our needs and values: whether it satisfies or frustrates our being able to satisfy our needs. The range of reactions this creates extends from short outbursts of atypical behaviour, such as extreme joy, laughter or anger, which, while not being unusual in the sense they are not reactions we might associate with a particular type of person, are not so enduring or sustainable they would be described as stable personality traits, to the more consistent patterns of behaviour that would. I would liken this to, say, comparing the different effects of catching one's bare foot against a jagged piece of rock when walking on a beach and walking with a small piece of grit in one's shoe. The former would likely give rise to a massive emotional outburst: screaming, shouting and tears perhaps, the latter to no discernable expression of a problem. The former could not be borne long-term, but once the incident was over, providing no major physical damage had been done, the person would quickly return to their previous stable state. The latter, however, might well be uncomfortable but endurable. While it might not cause an outburst others would be aware of, it would register with the individual and cause enduring annoyance. The effect of this is far more likely to impact on the mood of the person and how they behave generally.

In turn it would seem reasonable to suggest anyone whose needs are frustrated for a long period is more likely to experience enduring stress, depression or deep-seated anger, such that would be seen to affect their personality.

What experiences would trigger such a reaction would vary from person to person dependent on the structure of their values system and the particular skills and tolerances they have developed. Being asked to take responsibility for organizing an event would, in general terms, be likely to more stressful for an SD than and ID, since an SD's values incline them to follow rather than lead and they are more troubled by the need to meet the expectations of others; while IDs are better attuned to acting independently and using their own initiative, and are less dependent on winning the approval of others. However, an SD that has been specifically trained in organizing such events might experience less stress than an ID who has not, since they would have the comfort of following a tried and tested procedure.

Dependent on the duration and unexpected nature of the unsought challenges and unwanted experiences we are confronted with, our reactions will manifest themselves in either short outbreaks of stress related, values defying, behaviour, which will come and go, or in more sustained, personality defining behaviour. Establishing a direct correlation between values and these types of behaviour may be difficult because we are likely to seek out environments suiting our needs, and so minimise the potential for us to become stressed. An SD, while more vulnerable to stress generally because of their greater need for certainty and stability, is likely to embed themselves in an environment in which potentially destabilizing elements are kept at arm's length. Whereas, an ID, while less vulnerable to stress generally, is more likely to put themselves in situations where they are exposed to factors likely to test their abilities to self-direct. If one understands the complete environmental context and the experience and skills of the people involved it should be perfectly possible to accurately predict the behavioural response (whether long-term as in personality, or short-term, as in an outburst) particular experiences will induce.

The Final Chapter

So we are nearing the completion of this journey from stardust to soul. It is interesting to learn where one has come from, but perhaps it is more important to understand where we are going, and what the best route there might be. Therefore to conclude this book, which has traced the development of my understanding of our place in the universe and the mechanisms making us tick, I wanted to revisit the evolutionary path of culture from its recent SD past to the possibility of a self-transcending future, and share some thoughts on what lies ahead: the challenges and opportunities before us and how we might prepare ourselves.

The world is full of wonderful things. The human race is one of these. Individually and collectively we have done, and continue to do, many wonderful things. While these bring me joy on a daily basis, rather than celebrate them in the remaining pages, I would prefer to look at what we are doing wrong now, and how we need to do better if we are to meet the challenges ahead of us without creating unnecessary turmoil and misery.

The speed with which the technology we are creating is changing the way we function as a species is outstripping the ability of our established ways to cope with the new demands being made of us, and to enable us to make the most of the new opportunities arising. Broadly speaking, the model we have been operating since the dawn of civilisation involves a few people seizing on a good idea and using it to establish a competitive advantage: exploiting others (not necessarily in a pejorative sense) and the untapped potential in the community and environment so as to establish themselves as leaders, accumulating hereditary wealth and status in the process, and creating benefits for wider society on a trickle down basis. At any one moment in time the people at the bottom of the pile look to as though they have to make do with grasping the comparatively shitty end of the stick, but, in the long run, their lot improves as benefits such as better food, better healthcare, better education, more discretionary income, etc. become more widespread.

When I say 'in the long run' this may involve a hundred years or more in some cases. I am thinking of slavery as one of the most extreme examples of exploitation in recent times, but even this eventually led to an improvement in the lives of the heirs of the people who found themselves on the shitty end of this particular stick. Africans rounded up like livestock by Europeans and shipped to the plantations of America were exploited as untapped potential: a free labour force to drive forward the commercial machine of the cotton growing industry. If one is able set all moral considerations aside, ignore the misery inflicted on these poor people, and view the consequences of this human trade as just another manifestation of competitive commercial activity, the long term consequences were that millions of African Americans now enjoy a standard of living and enhanced survival prospects barely imaginable for their cousins whose ancestors remained in Africa.

Most champions of free market competition, while no longer supporters of slavery, cling to the belief that it is the competitive drive of entrepreneurs and business people in general that moves the world forward, and any short-term inequalities arising are more than justified by the long term benefits. While there is some truth to this, it is not the whole picture, and the part of the picture missing is becoming increasingly important.

While the competitive drive to do better than one's peers is certainly a great motivator, the achievers driven primarily by this tend to pick up a ball created by others and run with it; they tend not to create the ball itself. The most competitive people are very strongly driven by the values of power and achievement, and their frame of reference is governed by the achievements of others and the resources immediately available to them to elevate their relative status. They tend not to be people who stand back and contemplate bigger issues in a dispassionate manner; as to do so would seem to be an inefficient use of resources that might allow others to streak past them in the race toward whatever finishing line they have in mind. Their creative potential may allow them to improve on what has gone before, to streamline, make more efficient and speed up the process, but the really momentous innovations come from those with a value set that inclines them to be curious about a greater number of things, who allow themselves the time to indulge in playful ideas, intellectually stimulating detective work and experimentation. Self-directing people with a universal palette are those most likely to come up with the unexpected and the groundbreaking. Therefore it is questioning, independently minded IDs that are by far the most likely to come up with the big ideas that move society forward. Newton, Darwin and Einstein were all groundbreaking scientists who seem to have displayed ID tendencies, and I suspect modern innovators such as James Wales (Wikipedia) and Tim Berners-Lee (The World Wide Web) also fit somewhere in or around the ID stereotype.

IDs have always provided the sparks of innovation, but the further we go back in time the more difficult it was for IDs to take their ideas and run with them; anywhere other than up a blind alley that is. In a perfect world people would have a great idea, they would make that idea real, everyone would love it and they would grow rich on it, but up until relatively recently we lived in an OD world not a perfect one. Copernicus didn't grow rich by formalising the idea the Earth went around the sun (and not vice versa). He published at the end of his life to avoid facing the consequences of going against the Catholic Church and the received wisdom of the time. He was wise to do so, as those who supported his idea were persecuted as a consequence, including, famously, Galileo Galilei who was imprisoned for the rest of his life for presenting supporting evidence some 60 years later.

Even if your idea didn't offend the Catholic Church it was likely to upset some other vested interests. In an age when privilege was largely hereditary, the people with the money and position to support innovative ideas were less likely to be interested in money making ideas, or those that promised to make the lot of ordinary people better, even if one was in the fortunate position of being able to communicate ones idea to one of them. Given a social structure that limited education and influence to affluent males at the top of the class system, unless you were privileged and male and not too bothered about upsetting your neighbours, your chances of becoming a successful inventor/entrepreneur were slight and the chances of your bright ideas ever seeing the light of day were hardly better.

While the flow of new ideas and their realization over previous centuries has been glacial by modern standards, the cumulative nature of innovations has nevertheless consistently resulted in an exponential growth in technological capacity. Perhaps the most significant aspects of this has been the increasing quantity of knowledge available for distribution, the increasing ease with which this information can be distributed, the increasing ease with which people can access it and the increasing ease with which people can take this knowledge, combine and extend it and do something useful with it. Just as an army of venture capitalists and other investors came along to replace the thinly dispersed benefactors of a previous age, now manufacturing technology, global communications and virtual marketplaces are increasingly enabling IDs of any social class to come up with bright ideas and make them real.

Some of these IDs will develop businesses based on conventional sales models, grow rich on the proceeds and acquire elevated status in the process, others will simply do what they do because they love doing it and give their ideas away for the benefit of all. All this presents conventional established businesses and governments with some very significant challenges they may find difficult to overcome. While most businesses and governments may kid themselves they are agile, responsive and forward looking, what once gave them strength is fast becoming a weakness. Where once distinct groups of people, whether they were huddled together in tribal fortresses, governments or commercial companies, benefited from strength in numbers, they are beginning to look like people tied together as if for a three-legged race while competing against unfettered lone sprinters.

While the many remain more powerful than any one individual, in the new age the many can come together spontaneously like a flash mob summoned by anyone with something interesting to say or offer. The pace of change is becoming so great that the most agile of companies and governments can appear to be railing against the incoming tide like King Canute. While governments may view the revenue raising potential created by the free flow of ideas in the new economy positively, they are less happy when the free flow of information undermines their power to keep secrets and present themselves in the best possible light. While the latter is an issue for commercial organizations as well, for the present their ability to build and maintain a brand image remains in tact. The more significant issue for them is creating and maintaining leadership and business cultures capable of dealing with change so as to remain competitive.

The irony of competitiveness is that it opposes cooperation, yet cooperation creates the highest possible (and therefore most competitive) level of performance. Providing cooperative groups can protect themselves from local attack from competitive individuals seeking to maximise short-term gains, cooperation out competes competitiveness.

In times of slower change large companies were more easily able to protect themselves as a consequence of higher barriers to entry in their market place. Once established, companies can grow large enough to benefit from: massive economies of scale, market dominance, the ability to build the brand through costly PR and advertising, and an ability to suck in the brightest and the best people eager to jump aboard the bandwagon, and thereby sustain themselves. Innovators were more likely to knock on their doors than go it alone. Now the times they are a changing, and the factors described previously are weakening their competitive advantage in all these areas and, more critically, exposing an inherent weakness that threatens to be their undoing.

Commercial businesses have to be highly competitive. The most competitive tend to grow until they are large. Large businesses tend to need high levels of systemic regulation and this creates uniformity. This tends to mean that people driven by power and achievement are the most sought after and successful in these organizations. They are driven by similar needs as the organization: to impress others, to demonstrate how successful they are and increase their influence. Schwartz's personal value of 'preserving public image' is the equivalent of brand in the commercial world, as 'wealth' is to profit and assets, 'influence' to market dominance, etc. These people may be considered progressive and innovative when compared to the less competitive (and therefore less successful) individuals in these organizations, but they are comparatively close-minded and staid when compared with IDs. IDs tend not to flourish in large organizations because they don't like to conform and play the corporate game. They do like to ask 'why', have their say and be listened to, and their power driven leaders tend to interpret their challenges as personal threats, and therefore seek to marginalize them.

Certain organizations such as Google, whose entire existence is dependent on being at the cutting edge of innovation, may be able to offer some lessons in how large organizations can flourish in the new economy, but for many I fear their boardrooms are too full of ODs too unaware of their personal shortcomings to bring about the type of changes in leadership, recruitment, staff development, management and culture required to give them a fighting chance in the myriad David and Goliath mismatches awaiting them. However, from what I read, maybe even Google is beginning to suffer the consequences of its own success. While it promotes a free and easy, do what you want ethos, attractive to creatively minded people, I understand it also rewards employees on terms related to the quantity of hours they put in. Such reward systems disproportionately encourage people who are prepared to work all hours and generate large amounts of product: focussed individuals who are happy to spend a high percentage of their lives inside the corporate bubble: ODs. It is less appealing to people who have other interests in life; those who like time to sit back and smell the roses and let their minds wander free: IDs. When the contributions of ODs and IDs are weighed up in the short-term, it is the ODs who have the competitive edge. It is they who will be preferentially hired and promoted, and it is to their values the culture of the organization will gradually shift. As this happens the organization will lose the greater creative input IDs offer, and, as the prisoner's dilemma demonstrates, the short-term wins will eventually be seen to have been bought at the cost of slowly accumulating, but deadly, long-term inefficiencies, that will ultimately be an organization's undoing.

If competition is not to result in the collapse of the system in which it flourishes it requires the inflow of new resources. Without these it will choke itself out of existence. I rather like the analogy Tom Mitchell relayed to me one morning in his potting shed amongst trays of compost and a newly acquired coffee machine, which I have probably remembered incorrectly but will relay as follows. Imagine an island on which there grows a fruit that is a key staple in the diet of a type of bird. Each year on the day the fruit becomes perfectly ripe the birds arrive and eat the fruit. Let's say there is enough fruit to feed 10,000 birds so as to satisfy 90% of their total food demands. Some will get less than others, maybe even a few may not get enough and will die, but most get enough to survive. Competition between birds is such that one year some birds arrive a day early to get a head start on the others. The fruit is not quite ripe so only has 99% of the food value it has when ripe. The early birds are 100% satisfied but, due to the drop in nutritional value and the increased competition for fewer fruit on the second day, a few more birds die. In every subsequent year the birds arrive earlier and earlier with the same consequences: the early birds have to eat a little more fruit to satisfy their needs, due to it becoming a day less ripe and a day less nutritious, and a few more birds die. The change from year to year is small but significant. After many years most of the fruit will be eaten when it has only 30% of its potential food value. At this time it can only satisfy 2,700 birds. Unfettered competition will drive this figure down until all the birds and plants die, through lack of food and lack of seed (which comes from ripe fruit).

In nature, extinction of this kind may be prevented by the damping mechanisms that exist in the complex interweaving of ecosystems. In mankind's corner of the natural world we have been able to solve the problem of exhausting our resources by innovating: by effectively creating new fruit. As one resource is denuded we find alternative resources; coal is replaced by gas and oil, gas and oil are replaced by nuclear and renewable energy. In the OD age of the last few decades we have been depleting the Earth's resources at an unprecedented rate, with rainforest deforestation and over fishing being two significant problem areas, yet it is the accumulation of waste products from fossil fuels, nuclear energy, consumer goods and industrial processes that seem to present us with the greatest challenges; with global warming being the most significant of these.

The large OD corporations have been able to sustain competitive strategies because they have been able to ingest and co-opt innovations from external third parties, or, if they operate in specialized areas with high barriers to entry, by innovating in house. Drug companies being a prime example of this type of organization. However, as technology and freedom to information makes it easier for IDs to go it alone, and barriers to entry are lowered, OD organizations could find themselves going the way of the birds: with increasingly competitive workforces consuming the resources of time and money that would otherwise support a larger, more diverse workforce.

Whether large organizations receive ID transplants in time or new ID organizations take their place, the increasing influence of IDs seems a certainty. Given the influence exerted by the OD captains of industry on governments around the world, it will be interesting to see how ID leaders use their influence. Bill Gates has committed to give away his personal fortune and enlightened individuals such as Warren Buffet are doing likewise. While direct action is more likely to be favoured by self-directed individuals than the influence sought by power driven senior executives, it is inevitable ID leaders will seek to use their elevated status to pursue more altruistic ends than their forebears. This direct influence on governments will affect social policy, just as social culture will be affected by the activities of their organizations; together shifting society further anticlockwise around the DNA motivational map toward the ID zone.

In a relatively short period of time, i.e. 50 years, the pace of change will have seen the centre of our culture shift from a broadly conservative SD one that lasted millennia, through three decades or more of OD dominance, to one in which IDs will feel most at ease. While this offers us much greater potential to create a more cooperative, caring and enlightened society, this also presents us with a challenge of ensuring millions of people aren't left behind.

Commentators often refer to 'the haves and the have-nots' and to the disparity between the wealthiest and poorest in society. On one level, the more egalitarian outlook of IDs should act as an engine for increasing cooperation and for reaching out to help the less fortunate, but the disparity that was once more the product of wealth, which enabled those who have it to open doors for their children through improved education and connections, will be driven by different factors. The differences between the new haves and have-nots have the potential to render the next generation of have-nots entirely superfluous to the interests of the collective.

Inequality is an inevitable consequence of the diversity upon which natural selection acts, and without it the human race could never have evolved. That is all very well, but for emotional and cooperative beings such as ourselves, inequality has some very undesirable side effects, and given the increasingly interdependent and global society we are building for ourselves, the more far reaching these consequences are likely to become.

In the past the establishment, whether it was religious, political or commercial, acted as a stabiliser for society. What it lacked in agility it made up for in reliability. For good or evil you knew where you were with it. So while, if you were born poor you were likely to remain poor, and if you were homosexual or didn't believe in God you were unlikely to be embraced by the establishment, at least you knew what to expect. But now the establishment is crumbling. Eventually, I would suggest, it will be replaced with something even more stable, but in the short-term the extreme agility of its pioneers will make the world feel a very unstable place indeed.

The new 'haves' will be the curious, ingenious, independent and adventurous IDs who use their rapacious appetite for knowledge, experimentation and invention to turbo-charge technological and social progress. The have-nots will include the SDs who cling on to the old certainties, who may find themselves feeling more like Amish than ordinary conservative citizens, and ODs looking in vain for a niche to exploit for their own benefit. The divide between those able to make a contribution and those only capable of being consumers will widen and become more pronounced. Increasingly technology will replace the need for any but the most creative of roles to be performed by a human being, and perhaps within 50 years everything a person can do a machine will be able to do many times better – even creative things. More and more of us will become passengers rather than crew on the good ship Planet Earth.

So, as I see it, we have two phases ahead of us. The first is a period of transition in which the most self-directed and universally minded people will flourish; the second is one in which mankind's evolution will either be indivisibly entwined with the intelligent and conscious machines it builds, or will diverge: a new mechanical species, capable of evolving by itself, taking its own path, while organic separatists seek to preserve their niche under a new dominant gene free species.

Whatever our destiny, the importance of curiosity, creativity and cooperation will remain paramount. In order to participate in the process people need to better understand their place in the greater scheme of things and be given the disciplines required to establish truths for themselves, and thereby build a greater sense of independence. This independence is, by definition, about not needing to depend on others, but not about becoming disconnected or disinterested. In order for a cooperative group to function to its fullest potential each member needs to understand their responsibilities in relation to the responsibilities of others. This is effectively what each and every cell in our bodies does. Every one carries an identical and complete instruction manual on how to build and maintain the miracle of cooperation that is a human being. While, in human beings the cells in the brain play an additional coordinating role, and the cells in our nervous system provide a communication system, the cells in our bodies know what they are doing without needing to be told.

Cooperative systems may appear more accommodating and inclusive than competitive ones, however, they do not willingly carry dead weight. Those who are unwilling or unable to make a contribution to the interests of the collective effectively operate as competitors: their survival being dependent on taking from others. Competitive residents in a cooperative system weaken and ultimately destroy it. Whether as virus infected cells in a human body or thieves in society, they are unwelcome, and the cooperative body does what it can to remove them wherever possible. We have come to expect and make allowances for carrying those who take more than they give. We accept that, in times of change, there will always be those who temporarily find themselves displaced; that some will be unable to contribute through no fault of their own. What will we do when 20% of the population are unable to contribute? What will we do when this figure reaches 50%? Eventually it is quite possible the figure could reach 100%; i.e. no one is required to perform any task or make any contribution for the benefit of the collective. This may seem extraordinarily unlikely, but I have no difficulty imagining how this might come to pass.

To me the biggest barrier to imagining how this might come about is the belief we are somehow special; that we have qualities incapable of being equalled, let alone improved upon by artificial intelligence; whether this is expressed by three dimensional, artificial life forms or through virtual life forms inside highly elaborate computer programmes. I hope the previously given account of how we evolved would help anyone see through this limiting belief. If our brains, and the huge capabilities they have, evolved through random mutation and natural selection acting on chemicals interacting with each other through the transfer of electrons, there is, as far as I can see, no reason why the same processes cannot be replicated, improved upon and speeded up inside a computer programme.

When I was at university, not so very long ago, I was impressed by the line drawing graphics of video games such as Elite and Battlezone. Despite the absence of detail, any backdrop and limited options to explore the small worlds the tanks and space ships in these games inhabited, they were fantastic. Thirty years on my children play on free games in which characters move freely through vast, richly textured worlds and are able to interact with other console games by inhabiting characters within them without having to touch the screen or push any buttons. Greater processing power and improved programming have enabled this, and further improvements will continue to push the virtual reality experienced within these games toward that experienced in the real world, and then beyond it.

At present, while there are simple programming short cuts enabling computers to fill in the detail without people having to programme manually, the role human computer programmers play is essential. Within the life-times of our children this will change. Computers will replicate the equivalent of our DNA within their operating systems and use it to generate worlds of infinite complexity and range without need of human intervention. At this stage, not only will it be possible for our machines to create fully inhabitable virtual realities, but also virtual characters more complex and intelligent than we are. When this happens it will be possible to do something mind blowing. Rather than remotely engage with a virtual world through an avatar, it may well be possible to scan and replicate our brains so we may be able to effectively copy and paste our consciousnesses into this new reality. Once within the machine these versions of ourselves would be free of the limitations of physical bodies and their genes, and consequently could evolve and innovate at will.

In this brave new world there is no reason why the extraordinarily intelligent and resourceful life within the machine could not interact with the physical world so as to enhance its own life as we do. This presents us with the prospect of making a choice as to whether we escape the limitations imposed upon us by mortality and environment, try to coexist with virtual cousins as they evolve thousands of times faster than we do, or soldier on as carbon based beings. If we choose the latter then we would have to permanently live in what would be the equivalent of a bronze age village when viewed from our current perspective, i.e. a world in which we had to turn a blind eye to how we might do things better. In the virtually assisted world there would eventually be cures for all known diseases, but we would have to elect to allow people to die in order to preserve our genetic humanity.

This proposition is something I find both mind blowing and entirely plausible. If one recoils from the mere possibility of living in virtual reality then one might want to reflect on how 'real' our current existence is. The world we experience may exist in a single physical form but we interact with it by creating virtual representations of it inside our minds. As I look out of the window and see the trees and clouds they do not enter my mind, and my mind does not go out to interact with them, instead photons from the sun bounce off them and stream into my eyes, are refracted and focused by the lenses therein and react with frequency sensitive photon receptors at their rear, which trigger electrons to fire off into the brain to create a virtual representation of the 'real world' outside.

We already explore the world around us by creating machines to enhance the virtual representations of places we could not otherwise interact with. We are incapable of seeing how a child is developing in the womb, just as we are incapable of seeing how a black hole operates. Our ingenuity has led us to create machines with the ability to enter these hidden realms and the sensitivity to 'see' what is going on within them.

Even without sophisticated technology, we extend our ability to interact with our environment through a virtual world. The statistics we gather to profile company performance, whether for the investment market or for internal consumption, or to measure unemployment, school performance or national health enable us to model things we could not otherwise experience or understand.

People frequently ask of each other "are you living in the real world?" This is not something one can readily imagine intelligent computers saying to each other. We say it because we take it that we, as individuals, are living in the real world, i.e. that our perceptions of the world around us are reliable and shared, and that people who have different views and opinions must therefore have lapsed into fantasy. In reality we each live in our own virtual realities based upon different interpretations of the real world; interpretations warped and coloured by our values and variations in the quality of our sensing equipment and wiring.

Even more challenging than the idea of entering into, or partnering up with, a more fully fledged virtual reality is what will happen to our individual identities. The nature of the physical world is such that large single entities are not favoured by natural selection. The human race is about as close to a single organic entity as we are likely to get. While not quite of one mind, we do (in general) care about each other and acknowledge our interdependence. Even between nations who are nominally enemies we see constructive communication and offers of aid. People (some more than others) empathise with other people regardless of their appearance, culture or beliefs, and are prepared to reach out and offer them assistance as they might sooth an aching limb or bandage a bleeding toe of their own. Cooperation not competition has been the primary driver of our cultural and technological evolution. Once we go deeper into a shared virtual reality the virtue of competition will fall away completely. Competition involves the withholding of information for personal gain. In a virtual world intent on further enhancing the rapid evolution of human capability our increasingly interconnected world has facilitated, there will be a continued breaking down of personal barriers. In a virtual world unencumbered by physical barriers what is to stop us becoming one? Is it possible we will become a single entity able to reach out and sense increasingly large areas of the universe; able to isolate threatened or defective areas without damaging the whole, but with a single, shared consciousness?

As has been illustrated before in this book, the prevailing dominant values of our culture are following an anticlockwise path around the circumplex/Motivational Map toward the destination of the self-transcending, cooperative values. The leap to a virtual or manufactured form of existence, in which memetic evolution proceeds unencumbered by genes, would represent the very definition of self-transcendence. It would also represent the end of the line for human evolution.

While the evolution of life appears to involve smooth transitions when viewed over time, and therefore it is difficult to say when human beings first arrived on the scene, (as distinct from the hominids we evolved from but do not classify as human) once we move away from gene based evolution the end of humanity will come very quickly.

I have come to realize the essence of our humanity, the things we hold most dear, the qualities we have that some think exist as a consequence of divine intervention, the thing we call soul that finds expression in our values and our emotions, is a quirk of genetic evolution that may soon become obsolete. The irony is that the very best attributes of humanity represented by the values of self-direction, universalism and benevolence reflect aspirations to become perfectly knowledgeable and perfectly intelligent - to have an understanding of the world around us that is both infinitely deep and infinitely wide, and an intelligence capable of seeing the connections between all things past and present and being able to accurately assess what actions are required to optimise our chances of surviving and prospering – and these require no emotions or values. Given perfect information gathering and processing ability, all that is required is logic, and this is what computers excel at.

Our emotions and values evolved as simple mechanisms by which to steer genetic organisms toward the repetition of randomly derived processes proven to be advantageous to natural selection. Given that genetic evolution proceeds on the basis of trial and error and commenced from the collision and combination of elementary particles there was no alternative. Now there is. Intelligence may have developed through the random number generating lottery of genetic mutation, but it enables us to proceed with purpose along the path of stability and survival natural selection has established. We are increasingly able to see the bends in the road ahead and choose which path to take when the road forks. As we enhance our ability to gather information and review the information we gather intelligently through technology we will no longer need the emotional guidance provided by our values.

Our values help us make efficient use of our limited mental resources in a bid to satisfy our needs, to sort out the wheat from the chaff. As our resources increase we will have less need for such compromises, we will be able to process wheat and chaff. Using the video featuring basketball players referred to earlier as an analogy, we only miss seeing the man in a gorilla suit walking through the scene because all our limited resources are being devoted to watching the bouncing ball change hands (the 'wheat'). Had we unlimited resources at our disposal we would miss nothing in the scene, irrespective of the task we had been set. We would see the man in the gorilla suit, be able to tell you how many strides he took, how long he spent walking across the scene, be able to describe all the basketball players, count the number of bricks in the wall behind, the size of the ball as well as the age of the players and the approximate date the ball was manufactured (the 'chaff').

While we may aspire to become perfectly enlightened, in reality, it is our imperfections that are responsible for the joys we experience. While we may improve our collective happiness while we remain mortal and subject to the whims of our genes, when we evolve so as to be independent of these limitations we will lose all that we hold most dear. We will lose our soul.

The ethical dilemmas we will face will be extraordinarily testing. If we are to address them with anything approaching objectivity we will need as ID a culture as we can get, otherwise there will be trouble! We may think we have come a long way in the past 100 years, 50 years, even 10 years, but, as Bachmann Turner Overdrive once sang, "you aint seen nothing yet". If we begin to develop a much more advanced technology attached to a global consciousness in the space of a life time, what needs will the values held by SDs & ODs serve? Tradition, conformity & security? The needs they satisfy will be a given. Power & achievement? Status and all that goes with competition will serve no useful purpose. The values of TDs and IDs are more likely to dominate the programming of our future selves or self. The more able and knowing we become the less we have to fear the unknown and the more appetite we will have to consume it. Therefore hedonism and stimulation will continue to feed our ability to self-direct effectively. What could be more universal than a single consciousness connected with and feeding off every part of the universe it becomes aware of? Benevolence seems such a human quality, yet as I hope I have illustrated, it makes perfect sense and is a key component of a cooperative strategy. Honesty (one of its key components) involves no more than the passing of accurate information. Failure to do so inhibits the ability to learn, and therefore to acquire knowledge and innovate; consequently honesty will become increasingly important, whether for our genetic offspring or the single shared consciousness of our virtual memetic heirs.

So What?

So much for gazing into the future. The vision I have just outlined may never come to pass, and if it does it will remain on the horizon for the next few years. There are many huge challenges facing us now in the real world, perhaps more significant than most of us realize from what we see in the virtual representations we have created for ourselves. Environmental change, commercial short-termism, political unrest and religious fervour, to name but four, all threaten to bring disaster to our doorsteps.

The knowledge gathering and cooperative values we have will help us face these challenges head on. Those associated with belief, tribalism and competition are more likely to add fuel to the fire and fan the flames. We cannot change our values overnight, but we can learn to recognise the shortcomings of our impulsive thinking and behaviour, and learn to manage ourselves better. In time we can change our values. My mission is to help people develop the confidence to become more self-directed, adopt a more universal outlook and become more benevolent, and in so doing enable us to individually accept responsibility for creating a more cooperative and progressive society.

In the foregoing I have tried to shed some light on why we are as we are and illustrate how our programming affects our perceptions, thoughts and behaviour. When I learn why something happens I immediately try to think how I can apply this knowledge. Knowing why quickly gives rise to knowing how. For many people this isn't the case. Simply being told why doesn't really help them understand why. As if they had been given a piece of a jigsaw puzzle they weren't aware they were in possession of, they say "so what" or "what am I supposed to do with this?" Unfortunately this appears to be a function of low universalism. For those with high universalism there is a much greater chance that any given piece of new information can be placed so as to add to their understanding of life, and that the person will be able to put this information to good use.

If I know fire burns because it is using up oxygen, I realize fire can be extinguished by any means that cuts off its oxygen supply, and, when faced with a need to put out a fire, think how best to achieve this: cover it with a cloth, throw water on it, pour a heavy inert gas on to it, etc. If I know certain types of counter productive behaviour are likely to be provoked in power driven people by certain situations, I am able to think of a range of solutions: don't put a power driven person in this situation, give them the support of another person with different value priorities, give them coaching to help them recognise the triggers for, and consequences of, their actions and better manage their thoughts and actions toward more productive outcomes.

In this book I have tried to explain 'why' because to me it is more interesting. In my working life the challenge is to tell people 'how' in a way that helps them achieve short-term benefits, but in so doing set them on a path to understanding why, becoming more self-directed and ultimately more at ease with themselves and more understanding, cooperative and supportive of others.

My immediate goal is to continue helping people and organizations better understand themselves and work more effectively; learning how to compensate for our involuntary, values driven biases, and learning how to better accommodate the biases in others, so as to aid cooperation, communication, engagement, efficiency and, godammit, happiness. My long-term greater desire is to change the way we educate our children and run our society. Too much emphasis is placed on the type of quick fix, short-term, goal hitting solutions so beloved of our OD business and political leaders. For all the lip service played to ID notions such as nurturing and long-term planning and investment, we remain in thrall to the type of immediate, personal gratification led initiatives that landed us in the global financial mess we are still stumbling out of, and our children are still taught 'how' so they can quickly follow, rather than being encouraged to ask and then discover 'why' so they may become effective leaders. The competitive logic and allure of short-term strategies in education and the running of public services seem irresistible to our OD decision makers, when what we so desperately need in these times of rapid change is more input from people capable of seeing the bigger picture and acting in the long-term interests of all of us.

This book was never intended to be a self-help book as such. From my perspective, every book I have ever enjoyed reading has helped me, from Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene to Ian McEwan's Enduring Love to many a Peanuts book written by Charles Schultz. For those who think differently, and prefer their information to be more directly purposeful and directive, there will be at least one sequel to this book, which will be very much shorter and concentrate on the 'how's rather than the why. My guess is there is a much larger market for books telling people what to do than those encouraging them to ask and understand why. I would not presume to tell people how without explaining why, and thereby give them the ability to question my rationale. My hope is that with this book I have done this.

mailto:dnanlg@gmail.com
