Physiognomy and Genetic Disease

My colleague's grandfather worked on the understanding that if you carry one recessive gene for sickle cell anemia you won't have the genetic disease but you will have a certain extra resistance to malaria.  Being a carrier here confers the advantage and it lead me to wonder what advantages being a carrier of other genetic diseases brings and also what advantages those who are unfortunate enough to have a genetic disease are hiding?  For instance an individual high in clotting factors in their blood is considered diseased because of a higher chance of thrombosis but would it have been an advantage in our wilderness evolution to not bleed out as quickly as others?

THE PRISONER

I have noticed that people who store fat easily around their abdomen along with diabetics and people with abdominal epilepsy tend to be dreamers with extremely powerful abilities to imagine and visualise, and who are happy with their own company.  This ability to dream and fantasise often results in them not taking too much exercise and thus compounds their issues with fat storage.

People don't really discuss or compare the traits of their consciousness very often but things like memory, visualization, creativity, reflexes, taste, etc have genetic bases and those bases could rest in the same place as what we typically call genetic diseases.  Unless I am in astral trance my imagination tends to be hazy at best and I read stories very textually but for the imagineers I mentioned above, worlds explode into life in their inner eyes.

People tend to focus on the traits that they consider to be their disadvantages - fat storage, skin problems, depression, metabolism issues, etc - and rarely consider the advantages that come along with them or that they may be interwoven.  Your character defines your suffering but it also defines your special powers.  This character is the root character contained in the genes that you carry and it naturally wears a mask, a normal part of functioning consciousness but only healthy when it is in line with the roots. When people despise their own body, etc, or are mocked by others the ego mask gains strength from the fear, guilt, anxiety and ends up becoming diseased with self-loathing, etc.  The extremes of this are seen in cosmetic surgery*.

The choice with any disease we bear is how we relate to it.  Do we seek to mollify its excesses - i.e. eat less and exercise more if we are prone to store fat or pro-active relaxation for those of us plagued by stress-related skin or bowel conditions?  How far do we strive in that direction? If I am naturally a plump master dreamer will my vigourous course of exercise reduce the time I have to create worlds on the astral plane? What if your special powers of creativity, or athleticism, or lovemaking, or imagination, come at the price of a cancer gene or latent paranoid-schizophrenia?  What if , in an effort to cure or reduce the effect of genetic disease, we cure or reduce our special powers?

Would you rather be a suffering somebody or a smiling nobody?



*I am not against all cosmetic surgery, some of it is clearly unnecessary and excessive.