Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Theory of Knowledge - Genetic Disease, Physiognomy and Ego

As you know one of the main subjects that is tackled by the Hermetic Lessons is Physiognomy (updated by genetics and biopsychology) and a few things have come up recently that I wanted to post a little thought experiment about.



I was reading this article on facial recognition technology being used to help diagnose the chance of acquiring/having a genetic disease at the same time I was going through my fb friends and noticed that of my friends who had disabled children all had ended up with someone who looked similar to them - in one pair, who have a child with Angelman's Syndrome, both of the parents have ''proto'' Angelman features which to my mind indicates the genetic disease lurking beneath the surface - they are already on an Angelman ''spectrum''.

We know from biopsychology that chemical attraction tends to try and link you to someone with as opposite an immune system as possible in order to increase the survival-ability of the offspring* but we also know that the distortions in the ego caused by modern society and the confusion of the senses due to makeup, perfumes, contraception etc can often lead people away from it in other random directions or perhaps the worst possibility, towards ''themselves''.

So:

- People who are attracted to people who look very much like themselves normally have a positive self-regard often to the extremes of narcissism, this why they want to form relationships/get married to themselves or ''a mirror''

- The more similar you are in looks to a person the more likely you are to generate genetic disease because you are increasing the chance of two recessive alleles meeting

Obviously there are other ways that genetic disease can be acquired - radiation, etc - and we would fall short of suggesting the egoist in question is being ''punished'' by this but its an interesting idea to me.

Working out how many successful shags were necessary to create me from the 1400s rapidly becomes a scary number especially when you compare it to population.  Work it out.  Being kind here, lets just say that our genetic backgrounds are full of kissing cousins - so what could be happening... in these cases... could be a kind of genetic timetravelling incest thing (?) as opposed to pure Narcissism.  But who knows?  Is this idea insane?  Let me know!

*Although that is no certainty of it increasing the survival-ability of the relationship!