The Godfather, genes style

Dawkins has painted an awsome picture so far of the kill or be killed world of the genes. Alleles, rivals, compete for spots to replicate. And Dawkins' fascination with intricacy and interworkings has created an explanation that works from the microcosm to the macrocosm. The key is the refocusing. While we focus on us, and birds and plants and fish and on the different entities of the world as possibly the purpose, or even inhabitants, as the center of life if you will, Dawkins brings the focus to the genes. This is a really interesting and cool perspective shift, that gives the genes all these intentions and just leaves the different species of the world as throw away objects like coats you bought at walmart. Like a toy you play with too much and it breaks. Or even like computers are for us, we constantly upgrade them and throw away the defunct outdated ones. That's how genes treat our bodies.

In doing this it's like Dawkins has added a new property to the world as a true out there reality. He calls it "moving towards stability" but really it's more like "competition." In Dawkins world competition is like a real out there in the world principle. The constant struggle of existence as a force, like gravity and magnetism. This certainly could be true too. I mean even us as a species (or at least I) get an incredible thrill from competition. Sports are incredibly enjoyable because of the possibilities being reduced to 2: win or lose. And we get excited when we see the best competitors at any given sport, well at least sports fans do. But these are situations where we can feel competitiveness. The only problem I have with competition as a real force is it has a lot of subjective properites. It seems like the human brain pattern and Dawkins' poetic account of struggle are adding properties of our interpretation. Though on the other hand it is probably impossible to disentangle "what is truly there and happening" from "what is added by our interpretation." Seperating the two would be like trying to seperate cream from coffee after you've poured it in, or maybe even the cofee ingredients from the water in the coffee drink itself.

One more thing, Dawkins deffinition of gene is good, but is almost too flexible. I'm not totally comfortable with it. It is extremely fuzzy on distinction. Dawkins explains that a gene is a pattern in the DNA that lasts for generations. He gives lots of examples to explain it but overall it ends up being this semi-vague deffinition. Truthfully you have to give him credit because of the way DNA works genes are not a cut and dry matter. But if they are the answer he claims them to be, you'd think they might have more distinction. I mean, is a gene as small as a two chain pattern? That wouldn't seem very useful. But he does say that when plants and animals do non-sexual reproduction that a chromosome is pretty much synonymous with a gene. It's verging on that line of the gene is a pattern in the DNA that lasts for generations that works for him. Because otherwise the gene almost explains itself away, like it's a fake arbitrary unit. Then how could it be so selfish? But on the otherhand, the amount of DNA preserved every time it is copied is utterly astonishing and points towards some kind of information pattern. Considering every human is 99.9 something percent alike genetically. and apes are like 98 percent the same genetically as us.

I guess I'm mostly splitting hairs, I'm still uneasy with his deffinition, but I'll take it for the sake of his argument. I'm looking forward to see what comes next.