Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Genes, Time, Immortality, and Consciousness

Deepak Chopra discusses genes and DNA with Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, Harvard neuroscientis/geneticist.



So I guess consciousness is encoded in the DNA too. Even though the body dies, the genetic message is passes on to the next generation with some recombinations from mom genes and dad genes. Human beings used to be short-lived and had children as soon as we were biologically able to do so. Now it seems like the more educated want less kids (if any) while those without the opportunity or desire to pursue a lot of schooling continue to have many children. Some people say that intelligence is being negatively selected. That doesn't really mean anything because the way it's going (hopefully), more education will become available to more people in the world, so in 30 years maybe university education will be free to everybody in the world. Also, super-smart parents don't necessarily always produce smarter kids (although if they have lots of children than the chances of some of them being super smart might be quite high).

I'm wondering if the DNA that drives some people to keep pursuing further education, to be obsessed with wellness (exercise, yoga, cleansing, life balance, meditation etc) have genes that are so selfish they just want to keep improving themselves and live on forever rather than recombine into the next generation? What I mean is, raising children takes time away from continuous improvement and education of the parent, so these people have lower desire to have kids?

What I'm speculating is totally unscientific (ie. no supporting evidence). I'm just curious because I find it fascinating that I have all these weird thoughts while a lot of people I know just ponder about what they're going to do the next day. If I can have less of these weird thoughts, I might be more productive at work. I do find some yogis with fascinating thoughts too though, and that makes me happy I'm not the only weirdo out there :) I really celebrate those who think differently from the norm.

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