Peter Smith

Evolution explained

Evolutionary politics

We must have all now read of that experiment, inspired by actor Colin Firth, at the University College London. A scanning of 90 students’ brains uncovered a correlation between being left and right wing and the size of particular parts of the brain. Firth was reported as saying that he just wanted to find out what was biologically wrong with people who didn’t agree with him. No prizes for guessing which way the actor leans.

While I am fairly confident that the theory will turn out to be as credible as the Piltdown Man; it is an interesting piece of evolutionary trivia to mess around with.

As I understand it, evolutionists believe that humanoids (for want of a scientific term) and apes both developed from an earlier creature; a common ancestor. God knows, if you will pardon the expression, what awful creatures were ancestral to the ancestor.

Was this ancestor more apish than an ape or less apish? I don’t know. Anyway obviously one day in the jungle by sheer chance creatures more ape-like than the ancestor began to be born and with certain advantages – better tree climbers perhaps. Through time, one way or another, these ape-like creatures killed off the ancestors in the jungle.

Separately and somewhere elsewhere, where there was no jungle perhaps, the ancestors started giving birth to smoother less hirsute creatures with shorter arms; again by sheer chance. I don’t know what advantages they had. Perhaps they were better looking and sought each other out, while the ugly ancestors were turned off by each other when they compared themselves to their more attractive cousins. We can only speculate. In any event, we evolved and the ancestors died off. Of course, while this was happening, many thousands of mutant unfortunate creatures developed by sheer chance as you would expect. These quickly died off and their bones were reduced to nothing. The less said about them the better. We don’t know what they looked like. Then again, who would want to?

That explains scientifically how humans evolved. And if you think that sounds fanciful well speak to Richard Dawkins. What it doesn’t explain is why left-thinking and right-thinking humans evolved side by side. In order to explain that, timing, speciation and geographical separation have to be injected into the picture. (Hope my high powered evolutionary science isn’t losing you at this stage.)

In the beginning only right wingers evolved. That explains why Firth vicariously found that right wingers had a more pronounced amygdala. Because this is a primitive part of the brain associated with emotion. By sheer chance at some point people began to emerge with a smaller amygdala and less emotion. Suspecting them of being sociopaths, the “Amygdala tribe” banished them. However, sociopathic or not, they were fecund and grew in number. And horror, because they lacked emotional sensitivity they regularly crept among the Amygdala tribe to steal from them and share the spoils among their own tribe.

The only way the Amygdala could protect their property was to use clubs. They used to club the intruders over the head exactly where the anterior cingulate is located; at the front of the brain. Over time, only those with thicker anterior cingulates survived to have offspring. Evolution took its course. In other words, only the thickest of those who we now know as left wingers survived. And because they reaped without sowing, the grasping and indolent genes gradually predominated until the fully-fledged left winger of today emerged.

In modern times, left wingers no longer creep among the right-wing Amygdala trying to steal from them. These days they do it openly and much more successfully using the government to do their dirty work. It is not known at this stage how this will continue to mould evolution.

This all explains why right wingers and left wingers have the brains that they do. It doesn’t explain green brains because they must be different again; and distinctly so. Kevin Andrews in a masterly article in the current issue of Quadrant (“The Greens’ Agenda, In Their Own Words”) lays bare the Greens’ radical agenda.

He provides, in my view, irrefutable evidence that Greens are a species apart. So we have right-wing brained people, left-wing brained people and, to cap it all, green-brained people. Where did the green-brained people come from? Here I think even the undisprovable marvels of evolution would be hard put to explain it. Even the vivid imaginations of evolutionary biologists would be tested. Certainly we now need Firth to go forth and see to it that Bob Brown’s brain and other green brains are examined. Short of Firth coming up with something, we might have to turn to outer space and to people like Erich von Daniken to find the answers. Little green men have long been reputed as coming from Mars. There might be something in this after all.

As conclusive evidence, note the club in the hand of the fourth hominid in line, used by the Amygdala tribe to beat the heads of the “left-wing” intruders.

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