The Genetic Importance of Heretics

I’ve been thinking about thinking, specifically “group think” or the impetus to align your own personal worldview and ideology with that of the greater community. No one wants to be a weirdo. We punish weirdos, ostracize them. In the past they may have been labeled as heretics or witches, drowned or burned alive.

There must be an evolutionary benefit to conformity. It could hardly have been beneficial for an ancient hunter-gatherer to constantly be at odds with the group. If survival is contingent on cooperation, then it’s possible that “fitting in” may have been (and continue to be) a matter of life and death.

We can perhaps liken individual ideas to genes, and overall, coherent ideologies to something like a genetic makeup or genotype. Certain genotypes work best for certain environments, and natural selection molds the genotypes of specific populations in accordance with their circumstances. Each individual organism has its own distinct genotype, of course, but through the pressures of natural selection broad similarities specific to local selective pressures arise within the group. Deviation from the norm is punished with a loss of biological fitness.

But could deviant genotypes have a purpose? Evolution and adaptation is fueled by mutation, after all. Without genetic variation, a population lacks the flexibility to adapt to new environmental situations and pressures. An individual with a “heretical” genome may suffer from a loss of fitness in the present context, but may hold the genetic key to the population’s future survival as selective pressures change. It may be that both the forces of normalization and deviation (natural selection and random mutation) are necessary for the long-term survival of a species.

“Free thinkers”, “heretics”, “beatniks”, weirdos”: these are the titles we give to those with mutated intellectual genomes, to those whose ideas are deviant from the norm. They may suffer ostracization from their community, or an inability to adapt to their societies- they take a hit to their evolutionary fitness. But when the old ideas and perspectives become outdated, harmful or even dangerous, it is the deviants who can provide us with the intellectual keys to our continued collective survival.

Of course not all mutations are created equal. Some provide an evolutionary advantage, others are quite literally cancer. There’s a difference between a hippy and a Nazi and the distinction is of vital importance to our society’s health. Still, with the world having transformed so completely in such a short amount of time (from a feudal, agrarian world to an industrial and capitalist society and into the age of globalization) maybe it is time to incorporate the deviant genes of (some) of the world’s weirdos into our intellectual genomes and adapt to meet the changing pressures of existence.