Saturday, May 1, 2010 - Clayton Lake State Park, Clayton NM
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Dawn at Clayton Lake, Clayton Lake State Park, Clayton NM, May 2, 2010
I like this park - a lot. Even if there is no Verizon cell or internet service. Even in the light of the internet withdrawal I'm suffering. This is a very attractive, quiet park. There is some good walks - over the dam or at the other extreme way down through the rocks and pastures to the upstream inlet end of the lake. There's even a bunch of huge fossil dinosaur footprints to muse over.
I'll be back. Indeed I think I'll stay tomorrow and extend my just-passing-through a bit. Yeah. This sure beats run-down Tucumcari or a Walmart somewhere.
Night camp
Site ?? - Clayton Lake State Park, Clayton NM
- Verizon cell phone service - none
- Verizon EVDO service - none
- Go to Clayton Lake State Park website
- Locate Clayton Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Genetic Determinism and Human Nature
The "implication" that seems to worry people the most is so-called genetic determinism - the notion that if human nature was shaped by evolution, then it's fixed and we're simply stuck with it; there's nothing we can do about it. We can never change the world to be the way we want; we can never institute fairer societies - policy-making and politics are pointless.
Now, that's a complete misunderstanding. It doesn't distinguish between human nature - our evolved psychology - and the behavior that results from it. Certainly, human nature is fixed. It's universal and unchanging, common to every baby that's born, down through the history of our species.But human behavior, which is generated by that nature, is endlessly variable and diverse. After all, fixed rules can give rise to an inexhaustible range of outcomes. Natural selection equipped us with the fixed rules - the rules that constitute our human nature. And it designed those rules to generate behavior that's sensitive to the environment. So the answer to genetic determinism is simple. If you want to change behavior, just change the environment.