Evolution Within the Social Organism

     Individuals evolve within an environment. Darwin proposed that the individuals of a species compete for resources within an environment, with more fit individuals surviving and passing their genes on to their offspring. This model assumes that the environment is essentially passive, that it does not respond to genetic changes that occur as the individuals evolve. While the environment does change, it does not suppress genetic characteristics directly. It is important to be clear about the distinction being made here. There is a feedback effect within the Darwin model that allows for the evolution of a species to affect the environment. If a species evolves that affects the amount of water in the environment, the environment changes and the evolution of other species will be affected by that change in the environment. But the environment does not directly compare one individual to another and suppress one individual in favor of another without giving the individuals a chance to compete, exercise its genetic components. In this sense, the environment is passive even though it is in constant flux.
      If the environment directly suppresses change, if it is an active agent which compares individuals against a template and suppresses individuals who deviate from the template, then the individuals are no longer evolving according to Darwinian evolutionary principles. Our language includes the concept of "hostile environment" which would seem to include agency of the kind I am talking about. However, we don't assume that the environment has the sort computational process that measures and suppresses deviation from a template.
    I am proposing that a large portion of evolution takes place within an environment that consists of Social Organisms. Evolution of individuals is more dependent on the non-passive, computational environment of S-ORGs than Darwinian evolution allows for. I believe that this explains many of the problems with evolutionary theory. My theory states that the individual evolves within the environment of the Social Organism in much the same way as the cells of the human body evolve within the environment of the human body. The human body depends on the functions of cells and has an elaborate mechanism to destroy cells that deviate from a fixed template. A S-ORG, depending on its own evolved characteristics, works to eliminate variance within the individuals that comprise the S-ORG. It is this process that drives the phenomena we call conformity.
     There are many striking parallels between S-ORGs and individual life forms, but we'll put those discussions off to another post. However, one prediction that arises from this premise is that S-ORGs will generally slow down the rate of evolutionary change for the individuals that make up the S-ORG. In order to discuss this prediction, we need to discuss several things, not the least of which is the question of what is evolutionary change for Social Organisms and how have S-ORGs evolved.