But our lives are not as simple as that, because we all have sticking points. This is a difficult subject, and I do not pretend I have more than a superficial knowledge of it; but it has such an important influence on human behaviour that it cannot be ignored. No attempt to provide a rational description of human behaviour would be adequate, without acknowledging and recognising its ubiquitous power.
In Shakespeare’s Richard III, the Duke of Buckingham, having entered shamelessly into Richard’s many schemes and murders, draws the line at murdering the Princes in the Tower. He cannot bring himself to do it. His rather tardy qualms of conscience cost him his life. But sticking points are not always matters of conscience; they may be a reluctance to countenance loss of control. For instance, it may take the form of a refusal to entertain physical risks; not because one is afraid to face the risks involved, but because one knows instinctively that those in charge are not competent to cope with the risks involved. One knows there would probably be a complete loss of control. Sticking points range from Totem Posts, or shibboleths, which one dare not cross, to living relationships which one absolutely refuses to betray. You see it in children trying to break free from “home” in order to marry; they have almost to quarrel with their long-suffering parents in order to do it. It is like learning to swim, and always wanting to keep a foot on the bottom; whereas it is one of the bonuses of advocacy that you must launch out into the deep. Sometimes they take the form of a lack of confidence in one’s ability to make important decisions; but they are still there even when one has this confidence. I suppose the two extremes of confidence are when one is filled with the spirit of God, or when one is willing to become diabolical; but in the first case there is the refusal to betray even in Gethsemane, and in the second the threat at any moment of an unwelcome twinge of conscience, such as Buckingham had. You never escape them.
But genes are unaware of sticking points; and one attraction of a theory of human behaviour based on the influence or rule of genes, is that it bypasses this difficult and most unpredictable facet of human character. When one reads of the quarrels between sects of the evolutionary church, the Saltationists versus the Punctuationists, the Cladists versus the Phyleticists, one is reminded of the interminable arguments in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans about circumcision and uncircumcision. These arguments were crucial to people at the time; but nowadays, if one is not bored stiff, one is inclined just to laugh. It is much the same with Evolution; we all, or most of us, accept that star-dust has evolved into Us! And the minute aspects of every twist and turn on the journey are frankly not all that important.