What follows are assumptions based on my understanding of
epigenetics.  To the best of my knowledge, they do not have, at
this point in time, a basis in science.  I do not know if they’ll
ever be (in whole or in part) substantiated; they are, however,
in my humble opinion, thought-provoking.

Being Ready

We’ve often heard this question:  Is he/she ready (or not)
to assume more responsibilities?

Let’s consider the following scenario.  A job has opened up
in a bank requiring a lot of travel and dealing with foreign
organizations.  The candidate must be worldly, smart, mature, and
have excellent judgment.  Top management, the president and 6
vice-presidents, are meeting to decide who should be promoted.
They tentatively decide on Fred.  Fred is 46, single, savvy,
well-educated, has travelled a lot, speaks 4 languages, and has
always exercised good judgment.  In other words, the ideal
person.  Yet, the meeting drags on, and the decision is
postponed.

When they meet again, one of the vice-presidents, Cedric,
sums up their concerns:  “Fred may be a perfect fit in every way,
but I don’t think he is ready for such a sensitive post.”
Ultimately, they promote another person.  Since nobody (except
management) knew about this position, there are no hurt feelings.

The question now is:  What did Cedric mean by “not ready?”
Our performance at work depends upon a host of factors.  For
example, education, intelligence, dependability, motivation,
judgment, initiative, and so on.  These are all tangible
elements, but there is an intangible dimension which makes us
trust, or not trust, a person to do a certain task.  We call it
instinct, or perhaps intuition, and in my opinion, it is based on
epigenetics!

Just as we physically evolve epigenetically, so does our
brain.  Our brain continually makes deposits in our epigenetics
bank account.  As time goes on, we get wealthier, again
epigenetically speaking.  Some of us are more diligent savers and
will have a sizable balance in the account over time.  The richer
we are epigenetically, the more intuitive we become.

Let’s go back to my example and try to explain it based on
the above.  Management felt that Fred was missing “something.”
And they could never spell it out, but their intuition (specially
Cedric) told them that Fred was not their man.

Intuition has always been a mysterious concept.  The ghost
in our brain.  It can’t be taught in university, or indeed in the
school of life.  Then what exactly is it?  I suggest that it
depends on the development of enough epigenes.  Some of us are
better in accumulating these epigenes and are therefore more
intuitive.  Women are better than men since they are acknowledged
as the intuitive sex.

While this explanation may appear far-fetched, I would like
to think that it is not totally impossible.

Being ready is too important a concept to leave it at that.
I will therefore talk of two more phenomena.

Social progress is the kind of progress that makes us more
civilized.  As early as the ’50s, there was no such thing as free
medical care, or institutions to protect children from abuse.
Today, they are common currency in advanced countries.  What
brought the changes?  Epigenetically we have gradually progressed
and we have passed that on to subsequent generations.  Today, we
can no longer stomach child abuse nor can we deny medical care to
a sick person because she has no money to pay for it.

Over the past 40 years, many nations have embraced
democracy.  A large part of the globe, however, has autocratic
governments.  When will they join us?  Not for the foreseeable
future.  They are not ready for democracy.  And no amount of
pleading or military might can change that.

While we (in the Western World) are governed by democratic
regimes, our democracies are still rife with corruption, deceit,
undemocratic shortcuts, abuse of power, political sleaze, and the
list goes on.  Progress will happen by epigenetics increments
passed on from one generation to the next.  Future generations
will look upon our present “advanced” governments as downright
primitive!

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