Evolution by natural selection has two sides—on one it creates new life forms; on the other, it destroys them all. It has ruled our species since the beginning. It is mindless, purposeless, relentless, merciless and amoral—it is a force of nature. It has produced two living varieties of humankind who instinctively follow their evolved natures: democrati who are timid and altruistic, and tyranni who are aggressive and selfish. Democrati naturally work for the common good—they act rationally. Tyranni naturally work against the common good—they act irrationally.

The cycle of human history: Tyranni naturally, aggressively push forward to take power. Democrati naturally, timidly step back to let them pass. Tyranni naturally use that power to indulge their selfish urges. Innocents (tyranni and democrati alike) suffer and die unnecessarily. A great commotion occurs—from elections to wars.
Tyranni-outs seize power from tyranni-ins. Innocents continue to suffer, but under new rulers. And the cycle renews.

Democrati will suffer much before they push back. Now, more than ever, is the time for democrati to push back—hard. The tool that will add the necessary power to that push is evolution by intellection. The Athenians formalized this process for managing the evolution of civilization. It has the following characteristics:

• The process is not a natural one, it is a tool created by humans for their use. It depends on the sustained, cooperative, and rational acts of humankind. It depends especially on the most important of our intellectual gifts: the power to make something out of nothing but an idea.
• The process is rational and depends on facts.
• The process sets goals and works to achieve them.
• The process is not self-renewing. It is simply a tool that is useful only when humans pick it up and apply it to the problems of life.
• The process works for the common good. It gives our species the best chance of building a better world for us all: tyranni and democrati.
• The process requires that we apply our intellects to gain control of evolution by natural selection. This effort has already begun but has a long, long way to go. At the very least we must fight to mitigate or cancel altogether the undesirable effects of evolution by natural selection and genetic variation.
• The challenges facing our species are so great that it will take our combined intellectual power to overcome them. Our STEM institutions and our citizens must work closely together to apply our intellects in rational, benevolent, and forward-looking ways.
• Tyranni will gain power and so our institutions must be organized to keep tyranni from doing harm.
• Our fate is not planned or guided by any friendly power, we must make our own plans, we must be our own guides, and we must be our own friends. We are all in this thing together.
• Our future as a species depends on wisely applying our collective intellectual power to answer four eternal questions:

Where do we stand?
How did we get here?
Where do we want to go?
How do we get there from here?

By applying this new form of evolution to all our major institutions we can transform our lives. Tyranni disregard facts that are contrary to their beliefs or that interfere with indulging their selfish, unthinking urges. This tyranno-propensity becomes dangerous when tyranni gain power of the kind that flows from control of a government or a large corporation or religion. It is happening every day in our society. But evolution by intellection requires that we use our minds. By organizing government and other large, important institutions so that their leaders make decisions rationally and in pursuit of the common good, we will create a better America.

Our system of government, never a democracy but rather a version of the Roman republic, allows men like Trump, tyranni, to get and hold transformative power. Democracies, well, the only one in history, did not allow such a concentration of power.

Now that we are faced with the destruction of our civilization, we must transform our system of government that will allow us to concentrate our resources on saving us from ourselves. Our present system will not serve that purpose.

Media people have the terrible burden of having to respond to Drumpf on a daily/weekly basis. This leads to mistakes. It also, inevitably, leads to a tendency to normalize him and to minimize the appalling stupidity and evil of what he has said and done in weeks/months/years past.

There is pressure to play nice.

I am good friends with a talented and experienced “pundit” who has explained to me the terrible punishment meted out to reporters who have offended the White House. You are shunned. You don’t get phone calls returned, It becomes hard to do your job.

I am also old friends with a longtime Establishment foreign policy figure whose name shows up in association with the Trump administration. I think he is 1) attracted to the possibilities for restructuring the global map along more comforting, “rational” lines, 2) interested in the large amounts of money floating around, and 3) desperate to stay relevant as he enters his eighth decade.

It is bad form to say this, I know, but I just stand on the sidelines, praying that the good guys will win…eventually.

The failure of the pundits to respond to this just makes so clear how they have become used to legitimizing the already-powerful, so that they don’t know what to do when someone actually bad is in power. I read a headline from Thomas Friedman the other day that read, “What Trump is doing is not O.K.” Hardly resistance.

If they knew any better (perhaps by reading Masha Gessen), they would know the rules of surviving an autocracy include “Don’t be taken in by small signs of normality”.