Monthly Archives: April 2023

The digital environment, argues Reading Rooms Rushell Clarke, is Darwinist: its evolve-or-die. Heres Clarkes field guide to continuous evolution.

In todays fast-paced, ever-evolving world, digital transformation is no longer just a buzzword. Its business critical. Organizations that remain rooted in outdated practices, relying on aging systems, are at risk of falling behind. Meanwhile, those who embrace change can adapt quickly and soar to new heights.

Welcome to the age of the future-fit phenomenon, where agility, adaptability and foresight are key to success.

Being future-fit trumps being future-ready. While future-ready tech may seem sufficient for now, it can limit organizations when new innovations emerge. At Reading Room, we champion a future-fit approach, crafting tech solutions designed for continual optimization and improvement as technology and user expectations advance.

A future-fit mindset empowers businesses to stay ahead of the curve, fostering innovation and growth. Instead of relying on static solutions, we help build dynamic digital ecosystems that adapt to the evolving technological landscape. This cultivates a culture of continuous improvement, setting your organization up for long-term success.

Being future-fit is more than just having cutting-edge technology; its about embracing change and championing ongoing optimization. This requires a curious and empathetic approach that acknowledges the challenges of change while embracing the opportunities it presents.

Its essential to invest in your organization's digital infrastructure, but its equally important to empower your team with the skills, mindsets, and resources to navigate ongoing change. By cultivating a workforce that's agile, adaptable, and ready for whatever the future holds, youll be better equipped to capitalize on emerging trends.

To thrive today, organizations must adopt a digital-first mindset. This means prioritizing digital channels, embracing digital tools, and leveraging data to create meaningful customer experiences. By putting digital at the heart of your operations, you'll stay ahead of the curve.

A digital-first doctrine empowers businesses to be proactive in addressing customer needs and staying relevant in a rapidly changing landscape. Through strategic investments in technology and innovation, you can unlock new efficiencies, optimize processes, and deliver more personalized experiences to your customers. The result? Increased customer satisfaction, stronger brand loyalty, and, ultimately, greater resilience and profitability.

For example, our digital-first work with UK Coaching delivered a 50% increase in web visits, a 14% increase in membership subscriptions, and a 3760% increase in e-learning courses from the previous year.

Embarking on a digital transformation journey can be daunting, but it needn't be an insurmountable challenge. With the right guidance and support, your organization can thrive, now and in the future.

First, its crucial to have a clear vision of digital objectives that are aligned to support broader business objectives and a roadmap to guide your transformation journey. This involves setting achievable goals, identifying potential roadblocks, and establishing metrics to measure progress. With a well-defined plan, you can ensure that your organization stays on track and maintains momentum throughout the change process.

Secondly, its important to foster a culture of experimentation and learning. Encourage your team to embrace new ideas, question the status quo, and take calculated risks. By creating an environment where innovation is rewarded, youll foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Finally, dont be afraid to ask for help. Progressing through your digital journey can be complex and overwhelming, but you dont have to go it alone. Partnering with digital transformation experts can provide the knowledge, skill, resources and support needed to guide your organization through the intricacies of change, from assessing your digital maturity to implementing cutting-edge solutions.

The journey to becoming a future-fit organization is not without challenges, but the rewards are well worth the effort. By embracing agility, adopting a digital-first mindset, and seeking the right future-fit guidance, your organization can digitally evolve and emerge as a leader. The key is to approach transformation with curiosity, empathy, and a forward-thinking attitude, equipping your team with the tools and mindset they need to adapt and thrive.

The digital landscape will continue to change, presenting challenges and opportunities along the way. By staying agile, adaptable and prepared for the technological advancements that shape our future, your organization will be well-positioned to seize new opportunities and achieve long-term success.

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Digital Darwinism: How To Build Future-fit Foundations For Business ... - The Drum

Photo: Kate Winslet, by GabboT, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Recently, theWall Street Journalreported that Kate Winslet, and other actors, for the sake of the newest frontier in blockbuster moviemaking are learning how to hold their breath underwater for several minutes.

Around the same time the websiteScience Dailyhighlighted an article fromCurrent Biologythat expounded on how crocs can go hours without air, thus blowing Miss Winslets impressive feat seven and a quarter minutes holding her breath right out of the water. The article attributes this croc ability to evolution.

But things are not as simple as they look. This is especially true once you understand how life works to survive, and the causal hurdles that would have had to have been surmounted to build life from the ground up.

Thats what my recent book, co-authored with Steve Laufmann,Your Designed Body,accomplishes for the reader. Read the book and youll be prepared to analyze the validity of Darwinism, ask evolutionists better questions, and expect better answers rather than just accepting their just so stories.

As Steve and I demonstrate, with each lesson learned about the complexity of life and survival and the built-in engineering that makes that possible, the explanatory power of Darwinism fades away until all that is left is the narrative gloss.

The fundamental building block for all life is the cell. One of the cells most important needs is energy. The cell, whether it lives and works in Kate or the croc, mostly gets this energy from cellular respiration. Cellular respiration involves the cell, in the presence of oxygen, releasing the energy from within the glucose molecule (while producing carbon dioxide) and storing it as ATP (the cells energy currency). The cell does also have a much less efficient way of getting a lot less energy from glucose, called glycolysis, a process that is anaerobic in that it does not require oxygen.

A one-celled organism, such as an amoeba, is like an island of life. Thats because it can get what it needs from its watery environment, while getting rid of what it doesnt need as well. When it comes to energy, the amoeba gets its glucose and oxygen from its surroundings and releases carbon dioxide.

In contrast, a multi-cellular organism, like Kate or the croc, is like a deep dark continent of life since almost all of its trillions of cells are not near its surroundings. Thats why the organism needs to have a respiratory system to bring in oxygen (and release carbon dioxide), a gastrointestinal system to bring in glucose, and a cardiovascular system to carry these chemicals in the blood to or from all of the cells.

Not having enough oxygen (or for that matter, glucose) for your cells, especially the ones in the brain, which affords consciousness and controls breathing and the cardiovascular system, is a quick path to death. So, understanding how a creature can perform these breath-holding feats, while staying alive, is not an exercise in abstraction.

Physicians and engineers, unlike evolutionary theorists, work in the real world of science. The end point that proves any of their thought or practical experiments to be wrong is death whether its that of the body or of a machine. Thats why understanding why an organism has to have enough oxygen (and anything else it needs to survive) and what happens when it doesnt (death) must be plugged into any theory of life. Without this grounding in real life and death science, evolutionists are just letting their imaginations run wild.

Like every multi-cellular organism, Kate Winslet has a respiratory system through which she can bring in the oxygen her trillions of cells need (and release carbon dioxide). This consists of the nose, mouth, pharynx (throat), larynx (voice box), trachea, bronchi, bronchioles, and millions of alveoli, each surrounded by hundreds of microscopic capillaries where oxygen enters the blood from the lungs and carbon dioxide leaves the blood through the lungs. To complete the picture of the respiratory system, we have to add the chest cavity, consisting of the twelve ribs on either side, the sternum (breastbone) up front, the thoracic vertebrae in the upper back, and the connective tissue that holds them all together in addition to the diaphragm and intercostal muscles.

But thats not all. Experience tells us that our respiratory systems function is under control. When we try to hold our breath, within a few seconds something tells us to breathe. This urge comes from the respiratory center in the brain stem. The respiratory center constantly receives information about the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in your arterial blood from sensors in the main arteries leading to your brain and from within the brain itself.

Every control system, whether biological or technological, is irreducibly complex in that it must have at least three parts for it to work correctly. Absent any one part, the control system fails, and life is impossible.

The first part is a sensor, like the oxygen and carbon dioxide sensors, to detect what youre trying to control. The second part is an integrator, like the respiratory center, to analyze and interpret the sensory data, decide if everything is OK or if something needs to be done, and then send out instructions to correct the problem. And the third part is an effector, in this case the respiratory system, which when signaled by the respiratory center releases built-up carbon dioxide and brings in a new supply of oxygen.

By hyperventilating beforehand, Kate Winslet maximized her blood level of oxygen and minimized her blood level of carbon dioxide. While holding her breath, as her carbon dioxide level rose and her oxygen level dropped, she would have had to resist the urge to breathe and also deal with symptoms like tingling limbs, impaired vision, feelings of freakout while being at risk of becoming unconscious and drowning. Thats why she always did this under the supervision of a trainer. Do not try this at home or alone!

Besides her respiratory system, putting oxygen into her blood to get it to all the cells in her body, Kate has a cardiovascular system. This consists of the heart with its right and left sides, and the pulmonary and systemic circulations. The right ventricle pumps deoxygenated blood through the pulmonary arteries to the lungs where it enters the capillaries surrounding the alveoli to pick up oxygen and then returns to the left side of the heart through the pulmonary veins. The left ventricle pumps oxygenated blood through the systemic arteries to the capillaries in the tissues. There, the cells get the oxygen (and glucose) they need and download the carbon dioxide. The blood then returns to the right side of the heart through the systemic veins.

One final problem remains, though. It turns out that oxygen doesnt dissolve well in water. Thats why Kate Winslet has hemoglobin thats made in her red blood cells, which are made in her bone marrow. Hemoglobin is a complex molecule, containing iron, that locks onto oxygen when it enters the blood from the lungs and so allows the blood in the body to have enough oxygen-carrying capacity.

With maximum exercise, Kates body needs a 14-fold increase in oxygen consumption compared to when shes at rest. This means that her blood has to have enough red blood cells with enough hemoglobin to carry enough oxygen to meet the metabolic needs of her body, no matter what shes doing. So, that means that her body has to control her hemoglobin.

As noted, every control system needs at least three parts and the one that controls the hemoglobin is no different. Kate has specialized cells in her kidneys that sense her blood level of oxygen and in response, the cell as the integrator sends out a certain amount of a hormone called erythropoietin. Erythropoietin travels in the blood and attaches to specific receptors on immature stem cells in the bone marrow and tells them to develop into red blood cells, which produce hemoglobin. So, if the oxygen level goes down the kidney cells send out more erythropoietin which tells the bone marrow to make more red blood cells which gives the body more hemoglobin.

Given her impressive feat, its safe to say that Kate Winslets respiratory, cardiovascular, and hematological systems were all working at maximum efficiency. But the croc can easily beat her. Now, remember, the croc needs this functional capacity for survival. Hes not worrying about performing well enough to meet the needs of the newest frontier in blockbuster moviemaking. Nor is he trying to impress his friends by showing them how long he can hold his breath underwater while risking death by drowning. No, when the croc grabs the hindquarters of an antelope, he instinctively dives down deep into the water, where he knows he can survive for an hour or two without drowning, but the antelope cant.

Since this involves the respiratory, cardiovascular, and hematological systems, they would seem to be the right places to start in comparing Kate and the croc. But before we do, we have to take into account that Kate is warm-blooded, while the croc is cold-blooded.

This difference means that Kate has to use a lot more energy (oxygen) than the croc to maintain her core temperature, which is between 97oand 99oF. She needs to do this so that all of her organ systems, especially her brain, can work properly. Remember, the croc only has to worry about surviving and reproducing. It would seem that being cold-blooded doesnt bother his self-esteem one bit. However, being warm-blooded allows us to have the biggest brains in the animal kingdom, a fact that affords us numerous abilities, like intelligence, reasoning, creativity, self-reflection, and free will, going far beyond mere survival and reproduction.

In contrast to Kate Winslet, the croc can usually maintain its core temperature, between 82oand 92oF, with little effort simply by making sure it lives in a warm climate. In fact, at rest the croc only uses about 15 percent of the energy that a human does. And when it dives down deeper where the temperature is lower, because it is cold-blooded, it is able to reduce its metabolic rate even further.

So, for a given ambient temperature and level of activity, the croc requires much less oxygen (energy) than a human does to survive. This is so even if the human and the croc have the same amount of oxygen available for use. In fact, it means that as compared with Kate, the croc can get by on the anaerobic process of glycolysis to obtain the limited amount of extra energy it provides because he only needs 15 percent of what Kate needs.

From the start we can see that since the croc uses much less oxygen per minute than does Kate, this would at least partially explain why it is able to hold its breath under water so much longer. But theres more. On Monday well ask, How Does the Crocodile Hold His Breath So Long? Stay tuned.

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In Breath-Holding, Kate and a Croc Are Champions - Discovery Institute

Evolution goes beyond the genetic code and the transformation of physical form, from land-mammal to whale or dinosaur to bird.

At the core of evolutionary science is a triad: variation, selection and replication, explains Binghamton University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences David Sloan Wilson, the founder of Binghamtons Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program. You can see this triad at work in culture as well, from economics and business, to engineering and the arts, and the functioning of society at all levels.

Knowing how cultural evolution happens also means we can harness it for the larger good, creating a more just and sustainable world. Thats a topic of Multilevel cultural evolution: From new theory to practical applications, a new article by Wilson recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

Co-authors include Binghamton alumnus Guru Madhavan, MBA 07, PhD 09, senior program director at the National Academy of Engineering; Michele J. Gelfand, professor of organizational behavior and psychology at Stanford University; University of Nevada Psychology Professor Steven C. Hayes, who developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT); Paul W.B. Atkins, visiting associate professor of psychology with Australian National Universitys Crawford School of Public Policy and co-founder of the non-profit ProSocial World with Wilson; and microbiologist Rita R. Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation.

The wide-ranging article explores the three hallmarks of cultural evolution: prosociality, or behavior oriented toward the welfare of others; social control, which enforces prosocial behavior and penalizes those who behave selfishly; and symbolic thought, which relies on a flexible inventory of symbols with shared meaning.

Humans have evolved to live in small, cooperative groups, not as disconnected individuals. To be effective, however, society also requires structure.

Otherwise, strategies that are beneficial on the individual or small-group level become maladaptive: Self-preservation becomes self-dealing, helping friends and family becomes nepotism and cronyism, and patriotism fuels international conflict, for example.

We have to have the global good in mind and everything that we do in some sense has to be coordinated with the good of the whole, Wilson said.

The application of evolutionary concepts to larger human society is not itself new. For example, in 1898, Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen wrote an article called Why is economics not an evolutionary science?

Thats a good question, according to Wilson. Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, Binghamtons EvoS program applies evolutionary principles across the curriculum, crossing disciplinary lines into psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics and political science, even the humanities. It was the nations first when it began two decades ago, although similar programs have since developed at other universities.

The curriculum is highly individualized, which allows students to follow their own path. One highlight is its seminar series, in which prominent scholars discuss diverse topics from an evolutionary perspective, from microbiology to anthropology.

Its rare for a transdisciplinary program such as EvoS to last for 20 years, Wilson points out. Graduates include Justin Garcia, executive director of the Kinsey Institute, as well as professors and researchers at a variety of institutions.

Evolutionary concepts have been misused, however. Take social Darwinism, for example, which is often used to justify competition and harsh social inequities as survival of the fittest, a misunderstanding and misapplication of Darwinian theory. Social engineering also has insidious implications, Wilson noted.

We need to ask: Is there anything about evolutionary theory that is especially dangerous in that regard? Or is it the case that anything that can be used as a tool can also be used as a weapon? Wilson asked. I think its the latter.

These concepts become weapons when they are used as means of control, with little to no input from the people they impact, he explained. When people decide to use evolutionary principles to shape their own actions and goals, however, these principles are largely benign.

Checks and balances are at the core of multilevel cultural evolution to avoid power imbalances, making it the opposite of social Darwinism, which portrayed social inequities as necessary and inevitable. Social Darwinism actually has little to do with Darwin or his theories, Wilson points out; its a stigmatizing term associated with the moral justification for ruthless competition, and probably closer to the principles behind neoclassical economics.

But fields such as economics and business neednt define themselves with the neoclassical greed is good ethos of Milton Freidman. Wilson points to the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom, who proved that groups can self-manage common-pool resources avoiding the proverbial tragedy of the commons if they implement eight core design principles.

Wilson collaborated with Ostrom to show that the core design principles can be generalized, providing a key to successful governance for nearly all forms of cooperative activity.

To begin, you need to have a good, strong sense of identity and purpose; thats the first core design principle, Wilson said.

Other principles involve the equitable distribution of benefits and resources, inclusive decision-making, transparent behavior, and levels of response to helpful and unhelpful behavior, as well as fast and fair conflict resolution, local autonomy and authority, and relationships with other groups.

These principles not only build better workplaces, neighborhoods and nations, they can also heal the mind. As social mammals, our minds interpret social isolation as an emergency situation, the authors note, and social support is key for the treatment of such conditions as anxiety and depression.

The tools used in therapy particularly mindfulness are also applicable on a societal level, encouraging adaptability and cognitive flexibility, which helps individuals recover from adverse life events. Thats true of groups as well, Wilson said.

Creating a more prosocial world grounded in equity and cooperation isnt some unreachable pipe dream.

There are practical applications, said Wilson, who established the nonprofit ProSocial World to plant these ideas outside of academia. Right now, not in some far, distant future, we could be using these ideas to accomplish positive change.

Its important to avoid what Wilson calls the archipelago of knowledge and practice, consisting of many islands with little communication. Otherwise, ideas and solutions may become trapped in separate silos.

In essence, the EvoS speaker series functions that way for students, mingling lectures on bacteria with Neanderthals, morality, the arts and more. Students are exposed to ideas they may not have otherwise encountered, which introduces new paths and possibilities. The same can happen in the larger society, too.

While technological changes can spread from one culture to another over decades or centuries, Wilson hopes to spark societal change more quickly. He draws upon the concept of catalysis in chemistry: Added in small amounts, a catalytic molecule hastens the rate of change, he explains.

As catalytic agents, individuals may inspire changes that would otherwise take decades or not happen at all. And this catalysis can happen in ordinary ways, by leaning into the small-group community mindset that fuels our humanity.

Consider a community garden, for example: Reaching out to different community gardens and sharing knowledge can only benefit everyone involved, Wilson said. And those connections dont need to consist of dull meetings; they can involve social interactions such as parties and potlucks, which bring people together and encourage them to make connections.

Imagine repeating that in every walk of life, in our schools or businesses, on every scale from small groups to cities, he explained.

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How the principles of evolution can create lasting global change ... - Binghamton

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Recent debates around transgender people and sexual diversity have been marked by essentialism, a profoundly conservative mindset with deep links to religious and metaphysical dogmatism. It is a stance through which conservative thinkers seek certainty in a world of change and fluidity.

Essentialism comprises three key ideas.

First, there is the idea that nature is divided into discrete kinds of things, which are completely and definitively distinct from each other. For example, there is the view that living things are fundamentally different from non-living things, or that human beings are fundamentally different from other animals.

Second, there is the idea that these differences are eternal and necessary. This sometimes takes the form of the religious doctrine that God created the world and all the things in it in accordance with an unchanging typology. But the idea can also be attributed to Plato, the father of Western philosophy, who postulated eternal and changeless "forms" that worldly things copied and instantiated. If a particular thing is an instance of an eternal metaphysical form, according to this theory, it must have clearly delineated properties.

Third, essentialism suggests that each kind of thing has an "essence," which requires it to maintain its distinctness by acting in a way that is true to its nature. If God created things as clearly distinct from one another, then these distinctions become sacrosanct. Another example is Descartes' view that the essential difference between human beings and animals is that only human beings have rational souls.

Many implications, including ethical ones, have been drawn from such claims. To say of an organism that it has an "animal nature" implies that it falls outside the purview of our moral responsibilities, while the existence of "human nature" implies that a person is subject to various moral norms and prohibitions.

There are strong reasons for rejecting such essentialism. The first of these is Darwinism. It is a commonplace of modern biology that human beings evolved from other life forms. Indeed, all the life forms that inhabit the earth today evolved over eons of time from earlier life forms and from non-organic matter.

Those who reject this scientific consensus for religious or other reasons do so because they want to maintain the links between essentialism and a priori moral principles. This way lies doctrinal and moral dogmatism.

The most obvious implication of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is that natural typesas exemplified in biological speciesare not eternal or changeless realities. Species change all the time. The human species has changed over the large spans of time which are required for natural selection to do its evolutionary work.

It follows that there is no human essence and no changeless typology that marks off human nature from the rest of the animal kingdom or from the world of things more generally.

There are also ideological and ethical reasons for avoiding essentialism. The view that human beings are essentially different from other animals supports the view that humans have a unique moral standing. It used to be argued that because animals do not have souls or minds, it was morally legitimate to use them in any way we pleased. The religious version of this argument is that God created animals to be of use to humans. Add to this the argument that animals do not feel pain (because they do not have minds) and all kinds of cruel practices are legitimated. Peter Singer has labeled these theories "speciesism."

Racism is another example of this way of thinking. The basis of this view is also a form of essentialism: in this case, the view that there is an essential difference between black people and white people.

The scientific challenge to racism is data that shows the differences are genetically very slight. The moral challenge is to argue that they are irrelevant. During periods of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, racism often took the form of empirical claims some people were inherently and necessarily less intelligent than others, or more prone to violence, or were in need of strong discipline, or were "primitive" and in need of civilization. People of mixed race are troubling to racists, because they cross essential boundaries, blurring the difference between "us" and "them."

Nationalism, racism and certain views about class are examples of the inherently oppressive quality of essentialism. Economic and social thinkers (sometimes inspired by misunderstandings of Darwin) used to argue that members of the working classes (sometimes referred to as the "lower orders") were inherently stupid and dissolute, so it was doing them a favor to keep them working in the factories and pits for long hours, because only in that way would they ever be productive.

Never mind that talent is distributed arbitrarily across all socio-economic classes and needs only the opportunity to develop in individuals, no matter what class they belong to. As for nationalism, the view that some people are inherently of less worth than others because of their nationality is not the least important of the many causes of war.

Essentialism also lies at the heart of many sexist practices and forms of life. To cite Aristotle: "The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and one rules and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind."

According to such essentialism, certain things are said to have inalienable features and, as a result, have a lower or higher status on an imagined hierarchy. Aristotle grounded his view on biological theories about women and men and their sexual functions that we now know were incorrect, but the key point here is that he attributed a different metaphysical "nature" to each sex.

When biological differences are turned into immutable essences of moral significance, they can be used to justify practices that are oppressive and unjust. It is easier to justify preventing women from taking a full part in public and commercial life if one asserts that it is the nature of women to be housekeepers and mothers.

Essentialism also plays a part in the oppression of sexuality. If one maintains that the essence of the male/female distinction is that it is the basis of procreation, then homosexuality can be proscribed as "unnatural." But there is no essential purpose to sexuality. While procreation is an important outcome of sexual activity, it is not its only function.

Transgender identities show there are no essential links between sexuality, gender and biology. Trans activists deny that apparent biological differences create immutable gendered essences. The claim is not that transwomen are biological men who prefer to dress and act like women; it is that, because biological essence does not determine gender identity, transwomen are women.

This is a claim that a male or female identity is not defined on the basis of any material reality of embodied maleness or femaleness, but on a higher abstracted or psychological plane. While it might be difficult for non-trans people to understand what this plane would be, it is clear that it eschews any essentialist definition of what a woman or a man should be.

When gender differences are turned into immutable essences, one can give them moral significance and use them to justify practices which are oppressive and unjust. Nothing can be more offensive to an essentialist than the blurring of boundaries represented by transgender identification. It is the fixing of empirical differences into the categories of metaphysical essences that does the work of grounding oppressive principles.

Prejudices of all kinds usually take an essentialist form. It will often be found that the standards of human excellence propounded by essentialist theory are the standards held by the propounder of the theory. This is why essentialism is usually oppressive to anyone who is "other" in relation to the essentialist. To an essentialist, difference is pejorative.

By contrast, Jean-Paul Sartre's famous phrase "existence precedes essence" proposes that our self-conscious mode of being is not determined by any essential human nature. The "existentialism" he founded is the opposite of essentialism.

Rather than claiming that our human nature, our socialization, our genetic inheritanceor any other material or historical forcedetermines who we are and what we ought to do, existentialists make the radical claim that it is our subjectivity, our project of self-making, which projects itself into the world and uses those factual and formative elements to forge an identity for itselfan identity of its own choosing.

Unlike essentialism, which seeks to fix human life into the definitions its metaphysical categories bring with them, existentialism reminds us that our initiative and creativity are vital in the living of our lives.

Existentialism is anti-essentialist in relation to human existence. It claims the self is not a fixed entity. Human beings create their own modes of being, their values, and their destinies. And this applies to sexuality. Gender is an existentialist project, rather than a fixed essence.

Depending as it does on ancient metaphysical and religious doctrines, essentialism seeks normative certainty in a fluid world. It suggests that everything should act in accordance with its eternal and necessary nature. It is an inherently conservative stance which ought to be expunged from contemporary ethical and political debates.

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What is essentialism? And how does it shape attitudes to transgender people and sexual diversity? - Phys.org