A reader adds a gloss on my earlier observations on Evolution:

… one extra point might be made, just to protect against hubris in evolutionists, who seem for the most part to have an unfailing belief in the perfectibility of man. .

You write of breeding schemes producing ‘better animals’. Better for whom? I ask this because Darwin insisted on using the word ‘progression’ rather than ‘progress’. Is it not possible that there are also some negative ‘progressions’ in man’s continuing evolution?

Good point.

It is hard in this area to find the language to avoid teleological nuances – the idea that there is underlying natural ‘purpose’ out there. Even the phrase ‘natural selection’ conveys an idea that someone or something is effecting the act of selecting – choosing between possible options and outcomes.

But are we edging towards new scientific discoveries which start to throw disconcerting new light on how personality characteristics of different communities are, in fact, really different? That some ‘ethnic groups’ are, for example, indeed more aggressive or docile or even clever or lazy than others?

And that these character traits, for better or worse, are not down to eg ‘colonialism’ or sexism, but rather to genetics?

Thus:

Skin color has no moral significance, but traits that led to Darwinian success in one of the many new niches and occupations of Holocene life — traits such as collectivism, clannishness, aggressiveness, docility, or the ability to delay gratification — are often seen as virtues or vices.

Virtues are acquired slowly, by practice within a cultural context, but the discovery that there might be ethnically-linked genetic variations in the ease with which people can acquire specific virtues is — and this is my prediction — going to be a "game changing" scientific event.

That should be interesting.

Another reader points out that she and her partner have chosen not to have children, as they just can not afford it: is this somehow a reprehensible decision?

Of course not.

It’s just that in the way of things, societies/communities (more ‘conservative’ as some might see it?) which favour having families as an end in itself probably will tend to replace those who treat children as a lifestyle/economic option of some sort.

Plus who generates the money to pay our pensions in a couple of decades’ time as the West’s Pension Ponzi Schemes run out of road?