The Red Queen Effect

The Red Queen by Sir John Tenniel 

by Madeleine Kando

In Lewis Carroll's ‘Through the Looking-Glass’, the Red Queen and Alice are constantly running but remain in the same spot. 

They finally stop and Alice says, still panting a little: "Well, in our country, you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" says the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" 

That is exactly how I feel about my life right now. Like being on a treadmill, running and running, just so I can stay in place.

My days are filled with exhausting activities like taking a shower so I won’t get lice, get dressed so I won’t freeze to death, eat so I won’t dwindle away and sleep so I won’t keel over during the day. All that just to stay in place!

The abyss called entropy is lurking behind me, threatening to swallow me up. Who wants to let their fingernails grow into claws, get scabs on their scalp for want of washing their hair, have their teeth fall out if they don’t brush them.

The Red Queen is right: ‘If you want to get somewhere, you have to run twice as fast’. But who has the energy these days? I am quite content to stay in place. It’s exhausting enough.

In evolution, the Red Queen Effect, means that species have to constantly adapt in order to avoid extinction. A rat race, if you ever saw one. That also applies to me and you.

Let me give you a brilliant example: If you are unfortunate enough to be born without dimples in your cheeks, you are never going to have a go at being on TV. I wrote about that before here. But since all anchors on TV have dimples, who is going to keep their jobs? The ones with the deepest and most disfiguring dimples. They are all running in place, dimples and all, to keep their job.
Soon, they all will out-dimple each other and the rest of us, the un-dimpled, will finally have their day under the sun. There will be a mad race to hire the few, un-dimpled candidates. Then the un-dimpled will out-un-dimple each other. The ones with the shallowest cheeks will keep their jobs until a new demand for the chosen dimpled candidates will begin again.

You see where I am going with this? There is a never-ending struggle to outdo your rivals.

That is why people spend their hard-earned money on self-help groups that promise to make you a better person, live up to your potential, be more successful. Instead, why not invest your hard earned money in treadmill surrogates? That way you can run twice as fast to get somewhere else.

I bet presidents don’t take time to cut their own nails or trim their own nose hair. Al Capone didn’t, according to one of my favorite movies ‘the Untouchables’. That’s why he had time to run even faster and become the all-time criminal in history. I bet he even had someone wipe his holy bottom after he went to the bathroom.

That is why Einstein had such weird hair, so he wouldn’t have to spend time cutting it. Gandhi shaved his head for that same reason and only wore a loin cloth, so he wouldn’t have to get dressed. How else do you suppose they became famous? They had time to run even faster!

The White Queen

The White Queen represents the opposite of this idea: that the Red Queen controls the future of our species with its struggle to evolve or get wiped out. The Red Queen chops everyone's head off. The White Queen lives backwards. She needs to believe in the impossible, the 'what if'.

That’s why I like thoughts so much. They can outrun anything and they let you multi-task while you are on the treadmill, brushing your teeth and have brilliant thoughts at the same time! There is the risk of flying off the treadmill attached to your thought-balloon and never be heard from again. After all, thoughts don’t really take you anywhere, do they?

But according to the White Queen Effect in biology, if you have enough ‘supporters’, i.e. close relative-species that support you, you can outrun the Red Queen Effect and land on top in evolution. Like ant species that co-operate instead of raid each others’ nests. They live longer and have more time to undergo genetic changes.

I like that idea. It is analogous to the cooperation versus competition principle. See, even ants believe in the impossible and then make it happen!*

But I am in danger of flying off the treadmill, attached to my ever-expanding thought-balloon.

So, to get back to earth, let me ask Alice what to do. I googled her while on the treadmill: ‘Listen to the White Queen’, Alice said. ‘Sometimes she believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!’

I have great confidence in Alice’s wisdom, so I will keep following her advice. Who says you cannot have your breakfast and eat it too!   leave comment here

* If you have the misfortune of being a biologist, it is your prerogative to skip this part, since my knowledge of evolutionary biology is the size of a flea.