Evolution - Biology, Individual, Society and Me

I am about to finish reading "The Emperor of All Maladies", from Sidharta Mukherjee. What a spectacular book, probably the best I have ever read. I am now migrating to a non-cancer related book from Allan Meltzer, in my opinion the best economist/financial historian in the world, a teacher at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, ardent student and "biographer" of the US Federal Reserve, and most reasonable and knowledgeable defender of capitalism, democracy and the rule of law. His book is called "Why Capitalism?".
It is interesting to see how in the last 6 months I have read books that are seemingly so unrelated on the surface, such as "Neuroscience for Dummies" and "Why Capitalism?", but I see stricking connections on how we evolve as species, individuals and society.
I have found a new interest in biology and realized that I have to learn everything I learned in high school again. Science has evolved enough in the last 20 years that I see a need to go back to basics and study high-school biology to understand several things I learned about cancer. Oncogenesis, Tumor Suppressor Genes, Heat Shock Proteins and so forth, things that I feel a deep need to connect in order to understant what is happening to me and how the drugs I am taking help fight it. I have even formulated a few hipothesis that I feel a need to validate, but before I pose my questions I want to make sure I am not asking trivial questions.
One thing that became clear to me is that cancer can be as deadly as it can be resurrecting. As I studied Neuroscience I learned new theories on how we evolved as species from unicellular organisms to what we are today.
As unicellular organisms grouped themselves to perform tasks, the cells in the inner part of the group of cells faced very different environments from the cells exposed to the outside world. That created a need for cells to specialize. Of course cells, just like people, don't choose what they want to become biologically. Saying that a cell can choose what function to perform is as crazy as me saying that I decided to grow wings.
But the environment takes care of changing cells. Radiation, just to mention one known environmental factor that can change our DNA, and as a consequence the function of our cells, will create new cell functions, creatures and sometimes diseases. Evolution then takes care of the rest.
Imagine that at first all cells in multicellular organisms performed all vital functions. Then radiation hit the group and the cells outside the group could not produce energy anymore, but only filter radiation as cells inside the group focused on building energy reserves and "feeding" the outside cells. These cell groups, with the genetic stability provided by the radiation filtering cells, all of a sudden became more stable, creating a multicellular organism much better prepared to face the enviroment and survive. For another random reason DNA changed again and the inner cells were transformed in two groups, one specialized in digestion and another one specialized in energy storage for tough times. When food became scarce the energy storage cells provided the food for the other cells, enabling this organism to survive while others died in times of scarcity.
Of course this is an overly simplistic view of evolution, but if we think of ourselves as a self-regulated group of unicellular organisms we can look at cancer as a Coup D'Etat of certain cells.
In my case for some reason the cells that are supposed to protect my brain now think they need to take over it, messing up the balance of forces that turns a chaotic unicellular environment into a well organized single entity that is now writting this crazy story.
As I read Meltzer's book I realized how capitalism, in the form of market forces, democracy and the rule of law, performs in essence a self-regulating function for our society. We want a society where individual rights are preserved and never above the collective good. Democracy gives all players the right to choose what is best for society. When a group of individuals tries to take over control at the expense of others, the voters can expel that "cancer" and self-regulate the country, or the "body". This self-regulating mechanism of capitalist democracies has proven over time to be the most effective way to produce prosperity and improve the standards of living, no matter in which society it is implemented, from multi-cultural US or Brazilian societies, to the uniform and conservative Japanese or German societies.
Brazil is now living a wonderful moment. People of all classes are realizing that they can create opportunities for themselves. I met a person at a Trade Show last week, an entrepreneur that was turning garbage into reusable bags. I learned that his office was close to where I lived before I moved to the US. When I told him that I sold my house, car and gathered all my money to get an MBA in the US he said he got goose-bumps. To me that was such a no-brainer (no pun intended), but to a lot of people choosing instability over stability might be a tough choice. I, on the other hand, was blown away by this rags to riches young adult who saw in trash an opportunity to help the environment and make money.
Resurrecting after my brain tumor was just another example of how one can face adversity (or instability), adapt, evolve and move on, always on a path to become better than before. If we all try to become better as we face instabilty we will always strive as humans. Of course if I had the choice I would not have chosen to take the brain tumor road, but now that I am on it I want to come back home better than I was before, and so far I feel much better.