My thoughts on the Human Evolution

Okay, so we all laugh at these "Darwin Awards" jokes but is this really the correct way to think? I don't mean to start a nature vs. nurture argument as I believe WHAT we think and the way we perceive things may indeed be preserved in DNA however the way you look at something cannot make you stupid. Sure, it's kind of funny but at the same time, it's giving completely the wrong idea about darwinism! "Survival of the Fittest" might apply to those without healthcare, supermarkets -- all the conveniences of modern first world living... however you've got to accept that far more than 99.9 of the population of earth (I'm including all fish, insects, mammals and birds in the population of Earth) so it is alright for "Survival of the fittest" to be a fairly acceptable theory...

However, we DO have health care, supermarkets, fast transportation, emergency services and what have you which almost makes us exempt from any process of evolution. So of course it is to be expected that generally, as our population grows bigger and bigger, and there appears to be a lack of any evolution (which is very hard to test, I admit) should be no surprise. Yet we have built such a delusion of grandeur amongst ourselves that we fail to see what nature... or Darwin's version of nature, intended for us... which was indeed, to DIE, and to REPRODUCE... and with each reproduction would be an every so slightly modified version of yourself (aka a human being... not literally as a clone) which will keep changing and changing - possibly due to external circumstances, or to random mutations or what have you... but as we are curing the sick, letting those unfit to reproduce in any other circumstance... we are making THIS the final stages of our evolution.

I will admit that even I myself consider myself somewhat more intelligent, considered say, to my kittens, or to shrubbery... but does intelligence prove to be of any value in the long haul? In fact, it has already, in only about 10, 000 years, a fairly short amount of time considering the age of all living things, let alone the age of the earth, has proven to be quite DISADVANTAGEOUS! You might disagree but there are a few characteristics I want to mention....

Natural Instincts for one... we still have them. This is a dangerous combination when you might natural instincts with the ability to analyze and interpret your surroundings - hence all the 'sex' adverts and television in general - many of you know about the fight-or-flight response and what television has to do with it... and if you don't, look it up (or I might post more info on this in the next post if I feel like it). We interpret our surroundings and without even knowing it we have stored away loads of important information which manifests itself in our conscious thinking without even knowing what could spur such a thought...

Interpretation is another thing which is dangerous mixed with intelligence - just because you're smart, doesn't make you wise... in fact, I almost happen to think otherwise - the less of our intellectual faculties we use in processing information, the MORE we realize that what exists doesn't have to be open to interpretation - it is, therefore I should accept it, but when you try and interpret, say, a chair or a table you see it as 'a thing to sit on' and 'a thing to eat on' or 'do homework on' or what have you. But if you look at a chair and see a flat surface with 4 bars or whatever (i'm not a chair expert) and accept it for what it is you use less faculties and thus recognize all individual aspects of the chair itself... it's hard to explain what I'm getting at but the idea is that if you're not interpreting anything you see all the possibilities of an interpretation...

(continued in next post)

Now I'm not saying interpretation is in itself a bad thing but a problem arises in society when two different philosophies (an interpretation of non-physical entities... ideas, economic systems etc.) have differing interpretations and have very physical clash and thus either violently or silently terminates a whole 'idea'... but like I said I don't want to turn this into a nature vs. nurture but unique ideas can be passed down from generation to generation through the many means of communication we have created for ourselves and be embraced... and that's essentially what we've created for ourselves is a constant battle of ideologies...

Now I ask the question for the future of humanity... are we really as wise as we are intelligent? I don't think so. I think my kittens are wiser than me. I can almost assure myself entirely that any plant being is a lot wiser than me. I don' think wisdom has anything to do with intelligence. I think wisdom is embracing everything for what it is, and I cannot think of a better being than a plant as an example of this. A plant does not argue about its surroundings. A plant may compete for soil space, for sunlight, for nutrients and water... but a plant stays at it's location till the bitter end. You can't find determination like that in any animal life... they simply accept their realities, and come face to face with them - like any wise man would do.

But not intelligent life, intelligent life aims to always seek a way out. a way out of doing too much work. We have become so lazy we don't even light our own fires anymore. We have a machine that just fries our food for us. An oven. Even worse is the microwave - an artificial method of heating, created just for our convenience. If anything as intelligent beings, we lack foresight... if we had simply accepted the truth that all life must fight for its survival or else be destroyed... we could have delayed or completely eradicated all the problems we have today... for we ARE going to be destroyed rest assured, but it isn't going to be on an individual scale, we have done so much wrong... the entire species hangs at a balance.

So that's my rant. It's 12:30AM and I just am not able to fall asleep so I thought i'd ramble.

flame away

I'm not fully sure if you posting about intelligence over wisdom, or wisdom over intelligence. So let us for now place whatever issue you are not fully articulating aside, and simply ask the question...what is evolution?

For my own part, I answer the question for it to mean the process by which life forms adapt through time to remain in sync with their environment and thus maintain advantageous ability to remain alive long enough so that they can pass on their genes. Even this thought in itself does not fully encapsulate the whole idea of evolution, because even the idea itself is evolving as and when new discoveries are made that change the fundamental idea put forward by Darwin. The idea of evolution today is far more complex, yet better understood than it was when Darwin first postulated what was then just a theory. Today, the mass of ever-accumulating evidence makes the theory no longer a theory, but fact.

Evolution, however, does not just pertain to physical characteristics, of cells, of organic structural forms, but is also equally pertinent to our psychology, our mental life, in which our ideas are formed. I think there is a argument to be put forward that our species' (human) evolution is a triptych process that is not evolving in sync with each other. Physically, our bodies are always adjusting and adapting to the ever-changing environments, but at a very slow, unobservable rate. Everytime we catch a cold or flu, the body's immune system sets about to create antigens specific to each cold and flu virus, so that the same cold or flu virus does not make us ill in the future. This is a simple step in the evolutionary process.

I would say that for human beings, we are also evolving psychologically, away from innate natural instincts, and at a much faster speed than the evolutionary process of that of our bodies. Our psychological development, which essentially includes intelligence and wisdom, is the process that is 'humanizing' the ancestral ape-gene which we share with our closest animal descendent...the Chimpanzee. Of course, we did not descend from the Chimpanzee, but from a common ancestral gene link, whose evolutionary chain of being provided for adaptation of the brain, leading to the powerful tool we have as attribute...intelligence.

In itself, one's capacity for intelligence does not make one wise, for wisdom in its functioning requires a moral outlook, but not necessarily leading to an unabsurd result. Intelligence requires a functioning memory system, by which references to both present and past experiences can be made and such cross-referenced to provide a sense of foresight, which is where wisdom comes in. We can be wise, but still make errors in judgement.

Intelligence and wisdom are two-sides of the same coin (so to speak), but we must remember that it is the coin itself that joins them together...that coin we can call 'discernment'. In life, we are like bees flitting about from one flower to the next collecting pollen, but in our case, we are collecting knowledge from experience, but knowledge itself comes in all manner of forms, true and untrue, real and unreal. without the attribute of discernment, we would be unable to realise what is fact from fiction. The pre-Copernican concept that the earth is flat and is orbited by the sun, has been supplanted by the earth is roundish, and it itself orbits the sun. From the self-evidency of our visual experience, this does not seem to be the case, but from empirical study, we know that science has establised it to be the case. Science discerned fact from fiction by following the empirical method of analysis.

Darwin didn't set out to eject God from the universe, but from his study and analysis of fossils and living animals, he discerned the natural process by which biological life adapts and changes over time that gives us the vast variety of forms we see on our planet, including ourselves. He was not alone in discerning this, another victorian scientist, Alfred Wallace, also uncovered the process, which a letter from Wallace to Darwin forced his hand to present the concept of the process 'natural selection' to the public, leading Darwin to write his opus...The Origin of Species'. Uncovering the fact that the universe is and always was 'God-less' was incidental to his understanding of the process.

Hi elysiumfire... and thanks for posting

I agree that there is a definite psychological evolution occuring within our species however it cannot be as clearly defined as natural, physical evolution you know what I mean? Ideas cannot be destroyed - but they can be eliminated. Ideas can be passed on through writing, oral communication or through music and art. All of these, bar oral communication, are subject to destruction, and oral communication is subject to deception. What ideas are real, and what ideas are fictional?

Intelligence to me is a very short-sighted thing. We have done much in our quest for knowledge. This is a never ending quest and while I do appreciate our ability and thirst to find things out and discover new rules for the game of the universe, at the same time I find such a focus to be short-sighted. Einstein - one of the smartest people of the last century, discovered the way to mass murder an entire city... of course this was easy on the conscience of the people who decided an entire city should die because it did not involve brute force... but a wise species would have looked past such a decision. YES fighting and violence is an innate part of nature, simply cannot be avoided however, such meaningless destruction is not what was intended at all. There was no reason (other than perhaps, political) to kill all those innocents at hiroshima.

Wisdom is embracing natures plan... not deviating from it. And in the last 200 years we have taken our wisdom and departed entirely from natures plan. Look around your neighborhood... what do you see? Houses, streets, cars, lights, factories. We are fighting a battle against nature and most of us are unaware of it. All of these things do not belong in a natural world. Hell, I don't even think we belong in half of this world as it is uninhabitable with our present physical conditions... we are becoming less and less hairy, thus more susceptible to cold climate, we are simply denying our innate need to FIGHT and SUFFER for our survival. Nature is cruel, yes, but she is also very giving. It simply cannot be denied that we are harming her in a most brutal and unwise fashion. We are only thinking of fast ways to get from point A to point B without any regard to what happens after.... a long time after, yes, but the future should not be dismissed as an afterthought.

As someone said "We are not inheriting the Earth from our Fathers, we are borrowing it from our children". What is the generation... say, 100 years from now going to experience? Inescapable smog... light pollution - the one thing that has fascinated almost every intelligent human will be lost to our naked eye - the stars... Some nihilists might argue that "it doesn't matter i live life for the moment destruction is imminent" but just because the matter around us is void of any true, singular meaning doesn't mean that we can simply destroy what is rightfully the property of ALL LIFE on Earth... not just the intelligent ones.

I used a plant as an example of true wisdom because a plant does not change its surroundings... except for the way it was meant to, the way it was designed to. It does not argue or try to make meaning out of things that have no business being perceived at all. We are taking our intelligence for granted but we are too short sighted to be gifted with it IMO. And I'm not claiming that I know what's best either, I am subject to all the failings of mankind as much as you, me, Obama and Stephen Hawking.

One, out.