Evolution of the human
What is evolution? It is change. Change during our lifetime and change after it has expired. Darwin strongly believed in survival of the fittest. An evolutionary process that removes the weakest from the gene pool. Humans evolve a bit differently. Since we are not overly strong, nor do we have any form of natural defense or offense (unless you consider burping and farting offensive) we evolve by survival of the smartest. An entire race based on intellectual survival. Since we couldn’t survive on out own we needed to develop tools and weapons to defend ourselves with.
With the intellect of humans we have created science. Science has given us cures for disease, neat gadgets and other things in life. We have created great cures for disease that would have taken evolution another few thousand years to achieve. So science is accelerated evolution? In a way it is. Since we now have a 99% survival rate evolution has taken a nose dive. It’s like everyone is urinating in the gene pool now. What was once clean and pure is now getting polluted corrupted. But that does not answer what life is. No not yet.
Evolution is a major part of what life is. We live, we learn and we evolve. Adaptability is one form of evolution. A human can adapt to many different environments during a lifetime. From harsh colds, to extreme heat. That is a part of our evolutionary chain leading back millions of years. Since we have generally long lives we needed someway to adapt to our environments. A bacteria on the other hand adapts to an environmental change through death and rebirth. The survivors evolve and adapt after a mass cycle of death. Like the antibacterial we use in our homes. It kills 99.9% of bacteria. What about the 0.1%? They live on and mutate to become more resistant to the antibacterial, eventually becoming immune.
So how does the bacteria have to do with what life is? It has a lot to do with the cycle of life, but on a much faster and larger scale. Humans live naturally 60 to 100 years. About 200 years ago that was more like 40 to 60 years of age. What happened was our scientific minds created more and more cures to disease. We learned to live longer. This has an effect on the gene pool. There was a rush to get married young 200 years ago. Humans would have 8 to 12 children per family in hopes 2 or 3 would survive long enough to marry and procreate. In modern times there is no rush so we marry at around 30 and have 1 to 5 children now. What this means is evolution now has lost 10 years and a bigger mix of gene combinations to try out. Slowing down our natural evolution.
So now we have slower evolution. But there’s more to it now. Instead of having 12 children and 2 or 3 of the strongest survive, we have 1 to 5 children and they ALL survive. Sure that’s mentally good for us. But now not only do the strong survive, but the weak can live on as well. The weak can then go on and wreak havoc on our gene pool. Millions of years of evolution dumped down the drain in the name of science. So now with the generations of people pissing in the gene pool we’ve gone U-turn in our evolutionary process. But here comes the ethical side. We can’t just go on and kill off the weak, the dumb or the ugly. They’re alive and have the right to live a natural life. We can’t take away their ability to breed either. Science to the rescue.
So since science has given us better and longer lives, perhaps it can fix the accidental corruption of the gene pool. We didn’t try to poison our futures, and corrupt the gene pool. We as a race wanted to prolong our existence. Gene therapy is the way to fix our unfortunate dilemma. But we need to put aside it’s economical aspect. We need to start thinking of the future and survival of our race. Sure we’ve got the “I won’t be here in 50 years” mentality, but we need to wash away our arrogance. Focus more time and attention to gene therapy. In simple terms gene therapy is taking the bad gene and replacing it with the good gene. Natural evolution is over. We’re in the age of de-evolution.
There is no immediate solution. But the first step to anything is realization. We must realize there is a problem and to not deny there is a problem. Denial is a serious epidemic as well. “I’m not fat”, “my son is not a killer”, “He’s not cheating on me”. Once we stop denying ourselves things, we can move forward as a race. Otherwise the human race is in serious trouble…
) - anyway, just thought it was an interesting article, seems to make a lot of sense to me...
