Friday, March 23, 2007

Evolution is All in Your Head

Thousands of years before the oil lamp went on over Charles Darwin's head, humans had ceased to evolve by natural selection. No wonder they thought it was a crackpot theory.

We evolve in the world of ideas now, and have for a long, long (keep adding longs for a long time) time. Because of this, communication of all kinds carries huge weight. We imagine the future and try to change it based on what we know now and from the past. Whether we get the changes we hope to get is irrelevant. We do change things purely based on what we think. To the extent that we are not natural, that's not natural.

People with unsuccessful ideas breed. The offspring adopt different ideas, and might or might not breed. Ideas outlive their creators and evolve on their own, further changing the future independent of any reproductive system.

At the same time, some form of physical evolution continues just because we keep breeding and DNA keeps twisting. But the forces on our physical being reflect what our minds have created. There is no single master plan, as there would be for a simpler species dealing with the simple needs of food, shelter and sex.

We of all species have the greatest power to deceive. We can dress thoughts to look like other thoughts, and create pitfalls and snares in the invisible space of spoken word.

And this, for the moment, is the truth. Take one step away in any direction and I can't guarantee anything.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Evolution Dead? Certainly at the Human level of the animal kingdom.
Scary isn't it?
unsuccessful ideas breed. unsuccessful people breed. unsuccessful people with unsuccessful organs breed.

Isn't Science is a wonderful thing?

The truth is, the world goes around, literally. It just goes around and always has. Its not going to change for us. Evolution? Yep it's still there but for those life forms that can't communicate quite as sophisticated as we.

Societies have learned little from the past and keep making the same mistakes. One of these mistakes will ultimately be the end of our evolutionary trek.
I just hope its not before I get another chance to listen to Mozart's 27 piano concertos one more time.