Most people don't think about the fact that "evolution" really is a euphemism for a cold, indifferent, rational genocide performed by nature. When I read phrases like "evolutionary leaps" I can't help but think that yes, with the luxury of retrospective, even the abhorrent acts of the Mongols can be seen as a productive force; but at the other end of it is always countless victims, lives snuffed out by pure chance.
When climate change every so slightly changed the course of our evolution 250 000 years ago, it did so in a world that selected the most competent hunters, survivors, "animals" in the world as it existed. It's curious, and somewhat depressing, to think about what type of "selection" the more than likely catastrophic climate change we will experience in a few generations will have on homo sapiens.
Society, as I see it, is created upon the foundation of knocking natural selection out of the equation. And good riddance; I don't want a world where humans have to fight like predators for the privilege to survive. But this also means we have rigged the game for alternate selection. Considering what the most "fit" future survivors will be, I can't help but wonder what our arbitrary and egocentric selection process will do to the future human -- if it will even be around.
In a sense, we really are space age apes with stone age minds. Whoever survives into the future will be more up to chance and gamble than competence, since our world is so far from meritocratic. At the very least it will be more like a random selection than a fit selection, and worst case we will doom ourselves through our own humanity. But what is the option? IQ tests and fascist elitism? Sometimes it feels like there's no right answer wherever you turn to look.
When climate change every so slightly changed the course of our evolution 250 000 years ago, it did so in a world that selected the most competent hunters, survivors, "animals" in the world as it existed. It's curious, and somewhat depressing, to think about what type of "selection" the more than likely catastrophic climate change we will experience in a few generations will have on homo sapiens.
Society, as I see it, is created upon the foundation of knocking natural selection out of the equation. And good riddance; I don't want a world where humans have to fight like predators for the privilege to survive. But this also means we have rigged the game for alternate selection. Considering what the most "fit" future survivors will be, I can't help but wonder what our arbitrary and egocentric selection process will do to the future human -- if it will even be around.
In a sense, we really are space age apes with stone age minds. Whoever survives into the future will be more up to chance and gamble than competence, since our world is so far from meritocratic. At the very least it will be more like a random selection than a fit selection, and worst case we will doom ourselves through our own humanity. But what is the option? IQ tests and fascist elitism? Sometimes it feels like there's no right answer wherever you turn to look.