Evolution as applied to modern man.

According to Bob.

 

For a long time I was convinced that we had actually halted our own evolution. I had based this on the assumption that with the aid of safety devices such as crosswalks people who would otherwise walk into traffic, be struck by a vehicle and thus remove themselves from the gene pool were being protected from said destruction. Devices such as prosthetic limbs and mobility devices to aid the disabled, drugs to prolong life for the dying...they all serve to effectively weaken the gene pool by keeping those who would surely die in nature alive and in circulation. It's cold, but it's true. There are thousands of examples. Do some critical thinking of your own and you will come across many you see in day to day life.

Now a few things we should knock out right away:

1: I am not here to debate evolution versus religion. I personally believe in both, but that is another article. Evolution is in progress, and to turn a blind eye is to seriously handicap all human progress (oh sweet irony) and deny yourself and chance of greater understanding of the patterns that are and will be established.

2: I do not advocate killing the weak (within reason). Compassion is what seperates from the rest of nature. It is one of our greatest strengths as well as one of our greatest weaknesses. Intelligent use of said compassion will define our future as much as anything.

3. In no way am I the doomsday type. I do not advocate abandonment of modern technology. These are merely observations. I don't even hope to change what is already in motion. I merely hope to gain some basic level of comprehension, even if that means understanding that I will never understand.

4: If the term evolution offends you to a point where you stop thinking, trying using the term trending in it's place. Guided trending is really what we are measuring here.

 

I have since realized that we have not halted our evolution as a species, but rather redirected it in ways nobody can hope to comprehend. There are so many variables I don't have time to go through them all. Instead I will select a couple and run with them.

Environmental Factors

A woman at work tried to tell me that every disease known to man was realeased by the government. No, sadly I am not kidding. She really believes this, and despite a barrage of logic from me continues to believe this to be true. This fallacy is downright offensive to me for a few reasons. First, it implies that our government is organized enough to pull off conpiracies on a massive, global scale and not draw any attention to itself. That is giving it a lot of credit it does not deserve. Second, it denotes an explicit will to circumvent any independant thinking by using a blanket theory to magically answer all questions. The thought of my fellow man so opposed to expending the effort to ponder life itself and it's infinite unanswerable extremes even on a basal level is disgusting to me.

I explained to her that in the last 200 years we had introduced more new pollutants and mutagens into the environment than we may ever know. Maybe it is the smoke from the stacks at chemical factories. Maybe it is the result of the catalyst scrubbers they install to cleanse the smoke. We won't know until it has already affected us. I explained the concept of diseases mutating to get around our defense mechanisms, and how it is a never ending process involving the antagonist disease and our agonist immune system in a battle of one-upsmanship. I explained the constant bombardment of our bodies by electromagnetic waves generated by most of modern technology.

These all affect us. No rational person can argue that the constant interference by devices of our own design and of natural origin will not sway our development. In fact, studies show that autoimmune disorders are on the rise. This is the most abbreviated article I could find for those of you who are attention span impaired. The point is, we have no way of knowing why more of our children are developing allergies to things like peanuts. There are endless factors. Maybe it is that we are growing up in HEPA filtered homes. Maybe we aren't spending enough time outside as children and thus are not exposed to allergens that we would normally build a resistance to. Maybe new building materials have an effect. Maybe flourescent lighting have some unrecorded ill effect. Maybe the ingredients used in child care products have some effect we don't understand yet. Maybe our children are now developing in an environment where pollutants and radio\television waves are constantly present. There are far too many variables to list here. Once again do an exercise in independant thinking, and you will come up with a few. I do not profess to have the answers. I only have questions. The people who claim to have the answers are basing their science on a very incomplete view of human existance. Maybe that's why medicine changes so much over time. Go discuss it with you barber the next time you go to have your bad blood let out. I'm sure he is positive bleeding you is the cure to your ails.

Cultural Factors

This one is even trickier because we are doing it to ourselves and we take it for granted. Has there ever been a generation that has spent so much time in chairs? Whether in the car, or typing an internet article that nobody will read all the way through, or even sitting in your cubicle at work I can't imagine any other time in history that has afforded us so much time to sit. There is such a high occurance of back trouble, could it be from the constant unnatural curve of sitting? Lumbar support be damned, back in the day they were out farming the land or walking door to door selling vaccums. After all, we evolved to a bipedal state so we could stand. Or is it that nobody lived long enough to complain of back pain 200 years ago. Now we sit and watch glowing screens all day. Will the television and computer screens alter the way we develop sight? Will aids such as the glasses I am wearing to see counter this effect, or amplify it? The newfound prevelance of gaming has given this generation super-thumbs. Can you tell me that cell phones, console and pc games haven't had some effect on our development...even if only on a small personal level? Imagine what it could do over time. This once again assumes that the fittest will survive and the weak will not. So who knows, maybe it won't change anything at all and instead our individual development will depent on our habits and habitat alone. We wonder at the rise of anaphylactic reactions to peanuts and many other perceived irritants by the bodies of our youths, but why would that happen? Could it be that modern trade has exposed people who otherwise would have never encountered peanuts to them? One person's genetic line could be altered by anything I imagine, so who knows what the next generations will be like. People in various parts of the world evolve differently. Africans have elongated extremeties to aid in the dispersal of heat...because Africa is hot. Eskimos have longer noses to warm air before it gets to the lungs and they tend to be shorter to prevent heat loss...because it's cold up there. It is not to say that one is superior over the other, as they are each superior in their given environment. Now those are 2 VERY basic examples. Imagine what is possible short term and long term on a cellular level, and the effects that could possibly arise. Another point of interest would be diet. Now more than ever people rely on fast food as a staple. Is all that genetically engineered food better or worse in the long run than home cooking?

Also consider standards of living and what I will conventiently call moral codes. In poor countries they do not have the EPA to clean up distasters. Will they be better or worse because of it? Societal trends show a weakening of the traditional moral codes imparted on us by our parents and religion. Promiscuous relations may have been just as common in years past as they are now, but due to the ease of access to people from far away isn't it possible that the spread of disease to unprepared peoples is not only easier but in fact changing us? 200 years ago it was unlikely that a man could zip on down to Brazil and fraternize with the local women and then go right back home to anywhere, USA. People developed seperately for the most part. This new integration yields a whole new field of potential. Certain races are carriers of certain diseases. Again this does not make any superior, it is just an example of the localization and adaptation of man to his environment. Our culture now affords us a melting pot like we have never seen before.

Medicinal Factors

This one should be easy. We prolong the lives of those who would otherwise not exist. Premature births, cancer patients, dialysis patients and anyone who has ever received an organ transplant would be perfect examples. Once again, this sounds cold...but I am just trying to stay objective. I'm sure everyone knows someone who has had something done to extend their life, and that's great. The question is not the ethics of medicinal intervention for the terminally ill patient, but rather the possible effects on the course of humanity. Modern pharmacology presents astounding potential for affecting our direction as a species. From the mind bending drugs to the life saving ones, they all have an effect. Also consider the possibility that we are becoming more and more reliant on them to fill in for our own defense mechanisms. Take allergy medicines for instance. Instead of developing a resistance to external irritants you can just take a pill. But, you can't stop taking that pill. Will it handicap your children's ability to fight off allergens? Will medicines designed to fight depression alter brain chemistry in ways we don't immediately see? How can we expect to tinker with our bodies on a chemical level and not see any adverse effect? They people making the drugs sure don't know, and if they say they do they are either ignorant or liars.

I can't imagine being so arrogant as to say I understand what is going on. I hope to whatever God will listen that people will open up their eyes and see that they don't know as much as they think they do. Otherwise, we can never have any hand in deciding how we guide our progress.

"Self is and ever will be our greatest enemy"

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