Humanity's Dangerous Delusion of It's Own Importance

"Evolution progresses to complexity and intelligence, and Homo Sapien's are the star on the Christmas Tree of life". Unfortunately, the facts point in a different direction.

Humanity has long labored under the mystical delusion that life developed from simple mindless organisms and evolved into complex, intelligent, and spiritual forms. This anthropocentric view of the Universe, while it justifies much of Mankind's actions, behavior patterns and cultural identities, is not supported when the origin of life is looked at in a scientific and objective manner.

Much of Humanity believes that we are the reason the Universe exists at all, paying no heed to the facts of the matter whatsoever. This "identity" being the remnants of a cultural meme spread many generations ago during the domain of religious dominance, before the development of true and accurate scientific methods.

There are several crucial facts that this hierarchical "Christmas tree" view of our own self-importance ignores. All life consists of reproducing cells driven by a simple chemical code representing genetic material, and has arisen from a common bacterial ancestor. In essence, all life is of bacterial origin, as recent developments in exo-biology has shown us.

Life is a process by which bacterial based lifeforms have deviated from their original bacterial base to gain access to untapped resources. When viewed objectively, it does not represent a progression upwards towards more complexity and intelligence. It is simply a deviation sideways, away from the bacterial base. Instead of a "Christmas Tree" we are left with the shape of a tree growing against the wall in the shade.

As the center or base becomes overshadowed and dark, the limbs must spread further to reach the light. Instead of a pyramid shaped tree where we Humans are the utmost pinnacle, we are left with a flat-topped tree sprouting from a wall, where humans are on tip of the longest, thinnest branch furthest from the shaded trunk.

All life is driven by the simple needs to reproduce genetic materials, and to tap new resources for survival. This new view of the tree of life is a reflection of this; everything else being extras in the grand scheme of things, created by the complexities of tapping the resources needed to spread the genetic code.

Red Queen Theory

It has long been assumed that changes in evolution take place due environmental factors. That is, when environmental conditions change, evolution will adapt an organism to allow it to survive. Researchers at the University of Liverpool have announced this may not be the case at all. They point to results from their genetic research that seem to indicate that inter-species competition plays a much stronger role.

The theory, first proposed as the "Red Queen Theory", formulates that most evolutionary changes are a result of a sort of "tit for tat" result of combative interactions with other organisms. Small but relatively rapid changes occur due to competition for survival in their environment. It suggests that all creatures are in a constant race for survival, evolving new ways to counter threats to their existence over time.

The "Red Queen Theory" is named after a passage in the Lewis Carrol story, Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen tells Alice "it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place".

This theory plays more into our currently accepted notions of Chaos Theory than the earlier view of Evolutionary Change, and can also be applied to other evolutionary systems as well, for example international arms races.

I will let you Google this one yourself if you want to know more...

Will Humanity Evolve into Artificial Life?

As humanity continues down the road of evolution, what is next for our race? For thousands of years, man has lived at sort of a stable level of development, with little about his condition truly changing. Life in an early Iron Age society not being a whole lot far removed from some of the later versions of civilisation. At one point, not very long ago, it was possible for a man to read ALL the written knowledge ever transcribed by man. With the introduction of Industrialism, this all changed.

Within a hundred years, we had many wonderous inventions and a wealth of knowledge available. The knowledge is self generating. When we discover or develop one thing, it leads to advancement in many other areas as well. It has fast reached a point where it is truly impossible for the human mind to comprehend all of the knowledge which has been acquired as a whole. There is just far too much. Man has reached a point where he needs to evolve to the next level just to keep pace.

Some scientists, like Stephen Hawking, say that genetics and DNA science is the key. They say that we should be seriously looking at stimulating the next step in evolution, although at this point, we can remain in control of the process through our technological development. Whether this next step will be totally genetic and biological, or some type of electromechanical enhancement remains to be seen.

One can envision a world population with network enhancements to allow for direct reception of things like the Internet, so as to maintain and enhance our mind through distributed knowledge. Once a process like this begins, biological enhancements for other percieved deficiencies will not be far behind. Maybe we will see development of things like articially enhanced legs for athletes, and enhanced vision for pilots, etc. At what point will it end?

The classic Cyberpunk anime, Ghost in the Shell, took on this very topic. In this story, the main character was a female secret agent with a cybernetically enhanced body. The only truly human part remaining, was the brain itself. In a case like this, is the organism still really a human?

The world is changing, and the conditions affecting our evolution are, in fact, evolving themselves. What will become of humanity in 500 years is anybody's guess.

See what Stephen Hawking has to say about it on the Daily Galaxy.

Ten Worst Evolutionary Designs

I thought this was interesting, so here is a summary...

1. Blowholes - Why not gills?
   
2. Hyena Clitoris - It gets so hard and big it sometimes kills the babies during birth.
   
3. Kangaroo Teats - Yeah, let's crawl across the body from birth to get to this.
   
4. Giraffe Birth Canal - 5 feet up. Really?
   
5. Bird eating Spider Exoskeleton - A very fragile skeleton for a spider who cannot spin web.
   
6. Shark Fetus Teeth - Babies with teeth in the womb is just a bad idea.
   
7. Human Stomach - Why can't we digest plant matter?
   
8. Slug Genitals - Genitals that get stuck together and sometimes have to be chewed off!
9. Quadrupeds - Makes scratching your back very hard to do.
   
10. Narwhal Tusk - Indeed. A 9 foot useless tooth?

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