So apparently I'm going to hell. This takes a bit of explaining. I was in anthropology today and we were talking about biological/physical evolution, natural selection, cultural evolution, etc. The prof was telling a short story about moths, how darker mutations appeared and due to the industrialization in England, they survived better then the lighter ones because they blended in with the soot from the factories covered trees, and therefore could live on to pass that gene.
I was thinking about that, and about how when mutations happen, they aren't neccessarily always for the better, but because of natural selection, those failed evolutionary "freaks" die off instead of striving to become the new norm. We as humans have the same things happen, but because of our culture, we do not let them die. For example, in Roman times, if a child was born with a physical deformity or a mental retardation, it would die young because it was not able to survive in the conditions of that world. However, right now if someone is born with a retardation, they will get special treatments and help, they have special hospitals, schools, programs to teach them a skill in life to make money and self-sufficiency, they are able to find mates, have offspring, and maybe those offspring will fail to have that trait, but a couple of generations down the line, it may reappear, but by now it's spread to many different families, etc. It doesn't die off like say a mutation in a family of deer would.
So I had to pose the question: Are we genetically screwing ourselves due to our culture?
Apparently, I'm a Nazi.
Or so the professor and the rest of the class viewed.
The Professor likened me to a Nazi. A NAZI. I was posing an intellectual question, I didn't say "Hey, Let's kill all these damned Re-res." Am I not even allowed to wonder anymore?
The Prof said something the first day of class:
"We as a species are unique. We can view our world and change accordingly based off nothing but our mental choices. We are the authors of our destiny."
Have we not also said "Hey Nature, screw you, you don't know what you're talking about, we're gonna do what we're gonna do, Natural Selection isn't good enough for us" and become likewise authors of our own evolution?
I was thinking about that, and about how when mutations happen, they aren't neccessarily always for the better, but because of natural selection, those failed evolutionary "freaks" die off instead of striving to become the new norm. We as humans have the same things happen, but because of our culture, we do not let them die. For example, in Roman times, if a child was born with a physical deformity or a mental retardation, it would die young because it was not able to survive in the conditions of that world. However, right now if someone is born with a retardation, they will get special treatments and help, they have special hospitals, schools, programs to teach them a skill in life to make money and self-sufficiency, they are able to find mates, have offspring, and maybe those offspring will fail to have that trait, but a couple of generations down the line, it may reappear, but by now it's spread to many different families, etc. It doesn't die off like say a mutation in a family of deer would.
So I had to pose the question: Are we genetically screwing ourselves due to our culture?
Apparently, I'm a Nazi.
Or so the professor and the rest of the class viewed.
The Professor likened me to a Nazi. A NAZI. I was posing an intellectual question, I didn't say "Hey, Let's kill all these damned Re-res." Am I not even allowed to wonder anymore?
The Prof said something the first day of class:
"We as a species are unique. We can view our world and change accordingly based off nothing but our mental choices. We are the authors of our destiny."
Have we not also said "Hey Nature, screw you, you don't know what you're talking about, we're gonna do what we're gonna do, Natural Selection isn't good enough for us" and become likewise authors of our own evolution?
SLATFATF
~Å~
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1 comment:
fascinating.
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