Has social evolution been detrimental to humans? Can we move away from nature/mysticism and towards progress?

Question

We have changed since our early days: with the exception of third world nations, we have protected ourselves from nature and deemed ourselves exempt from natural selection through medical science. But we have, as a society, abandoned close relationships with elemental mysticism, that is, separated ourselves from nature, in the process.

Answer 1

The separation is definitely the problem. We live in our houses, we go to work in places with no natural light and no fresh air. We wear shoes that prevent our feet from ever touching the earth. Is it any wonder that we are destroying our planet -logging old growth forests, mining uranium from national parks to sell to other countries to make weapons. The list goes on. It has come to this because we can no longer 'feel' our environment, let alone care for it.

Answer 2

We haven't exempted ourselves from natural selection. We have just altered the traits that make us more or less fit (susceptible to small pox? big deal). As for the cultural trade-offs of a complex technological society, who knows what will happen. I'm not about to proclaim Y!A as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it hasn't been long since you could ask a question like this to anyone in the world.

Answer 3

Current DNA research shows clearly that we have not exempted ourselves from Natural Selection and it's partner, Genetic Drift. We cannot separate ourselves from Nature. By creating and nature/unnatural duality in your mind, you cease to see things as clearly as you might. We are not unnatural or supernatural beings. Blue/green algae consumes carbon dioxide and excretes oxygen. At a point in the distant past, so much blue/green algae occupied the oceans of the earth that it changed the balance of the atmosphere and made it impossible for that maximum level of algae to continue to exist. Birds build nests, termites build huge mounds, chimps make beds out of leaves and tree branches, and we create concrete and steel megastructures. We excrete so much carbon dioxide that we are changing the balance of the atmosphere. It's all part of the ongoing natural process of this planet. 95 percent of all species that have ever existed are extinct. Because of us? No, because that's the way of things. Individuals have their life spans, species have theirs. We have no way of making anything that is outside of nature. We have no way of being that is outside of nature. Nature is what is. We are of it and in it.

Answer 4

intolerance, close mindedness. From what i've got study in history every time somebody makes a super discovery(which comprise Galileo looking that the earth rotates around the sunlight) it generally takes until all the illiberal human beings have died for it to become broadly excepted. human beings often combat wars, and segregate one yet another through unwillingness to settle for sparkling ideals. i think of that is considered as we talk with the help of people who do not settle for homosexuality, the thought of evolution and different issues that folk deny through fact they have been taught to be against them. i think of in part that's the fault of the incompetence of our academic device.