how are we evolving?

Question

as a race..will our emotions be stronger,senses?

Answer 1

I dont believe the human race will continue to evolve just so long as civilization brings us together and technology supports our lives.

You have to understand the mechanism for evolution. First, there is genetic mutation... characterized by the uniqueness in one individual of a species.

This attribute spreads through a species over many generations, either by luck, or because it provides an evolutionary benefit that somehow aids survival.

This must occur many times, drastically changing a species over time, over countless mutation. When a species is so far removed from its ancestors that mating with their kin become impossible, then a new species has formed. These changes occur throughout the entire species.

Now, I ask, in a society where the physical is deemed superficial and many people base partnership on psychological or spiritual virtue, or otherwise look past certain physical traits through love, how might unusual characteristics die out?

When medicine is capable of masking the unusual, what basis in superficiality is there for rejecting a potential mate?

Most mutation that occurs is not advantageous... but potentially life threatening. Mutation occurs at random... there is no evolutionary objective... no one guides the process to the ultimate betterment of a species.

Now science is capable of preventing the death of mutant babies, allowing them to live full, normal, productive lives. Medicine will prolong the lives of individuals that should have died in the womb, long enough for them to procreate, themselves.

You see, with a world like ours, where science masks ones genetic failings gives people the added chances to mate, where society exists that are not as instinctively oriented toward the betterment of their genetic line... what are we left with?

Our species will only continue to accumulate genetic mutation that have no benefit. The few beneficial mutations that show up wont be countered by all the disadvantageous ones.

Our genome will become corrupted and impure. Eventually, I think, medicine will strive to maintain the species. Because we will no longer be able to on our own. Its possible we will become infertile as a species due to all the genetic impurities. Science will do their part just to keep the species alive.

We will become extinct as a species because we selfishly chose to extend the life of the individual, unnaturally.

Our species only hope for survival... and evolution... is to abandon the technology that keeps us going. Become, at least in lifestyle, the animals of nature... let nature make its picks.

Answer 2

What you have to consider with evolution is that its point of action is in producing children with the same traits who then go on to produce more children and so on.

So do strong emotions necessarily cause more children to come into being? Not at all. Some strong emotions cause people to do other things than produce more children, and many are more of a learned response than a genetic one.

Do better senses necessarily produce children? Certainly they can if they keep you alive when you might otherwise die childless. But by the same token, it doesn't really matter if you see a tiger coming with your exceptional vision or with a pair of binoculars. So as our technology improves this is becoming less and less of a factor.

What IS just as - if not more - important than ever is INTELLIGENCE. It doesn't matter at all if you see the tiger unless you recognize it as a threat, figure out the best way to evade it, and succeed in doing so. As our society becomes more and more complex, there are a greater variety of threats that exist, many of which are completely undetectable by senses (how can you see an oncoming financial disaster with your eyes?).

Further, almost every other advantage you might think of is probably replacable with the proper amount of ingenuity. Who needs telepathy or clairvoyance now that we have radio and TV? Who needs superhuman strength if you can rent a tractor? What is the point of being able to run at forty miles an hour when anyone can drive sixty on the freeway?

Thus, the only safe bet is that those who succeed us will be smarter than we are. And looking around, I thank the gods that this is so!

EDIT:

There are those who try to suggest that evolution can be stopped or turned backwards. This is complete nonsense to anyone familiar with the concept.

The only way for evolution to completely stop would be for everyone to have the exact same number of children. I know of no country, no matter how technologically advanced, where the infant mortality rate is zero, the deaths to disease are zero or confined to sterile individuals, or where even everyone is fertile, much less has sex regularly.

It's true that surviving a disease or physical deformity may be less important now, but there are now things that are more important that never were before, such as not being prone to carpal tunnel syndrome or being able to see well in the more heavily violet light that only fluorescent light bulbs tend to produce. And I know of very few societies where wealthy jocks have less trouble spreading their genes around than destitute cripples. Some things will always be advantages.

Answer 3

As a speeches - we are not a race - we are evolving through language. Biological evolution is very slow at best (we are probably very little different from our ancestors of 50,000 years ago) and we have indeed stopped it in so many ways by helping those who would have died out - helped to live. This is a good thing.

So how does language help us evolve. You cite stronger senses. We have now senses greater than any animal. How - well each generation of scientists and technologists stand on the previous generations 'shoulders' by being able to read all their work. A car manufacture does not have to re-invent the wheel. They can just read it up. Its called education - it is our education.

We can also discuss with so many people about their work. That is what a book is. This means I do not have to think every thing from basic.

Indeed - this very sentence - typed on this very computer - and answering this very question IS evolution of human kind.

Answer 4

I honestly think we've stopped evolving, for the time being. If Darwin's theory is right, then for genes to evolve into something better, the weak must die out and the strongest must go on and survive, its cruel but its the way evolution works. Human beings dont live like that anymore though, we dont leave weak people to die off like the animal world does, and like how we did 500 years ago - instead we encourage everyone to survive and breed. It is good for an equal society in the present, but in the long run, the strong arent going ahead properly, because they're too busy dragging the weak people that add nothing to society along with them, it's not the way nature intended really.

I dont think it will be long before anmials will begin to over take us, a couple of million years - they'll be smarter than us... if we're still alive!

Answer 5

Evolution partially depends on survival of the fittest. Since we are eliminating that factor with modern medicine and technology, evolution for humans in the future may be very different than in the past. Some theorists speculate that there may be 2 different species that branch off from our current homo sapien sapien. One good looking, intelligent, strong, tall and hairless super race and a sub-human, weak, short, dumbed down version of humanity that will eventually be wiped clean. I doubt this will happen but an interesting theory nonetheless.

Answer 6

Inside our species, we have already evolved over the past several hundred years. We're taller and seemingly healthier since we live much longer these days. That could also be due to our prosperity and advances in medicine and health.

Answer 7

We are not evolving. And there is no Human Race.

Answer 8

Probably not. For one thing, it seems that our emotions are getting weaker in the sense that we are more under thier control than the other way about. There's not much stiff upper lip anymore.

Answer 9

Getting weaker as benightedness is increasingly covered up by diversions and the greed of the top.

Answer 10

"Climb the Highest Mountain," Mark Prophet,
"The Master of Lucid Dreams," Olga Kharitidi, M.D.,
"Watch Your Dreams" and "Kundalini West," Ann Ree Colton,
"Man, Master of His Destiny," O. M. Aivanhov, and
"The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?", Free and Wilcock,
provide answers.

cordially,

j