I don't mean to offend anyone who may read this, but I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate for a bit.
Some people have put out posts on the evolution readings that I would like to challenge.
As far as natural selection goes, wouldn't "survival of the fittest" refer to everything and anything that makes it easier for your species to survive? Just because it says "fittest" doesn't mean that it refers to strength or size, it refers to how "fit" you are in a given situation. One mutation could cause a physically strong organism to develop something that makes it more "fit" in social interactions with the opposite gender, thereby making it the "fittest" to survive and pass on genetic material. In short, both strength (or agility, hardiness, etc...) and sexual attraction play equal parts in the scheme of natural selection.
Next, while no one has posted about this yet but I know someone will, a "mutation" is not bad. That word has recieved very bad press in recent years and nowadays we take it as meaning something that makes us a freak or grow a third arm, etc... A mutation is any genetic change, good or bad. Whether or not it halps us survive determines the "good" or "bad" part.
Third, as far as the native american children going to schools and losing awareness of the "natural" world, that is a cultural change and has nothing to do with genetics. Cultures adapt, like genetics, in order to meet new challenges of life, but they are not caused by anything genetic; though it can be argued that a cultural change has brought a genetic change. As a nice little side note, the perception of what is a "freak" is determined by your culture.
Finally, I do not support prolonging life through medical advances in certain situations. For example cancer, mental diseases, brain damage, or certain diseases like down syndrome or most forms of mental retardation. Remember, I don't mean to offend, I just don't think it's a good idea. Allowing our weak, diseased members of the species survive is not an efficient system for survival, even in an urban world. It wastes resources and money keeping people alive when they should by all natural means be dead. People may say "that's not fair," because that person "didn't get a chance to live," but that isn't the way the world works. It isn't fair. It isnt right. It doesn't care if you loved them or hated them. It doesn't care if you "didnt get a chance". Sometimes it doesn't give you a chance to begin with. But we have to move on and accept that thats the way it is, changing it won't necessarily make it better and if we allow the weak and stupid (not necessarily retarded, just stupid) to breed then we will lose what evolutionary progress we have managed to gain.
If anyone would like to discuss any of these issues further, I would be happy to respond.
Ryan Casto
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I agree with the last paragraph. I dont think that life should be prolonged. People are living really long miserable lives during their old age. My grate grandma lived to be 94 she wasn't enjoying her last few years of life. All of her sisters had died except for one and she had had enough of just being able to sit in a chair thinking the nurses were steeling her underwear. I love her and i miss her but I am glad she is gone. She wanted to leave this world.
ReplyDeleteraven p
As I discussed in my post on evolution; natural selection is mostly irrelevant at our stage in evolution, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Just because natural selection doesn't play as big of a role in our evolution, it doesn't mean we can not progress in society and as a human race. If cancer or other diseases could be cured by medicine, there wouldn't be much of a problem with passing on that cancer gene to the next generation since it could be cured anyways. As for mental retardation; I think it provides for a deeper society and allows different perspectives. People with autism are also generally more likely to be a cevant(spelling?), which allows for extraordinary abilities. What about Stephen Hawking? In your system he might have been euthanized as a child and our world would be one ultra-genius short.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting. I was just reading an article that stated that the pace of human evolution has actually picked up over the last few thousand years. The rapid changes in immediate environment that accompanied the onset of agriculture, higher population densities, population movements resulted in fairly rapid changes in many human gene distributions. There are the textbook examples of adult lactase, starch digesting enzyme amylase, and our coevolution with various pathogens such as malaria, bubonic plague, and the measles. But you can also consider the near extinctions that have taken place of various aboriginal peoples such as the former occupants of North America.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jeff that we're moving into a new phase of evolution in which the old rules need not apply. We are on the verge of being able to deliberately and consciously modify our genes. That's a whole new ballgame in "natural selection". May we be wise in our choices.