Thoughts on Evolution
I would like to share one thing I've been thinking about lately. I think most people call it The Game. Life? But I was thinking about evolution, a topic that's on my mind a lot this year, and how it works. The basic idea is that the organisms more fit and well-adapted for the environment tend to succeed and pass on their traits. And I contemplated what kind of human would be considered (by nature) best adapted to the environment we have today. Money is the main provider in this society we created, so it seems logical to look at what kinds of people make enough money to have kids who are successful and healthy. So people who make money and still have time to take proper care of their young. Also people who make enough money to be able to avoid health issues and obtain education. Making lots of money generally requires high levels of intelligence, proficiency in the arts, or both.
Anyone who keeps up with any decent statistics is aware that poor and racial minority populations are disproportionately affected by health problems, violence, and incarceration, all of which prevent the successful passing of genes. Essentially, by nature of our system, we have created a world in which evolution selects most commonly for wealthy, white people. Now there are far too many people in this world for that to eliminate other populations, but that's far from the point. The point is really to be conscious of this system that we've created.
So Evolution ought to and more and more is naturally inclined to create humans with higher and higher levels of intelligence and artistic expression with a slight bias towards the aforementioned demographic. But here's my main issue: are intelligence and artsiness ideal traits? Is that really benefiting the world? Because the fact is that those demands were created by us. Not the Earth herself. Surely Nature would not be inclined to create organisms that systematically extract resources and cause death to all varieties of life wherever they settle. Such animals are typically balanced out by the balance of the ecosystem in which they live. But we have transcended any single ecosystem. If one dies, we simply move on to something else.
But furthermore, if these demands for intelligent and artistic beings are created by us, that necessarily implies that we can choose what demands we place on the organism, and by extension have a real-world (albeit slow) effect on the evolution of the human race (and other species).
We don't need to manipulate genes to affect the future of humanity. We do it all the time by creating a society that values some people over others. We just don't see evolution because it's on a time scale much larger than ourselves, thus we tend to act as if it isn't real. And yet it is.
The precise age of humanity is debatable, but it seems to be a few hundred thousand years ago. Our ancestors date back a little farther, perhaps a few million. So really, we haven't seen too much evolution in our history, especially not in the brief recorded history that we have access to. But we also know from natural sciences that evolution tends to speed up under extreme circumstances, such as existential or apocalyptic events. So we find ourselves in a position where there is a system that creates demands for success, a system based on the desires of humans who lived long before ourselves and not based on systems found in nature. Furthermore, that system and its demands affect the course of evolution, but hasn't existed long enough for us to be aware of any of these effects. Neither do we know how quickly it might affect us given the presence of existential threats like climate change or nuclear war, which are only two on a long list nowadays.
But wait, there's one more implication of critical importance. We shape the course of evolution by creating artificial or previously nonexistent demands on organisms and valuing some over others. The system that we have in place currently operates entirely on the existence of exactly one basic thing, a principal rule of humanity: money. Money is the single most important and powerful tool for measuring objective value in society. Want to make some? Create something of value, be it a good or a service. This also means that giving your money to someone is the same as saying that you value that person or those services. But also, it supports an individual and their unique traits, thus promoting the passing of their genes and their place in evolution. Your money is a literal expression of your values that, one tiny drop at a time, weighs a bucket in a certain direction.
