Evolution of the mind

Evolution.... this word has been tossed around in debate for a very long time.

I don't believe that there is some specific guideline and pattern that is being followed. That doesn't necessarily mean that I don't believe there could be either. I think that it is all by chance that each of these genetic mutations exist. They either flourish, or they die out and become obsolete.

However I do believe that the path that this planet Earth has gone down, has led us to the resulting complex melting pot.

In order for life to have gotten where it is now, we had to evolve from our monkey state of being, eating bugs out of each other's fur, and throwing poop at each other for fun. We slowly evolved into beings that were more nomadic, hunting our food, following the migrations of animals throughout the seasons, living off of the land, being one with the land, understanding the land. Growing crops and keeping livestock then became the source of human survival, and has obviously become the primary source for most of humanity up to the present day. Life during these times was seemingly simple, and yet stressful in their own ways. During these times you were focused on making the products in order to survive, you would harvest your crops to feed your family. This was still a time where the stronger you were, you had a higher chance of survivability.

Survival of the fittest. Does not exist any longer. With medicine excelling at such incredible lengths each and every year such astounding breakthroughs are discovered. The way that a physical ailment is taken out of a species to create a stronger more survivable generation is the sickness does not get passed down into future generations, because, typically the sick would die. The few with a weak genetic trait would not survive naturally, and would thus not last long in the gene pool of any species. Since now our medicine is so advanced, many seemingly weak traits are passed onto children, only to be kept into the gene pool. This may sound a little insensitive, and I am not meaning it to be this way. However in the "natural" world, this weakness would not allow the individual to survive long enough to reach a reproductive state. Since it passes before it is able to reproduce this trait is filtered rather quickly out of the species. Since now we are able to keep people alive for so long, they are able to pass along diseased gene traits to be kept into the genetic pool of humanity. Now let me repeat, I am not saying this is a bad or a good thing, just something that is happening.

Since this is the case now, stress seems to be a strong combatant that we are fighting to overcome. It has become the primary source for many sources of disease, cancers, mental illness, physical immunity. This is the biggest killer and threat to our life, and that is something that medicine is yet to overcome.

We as humans, do not like to think of dying. It is not a pleasant thought that crosses our mind. Stress is a gigantic threat to each and every one of our well being and survival. However this may be a new source of survival of the fittest. We could be witnessing the next step in an evolutionary process taking place before our eyes. Technology has become increasingly fast. In the past ten years, it has exploded. Information is brought to us at lightning speeds. We do not like to wait, we are into instant gratification. We experience and process so much more information daily, than a person even ten years ago did on a weekly basis. This has created a necessity of our brains to speed up. In order to process information, our brains will have to adapt and keep up. This is also going to make our stress levels go up. The fact of reality of the present moment in time. Technology heavily dominates our culture. In order to survive well, one must have the brain capacity to stay up to speed with the world.

Perhaps it is the next step to the evolutionary process. The path that life itself has taken on our little organic vessel. If staying up to a current brain power speed relevant to the increasingly fast world we live in also determines our survivability. Would it not make sense that the people that are now going to survive and flourish the best, are the ones that are able to handle more heavily involved and fast bits of information. Our species is becoming upgraded at extremely fast speeds. Each generation, is hopefully going to be better equipped to handle the fast paced lifestyle of the world. As a 6 year old, they are already subject to a gigantic amount of more stimulus than even I was as a 6 year old, just 20 years ago.

Here is the beautiful thing about evolution. Just as time and space have no beginning or end. Evolution does not exist with a starting point, or an ending point. Just exists in constant change. Infinitely forward, infinitely backwards. The mind blowing thing about evolution is this. Without the previous conditions the future conditions would not be. You cannot have a house built before the foundation. Evolution doesn't only pertain to life itself. It is directly involved with every aspect of this ever changing universe. You would not have a civilization of multicellular, complex, thinking beings, without the first single celled organisms coming together. It is all stepping stones. We would not have my beloved iPhone without the first car dash board gigantor that my dad had in his truck.

The incredible thing about all of these extraordinary changes in life...every single year, is that we are evolving at such incredibly fast rates now, that we can see it happening before our very own eyes. Just as the population explosion in the past 50 years has doubled, thing are speeding up. In every aspect. It is incredible to witness and be aware of.

If you so desire to read up and become more aware in the topic of things doubling, such as the population, and more specifically technology, check out Moore's Law :-)