
Nothing is more surprising to people than reading about the deteriorating conditions of today's society or today's rebellious youth and then finding out that the text was written over 100 years ago. Or in some cases, as long as several thousand years ago. There are many Greek and Roman texts discussing the human condition that sound as real today as they did back then. Once you remove the time dependent clues, it is virtually impossible to tell when the text was written.
Obviously the human condition has not changed all that much. If we were to magically revive an average Roman citizen, chances are they would have no trouble adapting to today's conditions. After a bit of initial amazement at the cars and cell phones, they would quickly fall in line and act like everyone else.
Here is another hint. Many people when discussing human behavior like to point out that our "hunter-gatherer" brain prefers this or that look or situation or environment. We are said to like women with a certain waist to hip ratio, with a certain breast size, etc. because it indicates how fertile they are. We are told we enjoy certain situations because they appeal to the "primitive parts of our brain." Many pseudo-scientists and, unfortunately enough, scientists talk of human evolution as it it stopped 100,000 years ago, when our species appeared. When you read their comments, it may sound as if humans evolved from primate ancestors, and voila, that is that, here we are, forever static and unchanging. We are trapped in a modern world with a primitive brain.
It is baloney of course and evolution is an everyday phenomenon. We change continuously and from one generation to the next. Human evolution is quite rapid and surely more rapid than any scientific treatise lets on. The Europeans for example had evolved quite a bit of resistance against many diseases that came from Africa and Asia by the time they discovered America. The American natives, who had no such exposure had not evolved in the same way -although they were by definition equally evolved-, and hence they were quite quickly decimated once the Europeans arrived bringing with them ferocious and unknown germs.
Why is it then that we evolve so quickly, yet things remain so familiar? Are our brains evolving slower than the rest of our bodies? Fat chance, really. What it really tells us is that the human niche has remained essentially the same for the past 5,000 years. And very likely it will remain the same for the next 1,000 years. Probably a lot longer if we are lucky enough to stay around. The latter may be a bit doubtful now that we are outgrowing our resources.
Evolution is much like the red queen in Alice in Wonderland. You have to change continuously to remain in the same place. It is called the red queen hypothesis. It is also a lesson futurists never learn. They are always so impressed with new technology that they think these new technologies will fundamentally change us or our environment. Unfortunately, all technology really does is allow us to exploit our environment faster and more efficiently.
We now use more energy per capita now than the Romans did. We drive cars instead of chariots. We fly planes. We have indy and nascar instead of ben-hur's horse racing. If one movie is to be believed, we will soon have pod racing. The experience won't be that much different, it will be more of the same. We will just burn more energy more quickly. Until we run out that is.
No comments:
Post a Comment