The ultimate form of failure is extinction, to be an evolutionary failure. Most of the funniest looking animals have died out, the ones that remain, such as the blobfish hide in the deep sea, where they can't be harpooned and lampooned. I like to go to the tree of life sometimes and gawk at the extinct creatures, all those who failed to make it in the world, and it makes me feel much better about myself and my failures.
Sometimes I try to think about my little daily struggles in evolutionary terms. If someone cuts in front of me in line they have cheated me out of some of my time on earth and therefore deserve to be weakened, so they may not impede on anyone else's time on earth. I think a broken arm would be a fair punishment. It would make it a lot harder for them to push their way to the front again for a while.
We live very far from evolutionary terms these days though. We still try to survive and procreate and all that stuff, but we sometimes let other stuff take precedence over survival, and especially procreation. The further society evolves the further we get from our evolutionary needs. Sometimes I wonder if this is a good thing.
One one hand, not worrying much about survival enables us to do some really neat stuff with all the free time we have that used to be reserved from running away from large things with claws. We have time to create, and to build, and to explore the wonders of the world. On the other hand, we often forget about evolution all together and spend all this neat free time that we've created for ourselves destroying the planet, other lifeforms and ourselves.
In the spot-on satire "Idiocracy," a future is imagined where the stupidest people end up out breeding the fittest, which in time creates a world full of idiots. The easiest way to bear witness to this sort of "devolution," is in language. Language was once very important because it was the pinnacle of evolution. Language is what separates us from the lower animals. Language is what allows us to share ideas and find new ways to help each other in this battle for survival. While, more polyglots are born every generation, the sophistication of language, and the ways that it is used are in recession. People speak more simply to be understood, and thus we limit the sophistication of concepts that we can share with people.
I don't think that the recession of language's importance in society will necessarily lead us to an "idiocracy" but I wonder if something more effective may be replacing language as the most important evolutionary trait? The image? Will we communicate in photos and gestures to circumvent the vagaries and deceptiveness of language. Will we develop a sophisticated language based on abbreviating words, removing syllables (def) and turning small sentences into acronyms (lol), so that we can communicate much faster. Maybe communication itself will be replaced with an understanding and an empathy so rich that we already know what people want before they even have a chance for it.
I've been working on that lately. I'll just walk up to someone and hand them a piece of tape or a pen. It will come in handy later.
Sometimes I try to think about my little daily struggles in evolutionary terms. If someone cuts in front of me in line they have cheated me out of some of my time on earth and therefore deserve to be weakened, so they may not impede on anyone else's time on earth. I think a broken arm would be a fair punishment. It would make it a lot harder for them to push their way to the front again for a while.
We live very far from evolutionary terms these days though. We still try to survive and procreate and all that stuff, but we sometimes let other stuff take precedence over survival, and especially procreation. The further society evolves the further we get from our evolutionary needs. Sometimes I wonder if this is a good thing.
One one hand, not worrying much about survival enables us to do some really neat stuff with all the free time we have that used to be reserved from running away from large things with claws. We have time to create, and to build, and to explore the wonders of the world. On the other hand, we often forget about evolution all together and spend all this neat free time that we've created for ourselves destroying the planet, other lifeforms and ourselves.
In the spot-on satire "Idiocracy," a future is imagined where the stupidest people end up out breeding the fittest, which in time creates a world full of idiots. The easiest way to bear witness to this sort of "devolution," is in language. Language was once very important because it was the pinnacle of evolution. Language is what separates us from the lower animals. Language is what allows us to share ideas and find new ways to help each other in this battle for survival. While, more polyglots are born every generation, the sophistication of language, and the ways that it is used are in recession. People speak more simply to be understood, and thus we limit the sophistication of concepts that we can share with people.
I don't think that the recession of language's importance in society will necessarily lead us to an "idiocracy" but I wonder if something more effective may be replacing language as the most important evolutionary trait? The image? Will we communicate in photos and gestures to circumvent the vagaries and deceptiveness of language. Will we develop a sophisticated language based on abbreviating words, removing syllables (def) and turning small sentences into acronyms (lol), so that we can communicate much faster. Maybe communication itself will be replaced with an understanding and an empathy so rich that we already know what people want before they even have a chance for it.
I've been working on that lately. I'll just walk up to someone and hand them a piece of tape or a pen. It will come in handy later.
No comments:
Post a Comment