Reply #98: Evolutionarily speaking, we're a dud.

[Chulanowa]

A very interesting dud, perhaps, but look at it this way. The goal of a species is to exist as long as possible, right? If a species can be said to have a goal, that is.

Take the coyote, Canis latrans. This little dude has been running around, in his exact current form, for six million years. Huamns, in our current form, have only been around for three hundred thousand years. Humans, as an entire genus, two million. Hominids as a family? Four million. In those four million years, the family has produced probably at least ninety species, all of which lasted less than a million years each.

Four million years have seen ninety or so variations of hominid, none of whom lived long enough to really even leave that many remains, while there's only been one coyote. To be fair, coyote did give rise to both wolf and jackal, jackals around five million years ago, wolves about four.

Our rapid speciation and equally rapid extinction indicates a group of animals that lives hard and fast, but dies young. There's really no reason to think that sapiens is going to be the one to finally reach the million-year mark for the hominids. Erectus came close, and he wasn't the one covering his food supply under layer upon layer of oily rock.

When one is talking from a biological standpoint, peace and satisfaction are bupkis. Do you give a damn whether a hundred generations from now, people live in peace and happiness? It's easy to say you do, because it makes you feel good about yourself to do so. But do you really, truly care? Nah. As animals, we're concerned with what we can perceive. The people close to us up until the point we ourselves diw. The people we see on the television or read about. The "here and now", in other words. Even religion only serves for the hear and now, caters to the immediacy mindset of our species. A Christian worrie whether he and his family are good enough for heavan, but chances are, he doesn't really apply this to a guy in Tasmania who'll be born three centuries after the given Christian is dead. This isn't because we're cold, heartless things. It's just because our brains are wired a certain way. We care for our young, we worry about our neighbors, and we sympathize with htose we preceive. Everyone else is an abstract concept. It's not that we have anything against the unperceived, it's just that we can't make our minds give a damn about something it doesn't know actually exists.

Because of our instinctual self-interest, we'll either wind up devouring all our resources and starving into extinction, or our own fear of death will drive us to shield outselves from every disease and condition that might ever cause death, thereby resulting in either one miller untouchable bug, or breeding ourslves into such a bad genetic state that we wind up with more still births than live.

At the survace, the unavoidable oblivion of one's own species might be a little stress-inducing, but in reality it's no big deal. We certainly won't be the first, and only a truely misanthropist person would believe we'll be the last. I find it kind of comforting, a reminder that we are a part of this world and subject to the natural laws of biology.