Natural Selection
John Ink2Quill
www.ink2quill.com

Darwin is best known for the term “natural selection”. There is so much to be said about the ideas of Natural Selection. It has been so misquoted over time but it also is so wrong in its core ideas. The idea that nature settles everything concerning survival eventually and it will work our for humankind, until it doesn’t, seems to put people who don’t give the topic much thought at ease. In the minds of so many people, the mighty, or more accurately those that are doing well at survival so far have a right to prosper because it is the will of Nature, Mother Nature.

There is nothing wrong with believing that the life of a species, any species including humanity, is just one patch on the large quilt of life whose time will come and go. A person has a right to their beliefs. But consider a less passive approach to species survival. What if an animal like the beaver wanted to avoid drought and flooding of their ecosystem by changing the landscape? What if that beaver decided to avert a catastrophe through its skills and hard work? So it climbed a tree and took a look around and made plans to control the water in its ecosystem. What about all the living beings that look for ways to avoid extinction and thrive? Are they committing some kind of crime against Nature? The answer to that question is – probably not.

It seems that most species spend most of their time raising their young and acquiring resources like food, water and shelter and don’t devote much time or energy to the question of Natural Selection. Most species are on a kind of treadmill from birth to dust. One good example of a species that has left the treadmill of resource acquisition but has reentered it with its favorite past time – war, is humanity. In many ways the human species has not really left the treadmill of resource acquisition any more than the goldfish thinks of things beyond the pond or the seagull ponders things beyond the horizon. To its credit humanity has given Natural Selection a thought or two.

To really leave that death spiral of Natural Selection a species would have to ponder and act on manipulation of its environment while respecting that environment and all life. That means avoiding the wasteful past times like warfare and resource wasting to begin with. So far our tools to build a better future as a species are computers, the internet and A.I. and powerful tools they are. In some ways we have everything we need to leave the treadmill of Natural Selection right now. All we need is the will and focus to do so.

John Ink2Quill

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