For my writing class this semester I'm writing a reasearch about pollution. While I've been reading through article after article about all the industrial and life style aspects of human life that basically poison oursevles a rather random idea popped into my head.
Charles Darwin is famous for his observations with survival and we get the coined term "survial of the fittest" from his work. The basic idea is that the entity with the best characteristics for it's environment or the most adaptable survives the trials of the planet. A bird with a larger beak could be able to get more food than one with a smaller beak or the larger more aggressive male has a better chance at mating and procreating.
When you add the human element to the equation then it throws a whole new twist on the idea. You now have all the elements of society, industry, scientific study, religion, etc. These are the things that make humans feel so much more superior and more "fit" than other species. Then we throw in adaption. Most species adapt to their surrounding, humans adapt their surroundings to them.
Now this branches in two different directions. First, as we look at currents observations of conditions with pollution and global warming we see many species, like the Golden Toad, becoming extinct. Both flora and fauna are losing their habitats and the means for their future existance, while humans just install more air condidtioning to battle the increasing heat. Through our inventions we can pretty much out survive most other known life.
The second branch, however, deals with two sub ideas. The first random thought that popped into my head was that if we didn't have the capacity to create fire, the wheel, and antibiotics, would we still be more "fit". Without the human idea of adapting our surroundings to what we want how far would we survive? The second thought was that say due to our ability to adapt our environment we have killed many species and it looks like many more have been put in line for the fate of the Golden Toad as well. We may be the most "fit". But is an existance of destroying those less "fit" really a good existance? I wouldn't want to live in a barren world without frogs from the Amazon, coral reefs, polar bears, etc.
Me and my random thoughts.
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Good points there. Maybe the most important question is: Are humans really the most superior species? I'm starting to think not. The humans today are lazy, greedy, couldn't survive in the wilderness on their own for the most part. It's like we've created a world of our own, and if things for some reason reverted back to the way they were millions of years ago, we'd the the next creature on the endangered species list.
america is the illusionary empire shooting itself in the knees. our romantic ideals of equality go against Darwin's Law of Nature. society's standards were set at a low bar so that everyone can be equal -- fat, poor, ugly, handicapped, etc.. america is the nesting grounds for the weakest specie of homo sapiens.
my prime example -- a few years ago, socially inept kids at school never got laid, but now they can look cool coz of media and EMO! 'XD i have nothing against it. but hey, if you wna create a race of crying sissys that cant fend for themselves, by all means
but in all seriousness.. the reason we dont have excessive hair on our bodies anymore like our good ol' ancestors, the cavemen, is because we have indoor heating; we dont adapt to our environment anymore, rather, we adjust the environment (which is why we pollute the world so much).
side note: this is why americans suck at Survivor. if they had a bunch of third-world citizens join, theyd be living on the island like it was nothing.