Taking a slight detour from my 'quest' today, although still relevant.
Astrology, an idea that exists in billions of people's lives today surrounds us and bombards our consciousness on a daily basis. People trust in astrological predictions. That is the bottom line. There are varying degrees of 'trust', but I believe that even someone who only treats the predictions as fickle still values some of the input.
What is astrology? It is the idea that the paths and positions of certain celestial bodies including the planets in our solar system and the stars far beyond, have some influence on our lives. They affect our luck (What???), affect our mood and seem to give answers to the unexplainable in the form of Lady Destiny.
Let's explore this from two different perspectives:
1)Science: Scientifically, astrology is a totally moot point. What I mean by this is that astrology has NO, ZERO, NADA, ZILCH scientific backing. It is, for lack of a better term, bollocks. Why? essentially, things in space are far away....really far away. Light travels fast...that is an understatement. To put it in perspective, the light that reaches your eyes from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach us. Light travels at roughly 300,000 kilometres a SECOND! So, 300,000 multiplied by 60(for the seconds in a minute) multiplied by 8. That's how far the sun is, and the sun is considered 'close' to us. When you see the sun, you are seeing it as it was 8 minutes ago. it is impossible to see the sun as it is now. Extend this practice to other objects like planets and other stars. Some of the stars you see when you look at the night sky are thousands, even millions of light years away. Therefore you are seeing them as they were thousands or even millions of years ago. How is this relevant to astrology? Well astrology claims to be able to make certain predictions about the near, or even far future, simply by observing the movements of celestial bodies. scientifically, the only thing an astrologer can claim to predict, is the past. Even that is an overstatement. Keep this in mind whenever you read your horoscope. Consider that the person who writes your horoscope is either as deluded as you are, or is fully aware of the above facts and so is using your gullibility to manipulate you and millions of others, to make money. it is a job. And you fools are giving these liars the excuse they need to continue stealing from your pockets. They do worse though, they steal from your integrity and they steal from your lives. They successfully brainwash you into believing that certain aspects of your lives are 'written'..what is worse is that according to astrology, your 'written path' is the same, or is similar to all the other millions of people who share your star sign. Is it possible to make you feel any LESS special! You buffoons. It steals from your power to govern your life and make your own, objective choices. But what about gravity? Sure, all masses have a gravitational pull but they are simply TOO FAR away to have a significant effect on the earth, let alone the chemicals and hormones that are racing around in your body which govern your moods and behaviours.
Morally: Having established that astrology is just pure hearsay and very bad entertainment, well, how bad can it really be? Trust me it is. Is essentially turns you (the believers) into sheep. That's right, a herd of sheep, powerless to take your lives into your own hands. Astrologers are deceiving you into thinking that some things are 'meant to be' that destiny has a hand in your lives. There is no such thing, neither has there EVER been any kind of proof or evidence backing up any such claims. I can hear the keys being tapped as people frantically search the internet for proof to prove me wrong, do your best. It plays with your subconscious, capitalising on your desires and needs and keeping you intoxicated with magnificent and wonderful fairy tales. Tall dark strangers, the love of your life, economical boons etc etc etc. is this morally correct? Bullshitting people, manipulating their gullibilities and making predictions SO BROAD AND AMBIGUOUS that they can reasonably apply to anyone! Any claim made in a horoscope for, let's say, Leo, can easily apply to any of the other eleven zodiacs. Go on, try this: Get a magazine with horoscopes, cut them out so the names of the zodiacs can not be seen and give a 'Leo horoscope' to a 'Pisces person', letting them believe it is really a 'Pisces horoscope'. The person will in all likelihood claim that certain things came true and that the prediction was spot on. Due to the ambiguity of the predictions, and the fact that our subconscious is incredibly keen at generating what is we so desperately seek, the 'victim' is effectively manipulated into believing. Woosh! there goes your life, and there goes someone's money into the pocket of a smart-ass nobody who takes pride in being 'above' the sheep. You are both just as bad as eachother. The shepherd and the sheep.
Wake up people! Take your lives into your own hands...you only have one! Would you like to be on your death-bed in the future when your time has come, and regret certain things that happened in your lives? Would you like to believe that you could have done things differently rather than having let someone essentially run your life? Now is the time to change your belief. Stop reading the pathetic attempts at control, stop watching the silly old crone/witch who sits on your television screen spouting pure crap expecting you to be thrilled. Stop going to fortune tellers, tarot readers and all other forms of...*coughs* Bullshit! You should be proud to be alive, cherishing this rare thing called life and doing everything in your power to improve your short time here on earth, not letting someone get rid of any integrity you may have, and blatantly insulting your intelligence.
I may be jumping the gun here, but hey, why be politically correct when the people around you are morons? that's right, you are being lied to in your faces and letting it happen. So wake the f$&k up, and start living your life. Don't let anyone else do it for you...idiots. Don't let these liars pull curtains over your eyes.
Astrology, ONE of the great farces of our time.
Go on...prove me wrong.
Monday, 29 December 2008
Monday, 22 December 2008
Scratching my itch: Part III
It has been a trying and testing week for me, emotionally not physically and for reasons I cannot state directly here I have been delayed in continuing this work in progress. But i believe the glass has been overfilled now and it simply cannot contain anymore. It must spill, so whip out your kitchen roll and your wet wipes and let us get on with it...........
Part III
So, the universe has been born, and the earth has formed in one of the billions of galaxies scattered across the cosmos. Abiogenesis has (apparently) occurred and given rise to strange replicators which, being subject to the force of natural selection, have undergone evolution and resulted in millions of different creatures called organisms. Some are simple like bacteria, others belong to the domain of plant life and others have undergone complicated changes over time resulting in complex organisms called animals. Trillions of cells underneath one roof, each with their own genetic code, each gene striving to ensure the ongoing propagation of itself. Some genes form a gene 'pool' and therefore exert effects on other genes in the same pool. Others will in all likelihood never come across each other (I.E. a Human gene will probably never meet a spider gene....probably). Some of these genes have been packaged together into a wonderfully delightful and intelligent, yet extremely gullible and reactive creature called 'Homo-Sapiens'. No, this creature is not necessarily gay as the name may imply, but it is you and me...humanity.
We broke off from our closest common descendant with the chimpanzee about 250,000 years ago somewhere in the plains of Africa. That's right, deep down we are all africans. Some of us remained there, and others in their quest for food and shelter, journeyed off to far away places like the areas of the world we term 'Europe' and 'Arabia' and 'Asia'. Maybe someone swam to Cyprus and set up shop here!! Anyway, after having split off from the main group, travelled to far away lands where the environment was totally different it was therefore only natural that natural selection would favour different phenotypic expressions of genes, those that allowed the split off groups to survive successfully in the conditions they were exposed to. Heat, cold, humidity, grasslands, deserts, forests, tundras and of course the other organisms that inhabit these lands. Prey, predators, scavengers. Everything is connected.
For most of these 250,000 years humanity would stay in small groups called tribes, hunting for their food, protecting their young and fending off any threat. Some would survive and as is the way of things others would not. Genes which favored survival continued to replicate, whilst the rival alleles died off. Families and extended relations tended to stick together, and this is important for this is not just a comfortable situation which appeared by chance. it is genetic. you may tire of hearing the word gene being mentioned so frequently but there is no other way about it. it can explain everything. You see genes have developed for recognising close relation. This is due to the high chance that a close relation will have a copy of the very same gene and so it is beneficial to the survival of the gene to 'care for' or 'look after' other copies of itself. Chances are you care more for your Mother or father than for a stanger's mother or father, care more for your child than for a stranger's child (as much as you may try to deny it). Instinct is what some may like to call it. Suit yourselves.
Time to think......
Tribes continued much like this for many many generations. Depending on the environment, skills developed to allow for easier survival. Axes, hammers..tools in general. Hunting skills, methods to prepare and preserve food as well as ways of passing these learned skills along to children so they too may be prepared to fend for themselves when the time comes. Rival tribes competing for resources would frequently massacre themselves in an attempt to establish dominance. War, bloodshed, murder....nothing foreign to mankind (Note, i hate the word mankind for it seems to have sexist implications...what about womankind? more on that later). Genocide on small scales has been occurring for as long as organisms have existed, how ironic.
What was it that after such long periods of time suddenly gave rise to the abilility to think 'outside the box'? Some say it was the discovery of fire. This may be true, as having discovered fire, man need not live in such fear of unknown threats. There could now be light in the darkness and this offered a tremendous amount of safety. Safety gives time, time away from having to stay alert and vigilant in the dark straining your eyes and ears for a possible predator which may threaten you and your family. This time allowed for introspection. Maybe in his boredom, an ancient warrior whose duty it was to keep watch over the sleeping children at night picked up a stick and drew a line in the dirt. Maybe he realised he could draw a figure which resembled another of his own kind. Maybe this was how art was born.
Art in itself is a way of expression and as more time became available from 'watch duties', creativity could prosper. The development of langauge, possibly the greatest achievement of its time, meant that knowledge need not be learned purely by experience but a 'taste' of what is to come could now be passed on by word of mouth. Somewhere along the journey, humanity began to ask questions. What are we? Why are we here? Why does that great ball of light rise from the same region of the sky? Why does it then go away after a certain amount of time?
Those pesky genes......
Our genetic evolution resulted in our being curious creatures, always seeking a pattern with which we could explain our surroundings and our place in them. Ancient cultures devised methods of drawing up maps to familiarise themselves with the lands. They developed methods of forming building blocks from sand and water to create solid structures in which they could shelter themselves from the elements. Societal structures developed to satisfy the need for a hierarchy..this was only natural as by looking at apes and monkeys it is observed that a strong hierarchy does exist and it ensures the existence of a degree of order amongst the chaos. A group which was not structured in this way could not defend itself as effectively from threats, and in-group fighting and bickering would occur. Groups like this would probably not survive for very long. An ignorant age this was...but excusable, we did not know any better. Power struggles began as power was a coveted thing. He or she who had power could control resources and ensure his survival at the expense of others'. Ignorant views of nature meant that killing was an everyday thing seeing as empathy hadn't extended beyond the range of the immediate family.
Aaaa, the lack of a good book to read.....
If you don't have a good book to read, just make up a good story right? right. Let us see what good storytelling can do for someone. One of my favorite quotations of late is one put forward by Christopher Hitchens:
"Humans are pattern seeking creatures, and they will prefer a conspiracy or junk theory to none at all".
In an attempt to answer some of the mysteries that humans faced from their conception up until a few thousand years ago, stories to give meaning to many unexplainable phenomena were told from person to person. Sure they must have a source, and the source may not be a single person but groups of people each adding to their version as it is passed down through generations. In Egypt the sun became a god rising to do battle every morning, only to be defeated every night when another god came to shoo him away. Before even the egyptian gods, people had worshipped and revered Pagan gods for many years. The sun, the moon, nature, the woods the animals. There have been gods for almost everything you can think of including such things as fertility, food, wine and harvest. Gods have had lightning bolts in their hands, chariots at their feet and wreaths of flame on their heads. What do they all have in common? they give answers to the unanswerable. They give reason to observed events that are so present that they cannot be ignored. Most of these gods have now been relegated to 'myth' and we all accept them as unreal. Some aspects though have survived and have been mutated into new gods, gods with different personalities. People unfortunately live and die in the name of gods...in the name of manmade constructs in the mind.
The latest of these constructs, the ones that we are all familiar with are the Christian, The Islamic and the Judaic gods. Each of them has a book. Each of them have a common source of the first half of that book. Each of them have certain key characters in common. I mean...how boring!! If you are going to inspire your nation and give them moral values and meaning in their lives you would think that you might just try to be original, rather than say "Ok, let's take this part, yes, i like Abraham, he is kinda cool, but no I am not too fond of Jesus taking the part of the last prophet so here is another one". Humour aside, all religions and their associated unbelievable, physics defying tales are man made. And they are a poor job. They revere the male form and have for millenia kept women in their supposed 'place' as inferior beings. The gods themselves reek of masculinity and it is off putting...why couldn't i as a child have been told god is a beautiful woman who cares for her children? Maybe if the gods had been woman made then instead of shedding oceans of blood in the name of them, we might instead have nurtured love, tenderness and understanding....traits typically associated with women. Our loss.
But in the meantime.........
Throughout all of this brainwashing, natural selction must have favored an inquisitive mind, one that prospered because of its ability to see through stage shows and mesmerizing mystical tales. This inquisitive mind may have made a living out of this skill, devloping certain 'virtues' and 'morals' that man should follow in order to be 'right'. In lands where religious dominance was lax, minds could mingle and exchange ideas without fear of censorship. In lands such as these, let us say ancient Greece for example, the greatest single step of mankind was slowly fermenting inside people's minds. Philosophers, or those who quest for knowledge, began to question their every day reality and thought very strongly about the status quo. They began to ask questions like: what is reality? What am i? am i really alive? They also considered that religion and god/s might not have been the answers we had been looking for. Ways of describing the world were needed and mathematics bloomed beyond the simple arithmetic which was needed for counting pomegranates and sheep. Free thinking was encouraged and in some places, like Greece lets say, it was embraced. It is not for naught that the ancient philosophers are held in such high regard, for they gave us logic and reason, as well as other things we have come to depend on (rightly or wrongly) such as democracy. it is humbling to think of just how gullible an uneducated mind is, to think that while this incredible enlightenment was going on, in other parts of the world the exact opposite was happening. The pursuit of true objective knowledge was being stopped in its tracks, even punished. Punished by men who claimed to have the favor of god on their side..but whose god? The god in their mind, passed down through history, or the god which benefitted them because it gave them power? The god which told them women were not to work so generally the income of a nation must suffer. The god which said that someone poor who stole a loaf of bread was to be beheaded in public after breakfast and before the entertainment.
It is important to note that the philosophers probably told stories too, but they didn't believe them literally. They used them as analogies or metaphors to pass a meaning across. To teach something they deemed important, like one of Aesop's fables....ending with a moral. A real moral, one innate to humanity, not given to us by an imaginary spirit in the sky. A moral that derives from genetic sources, one that evolved to ensure the survival of genetic information. One that comples someone to care for their kin, and one that has favored the development of 'empathy neurons' in modern brains. Apes show this peculiar characteristic too. there are, as it has been discovered, neurons or centres in the brain which are activated when a fellow creature (even not of the same species) is depressed, hurt or in danger. These neurons allow us to 'empathise', or mirror the feelings within our own heads so me may feel the torment too. There is lots of evidence of the evolution of these particular biological traits. It seems that morality is not derived from a book after all, but is within us all, it just needs to be explored and prodded, like all things that are worth pursuing.
Two vastly differing stand points, one governed by the exploration of logic, and one by the religious doctrine. Both were probably favored by natural selection to develop, and they occurred at different times. One had roots thousand of years old, stemming from primitive times when answers were desperately needed. The other relatively new on the scene, fitting comfortably with the times. A time that needn’t imply war and struggle, but education and thought. Religion may have served its purpose to keep groups together and give them 'guidelines' on how to live correctly, but there were now minds ready to probe the inner workings of nature, the inner workings of the consciousness itself. Had the time come to throw away old beliefs to make way for new, objective and rational thoughts? To unlearn what had been learnt?
In short, do we still need to believe in miracles? Do we still need to believe in the boogeyman? Or have we matured enough to see things from a different perspective. We will explore this further next time...thanks for reading.
Thoughts are welcome, please feel free to contribute.
Part III
So, the universe has been born, and the earth has formed in one of the billions of galaxies scattered across the cosmos. Abiogenesis has (apparently) occurred and given rise to strange replicators which, being subject to the force of natural selection, have undergone evolution and resulted in millions of different creatures called organisms. Some are simple like bacteria, others belong to the domain of plant life and others have undergone complicated changes over time resulting in complex organisms called animals. Trillions of cells underneath one roof, each with their own genetic code, each gene striving to ensure the ongoing propagation of itself. Some genes form a gene 'pool' and therefore exert effects on other genes in the same pool. Others will in all likelihood never come across each other (I.E. a Human gene will probably never meet a spider gene....probably). Some of these genes have been packaged together into a wonderfully delightful and intelligent, yet extremely gullible and reactive creature called 'Homo-Sapiens'. No, this creature is not necessarily gay as the name may imply, but it is you and me...humanity.
We broke off from our closest common descendant with the chimpanzee about 250,000 years ago somewhere in the plains of Africa. That's right, deep down we are all africans. Some of us remained there, and others in their quest for food and shelter, journeyed off to far away places like the areas of the world we term 'Europe' and 'Arabia' and 'Asia'. Maybe someone swam to Cyprus and set up shop here!! Anyway, after having split off from the main group, travelled to far away lands where the environment was totally different it was therefore only natural that natural selection would favour different phenotypic expressions of genes, those that allowed the split off groups to survive successfully in the conditions they were exposed to. Heat, cold, humidity, grasslands, deserts, forests, tundras and of course the other organisms that inhabit these lands. Prey, predators, scavengers. Everything is connected.
For most of these 250,000 years humanity would stay in small groups called tribes, hunting for their food, protecting their young and fending off any threat. Some would survive and as is the way of things others would not. Genes which favored survival continued to replicate, whilst the rival alleles died off. Families and extended relations tended to stick together, and this is important for this is not just a comfortable situation which appeared by chance. it is genetic. you may tire of hearing the word gene being mentioned so frequently but there is no other way about it. it can explain everything. You see genes have developed for recognising close relation. This is due to the high chance that a close relation will have a copy of the very same gene and so it is beneficial to the survival of the gene to 'care for' or 'look after' other copies of itself. Chances are you care more for your Mother or father than for a stanger's mother or father, care more for your child than for a stranger's child (as much as you may try to deny it). Instinct is what some may like to call it. Suit yourselves.
Time to think......
Tribes continued much like this for many many generations. Depending on the environment, skills developed to allow for easier survival. Axes, hammers..tools in general. Hunting skills, methods to prepare and preserve food as well as ways of passing these learned skills along to children so they too may be prepared to fend for themselves when the time comes. Rival tribes competing for resources would frequently massacre themselves in an attempt to establish dominance. War, bloodshed, murder....nothing foreign to mankind (Note, i hate the word mankind for it seems to have sexist implications...what about womankind? more on that later). Genocide on small scales has been occurring for as long as organisms have existed, how ironic.
What was it that after such long periods of time suddenly gave rise to the abilility to think 'outside the box'? Some say it was the discovery of fire. This may be true, as having discovered fire, man need not live in such fear of unknown threats. There could now be light in the darkness and this offered a tremendous amount of safety. Safety gives time, time away from having to stay alert and vigilant in the dark straining your eyes and ears for a possible predator which may threaten you and your family. This time allowed for introspection. Maybe in his boredom, an ancient warrior whose duty it was to keep watch over the sleeping children at night picked up a stick and drew a line in the dirt. Maybe he realised he could draw a figure which resembled another of his own kind. Maybe this was how art was born.
Art in itself is a way of expression and as more time became available from 'watch duties', creativity could prosper. The development of langauge, possibly the greatest achievement of its time, meant that knowledge need not be learned purely by experience but a 'taste' of what is to come could now be passed on by word of mouth. Somewhere along the journey, humanity began to ask questions. What are we? Why are we here? Why does that great ball of light rise from the same region of the sky? Why does it then go away after a certain amount of time?
Those pesky genes......
Our genetic evolution resulted in our being curious creatures, always seeking a pattern with which we could explain our surroundings and our place in them. Ancient cultures devised methods of drawing up maps to familiarise themselves with the lands. They developed methods of forming building blocks from sand and water to create solid structures in which they could shelter themselves from the elements. Societal structures developed to satisfy the need for a hierarchy..this was only natural as by looking at apes and monkeys it is observed that a strong hierarchy does exist and it ensures the existence of a degree of order amongst the chaos. A group which was not structured in this way could not defend itself as effectively from threats, and in-group fighting and bickering would occur. Groups like this would probably not survive for very long. An ignorant age this was...but excusable, we did not know any better. Power struggles began as power was a coveted thing. He or she who had power could control resources and ensure his survival at the expense of others'. Ignorant views of nature meant that killing was an everyday thing seeing as empathy hadn't extended beyond the range of the immediate family.
Aaaa, the lack of a good book to read.....
If you don't have a good book to read, just make up a good story right? right. Let us see what good storytelling can do for someone. One of my favorite quotations of late is one put forward by Christopher Hitchens:
"Humans are pattern seeking creatures, and they will prefer a conspiracy or junk theory to none at all".
In an attempt to answer some of the mysteries that humans faced from their conception up until a few thousand years ago, stories to give meaning to many unexplainable phenomena were told from person to person. Sure they must have a source, and the source may not be a single person but groups of people each adding to their version as it is passed down through generations. In Egypt the sun became a god rising to do battle every morning, only to be defeated every night when another god came to shoo him away. Before even the egyptian gods, people had worshipped and revered Pagan gods for many years. The sun, the moon, nature, the woods the animals. There have been gods for almost everything you can think of including such things as fertility, food, wine and harvest. Gods have had lightning bolts in their hands, chariots at their feet and wreaths of flame on their heads. What do they all have in common? they give answers to the unanswerable. They give reason to observed events that are so present that they cannot be ignored. Most of these gods have now been relegated to 'myth' and we all accept them as unreal. Some aspects though have survived and have been mutated into new gods, gods with different personalities. People unfortunately live and die in the name of gods...in the name of manmade constructs in the mind.
The latest of these constructs, the ones that we are all familiar with are the Christian, The Islamic and the Judaic gods. Each of them has a book. Each of them have a common source of the first half of that book. Each of them have certain key characters in common. I mean...how boring!! If you are going to inspire your nation and give them moral values and meaning in their lives you would think that you might just try to be original, rather than say "Ok, let's take this part, yes, i like Abraham, he is kinda cool, but no I am not too fond of Jesus taking the part of the last prophet so here is another one". Humour aside, all religions and their associated unbelievable, physics defying tales are man made. And they are a poor job. They revere the male form and have for millenia kept women in their supposed 'place' as inferior beings. The gods themselves reek of masculinity and it is off putting...why couldn't i as a child have been told god is a beautiful woman who cares for her children? Maybe if the gods had been woman made then instead of shedding oceans of blood in the name of them, we might instead have nurtured love, tenderness and understanding....traits typically associated with women. Our loss.
But in the meantime.........
Throughout all of this brainwashing, natural selction must have favored an inquisitive mind, one that prospered because of its ability to see through stage shows and mesmerizing mystical tales. This inquisitive mind may have made a living out of this skill, devloping certain 'virtues' and 'morals' that man should follow in order to be 'right'. In lands where religious dominance was lax, minds could mingle and exchange ideas without fear of censorship. In lands such as these, let us say ancient Greece for example, the greatest single step of mankind was slowly fermenting inside people's minds. Philosophers, or those who quest for knowledge, began to question their every day reality and thought very strongly about the status quo. They began to ask questions like: what is reality? What am i? am i really alive? They also considered that religion and god/s might not have been the answers we had been looking for. Ways of describing the world were needed and mathematics bloomed beyond the simple arithmetic which was needed for counting pomegranates and sheep. Free thinking was encouraged and in some places, like Greece lets say, it was embraced. It is not for naught that the ancient philosophers are held in such high regard, for they gave us logic and reason, as well as other things we have come to depend on (rightly or wrongly) such as democracy. it is humbling to think of just how gullible an uneducated mind is, to think that while this incredible enlightenment was going on, in other parts of the world the exact opposite was happening. The pursuit of true objective knowledge was being stopped in its tracks, even punished. Punished by men who claimed to have the favor of god on their side..but whose god? The god in their mind, passed down through history, or the god which benefitted them because it gave them power? The god which told them women were not to work so generally the income of a nation must suffer. The god which said that someone poor who stole a loaf of bread was to be beheaded in public after breakfast and before the entertainment.
It is important to note that the philosophers probably told stories too, but they didn't believe them literally. They used them as analogies or metaphors to pass a meaning across. To teach something they deemed important, like one of Aesop's fables....ending with a moral. A real moral, one innate to humanity, not given to us by an imaginary spirit in the sky. A moral that derives from genetic sources, one that evolved to ensure the survival of genetic information. One that comples someone to care for their kin, and one that has favored the development of 'empathy neurons' in modern brains. Apes show this peculiar characteristic too. there are, as it has been discovered, neurons or centres in the brain which are activated when a fellow creature (even not of the same species) is depressed, hurt or in danger. These neurons allow us to 'empathise', or mirror the feelings within our own heads so me may feel the torment too. There is lots of evidence of the evolution of these particular biological traits. It seems that morality is not derived from a book after all, but is within us all, it just needs to be explored and prodded, like all things that are worth pursuing.
Two vastly differing stand points, one governed by the exploration of logic, and one by the religious doctrine. Both were probably favored by natural selection to develop, and they occurred at different times. One had roots thousand of years old, stemming from primitive times when answers were desperately needed. The other relatively new on the scene, fitting comfortably with the times. A time that needn’t imply war and struggle, but education and thought. Religion may have served its purpose to keep groups together and give them 'guidelines' on how to live correctly, but there were now minds ready to probe the inner workings of nature, the inner workings of the consciousness itself. Had the time come to throw away old beliefs to make way for new, objective and rational thoughts? To unlearn what had been learnt?
In short, do we still need to believe in miracles? Do we still need to believe in the boogeyman? Or have we matured enough to see things from a different perspective. We will explore this further next time...thanks for reading.
Thoughts are welcome, please feel free to contribute.
Saturday, 13 December 2008
Kanye's done it again!
Just to let you know, Kanye west's latest album '808s & Heartbreak' is here , and it is sublime.
He has evolved yet again, keeping it personal and keeping it relative.
Thank goodness that there is someone alive who can keep hip-hop going, and keep it real. All hip-hop seems to be about nowadays is booty, bling, bitches, bust-ups and ...bullshit.
A slap into reality, the tragedy amongst comedies, heartbreaking stuff. Enjoy.
He has evolved yet again, keeping it personal and keeping it relative.
Thank goodness that there is someone alive who can keep hip-hop going, and keep it real. All hip-hop seems to be about nowadays is booty, bling, bitches, bust-ups and ...bullshit.
A slap into reality, the tragedy amongst comedies, heartbreaking stuff. Enjoy.
Scratching my itch :Part II
Ok, so i was out last night with friends and i am slightly hungover (from 2 drinks, pathetic). Today i wonder why i went out to a club blaring music out of contraptions called loudspeakers, surrounded by other people in a space obviously too small to accomodate everyone comfortably ( i was stepped on twice...by HEAVY people), dancing, talking, gossiping, some looking for fun, others for sex, others for a fight. i wonder why i ordered 2 glasses of a liquid containing Ethanol, a particular chemical that makes us feel euphoric but can make us behave in ridiculously childish ways. It also has the ability to make me wake up in the morning to wonder and contemplate such things as these. So..in a quest to understand these behaviours and those of the people around me, i continue from the point i left off with my last note....
Part II
For those who missed the first part (probably because they were watching mind rotting, Spanish soap-operas with very beautiful ladies), I recommend you read it because although this will make sense on its own, the context will be lacking.
link to Part I for the lazy ones:
http://theperpetualitch.blogspot.com/2008/12/scratching-my-itch.html
And yet another great mystery…..
So, we have already seen how the universe came to be but we do not understand why it came to be. There is of course a lot more to the universe but we will get to that later. What interests us right now is how we came to be, and in a nutshell it happened like this:
The planet we call Earth, or Terra Firma, has just cooled down after being a large target for all sorts of stray rocks and asteroids and has also just acquired its very own atmosphere of gases due to its gravitational pull. It is a very inhospitable place and almost nothing like our planet today. The atmosphere has little or no life-giving oxygen and on the contrary, is full of poisonous gases like ammonia. The oceans are host to a multitude of chemicals, which have formed as elements produced in the stars came together under the influence of electrostatic forces to form what we call today ‘The Primordial soup’. Quaint as this title may sound, and controversial to some, it does offer an interesting theory into how life came about.
Why the oceans and not land? Well the early earth lacked the protective layer which we know as the ozone layer and so if any life was to form on land it would quickly be burned to a cinder by solar radiation arriving from the sun and cosmic radiation from space. This radiation still hits the earth today, but it is greatly buffered by the ozone layer and we also have an organ called ‘skin’ which protects us. So, a vast array of molecules (and I do mean vast, as the possibilities of molecules arising from different combinations of roughly 100 elements is endless) have formed and are ‘swimming’ around in the oceans.
At this point a big question mark needs to be aptly placed. What exactly is it that caused some of these molecules, namely the vast plethora containing carbon atoms, to come together and unite into a very specific type of molecule which has the innate ability to replicate itself (that is, to make copies of itself)? What a strange property. Unquestionably strange. In the primordial ocean, a specific molecule (or even a different number of molecules) somehow drew other similar molecules towards it, arranged them into a manner like itself, and produced a copy. This may sound trivial, but it is the basis of all life as we know it. Ok let’s look a bit deeper into this.
Replicators: The true units of life
So, let us assume that amongst the huge variety of molecules present in the primordial oceans, some had formed into units called ‘Amino Acids’ and others ‘Nucleotides’. Not so difficult to imagine as we know they do really exist and they have also been synthesized in laboratories today –with that said, all attempts to endow these synthesized molecules with life have thus far been unsuccessful. These aminos and nucleotides may have had certain affinities to other similar aminos and nucleotides, and whenever they bumped into one whilst floating along in the oceans, similarities or physical forces may have bonded them together (Much like the manner in which enzymes act upon very specific sites on other proteins or chemicals. Too far fetched you ask? What are the chances? Well, really, what are they? In a -for our purposes- infinite ocean of molecules it need happen only once. And apparently it did). More bonding or linking would have resulted in longer and longer chains. Aminos linked together form proteins, and nucleotides linked together form DNA, or for our assumption, an ancient analog which behaved like DNA albeit in a simpler manner. Let us now assume that this process was occurring all over the oceans all over the earth until essentially all the individual units (aminos and nucleotides) had been ‘used up’ in the construction of long chains. They needn’t have exhausted the supplies, only minimized them.
The possible combinations are vast and each different combination would result in different characteristics and properties. Some chains may have drawn units to them which in turn caused the breakage of a longer chain. Other chains may have curled up and arranged themselves into complex shapes, due to the forces acting upon different parts of them. Others, and the most relevant to us, may have drawn other units to them arranging them into an identical chain alongside the original, and once a certain, undetermined length was reached, the unique combination would cause the two identical bonded chains to separate. Twins if you like. Successful replications would increase the number of the chains and decrease the number of other, unsuccessful, chains. Eventually there would be a vast majority of the successful replicators. Do we have life yet? That depends on your definition of life. If you define it as a unit or object that can make copies of itself then yes we have life. If you define it as units or objects which can think for themselves, then we are far from it.
Nature is choosy
So an ocean full of replicators interspersed with individual building blocks of chemicals and elements. If replicators just used raw materials and continued to make identical copies of themselves, then nothing would ever change and eventually there would be just replicators floating around. Cue the fundamental forces again.
The complicated forces and physical processes occurring on the atomic and subatomic level give rise to radiation. Radiation is how extremely energetic particles express themselves. They can come from the decay (breaking down) of an atom as it is hit by a particle (such as a photon-a particle of light). This would ‘knock’ a part of the atom off, such as an electron and send it off with extremely high speed and energy to crash into another atom it may happen to come across. If a particle crashes into an atom on a chain of ancient DNA, it may knock another particle off, causing a change in the chain. If the change is catastrophic then the chain is doomed and no replication will occur. If on the other hand the change is such that it doesn’t put the integrity of the chain in jeopardy and allows it to continue its replication, but if it is significant enough to cause a noticeable change in how the chain replicates then this change may result in a new, similar copy but one which is not 100% identical. This is what we call a ‘mutation’ and may as a consequence, cause the chain to take on new characteristics and properties. It may cause a particular unit on the chain to bind to another unit which sticks out from the main body of the chain and so offers limited resistance to any detrimental effects that the environment may offer. Remember, there are still elements around in the oceans and they may have many adverse reactions with chains. These new ‘lightly armored’ chains would inevitably be favored in the competitive struggle as they would have a higher chance of not being destroyed by any one of a number of possible factors. Their numbers would increase at the expense of ‘non-armored’ chains. Nature will ‘Select’ the armored chain and thus the chances of the chain surviving long enough to successfully replicate into a new armored chain increase.
Use your imagination for a while here (and in the process save me the effort of continuing in this mundane, technical analogy of natural selection) and draw an image in your head of chains like the armored one being further struck by radiation which causes beneficial effects to the survivability of the chain. Maybe the armor effect continues and the chain ends up, after many successful mutations and replications, with a wall of external units resembling what we might call a ‘wall’. Maybe this was the first cell with a physical barrier protecting the ancient DNA inside. Other mutations may have caused other beneficial effects such as the ability to bind to certain areas of an amino acid, linking consecutive aminos together into a protein which, as it floated away from the DNA, became entangled into the wall and by chance offered another benefit, like allowing the passage of other molecules and elements into and out of the cell wall more easily. Maybe it hindered the passage of molecules. And the possibilities continue…..
One very important note here is that in order for natural selection to favor a change, there must be a change in the first place, a change which benefits the carrier (the cell or the chain of DNA itself) and allows it to successfully replicate. No mutation, no bombardment by another particle would result in no benefit, and thus no selection.
Simple beginnings….
So we have theorized how replicators came to be and how they may have ‘evolved’ (that is change through generations, by means of natural selection, a process that predominantly – but not exclusively- gives rise to beneficial changes).
The appearance of the replicators is still a mystery and there are multiple theories some far more plausible than others. The one I chose to illustrate is that of ‘abiogenesis’, the creation of replicating molecules as a result of the physical forces present in all parts of the universe (Electrostatic forces between molecules, and nuclear forces responsible for radiation). It may be the right one but it may not. What is unequivocally certain is that natural selection is the driving force responsible for favoring changes in organisms (they needn’t even be complicated, simple chains will do) and that evolution occurs because of it.
A simple cell may have undergone a multitude of changes, passed down in consecutive successful replications resulting in a slightly more complex cell, which itself in turn evolved by the same means into more and more complicated cells. Maybe this is how the first bacteria came about. And this is how once they did come about, individual cells came together in a way which benefitted them and so nature favored the coming together and the number of ‘groups’ of cells increased. These groups were the first multicellular organisms. Over hundreds and thousands of generations, spanning huge lengths of time, more and more complicated organisms could come about. Some would anchor themselves to solid objects and so could have a fixed position from which to replicate themselves while using up resources from the ocean (The first plants maybe). Some with outer walls or a ‘skin’ of sorts which benefitted them in the oceans, but by chance also benefitted them to survive on land for short periods of time could come onto land using their aquatic limbs to clumsily move around and replicate there. Future copies would be far safer than in the oceans, where there are already many different organisms all competing for resources. The first to come onto land would naturally be favored and numbers would increase. Other mutations could give rise to improved limbs, improved protection, more efficient ways to extract resources from air as opposed to water…and so on.
Complex issues
As evolution continues and different species arise, some increase in size, others in strength or speed, others in their abilities to use the organs they have developed to sense the world around them. Some succeed and some do not. Species have always gone extinct and it is said that there are currently less than 1% of species alive than have ever existed throughout the earth’s history. The times involved in evolution are beyond imagination as it requires successful reproduction and organisms may need a certain amount of time to reach physical conditions or ‘ages’ to allow for reproduction. Bacteria evolve quickly as they replicate very frequently, thus they evolve faster then more complex organisms which may replicate infrequently, such as mammals which take from months to many many years to give rise to new generations.
The point is that our race, the human race, has resulted from a long sequence of mutations and replications spanning billions of years, just as all other creatures alive on the earth today. There is no blueprint for evolution, no purposeful design, as it relies on chance. The chance arising of a mutation which may benefit the host organism, by improving its chances of replication in the environment it is to be found. Of course changes occur in other ways too in complex life, such as the crossing over of chromosome regions during mitosis and meiosis. The underlying principle is the same. Therefore it is not reasonable to assume we are the ‘end’ result of a design as the forces that affect natural selection are still at play and evolution continues. The changes in successive appearances of different species can be traced throughout time and there are literally mountains of evidence found in fossil records and geological research to solidify the (wrongly named) ‘theory of evolution’. We can see how we got here but it is very difficult, possibly impossible to predict how life will continue to evolve.
And so here we are
You are reading and I am writing. I am writing with the intention of my words being read and so I have planned out what I would like to achieve. You may be having ideas now, influenced by what you read or you may think I am going a bit mad and obviously have far too much free time to be here writing this. Believe me, I may be going mad but I have little free time (insert smiley here, which seems inappropriate so I will let you do it in your head). It is strange, to think that evolution favored the development of brains, essentially control centres for all the complex processes involved in the functioning of an organism carrying its DNA in each cell of its body, which is in turn composed of units called molecules in turn made up of atoms formed in the stars which are in turn made up of tiny particles which came into existence with the big bang. It is as if natural selection has been acting since the very beginning starting on particles and ending up, currently, with organisms. Maybe it should be called ‘Universal selection’. Maybe it will be.
At some point, nature favored a change which gave its host organism a larger cerebrum in order to deal with the environment it was found in. Better 3 dimensional analyzing in order to make full use of the very dexterous limbs that had developed, more neurons in order to cope with the added task of being able to vocalize certain ideas and expressions. Up until this point all complex creatures with a brain were essentially unaware of why they did certain things and made certain choices. Don’t misunderstand the point here, animals are certainly not automated creatures which are run purely by instinct, they are aware of themselves and so strive to survive and keep themselves alive. But certain instincts do overpower other choices in certain conditions. Pull a string along the floor in front of a cat and it will undoubtedly chase it, despite the fact that the cat probably knows the string is not a creature. It is moving quickly, like prey would do, and so the subconscious thoughts compel the cat to chase. Funny, I see some humans behaving in analogous manners also. The difference here is that the larger cerebrum which is now present in humans allowed for one very simple and yet incredibly powerful (I cannot emphasize this enough) skill. The ability to reason!
Billions and billions of years of ongoing natural selection had led to a creature which could now try to make some sense of this environment and reality in which it was found. Ingeniously using this skill to create tools to help survival, to secure a mate with which to reproduce, to dominate over other creatures which lacked this ability of ‘higher reasoning’. According to archaeological and geological evidence, we as a species appeared on the scene roughly 250,000 years ago, not a long time on the grand scale of the cosmos (14 billion years) and even on the scale of the earth (4.5 billion years). The closest relative we have is the ape which is uncanny in its resemblance to us yet it lacks the one thing that makes us so different. It is a small difference, only a mere step from ape to human, just a few changes in DNA sequence which make all the difference. Yet these few changes mean we can pry into the subconscious and understand why we do the things we do. But, for my purposes here, we are fresh on the scene having just taken a few steps out of the African plains where we appeared and are establishing a primitive foothold in the wild world. We have no technology yet, no real society, no politics just our senses and the ability to use them. It is a ‘dog eat dog’ world, or at this time, a ‘Human eat human’ or ‘Human eat animal’ world. I leave it here for now, to give you time to digest before we move onto other subjects which are of vast interest to all of us. The controversies are about to begin and personally I am looking forward to stepping on some peoples toes and possibly shattering some bubbles. Thanks for reading so far.
Remember, comments, crticisms, and debate are strongly encouraged. I want to hear what you have to say whether you agree or not because debate, that is, civilised debate is another of the abilities we have developed, and one which is a very important tool to forward our understanding......so.....don't be shy!
Part II
For those who missed the first part (probably because they were watching mind rotting, Spanish soap-operas with very beautiful ladies), I recommend you read it because although this will make sense on its own, the context will be lacking.
link to Part I for the lazy ones:
http://theperpetualitch.blogspot.com/2008/12/scratching-my-itch.html
And yet another great mystery…..
So, we have already seen how the universe came to be but we do not understand why it came to be. There is of course a lot more to the universe but we will get to that later. What interests us right now is how we came to be, and in a nutshell it happened like this:
The planet we call Earth, or Terra Firma, has just cooled down after being a large target for all sorts of stray rocks and asteroids and has also just acquired its very own atmosphere of gases due to its gravitational pull. It is a very inhospitable place and almost nothing like our planet today. The atmosphere has little or no life-giving oxygen and on the contrary, is full of poisonous gases like ammonia. The oceans are host to a multitude of chemicals, which have formed as elements produced in the stars came together under the influence of electrostatic forces to form what we call today ‘The Primordial soup’. Quaint as this title may sound, and controversial to some, it does offer an interesting theory into how life came about.
Why the oceans and not land? Well the early earth lacked the protective layer which we know as the ozone layer and so if any life was to form on land it would quickly be burned to a cinder by solar radiation arriving from the sun and cosmic radiation from space. This radiation still hits the earth today, but it is greatly buffered by the ozone layer and we also have an organ called ‘skin’ which protects us. So, a vast array of molecules (and I do mean vast, as the possibilities of molecules arising from different combinations of roughly 100 elements is endless) have formed and are ‘swimming’ around in the oceans.
At this point a big question mark needs to be aptly placed. What exactly is it that caused some of these molecules, namely the vast plethora containing carbon atoms, to come together and unite into a very specific type of molecule which has the innate ability to replicate itself (that is, to make copies of itself)? What a strange property. Unquestionably strange. In the primordial ocean, a specific molecule (or even a different number of molecules) somehow drew other similar molecules towards it, arranged them into a manner like itself, and produced a copy. This may sound trivial, but it is the basis of all life as we know it. Ok let’s look a bit deeper into this.
Replicators: The true units of life
So, let us assume that amongst the huge variety of molecules present in the primordial oceans, some had formed into units called ‘Amino Acids’ and others ‘Nucleotides’. Not so difficult to imagine as we know they do really exist and they have also been synthesized in laboratories today –with that said, all attempts to endow these synthesized molecules with life have thus far been unsuccessful. These aminos and nucleotides may have had certain affinities to other similar aminos and nucleotides, and whenever they bumped into one whilst floating along in the oceans, similarities or physical forces may have bonded them together (Much like the manner in which enzymes act upon very specific sites on other proteins or chemicals. Too far fetched you ask? What are the chances? Well, really, what are they? In a -for our purposes- infinite ocean of molecules it need happen only once. And apparently it did). More bonding or linking would have resulted in longer and longer chains. Aminos linked together form proteins, and nucleotides linked together form DNA, or for our assumption, an ancient analog which behaved like DNA albeit in a simpler manner. Let us now assume that this process was occurring all over the oceans all over the earth until essentially all the individual units (aminos and nucleotides) had been ‘used up’ in the construction of long chains. They needn’t have exhausted the supplies, only minimized them.
The possible combinations are vast and each different combination would result in different characteristics and properties. Some chains may have drawn units to them which in turn caused the breakage of a longer chain. Other chains may have curled up and arranged themselves into complex shapes, due to the forces acting upon different parts of them. Others, and the most relevant to us, may have drawn other units to them arranging them into an identical chain alongside the original, and once a certain, undetermined length was reached, the unique combination would cause the two identical bonded chains to separate. Twins if you like. Successful replications would increase the number of the chains and decrease the number of other, unsuccessful, chains. Eventually there would be a vast majority of the successful replicators. Do we have life yet? That depends on your definition of life. If you define it as a unit or object that can make copies of itself then yes we have life. If you define it as units or objects which can think for themselves, then we are far from it.
Nature is choosy
So an ocean full of replicators interspersed with individual building blocks of chemicals and elements. If replicators just used raw materials and continued to make identical copies of themselves, then nothing would ever change and eventually there would be just replicators floating around. Cue the fundamental forces again.
The complicated forces and physical processes occurring on the atomic and subatomic level give rise to radiation. Radiation is how extremely energetic particles express themselves. They can come from the decay (breaking down) of an atom as it is hit by a particle (such as a photon-a particle of light). This would ‘knock’ a part of the atom off, such as an electron and send it off with extremely high speed and energy to crash into another atom it may happen to come across. If a particle crashes into an atom on a chain of ancient DNA, it may knock another particle off, causing a change in the chain. If the change is catastrophic then the chain is doomed and no replication will occur. If on the other hand the change is such that it doesn’t put the integrity of the chain in jeopardy and allows it to continue its replication, but if it is significant enough to cause a noticeable change in how the chain replicates then this change may result in a new, similar copy but one which is not 100% identical. This is what we call a ‘mutation’ and may as a consequence, cause the chain to take on new characteristics and properties. It may cause a particular unit on the chain to bind to another unit which sticks out from the main body of the chain and so offers limited resistance to any detrimental effects that the environment may offer. Remember, there are still elements around in the oceans and they may have many adverse reactions with chains. These new ‘lightly armored’ chains would inevitably be favored in the competitive struggle as they would have a higher chance of not being destroyed by any one of a number of possible factors. Their numbers would increase at the expense of ‘non-armored’ chains. Nature will ‘Select’ the armored chain and thus the chances of the chain surviving long enough to successfully replicate into a new armored chain increase.
Use your imagination for a while here (and in the process save me the effort of continuing in this mundane, technical analogy of natural selection) and draw an image in your head of chains like the armored one being further struck by radiation which causes beneficial effects to the survivability of the chain. Maybe the armor effect continues and the chain ends up, after many successful mutations and replications, with a wall of external units resembling what we might call a ‘wall’. Maybe this was the first cell with a physical barrier protecting the ancient DNA inside. Other mutations may have caused other beneficial effects such as the ability to bind to certain areas of an amino acid, linking consecutive aminos together into a protein which, as it floated away from the DNA, became entangled into the wall and by chance offered another benefit, like allowing the passage of other molecules and elements into and out of the cell wall more easily. Maybe it hindered the passage of molecules. And the possibilities continue…..
One very important note here is that in order for natural selection to favor a change, there must be a change in the first place, a change which benefits the carrier (the cell or the chain of DNA itself) and allows it to successfully replicate. No mutation, no bombardment by another particle would result in no benefit, and thus no selection.
Simple beginnings….
So we have theorized how replicators came to be and how they may have ‘evolved’ (that is change through generations, by means of natural selection, a process that predominantly – but not exclusively- gives rise to beneficial changes).
The appearance of the replicators is still a mystery and there are multiple theories some far more plausible than others. The one I chose to illustrate is that of ‘abiogenesis’, the creation of replicating molecules as a result of the physical forces present in all parts of the universe (Electrostatic forces between molecules, and nuclear forces responsible for radiation). It may be the right one but it may not. What is unequivocally certain is that natural selection is the driving force responsible for favoring changes in organisms (they needn’t even be complicated, simple chains will do) and that evolution occurs because of it.
A simple cell may have undergone a multitude of changes, passed down in consecutive successful replications resulting in a slightly more complex cell, which itself in turn evolved by the same means into more and more complicated cells. Maybe this is how the first bacteria came about. And this is how once they did come about, individual cells came together in a way which benefitted them and so nature favored the coming together and the number of ‘groups’ of cells increased. These groups were the first multicellular organisms. Over hundreds and thousands of generations, spanning huge lengths of time, more and more complicated organisms could come about. Some would anchor themselves to solid objects and so could have a fixed position from which to replicate themselves while using up resources from the ocean (The first plants maybe). Some with outer walls or a ‘skin’ of sorts which benefitted them in the oceans, but by chance also benefitted them to survive on land for short periods of time could come onto land using their aquatic limbs to clumsily move around and replicate there. Future copies would be far safer than in the oceans, where there are already many different organisms all competing for resources. The first to come onto land would naturally be favored and numbers would increase. Other mutations could give rise to improved limbs, improved protection, more efficient ways to extract resources from air as opposed to water…and so on.
Complex issues
As evolution continues and different species arise, some increase in size, others in strength or speed, others in their abilities to use the organs they have developed to sense the world around them. Some succeed and some do not. Species have always gone extinct and it is said that there are currently less than 1% of species alive than have ever existed throughout the earth’s history. The times involved in evolution are beyond imagination as it requires successful reproduction and organisms may need a certain amount of time to reach physical conditions or ‘ages’ to allow for reproduction. Bacteria evolve quickly as they replicate very frequently, thus they evolve faster then more complex organisms which may replicate infrequently, such as mammals which take from months to many many years to give rise to new generations.
The point is that our race, the human race, has resulted from a long sequence of mutations and replications spanning billions of years, just as all other creatures alive on the earth today. There is no blueprint for evolution, no purposeful design, as it relies on chance. The chance arising of a mutation which may benefit the host organism, by improving its chances of replication in the environment it is to be found. Of course changes occur in other ways too in complex life, such as the crossing over of chromosome regions during mitosis and meiosis. The underlying principle is the same. Therefore it is not reasonable to assume we are the ‘end’ result of a design as the forces that affect natural selection are still at play and evolution continues. The changes in successive appearances of different species can be traced throughout time and there are literally mountains of evidence found in fossil records and geological research to solidify the (wrongly named) ‘theory of evolution’. We can see how we got here but it is very difficult, possibly impossible to predict how life will continue to evolve.
And so here we are
You are reading and I am writing. I am writing with the intention of my words being read and so I have planned out what I would like to achieve. You may be having ideas now, influenced by what you read or you may think I am going a bit mad and obviously have far too much free time to be here writing this. Believe me, I may be going mad but I have little free time (insert smiley here, which seems inappropriate so I will let you do it in your head). It is strange, to think that evolution favored the development of brains, essentially control centres for all the complex processes involved in the functioning of an organism carrying its DNA in each cell of its body, which is in turn composed of units called molecules in turn made up of atoms formed in the stars which are in turn made up of tiny particles which came into existence with the big bang. It is as if natural selection has been acting since the very beginning starting on particles and ending up, currently, with organisms. Maybe it should be called ‘Universal selection’. Maybe it will be.
At some point, nature favored a change which gave its host organism a larger cerebrum in order to deal with the environment it was found in. Better 3 dimensional analyzing in order to make full use of the very dexterous limbs that had developed, more neurons in order to cope with the added task of being able to vocalize certain ideas and expressions. Up until this point all complex creatures with a brain were essentially unaware of why they did certain things and made certain choices. Don’t misunderstand the point here, animals are certainly not automated creatures which are run purely by instinct, they are aware of themselves and so strive to survive and keep themselves alive. But certain instincts do overpower other choices in certain conditions. Pull a string along the floor in front of a cat and it will undoubtedly chase it, despite the fact that the cat probably knows the string is not a creature. It is moving quickly, like prey would do, and so the subconscious thoughts compel the cat to chase. Funny, I see some humans behaving in analogous manners also. The difference here is that the larger cerebrum which is now present in humans allowed for one very simple and yet incredibly powerful (I cannot emphasize this enough) skill. The ability to reason!
Billions and billions of years of ongoing natural selection had led to a creature which could now try to make some sense of this environment and reality in which it was found. Ingeniously using this skill to create tools to help survival, to secure a mate with which to reproduce, to dominate over other creatures which lacked this ability of ‘higher reasoning’. According to archaeological and geological evidence, we as a species appeared on the scene roughly 250,000 years ago, not a long time on the grand scale of the cosmos (14 billion years) and even on the scale of the earth (4.5 billion years). The closest relative we have is the ape which is uncanny in its resemblance to us yet it lacks the one thing that makes us so different. It is a small difference, only a mere step from ape to human, just a few changes in DNA sequence which make all the difference. Yet these few changes mean we can pry into the subconscious and understand why we do the things we do. But, for my purposes here, we are fresh on the scene having just taken a few steps out of the African plains where we appeared and are establishing a primitive foothold in the wild world. We have no technology yet, no real society, no politics just our senses and the ability to use them. It is a ‘dog eat dog’ world, or at this time, a ‘Human eat human’ or ‘Human eat animal’ world. I leave it here for now, to give you time to digest before we move onto other subjects which are of vast interest to all of us. The controversies are about to begin and personally I am looking forward to stepping on some peoples toes and possibly shattering some bubbles. Thanks for reading so far.
Remember, comments, crticisms, and debate are strongly encouraged. I want to hear what you have to say whether you agree or not because debate, that is, civilised debate is another of the abilities we have developed, and one which is a very important tool to forward our understanding......so.....
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