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.