Who Killed Evolution

I have written a few posts about evolution in the past, and I had blamed us humans for standing in the way of evolution.

I blamed humans of killing evolution by inventing the institution of marriage. I also blamed us for changing the rules of the game, from survival of the fittest to survival of the richest. Then I went ahead and blamed us for protecting the weak thereby contaminating the gene-pool. What about the time when I said humans bangaloored evolution by inventing tools to overcome their limitation.

I had however put a disclaimer at the bottom of almost all of those posts and am I glad I had done that. I knew there were too many things I didn’t know. But yesterday when I was at work I realized that why evolution came to a sudden standstill, and this time, I can’t blame us humans for it; at least not directly. We come across many people with some unique abilities. Maybe, calling it an ability is misleading, because it is more like a quirk, in a good way. There are people with some strange mental, physical and spiritual quirks. Why is it that others don’t have such abilities? You may have guessed it, it is genetic.

In some cases it might get passed on to the next generation, sometimes it might skip a few, but these quirks are always around. I am sure most of us would like to have some of these rare talents, but it never becomes a trait of human beings. Evolution works based on need, and in most cases we have learnt to overcome our limitations. These needs become a necessity for survival and that is when it manifests in most people.

It is well-known that life originated in the ocean, and the earliest life form ‘breathed’ just like fish do. Possibly, some of these tried to stay outside water, but I am guessing, just like whales, they had to get back to water to get their blood vessels replenished with oxygen. In due course, they might have evolved so that they can stay outside water for longer period of time to a state where they didn’t have to go back to water. We are not talking about millions of creatures waking up one morning to leave the ocean behind. It would be a few at first who were able to stay out for a few hours, and they might have reproduced and with Nature’s survival of the fittest policy, the ones that progressed faster got rewarded. Who knows, they might have found better food, or they might have escaped from predatory creatures in the ocean.

Unfortunately for humans, at present our population is so high that any sort of evolution would be difficult to impossible. There goes my hope of one day having telepathic ability or even existence without a body. I am sure the Geeks among us will be able to understand how I feel.

And if you are not a geek then you might want to watch this video. If you don’t have enough time, feel free to skip ahead to 1 min and 30 seconds.

Now that a naturally induced evolution seems so out of reach, I should start thinking how we can force our genes to evolve. I am sure some learnt people are already working on it, but as usual I would like to put a few points, even if it just a wish list.

Stay tuned!