Thursday, April 24, 2014

Evolution?


Sonali Kolhatkar - writer and radio producer - suggests that we may not be as "evolved" as we think.  I couldn't agree more.  In today's article at truthdig.com she quotes Pulitzer-winner Jared Diamond:

"Neanderthals carried on for 470,000 years and then came Homo sapiens and within a few thousand years, Neanderthals are gone. In modern courts you can convict people of murder on correlative evidence less convincing than that."

Kolhatkar continues:  "Sadly, it is not clear that evolution has given modern humanity enough genetic foresight to stave off our own extinction. Our rapid pace of industrialization and the resultant climate change has led some scientists to believe we will kill ourselves off within a few decades."

She explains that the agricultural revolution was a mile-marker for both the start of civilization AND the beginning of back-breaking labor, social and economic stratification, indentured servitude and other related human misery.

She suggests:  "It turns out that we humans are so genetically similar to chimpanzees - with only 1.5% difference between our genes - that in purely genetic terms we could be considered a third species of chimps, after the common chimpanzee and the bonobo.  After all, if the very same features that distinguish us from animals will lead to our demise, we are certainly no better than our fellow animals. On the contrary."

As a supposedly "evolved" species, some of us are intelligent enough to recognize the need for a sustainable economy, while other political apes are much too preoccupied with our sexual and spiritual preferences."

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