Quote:
Originally Posted by OldMan&TheWeed
Beside the THANKS button, there should be a BULLSHIT button.
Some of the posts in this thread remind me of a talk I had with a young adolescent child not so long ago. When I explained to this 12 year-old that computers and television didn't exist 100 years ago, he responded by saying, "They were stupid back then."
I do not subscribe to the myth of a “golden age”, and I certainly do not accept this ironic view of history that some people here seem to imply.
We are the same creatures we were tens of thousands of years ago. We may have collectively managed to alter our physical circumstances through technology, but we’re still the same species of hairless ape.
Evolution is dependent on environmental change (stress) and isolation of groups of organisms. Our species is experiencing the exact opposite of these conditions.
We are not evolving; we are stagnating.
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i kinda wish we had the same for this post
isolation is old hat. evolution is as much about behavior as genetics, and behaviors can change very rapidly for a social species of ape. we may be the same creature as our ancestors, but we have grown that creature into a very different beast since the dawn of civilization: from the point that small bands of humans became an inseparable collective entity.
this social paradigm achieved incredible prosperity, and right now we face the stress of developing it on a global scale. . . inevitably leading to increased survivability, prosperity, creativity, etc. if that's not evolution then just what the fuck is?!
edit- i would even go so far as to say technology is a manifestation or symptom of social tendency (the only creatures known to use tools are social ones such as apes and dolphins). in this sense society permits us to be technological. and with that in mind, i wonder what unthinkable things are possible as we develop it further