Good News, Bad News
Population chaos accelerated Human evolution. The population explosions increased variation, and the population implosions sharpened natural selection. Many cycles of this forced Humankind to transcend itself, in intelligence, empathy, resilience, endurance, courage, wisdom and cunning.
The natural world collapsed whenever Humanity exploded, and exploded whenever Humanity collapsed; so it too evolved rapidly. Raccoons learned tool use, corvids figured out arithmetic, parrots discovered grammar, and rats engaged in warfare and trade.
The chaos cooled down only after Humankind finally evolved a planetary State powerful enough, wise enough, and risk-averse enough to engineer population stability.
The Humans after population chaos were all athletes, acrobats, singers, artists, poets, and lightning calculators, from childhood. Their immune systems easily defeated all parasites, cancers, bacteria, viruses, prions, and toxins. Their livers could break down dioxin and nanomachines. They could resist gamma rays, sales pressure, and candy. They had accurate intuitions for physics, statistics, and politics. They had super-Human compassion, super-Human emotional resilience, super-Human bullshit detection, a super-Human sense of humor, and many other gifts.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that they needed all of those super-Human gifts to survive long enough to reproduce.
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