Our Devolution

But if a difficult existence for a specific species causes them to evolve, then what would be the result of our easy lives on the human race?  Will we continue to evolve regaurdless of our overly simplistic lives, will we simply stop evolving, or will we devolve into a more primitive form.  There is much controversy over this issue, and there is a substancial amount of evidence supporting the theory that we humans are devolving.  I feel that we are devolving, evolution is more of a cyclic phenomenon that takes the span of thousands of years.

In Sum

We humans have come so very far with the technological advancements of our own devise, but it isn’t clear whether we are still in control of the machines or if we are reliant on them and so we worship machines so that they will remain to provide us with our false luxuries without any enlightenment.  Reason may be discernibly superior to instinct, but instinct is part of our mind and accounts for a huge part of our personality.  In short, the evidence is out there and all around us that we as a species are devolving and some course of action must be taken.

Opposition

Michael Dougherty disagrees with the theory of devolution, stating that “there is no such thing as devolution”.  He states that it is wrong to think that humans are the best that a species can hope to become.  This statement is agreeable, evolution may continue, but ONLY if the right conditions for evolution are met, which they are not.  He may state that extinction is common and that harsh living conditions don’t influence evolution, but there is no evidence as to whether the species had time to evolve or that the species’ that are alive today would be extinct if they didn’t evolve so his statement is very flawed.  He also states one more “misconception” that evolution does not make a species more complex (Dougherty, 1998).  Devolution as defined in “Webster’s New College Dictionary”, is the “evolution of structures toward greater simplicity or to the point of disappearance; degeneration”, which means that his statement ironically supports devolution in that humans are becoming less diverse, intricate and “complex” (Webster, 2010).

Idiocracy

One prime supporter for the theory that we are devolving is the movie “Idiocracy”.  It most clearly and amazingly supplies all of the evidence that humans are devolving in the beginning of the movie.  It starts with an over voice stating that natural selection, the most essential part of evolution, selected intelligence as favorable aspect for survival and was enhanced upon.  But now other traits are favored, such as the physical strength, attractiveness, and the ability to reproduce.  In the movie the voice says “Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence.  With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduce the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.”  One solution posed in the movie was for people to read books and learn as much as they can for knowledge’s sake.  Though it isn’t necessarily true that because we use our minds that they will expand over time and keep us from devolving, rather we have to have a need to expand our minds then nature will provide the change.  But yet we still get some small feeling of accomplishment for finishing a book.  This is true in the sense that we most of all want to be considered smart (or avoid being classified as ignorant) and by reading we achieve that feeling, but the notion that we actually accomplished anything by doing so is mere fallacy.  That being said reading still has much more importance to our individual intellect.

The "Struggle" of Reading

People in modern times disapprove of long books thinking it’s not worth their time and watching a movie instead.  People seem to be more boastful of the number of books they’ve read rather than what was in the books themselves.  This makes books seem more like some kind of enduring punishment to be proud of, rather than a source of entertainment and information.  In fact, it wouldn’t be too far off to say that reading a book in this modern day society for entertainment is unusual and abnormal thanks to modern day cinema.  In this field of reading it should be more centered on quality of the book than the quantity.  Aristotle says that a part of thinking is suffering, and few people are actually truly suffering in this modern day society.  Unconsciously we gradually become reliant on others approval.  People also use social networking to confirm the reality of an event or just to get others approval.  Many of the children of the modern age prefer to talk to each other online than in person. 

Technology is our Downfall

One who doesn’t understand himself cannot understand what it means to be human.  If we can’t form real emotions then we will create false ones through entertainment.  Though with cell phones, televisions, cars, and the internet, entertainment is all around us so many will chose false feelings of gratification over real ones.  It is all the rewards we receive without earning it that make this true.  Consider the social network “facebook”, when the user finds a notification they will feel a sense of pleasure even though not having done anything to deserve it.  Individuals need the feeling that there is something going on, even more so that he is a part of something.  In earlier times we had much less stimulants making our earned feeling of gratification not so often, well earned and much more satisfying.

Old Thech is Obsolete Including out Minds

Everything we as the modern people perceive to be leisure are pointless.  When new technology emerges and society takes possession of it, its individuals quickly become dependent on it.  As we learn to use the new technology we forget how we performed the tasks taken over by said new technology.  For example, in the past to communicate with each other, we wrote letters to each other.  But compared to the instant text message sending and calling, writing letters seems inferior so after spending enough time in a society where almost everyone uses cell phones, people will start to forget the option of writing letters as an alternative method of communication.  In turn, if all of the cell phone companies failed, not many people would know how to communicate with others living far away.  Thereby decreasing our use of writing as a means of communication.

Proves Evolution and supports Devolution

This video is very enlightening and does a wonderful job of explaining evolution to people who don't know all of the details of evolution.  In it, the video explains how evolution supports the characteristics of how the reproduce.  And because of this, we are devolving, as the current most favorable traits would be our appearence.  It is quite easy to see in highschool even, all of the hot cheerleaders and football players  get together and may or may not have sex.  While the "nerds" who pay attention in school and work harder to make something of themselves, showing brains and good work ethic are left alone.  But its true in the adult world too that women want a "stud" and guys want a girl with a nice body, and neither having much concern for the others intelligence.  Thus the intelligent are becoming extinct.

Korn's Music Video "Evolution"

This uncredible music video by the rock band KORN has backgrouds and lyrics that support the theory that humanity is reverting to a more primitive form.

In the video it first shows a line graph representing the average IQ of American citizens’ which is increasing until about 1955 when it took a sudden clear downturn.  As the line rapidly goes in the downward direction, it passes by some of the causes such as families with low IQ’s reproducing twice as much as families with relatively high IQ’s.  Also that because of the gun, man has no natural predators, now we have no fear for our lives and our natural instincts which brought us this far are abandoning us.  Our instinct is key to survival, it helps our decision-making skills and provides a sense of morality even at birth, and without it we are doomed to be foolish and corrupt takers instead of givers.  Then the graph passes by words on the board stating “Causing… Human population to increase… And average IQ to decrease”.  Then it displays the human brain decreasing in size and capacity.  After the graph visual ended, several videos were displayed, two at a time to explain the unremarkable similarity between human behavior and the behavior of monkeys.  This arouses the question, “Have we really come so far or are we the most foolish animal to think we are superior to other species?”  The video skips to several people in a court room, watching a man and a monkey as they’re tossed a ball.  The man failed to catch the ball and the monkey succeeded.  The video as a last sign of hope showed a point on the other side when a woman took the floor and offered the monkey either a banana or a wad of money.  The monkey of course took the banana, but though many will interpret this to be a counterpoint to devolution, this could be used to prove devolution more so than disprove.  They posed a situation in an attempt to disprove devolution but when the monkey chose the banana which is instant sustenance and self gratification over the foolish concept of money which has no definite value, he was most definitely displaying a sign of natural instinct which we lack and have lost sight of.

Thesis

Devolution is the idea that modern society and its inhabitance are reverting to a more primitive form.  The concept of devolution is a new idea and not commonly embraced, but there is sound evidence as well as credible supporters.  Humanity is devolving and we must seek solutions.

Evolution

The concept of evolution began with Charles Darwin.  It suggests that as life for a species becomes more difficult they must adapt to the new environment in order to become better suited for survival.  He observed the differences in the diverse finches of the Galapagos islands and saw that each had it's own type of beak that allowed it to gather its own food.  Some had large beaks for cracking open nuts, others small to fit into holes in trees and get bugs.  Darwin sugusted that these birds had moved to the island and many died because the couldn't adapt but some had nessessary mutations in their offsprings, these would survive while the others died.  This held some influence for the phrase, "Survival of the fittest."  But it was not just these birds that went through this process of evolution all life has evolved stemming back to bacteria in the ocean at this planet's begginning.