Aggressive Evolution

OK I just been mulling this concept over in my mind for the last hour, and I find it rather fascinating so I will try to write it down and share it with you all.

OK we as a species have become one of, if not, the most successful species on this planet to date, and yet we are constantly hounded by such concepts as trying to balance our existence with that of the planet, to not abuse her, to reduce our population to a stable level, to not use up the fossil fuels, to come up with ways of reducing waste, of recycling, etc.  I can underatand these ideas and even support them as far as is practicable in my own lifestyle.

However many people seem to regard the human race as something totally seperate from all the other species on the planet, there is us and then there is nature.  We build town and cities and roads and yet we are encrouching on nature, destroying her.

As one of my favourite authors once pointed out, the beaver is part of nature and yet it cuts down trees, builds dams and alters the course of rivers and streams to suit itself, often changing the environment around it.  The praire dog builds huge underground cities, numbering into the hundreds of thousands and yet this is still part of nature.

Personally I think it is arrogant of us to assume that we are not part of nature, that we are somehow above it.  We are this planet, evolving and adapting, we are its experiment.  In the film ‘Independence Day’ the alien species is compared to a swarm of locust, travelling from planet to planet, stripping it of resources and yet locusts are part of nature and follow their own patterns, which the planet adapts too.  Locust have been around for a very long time and I doubt they will die off any time soon and yet we are not over run with them and they have not stripped our planet bare.

As a species I believe that we have evolved far enough that we are the first species on this planet that can now either adapt its environment to suit itself or even adapt itself to any environment.  We can even live in a tin can in the vacuum of space, and probably even thrive there, and I think that is and has to be our next step in our evolution.

If we are to be compared to the Locust then I think it is part of our evolutionary step to move beyond the confines of this planet, to, in a sense, strip it bare of its resources, so much so that we have to ‘hurl ourselves out into the void’ to find other resources, the moon, the asteroids, the other planets, and even other star systems.  If we do not then we have to follow a path that will allow us to strike a balance with this planet, to live in harmony, to regulate our activities and our population, and down that road lives an evolutionary dead end.  We will be stepped on by some other species, either from this planet or from another, one that is more aggressive in its evolution than us (The locust to our Dodo).  Dinosaurs once ruled this planet and something happened to them, the smaller species managed to adapt, but changed the direction of thier evolution from hunter/killers to what has not become a small budgie in a cage that stresses out at the slightest thing and starts pulling its feathers out.

So we have to continue evolving, aggressively until this planet cannot hold us and then burst out into the universe.

But ultimately, what can I, or even we do about this.  Nothing, nothing at all.  As one voice in the dark, as one candle lit against the coming storm, I am not that arrogant to assume that I could have an impact on the species and its evolution, only time can be the final judge of what we become, and I will be dust a long time before then….

G (feeling very philisophical)