Re: Is evolution accelerating?


<whitesickle@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:drbgig$18ho$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> Mr. Norman:
>
> Do you consider cultural evolution to be a part of evolution? If so, do
> you think cultural evolution is accelerating as it has for the last
> 10,000 years and especially the last 300 years and do you think it is
> possible in the future advances in cultural evolution i.e.
> biotechnology, stem cell research, genetic engineering, etc, etc. could
> be applied to our biology to reshape it and accelerate biological
> evolution? If one accepts the premise our current biological system is
> non-adaptive to the current environment then our biological system is
> not accelerating to keep pace with our cultural evolution. However,
> with the new science and technology of the life sciences couldn't it be
> theoretically possible to "accelerate" our biology in the sense of
> creating an organism which is adaptive to its current environment?
>
> Michael Ragland
>

This above question is directed to Mr. Norman, but I hope you will not mind
my commenting.

Cultural change, apart from technological change, would be hard to measure.
Transportation has sped up, and the cost of food in terms of man-hours to
earn it has diminished drastically, and individuals who are able to devote
more time to social mixing and mingling and more time to pleasure and/or
recreation have been increasing steadily because of production efficiency.
And people on average are living longer and enjoying better health in many
areas.

If people did not have as high a divorce rate in prior centuries, they did
not have much advantage in doing so, did not on average have much spare time
(from working) to do much shopping for spouse-replacement candidates, did
not have much spare time or money for wooing alternative sleeping partners,
and that sort of thing. But people still fall in love and get married or
fall in love and don't get married. And that's been going on for a long
time. Most people still have to work to get by -- most of them -- although
there are disparities in that... but have been for thousands of years.
Governments still have to run and some people commit crimes and get punished
in various ways. Schooling still is necessary to "socialize" kids. There
still are wars and rumors of wars. Music and dance are still enjoyed. Some
people still kill other people. Some people still are born afflicted in
ways that render them problems to other people, or dependent upon other
people. Some people (besides just governmentally sanctioned authorities)
still form crime coalitions. People still do have to eat now and then to
keep going. People still get sick. There still are religions. There still
are emotional needs.

I cannot help thinking that a lot of the change is not in people, and how
people relate to other people, hence not all that social or cultural in the
sense that... if everybody were suddenly thrust back into a situation such
as existed in the 16th century (one at a time) they would not make the
necessary adjustments and get assimilated -- if there were no choice. I
don't mean they would LIKE it. Nor do I mean that they would not have to go
through a period of shock and dismay and the classical stages of grief. But
necessity -- it seems to me -- is what makes for shaping how people act and
think and relate to other people.

I just think if everything technologically were to revert to 16th century
(and people could not RECALL) the technology sufficiently to know how to get
back to where they were in the 21st, they would gripe and groan and grumble
and mumble and, within a generation, begin to accept the situation. Some
might die off out of stubbornness, but most people, I think, who did not
starve or get into a fatal confrontation, or die of exposure to diseases
their immune systems are not experienced with...

Aw heck. Enough. To put it in a few words, I don't think a whole lot of
the differences between the way people thought and acted as between one and
another at any past time in history has changed all that much. People just
have all this technology that gives them more time and more to eat and more
variety in alternatives in how to spend their time.

I just don't think of the differences as differences in culture, so much as
technology-driven differences that make things easier and more fun.

Am willing to consider contrary thoughts...

g


.

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