Devolution

I've been wondering whether or not we've come to a point in our evolution where we now are actually undoing all of the hard work that billions of years of human evolution has done.

As most of you would know, the concept of evolution is so that a species can reach perfection in adapting to its habitat. Humans have obviously been very good at this since we are now probably the dominant species on the planet. But I think now, because of all this scientific progress we're making, our genes are actually becoming worse. If you think about it all this medical innovation is actually ruining our gene pool because it means that people with hereditary diseases aren't dieing out but are instead able to continue to breed and pass on their genes. Also stuff like adaptability to the environment has probably been diminished because we can build our own homes and make our own climate to suit us.

Also, our social preferences are probably ruining our gene pool too. Note how now we not only select our mates based upon physical characteristics (traits which are actually hereditary), as a society we also covet other stuff like personality (which is probably not hereditary). This would probably mean ugly people like me would never be born but I seriously wouldn't mind if there were a few more Miranda Kerr's out there. The male preference for women with less hair on their bodies (I think men like hair on the head more), is also counter-evolutionary because hair is meant to keep our bodies warm, although I guess we don't really need it now since we have clothes, but still it reduces our adaptability. I also believe that women are also trending towards the less hairy male but I'm not too sure, and if this continues we will all probably end up being hairless.

What I'm trying to say is that if some alien life force came and managed to take away all our clothing and any means of producing more clothing, we would be pretty screwed. On the other hand, if evolution was allowed to continue normally, we, as very hairy Miranda Kerrs, would stand a much better chance of survival.

That is all.

I've been thinking hard recently.

A few days ago after reading his blog I asked Jeffery on Formspring what he thought about determinism. I first learnt about determinism a few months ago from watching Waking Life (which I found about from Roger) and the idea seemed so amazing to me that I've thought about it a lot ever since. I now know that what I thought was determinism could be more accurately described as deterministic fatalism. That sounds a bit complicated but you can basically summarise it as this: if the laws of nature precisely govern the behaviour of every little particle in the universe, then everything that ever happens in the future can only follow one set path.

I had difficulty getting my head around this idea. It's not so hard to imagine that things like the orbit of the Earth, the death of a star, the formation of a galaxy are all predetermined events brought on by pre-existing conditions. But it gets harder when you realise that our minds are also made of the same particles as anything else in the world. So everything we think about, everything we do is not guided by our free will but rather the Laws of Nature being carried out within the particles of our mind. It's such a drastic conclusion but I can't think of any way that it's not true.

Accepting this belief of determinism, it then becomes quite hard to contemplate the implications of it. Should we resign to the futility of human will and forgo responsibility for our decisions? Technically, you don't even get to make that decision because that's predetermined too. But in real life when you make a decision, it still feels like you're making a choice and that you're in control of what you're doing. Free will may be an illusion, but it's certainly a very good one. People seem to make decisions everyday that affect the course of their lives. Everybody still needs to be held accountable for their actions and their decisions if society is to function. It seems that for all discussion of ethics, politics and practical real world issues, a fatalistic viewpoint while logically valid, is quite dangerous for the attitude of defeatism it implies.

Perhaps more profound are the consequences of these beliefs on things like spirituality. When one imagines the universe and consequently everybody within it to simply be a jumble of particles forced to follow a set sequence of interactions then that leaves pretty much no room for concepts like the human soul. I think this is a different topic altogether but thinking about this made me realise that the attributes that make up what we believe to be the 'human soul' like our personalities, memories, thoughts and beliefs are really just a specific arrangement of neurons. These things that we believe to be immaterial and maybe even persistent after death are in fact physical things that exist within our skull and decompose when we die. For this reason, I believe that there is no afterlife.

Anyway, this post was initially intended to be just about my fatalistic beliefs but it diverged a bit at the end. The reason I wrote about this stuff is that Jeffery lent me his course book thing from the philosophy course he did last year on the module 'Time and Cause'. This was meant to be a kind of introduction about why I'm interested in philosophy before I started writing about what I thought about the book Jeffery lent me but it turned out quite long. I'm halfway through the book Jeffery lent me and I'll blog about it sometime soon. It's titled 'Time and Cause'.

Harry Potter!

I saw Harry Potter yesterday and wrote about it in the other blog.

I know its kinda pointless writing about Harry Potter, since it's Harry Potter and all but if you value my opinion on movies/ find it interesting then you might like reading it lols.

Formspring

Today I decided to get a formspring for some reason. I guess I've been put off from getting one from either not wanting to conform to society or for the reasons Vincent had for not wanting to publicize his.
I suppose I should be happy with the four questions I've received from real people and my 2 followers but I always like to expand my horizons. My answers will probably vary in tone depending on how troll i feel.

The link is here

That is all.

Update

Bob and Richard just posted some cool stuff about movies on the other very good blog and so have I.

If you're interested in contributing, then comment on cbox or msn me or whatever. You don't have to write about movies. It could be about music, politics, fashion, philosophy, pornography etc. etc. Whatever floats your boat lol.