Darwinism, evolution and the illusion that the later (descendance) has to better than the precedence.
Darwin's law of evolution says that humans who manage to pass down their genes are stronger than those who dont. It's survival of the fittest. So from Darwin onwards we tend to criticise the past, to think that the present is better and the future will be best.
That could be why we always want more, because more is better.
But is it so? Watch the first part of this recent clip from TED.
Russell Foster: Why do we sleep?
How has we industrial creatures treat sleep? For those who dont know yet, sleep takes up one third of our lives. Whenever I plan my overload schedule, I always have to put in a blank of 8 hours of sleep because that is unavoidable no matter what. But of course i dont quite follow what I've set myself to 'not do' for the sake of that blank.
Seeing that a core part of our life - sleep - is ignored by us - supposedly better humans of later generation, what would Shakespeare's contemporaries say about this? "Those foolhardy humans are certainly not from our blood! Our descendants can't be worse than us"? No, they wouldn't have k own Darwin yet, so it should be like this: "Thou foolish future species! No time like our time! That's why the world will end in 2012! When humans don't sleep anymore and just die of exertion!"
From this little 'fable', what do you think? Why changes are often assumed to be better? We scorn the past for being undeveloped. Those from developed countries must have once been appalled at the conditions of 'backward' developing countries, even when they go there for a holiday in search of 'a past long lost'. Nostalgia might have painted the past in soulful oiled colours onto huge canvass, but the so-called 'truth' remains: we now are better off, somehow.
But are they so?
Darwin's law of evolution says that humans who manage to pass down their genes are stronger than those who dont. It's survival of the fittest. So from Darwin onwards we tend to criticise the past, to think that the present is better and the future will be best.
That could be why we always want more, because more is better.
But is it so? Watch the first part of this recent clip from TED.
Russell Foster: Why do we sleep?
How has we industrial creatures treat sleep? For those who dont know yet, sleep takes up one third of our lives. Whenever I plan my overload schedule, I always have to put in a blank of 8 hours of sleep because that is unavoidable no matter what. But of course i dont quite follow what I've set myself to 'not do' for the sake of that blank.
Seeing that a core part of our life - sleep - is ignored by us - supposedly better humans of later generation, what would Shakespeare's contemporaries say about this? "Those foolhardy humans are certainly not from our blood! Our descendants can't be worse than us"? No, they wouldn't have k own Darwin yet, so it should be like this: "Thou foolish future species! No time like our time! That's why the world will end in 2012! When humans don't sleep anymore and just die of exertion!"
From this little 'fable', what do you think? Why changes are often assumed to be better? We scorn the past for being undeveloped. Those from developed countries must have once been appalled at the conditions of 'backward' developing countries, even when they go there for a holiday in search of 'a past long lost'. Nostalgia might have painted the past in soulful oiled colours onto huge canvass, but the so-called 'truth' remains: we now are better off, somehow.
But are they so?
No comments:
Post a Comment