Edward asked:

Does anyone ever think that the world would have been better off if man had never taken, 'control of
his affairs,' in the first place?

Evolution. Imagine what that idea would cause — that man's image is of but a limited time and of no
absolute fixed value or duration — if it were generally known or believed. Do you think that man
jeopardizes his future by feeling revulsion at the idea of his evolution, due to perhaps some childlike
fear or immaturity? I can't imagine people being too eager to accept, perhaps eyes on the back of
their heads as an evolutionary advancement, or whatever it might be. So perhaps in taking as many
preventative and reversive measures as possible the fearful creature might destroy himself? Why?
because everything evolves, everything improves.

Now if man prevents this natural improvement he will inevitably fall behind in the 'survival of the fittest'
scheme of things. I do not mean to suppose that monkeys will rise up and overthrow their masters, as
is the case in so much paltry science fiction, but think for a moment. What is the great problem in
medicine today that is already worrying doctors, scientists and the rest? Is it not the evolution and
adaptability of bacterial viruses and infections? If I had to spell out a certain problem I would say that
evolution affects men, it improves him, in doing so it improves every organ in him, including his brain,
not just improvement in his natural immunity. And an improved brain means better intelligence ,
intelligence to think new ideas, perhaps even unimaginable and extraordinary ideas to us today.
Ideas which, none the less, he needs, needs to think up new ways to combat the ever improving
threats to his existence. So, do I have a case, or am I just weird?

============

Very interesting question, Edward, deserving of a well-considered answer. Let me recommend to you,
however, in asking important philosophical questions (not just to Pathways, but in general), that you
never assume sight unseen that you're the first to put them. For example, 'Does anyone ever think...
etc?' is an issue as old as the hills and there must be thousands of books and articles on the subject.
By you putting questions in this rhetorical manner, I have to choose between the alternative of
believing that you really have never seen an article or spoken to anyone who shares your opinion or
that you are indeed just using a rhetorical device. I don't know which applies to you, and that makes it
difficult for me to assess how to respond: you see the problem?

Anyway, I'll assume that it is rhetorical and that you're just looking for another answer because you've
not seen or heard one that really satisfies you. This means that I can simply respond 'yes' and leave it
at that.

And so now to the other parts. I'm sure your idea of 'revulsion' applies to some people, even whole
societies. Maybe 'revulsion' is not the best word, but this is a minor consideration. We do constantly
jeopardise our future; but this is not rooted in a fear of 'improvement'. The statement 'everything
evolves, everything improves' is factually incorrect. For example, many species of bacteria have
never evolved beyond their original state, and an argument may be put that creatures who reproduce
by cloning are no longer evolving, and that their mode of reproduction is precisely geared to keeping
the status quo going indefinitely. Further; many way stations along the path of evolution are not
improvements for many creatures and/or branches on the tree of evolution. One may put the
proposition that any species which is now extinct was not intrinsically an improvement on what went
before. One may propose, even more radically, that homo sapiens occupies an evolutionary rung
which has overshot the mark in terms of adaptability and is therefore very likely to 'write himself out'
of the further evolution of species. The point of these deliberations is that evolution is not a sort of
mechanism of progress, but rather an interplay between organisms and the habitat, in which the
former adapt to the conditions which prevail in their niche and the latter changes on two fronts
simultaneously, namely through the impact of organisms (which must inevitably change it) and the
chemical composition of that habitat from time to time, of which one outcome may be that devolution
is on occasion a preferable alternative. In other words, to think of evolution as an upward curve is a
mistake. Evolution is neutral: and in the scientific literature you will find it stressed repeatedly that
zero change is the rule of the game in stable environmental conditions.

Once you understand evolution in this lightnamely: that adaptability, not improvement is the key
criterion of evolution, then you will be in a better position to judge the crucial issue of mankind's
impact and the dangers involved in it. What you call 'improvement' is, in fact, the dispositionof some
types of organisms towards more complex evolutionary patterns, i.e. the development of more
sensitively attuned response systems. Take the evolution of nerves as a paradigmatic example:
millions of species have nerves and therefore a greatly improved resource of adaptive response to
changes in the habitat over creatures without nerves; then evolutionary stress may induce a further
evolution to a nervous system with control and evaluative facilities in a smaller number of species;
from there more species will go on to evolve brains. Speaking generally, this is to date the topmost
rung on the evolutionary ladder: fish, birds and mammals possess brains of varying size and resource
capability. Along comes, in a kind of sudden upward push possiblybeyond the needs of the species,
the brain of homo sapiens, which displays a crucial change in the capability of brains-in-general.
Brains-in-general evolved for the superior handling of short-term evolutionary changes, even
instantaneous changes, i.e. changes where the time stamp is too short to allow the quasi-mechanical
interplay between organisms and habitat that is the norm; but the human brain goes beyond that in
that we can think of the future, i.e. events which have not yet happened, and generate plans and
ideas and visions of possible tracks into the future against which we may wish to equip ourselves.
One obvious advantage to this is that the creature so endowed is able to build structures, both 'hard'
(material, so as to provide an artificial habitat which is to some extent independent of the natural
environment) and 'soft' (societal and cultural, designed to facilitate the coherence and
cooperativeness of the species in its efforts to survive). One disadvantage is that the animal instincts
which we inherited are still in force and have a tendency to be productive of 'misreadings' of these
possible futures in light of desires and short-term fulfilment of supposed advantages, all which change
the habitat very quickly and thus create evolutionary conditions where we as well as many other
species on which we depend on our survival, are endangered.

If we accept the reasonable conjecture that ultimately homo sapiens is the survivor of an arboreal
simian (ape-like) branch which is now extinct, then we can see easily by comparing the life habits of
other arboreal mammals (e.g. monkeys) what our problems may be. For example, we have no instinct
for cleaning up after ourselves, because our instincts were formed in the trees; we have no instinct for
curbing our natural aggression, because in an animal lacking 'tooth and claw' that aggression is in the
main designed to frighten rather than to kill; and so one could go through a long list of bad outcomes
of the evolution of certain simians into hominids. These outcomes are a result of instincts already
formed and genetically transmitted which have not had the time to adjust properly to changed living
conditionslet me point to our eyes, whose stereoscopic ability is a reminder to us that once we
needed that sharpness of vision to cope with brachiation. Against all these defects and
maladjustment, our brain is the only makeweight: but our brain is heavily influenced by this instinct
legacy which we carry around with us; and this is not a problem we are likely to solve in the short
term. But it is a problem of which we have been aware ever since Darwin started the evolutionary ball
rolling, but which as a whole we have never yet had the courage to face squarely. Instead, we've had
two world wars, nuclear bombs and pollution near to suffocation level.

So as all the old religious and philosophical stand-bye's have it, the potential for good and bad has
been placed into our own hands; we are the 'husbands' of the earth in the sense that as consciously
aware creatures we bear an enormous responsibility far extending our own needs, for every decision
we make as a collective affects untold numbers of other creatures and the vegetative world as well.
The danger we are facing most acutely is that our perceived and imagined needs will outrun the
capacity of the planet to sustain them, but equally deleterious, that many of those organisms which
we perceive as pests, nuisances and dangers have the same 'right' to existence as we do (although
strictly speaking no-one has a 'right' to live, only the privilege), but that from sheer ignorance we are
likely to erode much of that hardly-perceived life on which our own depends.

To some extent, then, your concern is surely well-founded, but the presuppositions by which you
judge them are still a little off the mark. You're not alone in this; but since your question revolved
largely around questions of evolution, I have concentrated on this to hammer home the point that with
all our 'knowledge' and acceptance of the idea, we have not yet, by a long shot, come to an
acceptance of what is entailed in this knowledge. We have not yet, as you'll surely agree now, even
come to an acceptance of such a simple fact as the incompatibility of our instincts with the need for
co-operative living in the terrestrial mode which was probably forced on our distant ancestors by the
cyclic recurrence of forest recession. One day, I guess, we'll be forcedto; let's just hope that when it
happens, it will not be too late!

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney.