Rhetoric Rants - Daily Musings and Social Commentary

Rhetoric Rants: Human Evolution; Extinct? Part Three

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Human Evolution; Extinct? Part Three

As I said earlier, I think that human evolution is done on a physical standpoint for several reasons, unless we have some sort of cataclysmic event that causes natural selection to start weeding out some of the population.  Now where does this leave humans?  The idea occurred to me that maybe we were experiencing evolution on more of a social level about 2 weeks ago, when I realized that some people were actually not having children due to their various problems.  A key example would be my friend.  She has a lot of issues, both physically and mentally.  She is determined to not have kids because she doesn't want to pass on these problems to her potential kids, as this would be unfair to them.  Maybe it is now up to the individuals to pass on their genes or not, so now maybe the "natural selection" is our own social consciousness.  Now don't get me wrong, not everyone is socially conscientious, in fact, I believe the vast majority of the populous is not.  If everyone were to be considerate and conscientious about the society as a whole, and not what is best for the individual, we might actually see a significant evolution of sorts.  This problem can be explained with a little bit of advanced economics.  There is this theory called the tragedy of the commons and to explain it, lets say that there are several fishermen and a supply of fish that they can all fish from.  The individual fishermen will do what is economically best for them, so the vast majority of them will fish.  For every fisherman that decides to fish, the total marginal benefit, or profit, decreases for all fishermen.  After a while, the fishermen will deplete the supply of fish, even though none of them intended to so as it is not economically beneficial to any of them.  If they would have worked together, the total benefit amongst all fishermen could have been achieved, and the supply of fish wouldn't have been defeated.  The moral of the story is that we as a society need to work together in order to receive the most benefit, as most individual working on their own will pick an inefficient solution that could produce a lot of harm in the long run.

P.S.  If I haven't followed you, and you have followed my blog, just post a comment and a link to your blog and I will return the favor.

23 comments:

  1. That's a very interesting way of looking at it. Unfortunately, as mammals we're hardwired to look out for ourselves and our offspring first.

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  2. I really like your view on this.

    my url: http://worldofmoviesbydoo.blogspot.com/

    not sure if you are following me :/

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  3. I think we as a society may have already peaked and might have stepped backwards over the last decade or two

    followed!

    blundersfrom6foot2.blogspot.com

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  4. following your blog brah.. very interesting stuff

    keep up the good work and keep on spilling ur brains for us to pick at


    follow me @

    http://www.xchodax.blogspot.com

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  5. A bit of a pessimistic view, but ah well.

    tehhappyplace.blogspot.com

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  6. It's true that we all have to work together.

    followed

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  7. Not sure if our society will ever work together as a unit for the greater good. People tend to look out for themselves first, then family/offspring.

    Sincerely,
    http://bulkingjobra.blogspot.com

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  8. i have to disagree that evolution no longer applies. we are constantly changing ever so subtly that it sometimes doesn't appear to be the case.

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  9. Agreed with erics. Things change everyday, we are constantly become more intelligent for one thing.

    -Zach
    http://www.evanztories.blogspot.com
    http://www.ducks2nucks.blogspot.com

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  10. Ya it looks like in places such as US for example, keeping the population healthy is a personal responsibility. On the other hand in China they control that.

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    http://www.blizzardhacks.com

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  11. good stuff brah, interesting to read about your thoughts on evolution

    ectomorphmuscle.blogspot.com

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  12. I'd agree to control of shared/scarce resources but apart from that, let everyone do their own thing: leave it to enlightened self-interest, the invisible hand, and Ricardo's theorem.

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  13. Following and supporting

    http://koal0r.blogspot.com/

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  14. Following and supporting.
    toastburnt.blogspot.com

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  15. Woah woah woah. I agree totally that it would be great for them to come together *economically* but not in our society as far as choosing what stays in the gene pool. I mean, that's basically denying a human of his/her right to raising their own child. Idk, it would just never work socially.

    http://lifeofbaron.blogspot.com

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  16. This series on evolution is awesome! Keep it up!

    thisemptybook.blogspot.com/

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  17. Thats an interesting perspective that I hadn't considered although I agree that most of the population is not socially conscious like that. Personally I don't plan to have kids just because I don't want any kids.

    also my blog link is in my profile, I don't want to spam it in comments. I think you already follow me but idk.

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  18. Nice point of view. I agree with most of that. We can never forget that we are technically all animals and must follow nature.

    xskamaniac.blogspot.com

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  19. that's the problem, we all need to work together, but we're all too busy doing our own things to really care. we're individualistic to a fault. I'm not a big fan of collectivism either, but collaborating and working together in a way that's good for everyone should be something that everyone can get on board with

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  20. thanks for the comment hitting you back up!

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  21. I am now following your every step. Please click on my name, I won't post the link to my blog, I think that would be SUSPISHAS.

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  22. Still bringing up some interesting points.

    ~Showing support to my fellow bloggers.

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  23. subscribed

    justbeatz.blogspot.com

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