Subj:  Re:Evolution                95-03-30 17:53:24 EST
From:  Joe Uhrig

>>"Instead of the strongest, smartest specimens surviving long enough to reproduce, ability to find a mate became based on........good looks?  Emotional sensetivity?  Charming-ness?"<<

"...For, whether in the depths of the forgotten sea out of which life originated, or in the jungle of it's evolution on land, or now in these great cities that are being built to be demolished in our recurrent wars, the same dread triad of god-given urgencies, of feeding, procreating, and overcoming, are the motivating powers."

- Joseph Campbell
"The Inner Reaches of Outer Space"

I'd specualate that once we stopped running from sabre tooth tigers and settled into a basically stable food supply the basic evolutionary instinct was  redirected into a drive to power primarily to insure being  at the top of the food pyramid (let them eat cake).  It also seems that somewhere along the line the genes became less important than the individual, hence a Roman emperor became less concerned with spreading his genes around than concentrating on the accumulation of maximum power.  Or in the terms of Campbells quote, they became less concerned with feeding and procreating and overwhelmingly concerned with overcoming.  Evolution for these individuals seems to have moved out of the realm of physical competition and into the realm of psychological competition.

But this "evolution of evolution" didn't just stop there.  You could perhaps extrapolate  that the winners of the struggle for individual power having ensured their individual survival in life, then often attempted to survive death by building great monuments, often to themselves, or  attempted to survive beyond death in our collective memories by making their mark on history.  

Though all of these things are at play and probably have always been, there seems to be a trend at work.  The progression of evolution seems to have been first the biological (genes), then the individual (personal survival), then the psychological (maximum power), and finally the spiritual (eternal).

Interesting progression.  Having survived all else, there is nothing more to survive than death itself.

 



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