Pre release comments on my personal best musing ("Connecting the Dots”) to follow in 3 parts.
Leave it to me to be melodramatic about some silly-ass upcoming musing. We like to say how much praise goes to particular individuals for the course of history. We like to think how important it is for us or someone else to be ‘right’ about major issues in history. But no such importance exists in the big scheme of things. If Galileo hadn’t established the earth was round, someone else would have. If Lincoln had not successfully choreographed the end of slavery someone else would have. If the Wright Brothers had not developed the first airplane, someone else would have. If the founders of our Constitution had not come up with a better form of government, some other group of individuals would have. And so it goes.
The problem is we think in Human years, and the Evolutionary process marches to Evolutionary Time. Evolution is in no rush. Eventually progress is achieved. In Evolutionary Time our lifespan is but a micro second. So, of course, if Lincoln hadn’t gotten rid of slavery when he did, maybe slavery would have lasted decades or a hundred years more. Evolutionary Time doesn’t really care BECAUSE what is better will eventually win out over the less adequate. What really counts in every case is what ‘change’ is better, not who first implemented the change. Put bluntly, no individual member of any species has ever determined the course of evolutionary history. Even more importantly, individuals don’t have destiny, the evolutionary process does. In fact all individuals have the same earthly destiny.
There have been 5 mass extinctions in evolutionary history. None of them were caused by any particular species but by physical changes in the more remote universe, or our own little part of the universe. We are now living in a period of the 6th massive extinction in evolutionary history. What is different here is that the current massive extinction is being caused by the activity of one species—the human species. In theory, humans have the brain power to avoid human overpopulation of the globe or destroying our planet’s natural resources, or ensuring that the least fortunate are able to achieve some contentment. But so far that brain power is being hindered by our still weak inherited inherent ethical nature. Examined from afar, nothing is happening right now with human actions around the world which is not to be expected from human overpopulation. There has never been a species yet which has ever thrived by overpopulation of it’s own species.
Let’s just assume for the moment that my next musing really has connected some dots together which explains some things more accurately. It really doesn’t make any difference whether I have succeeded or not. Being able to explain something doesn’t change the reality of what we are explaining. It really doesn’t make any difference whether 2 people think I am right or a million people think I am right. Whatever is best with change will win out irregardless of what any of us think about anything. The only aspect of evolution that any of us can change is how fast something ‘better’ is put in place, or how soon we understand something correctly.
The real reward for being right about philosophicohistorical matters is the contentment from feeling we understand more about life. While this perception/feeling brings us contentment, the reality is elsewhere. Too often we are like the blind man who picked up his hammer and saw.
