07.24.08
Future evolution?
Where Is Human Evolution Heading?
The race’s DNA is changing faster than ever; what it means for our descendants
By Nancy Shute
Posted July 24, 2008
If you judge the progress of humanity by Homer Simpson, Paris Hilton, and Girls Gone Wild videos, you might conclude that our evolution has stalled—or even shifted into reverse. Not so, scientists say. Humans are evolving faster than ever before, picking up new genetic traits and talents that may help us survive a turbulent future.
These articles and speculations about ‘future evolution’ are incoherent. To be sure, the changes in humand dna since the dawn of civilization are of tremendous interest, but they don’t tell us anything deep about real ‘evolution’.
Before man can evolve further, apart form the superficial changes caused by drifting through social situations, man has to make use of what he has already ‘evolved to’. As Wallace noted, man has a deep potential, whose explanation can’t be solely a question of natural selection or adaptation.
Realizing this potential is itself a kind of enigma, one that man in his current historical context cannot seem to resolve.
In any case, man is no longer a passive recipient of ‘evolutionary forces’. He needs to realize his potential for freedom and ‘evolve’, that is, ’self-evolve’ against evolution, so to speak.