A History and a Critique of Evolved Primates

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive.” That was an extract from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and those ape-descends are in fact us, Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens, as we tend to taxonomically call our collective species, or Humanity, is a very interesting entity of life indeed. We have come rather a long way, from the big bang, through the evolutionary process to end up as bipedal primates with a better cranial capacity than our ancestors the apes, amazingly with the ability to contemplate all the aforementioned, as you all are inevitably doing right now. So, you may be asking yourselves what I am going to give your evolved primate brain to feed on now, well my purpose today or rather my intended aim for today, is twofold: to talk about our history, and I say our history because we are all brothers here, both in the genetic and metaphoric sense of the word; and to give a critique of the humanity of humanity in this 21st century of the Gregorian calendar, that is our western almanac of dates.

But, let us begin the story of humankind. We are an utterly imperfect species, but we are nonetheless a very special species. You and I began with a traumatic ejection from a strange world as a single celled organism. The evolution of a single egg to a foetus to a baby to a child to an adult is one of the most fascinating and amazing processes in nature, and you and me and just today about 250 000 other homo sapiens have gone through this process. We are living this life and sojourning with the other 6.8 billion humans on this earth. Of the 14 billion years of the universe, the 4.5 billion years of the earth, and the 4000 million years of life, anatomically modern humans have only existed for 200 000 years of this, and the behaviourally modern human only for 50 000. If the scale of existence was stretched down to the length of an arm, humanity would be but the top of our middle fingernail. So you see we are somewhat insignificant in the grand scale of existence and the vastness of geologic time.

Now, let us proceed onto the story of our characteristics of our species. Humanity has been brilliant at adapting to and manipulating the environment. From the creation of the first primitive tools, humankind began the divergence from the laws of natural selection and unbound itself from the wildness of the wilderness and formed societies. As soon as environmental and practical factors caused the early humans down from the trees and onto the savannas, our physical and mental physiologies began to adapt. The step to bipedalism (no pun intended) enabled our hands to employ objects, and consequently we experimented and with each new successful and useful piece of technology our brain capacities evolved. As we voyaged out of Africa we encountered an immensity and diversity of environments and situations, and we continued to adapt and manipulate in order to survive. The next advanced step from tools was to agriculture around 10 000 years ago. This technique further enabled the ease of life but also the ability to further advance our brains. Just as bipedalism freed our hands, agriculture, instead of hunting and gathering, freed our time. Further skills and arts were developed, such as the wheel and the sail and the customs and rituals unique to ancient cultures around the world. Agriculture encouraged trade and cooperation too. Moreover, with our time freed we were enabled to contemplate existence, formulate complex linguistics and interact on large social scales with 6000 years ago the formation of the first civilisations. The beginnings of modern morality are based in this step to congregate. The social interactions of early humans were limited to family relatives and those who were tribally close. Thus, it served early humans well to be nice to such persons, as it was more likely for those that were treated nicely to treat you back nicely. And so these behaviours became instinctive and passed down through generations coded in our genes. With this innateness of altruism, societies evolved further and advanced further. In fact, other human beings have been one of the major driving forces of human evolution. It is universally accepted that human beings, or rather their emotions, are complex. Thus, on the basis for survival, it steered us well to have big brains in order to understand and interact with other human beings. We live in constructs and social systems to escape the monotonous and anarchy of selfhood. We necessitate social interaction; it stimulates brain activity and is a means to an end. Humanity comes together and sacrifices some personal freedoms in order to have a better chance of survival and an easy yet fulfilling life.

As the basic but fundamental foundations for life we necessitate: food and water for energy; shelter for protection; kinship for social interactions; leisure and work for fulfilment. However too much of one can be harmful and too little of one can be harmful, as can a combination of a few be harmful. We, humanity, have designed many and diverse systems and tools to make living easier: from the bridge to the telephone to the jet, from letters to literature to photography. It is a universal observation that when anarchy or chaos or disorder of any degree is introduced, established systems and structures crumble apart. Also, the assumptions we have used to establish our systems are continually being questioned and modified. Moral philosophy is just as evolutionary as biological physiology. It is progressive and change take place continually. We need to work and play, eat and sleep. We try to coexist with other complex beings, sharing and living every day. Sometimes we disagree, sometimes we fight, and sometimes we call each other names and even destroy entire communes. Yet sometimes we cooperate on immense scales, and achieve global goals and exist with empathy that encompasses the entirety of the earth. Overall, we are bound to the basic social and biological constraints of our humanity. We are, after all, evolved primates trying to live with each other the best we can. We are just primates, with primitive needs of any animals, with some evolved needs such as customs and meaning, due to our mental capacity; however also the need for understanding and curiosity. We create systems to help our lives, such as laws, and so on. We establish classifications and orders to facilitate the navigation through chaos and disorder. These actions extend from social interactions to tool utilization to cooking to chemistry. We have evolved through necessity of survival, and the brain’s power evolved hand in hand with the body, but also the brain evolved in order to better relate and understand fellow human brain holding animals.

Indeed we have achieved the zeniths of many objectives, and so on; however I fear that now in the 21st century on the Gregorian calendar, in the midst of modernity, we are losing or changing for the worse the very concept of human nature, human condition, and human behaviour. I fear we have become distracted and detached from our integrity, complacent about reality, and diverging from what makes us so special: our humanity. As Albert Einstein wrote in 1931, “How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.” I believe we need to reflect, and I believe these ties of sympathy are in danger of becoming relegated to the end of humanity’s list of priorities.

We are travelling through modernity, in a century already infamous for hedonism and hate, consumerism and conflict and materialism and mistrust, and we have come so far that I believe we are losing or changing for the worse our humanity. In a short moment in geologic time, we have achieved immensely and gone through immense change. But in this current time, I believe we have forgotten our basic needs and replaced them with superfluous and wasteful wants. We have turned to self-interest and this is the point on which I believe we are fundamentally diverging from our human nature. We are losing our civility. We are moving further and further apart from our brothers, that voids are being created, and we are trying to fill these voids with things other than each other. As we lose our civility which is the basis of civilisation, society begins to rumble and even crumble. We have witnessed this with the global financial crisis and are witnessing it with climate change. These are perhaps warning signs of further societal dysfunction and depredation.

We are just evolved primates with better mental and emotional capacities than the other animals we share this biosphere with. We are adaptable and pragmatic and we make life easy for ourselves. The annals of human history contain innovation, experimentation and experience; we have gone through renaissance and revolution and we have made our lives more comfortable, whilst enabling us the time, resources and capabilities for further renaissances and revolutions. From the industrial revolution, to the atomic revolution to the space revolution to the information revolution, Humanity has continually been expanding the frontiers of knowledge, manipulating the world for benefits and forging new and bold ideas and ideals. It is also interesting to note that in the period of modernity we are now in we are somewhat paradoxically making our lives harder, more stressful and more harmful to our communities and our Earth. Through prevalent pollution and pillaging for economic prosperity and ease of communication, transport and energy, we are harming our Earth. The modern ideology of materialistic consumerism is causing an immensity of both physical and mental waste. From non-recyclable technological waste, to superficial fashions and socio-cultural customs based on unethical positions, Humanity is facing unprecedented issues. Climate Change, a growing population and flawed economies are all contributing to detrimental and fundamental issues that we must correct, as an entire collective of people. We have come a long way, we have some unique qualities, yet we are not as special as we should consider ourselves. Yes, we have dominated our Earth and we are at the top of the food chain, but in the grand scope of existence we represent one of the tiniest proportions, and we really do not know anything at all. We came out of Africa and spread around the globe. We have a strange biological and physiological structure. We are unconscious for one third of our lives. We can contemplate our existence. We can somewhat understand how we got here. We are innovative and compassionate, and sometimes headstrong and steadfast, and we maintain an array of powerful emotions, that sometimes take control of us and lead us to be manipulated or manipulate. We have created ideas and ideals that are powerful tools, which helped to explain or preach ethical views. As we have evolved we have gained knowledge and skills, we have created the amazing and have understood the amazing. However, we are just, after all, evolved and godless primates, with quite a few beneficial qualities, quite a few detrimental qualities. But, overall we have come this far, and thus we must aspire to inspire each other for a better future.

We are grounded to our small pale blue green dot, and we are connected to each other by our biology and cultures. Through societal cooperation, collective power and the progressive passion of the people, humanity has ascended to the peaks of life. There is grandeur in our existence. We are special, living on this small pale blue green drop in the grand cosmic oceans, with a remarkable beauty and brilliance of diversity. Yet, we should not and cannot lose sight of our story, or mislay the meaning of being a member of the human family. In this age we live in, division and hate, coupled by self-interest and excess has led humanity into dark days. From environmental damage, to flawed economies, and from perpetual poverty and political prejudices, we face unprecedented issues, all centred on our human nature and behaviour. We must not lose sight and descend farther. As the Roman philosopher Lucretius stated “Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortals live dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed, and like runners, pass on the torch of life.” I say we must experience and appreciate the amazing nature of our world we call home and moreover, appreciate life and our way of life. We must continue our cooperation; maintain the integrity of human nature, and coexist the best we can whilst ever after that pursuit of happiness whilst in the constraints of our humanity.

© T.J.S.B. 2010