Its Evolution Baby!

A sound bite that I heard a couple of months back and got me thinking a little. Basically it was that "evolution doesn't necessarily equal good". For some reason, never really thought of 'negative evolution', or maybe there is no 'good and bad' to it all.

Started to think about how the phrases with evolution are articulated: 'Survival of the fittest', 'the best will adapt', 'those with the best features', 'the strongest' etc. Funnily enough, everything is phrased in the positive and I haven't been able to come up with a common catch phrase that is in the negative. So it would appear that intrinstically we are wired to see evolution as always being a step forward.

I'm tending to form a view that evolution can move in either direction - good or bad. I remember the conversation with Rob a couple of years back once that German dude ate another guy that gave him permission, and had him all chopped up in his freezer. There in cames the argument that because we have a conscious, or some form of 'recognition', we are 'outside' of nature. We were able to put ourselves at the top of the food chain.

I tend to think we are just mammals wearing pants and nature always has check and balances - floods, asteriods, disease, sun blowing up in 5 billion years etc. Just because we are the first to develop in a particular way, doesn't mean we are outside the system, just different from that which has come before.

Heck we probably have the check and balance built into us. Forever in a day we have gone to 'war' and evolved in the positive articulation to have become more 'efficient' at it. Heck we developed the nuclear bomb in the 1950s and a little over 10 years later, we came close to using it (see Cuban Missle Crisis). Not a good number - a couple of million years from ape to Homo Sapien and 10 years to end it all (For all those creationists out there, this post probably wasn't your cup of tea - feel free to stop reading. For that 3rd group of people who have an each way bet, nature caused evolution but aliens put us on earth, enjoy).

It only takes one mistake and that could be the end. Given mathematical theory, the probably of one mistake occurring as opposed to it never occurring is not good for us.

Maybe we have just evolved enough to put an end to our evolution - natures own check and balance.