Friday, March 6, 2009
Human Control
Since the beginning of our species, humans have been adapting and evolving into increasingly advanced creatures according to Darwin and the Theory of Evolution. Sometime between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago is approximately considered to be when we originated and the human species and civilization as we know it is not said till have begun until sometime around 10,000 years ago. This period was considered the Neolithic Revolution. Starting off just a small distance from apes, we have certainly become quite the super-species in just a short amount of time in the grand scheme of the universe. This makes me wonder about the extent to which we will continue to advance. Technically, we could go on advancing indefinitely to a level that is hard to even fathom. Since our beginning, our control we have had over our environment and nature has continued to increase. That is what has slowly separated us from other animals. It started with just our use of simple natural objects like rocks as tools. Toolmaking by our species has now become very innovated. Our demonstration of our control is also shown by our domestication of several types of animals, such as dogs and cats. This control of nature and other species is what has allowed us to expand our population to an unprecedented number, at least in the history of the earth. If we continue to advance at this rate, I am very interested how far this control will extend. Is it destiny that in the end, we will have complete control over nature, and all of its contingencies, or will it eventually claim us?
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Humans described as being in a fight with nature seems like an uneven fight. I don't think the relationship between humans and nature can be well described with a fight. Humans may be gaining more power than nature, not necessarily control. And maybe not even more power, but knowledge of it. And if we get to know all of knowledge than what do we become? We would not necessarily have beat nature but understood it. It could still exist and function.
ReplyDeleteIn time we will be able to understand nature as a whole and be able to control it. At that point we will look and act as we are at that time until the End becuase we will have no reason to adapt or play survival of the fittest with nature. However, the "tables will be turned" and nature will have to start adapting to the needs of humans and play the game survival of the fittest in order to exist.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that we will ever be able to completely control nature. We may get better at controlling natural things, but Nature as a force is so vast that we could never get more than a foothold on it. What humans in the neolthic revolution did was not to control nature, but to work with it to their advantage. I think that this is the type of thinking that humans in the future will have to adopt to survive.
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