Bliss

Science has a theory that flies into the face of science itself. So far, it has been unable to prove that intelligence has anything to do with survival. The theory is rather simple. Despite our human brains being so much larger than, say, an Ant's brain, we coexist just as succesfully on this planet. And though the lowly Ant will never likely land on the Moon, what, if anything, does that have to do with the survival of the Ant population? My own theory dovetails nicely into this theory - we humans survive despite our intelligence.

At the turn of the last century, Anthropoligists in England and American and other civilized countries had a heirarchical structure of evolutionary theory - to be blunt, that all human evolution eventually lead to England (or America, or Germany, or... you get the idea). One part of this theory still survives today in the nomenclature, first world, second world, third world - as if technology was the sole measurement of success on this planet. Though anthropologists claim to no longer believe this structure, opting for a more neutral "everyone is equal" structure, I believe there is merit in the idea - but that the order is reversed.

For 10,000 or more years, native peoples lived on the land in Nevada, Utah, and parts of California. Their lives were not complicated. They would hunt during parts of the year, gather during other parts, stay in family structures, sing, dance, tell tales, and construct elaborate religious excercises to mark the seasons and to pass on the important things in their lives. They had primitive dwellings, not transportation, no doctors, no electricity, no laptops, and no Starbucks. Yet, they managed to survive and remain blissfully at peace for 10,000 years. I don't need to tell you why that ended.

Most animal colonies also live is such blissfully ignorant conditions - eating, mating, and surviving in ways passed down to them generation to generation for millions of years. They have no computers, no automobiles, no airplanes, no ATM machines, and yet, they manage to survive just fine.

In my theory of devolution, this sort of blissful peaceful co-existence with all things on our planet would be the ideal - the goal - and the further we get from that, the lower down the chart we become. By this standard, America would be at the bottom, and undiscovered tribes in the Amazon would be at the top. We would be asked to quarantine ourselves, lest we infect the rest of the world with our devolved desires for more technology, more power, more control, more arrogance, more pride. We would be the ones living on preserves while the rest of the world sought to teach us how to survive on this planet.

We are too smart for our own good. We can't help but fail towards destruction every time. We build airplanes to carry people to new heights, and then use them to drop bombs on innocent people. We create rockets to carry people to the Moon, and then use them to carry atomic weapons of death and destruction. We develop the technologies to fight disease and poverty, and then use it to creat silent, deadly killers. We reach and surpass our carrying capacity on a daily basis. Our technology keeps us alive so we can rape and destroy more and more of this planet every single day. We humans have become a blight on this planet.

I envision a world of the not too distant future where technology has failed. A smog induced ice age may come, or a nuclear cloud, or a human created virus, that wipes out large portions of our population and the weakest link in the chain fails. Chaos reigns. Society crumbles. Our infrastructure is destroyed. Our world is thrown violently back a thousand years, two, ten... back to a point from before we became this pariah of nature. I do not look on this world bleakly, but as a world of promise. With the knowledge of 10,000 years stored and preserved in computers and databases, the human race would have the chance to start over, to wipe the slate clean. Only this time, instead of racing ahead willynilly to see just how far we can overextend ourselves, to see whether we can be the person on the block with the most toys, we will grow and adapt with the planet around us using our technology to live in peace and harmony.

We once lived in the Garden of Eden - in harmony with all the world around us. Food was plentiful. Nature surrounded us. We were free to do as we wished and in command of everything around us except one single tree. Our fall from grace taught us to do many things on our own to replace things that God had already provided for us. We learned to plant crops and domesticate animals, to create clothing and provide shelter, to build and to destroy. We started to foolishly believe that our own intelligence could save us and make us masters of our own destiny. The smarter we become, the less likely we will survive.

If you want to survive longer, turn yourself back to God - go back towards the Garden, go back towards simplicity, go back towards peace and harmony where everyone shared what they had and the survival of one was paramount to the survival of all. Go back. Devolve. Before you become too smart for your own good.