Further Notes on Human Evolution

Here’s the opening paragraphs to a short essay that continues to develop the logic of a critique of pure randomness in evolution. My thesis: evolution is purposeful and directed, altho we have extremely limited access to what that purpose and direction is.

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As I have suggested elsewhere, we humans are entering our teenage years as a species. In the last 5000 years, in this dawning of “civilization,” we have grown from adolescents, perhaps about 10 years old, to young teenagers, say 13 years old (by way of comparing species-time to individual-time).

We have grown from an innocent but raw and unmediated selfishness, guided by a “dogpack mind” that Darwinians have enshrined as ‘survival of the fittest,’ towards an emerging “teenage” sense of the value of other, and of community, while still gripped by the dogpack mind that drives us towards all kinds of self-serving bigotries and forms of violence.

But let me step back for a moment, to make clear my context.

What is meant by this term ‘survival of the fittest?’ It is generally interpreted as meaning that life and its evolution is changing randomly, that is, without specific purpose and without intended or even definable direction, serving temporary imbalances in nature. Fitness is just a way of describing temporary species survival. Is a lion more fit than a sparrow? Is an oak more fit than a fern or moss or algae? Such an understanding of evolution implies very specifically that the process is godless. Evolution has no purpose or direction. It only serves temporary states of ‘fitness.’

Now, it is conceivable that the universe is purposeless and directionless, but I don’t believe that it is. In fact, I don’t believe that anyone, literally anyone, believes that it is! In our heart of hearts we all believe that there is meaning and purpose in our lives. We also believe there is purpose in our collective lives, as well, although we may bitterly disagree on what that meaning and purpose is. As a species we humans are utterly absorbed in and devoted to matters of purpose and direction. Indeed, the loss of hope in the purposefulness of our lives drives us to suicide. But even suicidal actions that address such a state are in themselves a desperate grasping at meaning, at purpose, in which the suicidal individual can at least direct one last act towards rejecting their hopelessness and helplessness.

And if we human beings are so driven, so utterly absorbed in the idea of meaning, purpose, direction, is this then a species-wide delusion?

I believe not. The very term ‘evolution’ inherently involves direction, and our obsession with exploring our evolution is a function of the purposefulness that shapes our every thought. The ideology of randomness in evolution is the real delusion! It is a positivist reduction and simplification, and while false, it does serve the purpose of helping us collect data with, perhaps, a little less emotional and ideological baggage. In this way it can be seen as having some value, even though it is neither truthful nor accurate in its understanding.

That said, we must be very careful not to assume what we mere humans, a genomic wavelet hurtling forward on the vast tidal wave of life-evolution, have any but the dimmest understanding of the direction and greater purpose of evolution. Indeed, the universe, and the purpose that drives it is arguably something like a quarter-billion times vaster and more enduring than the flickering space-time of our individual lives (assuming the universe is 13.7 billion years old).

Still, we can glimpse that direction and purpose, using our own direction and purpose to guide our imagination….

Towards an understanding of 'Soul'

Transcribing recent scenes of The Atternen Juez Talen from my notebook, I found this spiritual-psychological sketch:

Last night Jonah wailed when he was not allowed to have cake. He is 15 months old. He already knows about “fair-not fair,” about justice. This is not learned; it is innate. The essence of a life of meaning, value, intention, justice is laid into us, altho nurture can amplify or de-amplify it. I believe this innate capacity emerges from the ‘Soul.’ Thus, I unconditionally reject the belief that the world, and our own life, is random, meaningless, amoral. Meaning and purpose are so fundamental and innate that, literally, we cannot think without them (although we can surely resist them on more surface levels of thought). Thought itself emerges thru, and is infused with our sense of meaning and justice. Our sense of meaning, purpose, and justice, like consciousness itself, like a sense of “I” and “I and you” and “I and Thou” all emerge from the infinite and unknowable, and are foundational to all we think and do. This is why, when people experience a loss of meaning or purpose, they find it so existentially devastating. Their access to their foundations, to the infinite, has been blocked or disrupted. It’s like drowning, like an absence of oxygen.

Morality, the sense of justice, is more than an innate inclination created by evolution. Genetics “channels” morality and a sense of meaning, but does not create them. The actual ability to seek meaning, justice, order precedes the physical. It precedes our existence. Its origins are from the infinite, the divine.

Let me state that in another way: Moral judgement is not an evolutionary innovation randomly derived. It is a capacity that has been evolutionarily facilitated, but it transcends and precedes physical being. It originates beyond being, in what may be called soul. The soul is not created by the body or by evolution. Rather, it is expressed, or given the capacity to be expressed thru the evolutionary development of the animal body (and perhaps even the plant body, as well). The body is but a physical vessel for life, for the soul. Indeed, the soul shapes the body, calling it into organization in a way that we might liken to a magnet rearranging iron filings.

The realization that life is distinct from the body can generate a startling sense of wonder. What once seemed bounded and finite (our lives) now expands to the infinite. It is a moment of divine contact. For many it causes a dormant spiritual inclination to awake from its ancient sleep.