The Damned Human Race

[DATo]

The Damned Human Race

by

DATo


I read somewhere that men first domesticated animals about 80,000 years ago. Then in the year 0 we find Romans building aqueducts and roads. In other words it took 80,000 years from putting cows in pens to building aqueducts. It then took a mere 1969 years from building aqueducts to putting a man on the moon. The point I am trying to make is that modern man became "modern man" very, very quickly. The sophistication of our technology has surpassed our basic primal, animal instincts for individual greed and power by leaps and bounds.


We are still Cro-Magnon Man. This is not meant as a pejorative but a fact. Our technologies, forms of government, economics and general lifestyles give us the illusion that we are more advanced than prehistoric man, but actually the opposite is true. Scientists believe that prehistoric man was, on average, much smarter than we are. He needed to be smarter to survive in the unsympathetic environment he found himself in. Those who were stupid did stupid things and died so the smart gene prospered through propagation and the stupid gene died off. This was part of natural selection, but smart does not necessarily mean moral as we would define morality.


It is a sobering thought to consider that in addition to being intelligent all of our far distant ancestors were among the most murderous, thieving, rapacious and immoral humanoids who ever lived, if they hadn't been we wouldn't be here because that's what it took to survive. Those genes prospered as well. Man's technology and mode of living has advanced because a very few special people over human history created technological inventions, forms of government and law, and forms of trade. The VAST majority of the estimated 100,000,000,000 (that's billion) people who have ever lived simply used what the "special" people gave us but the rest were, down at the bone, still little more than savage animals. They were then, and we are today.


Is it any wonder then why we see so much tyranny, greed, immorality and corruption even among the world's civic leaders, religious leaders or just about anyone you'd care to name? As William Golding said in Lord Of The Flies when explaining to Simon the nature of the beast ... "I'm close. I am part of you. I'm the reason it's no go."


I did not will the fingers of my hands into existence, it took millions of years of evolutionary attrition to create them as it took millions of years for us to psychologically become what we are and unfortunately we are not going to change any time soon. Lurking silently just below the surface of our confident pseudo-sophistication lies the face of the beast.

[escorial]

humans have created technology and keep evolving with it and in this humans can prove the existence of a grand design and creator but have kept their primeval traits and disguised them with religion and laws etc...as you eluded to humans are always human no matter how long it took for them to realise they are human beings....i really enjoyed your reasoning and it kept me thinking from beginning to end..enjoyed and would like to read more..cheers.

[Lorem Ipsum]

Very well stated DATo and thought provoking. Under all this technology, we are all still human.

But, I do have to wonder how scientists define “smart”. Comparing the intelligence of prehistoric man with the intelligence of modern man really seems like comparing apples to oranges. Technology has changed so much that the skills required for survival are not the same. If you threw me into prehistoric times, there is a good possibility I would die quickly due to ignorance. But the same may be said for throwing a prehistoric man into today’s society.

[LeeC]

Enjoyed your thoughts DATo. To me, any society created through genocide, and bent on material gain, can come to no good end. Maybe that's a natural order device? Your thoughts about intelligence and progress led me to the thought that maybe our so-called progress has only succeeded in allowing the ignorant to survive — there's a wild thought. I think of where we've gotten more as cleverness than real intelligence.

“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature, unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping.” ~ Hubert Reeves

Which brings me to a lighter note, if you'll forgive me including a meme I noticed on social media.

[ppsage]

The question is always to what extent cultural evolution can replace biological evolution in terms of behavioral motivation. To a very considerable degree I would contend, although Sigmund Freud begged to differ in his sort-of-serious monograph, Civilization and Its Discontents, where he argues that all persons civilized suffer neurosis therefrom. ------------ Not that tech development hasn't been an acceleration, but the timeline presented here is sketchy at best. Maybe some wild dogs were starting to co-evolve with humans 80k YBP but the whole penned cattle thing is closer to just 8 or 10,000 years ago. And useful aqueducts preceded their Roman perfection by most of a millennium. Tech development is surely amazing, there's no reason to hyperbolize it into disinformation.

[Winston]

The very traits that got us to where we are as a species (independent reasoning, toughness and decisiveness) are actively discouraged in today's society. From a Darwinian standpoint, we favor the weak over the strong to propagate and prosper.

Humankind is near, or past our developmental apex.

[dither]

Winston,
you may well be right although i believe that the absolute apex, and you might consider this a contradiction in terms, is armageddon.

[Sam]

Enjoyed your thoughts DATo. To me, any society created through genocide, and bent on material gain, can come to no good end. Maybe that's a natural order device? Your thoughts about intelligence and progress led me to the thought that maybe our so-called progress has only succeeded in allowing the ignorant to survive — there's a wild thought. I think of where we've gotten more as cleverness than real intelligence.

“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature, unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping.” ~ Hubert Reeves

Which brings me to a lighter note, if you'll forgive me including a meme I noticed on social media.

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are".

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

[DATo]

The question is always to what extent cultural evolution can replace biological evolution in terms of behavioral motivation. To a very considerable degree I would contend, although Sigmund Freud begged to differ in his sort-of-serious monograph, Civilization and Its Discontents, where he argues that all persons civilized suffer neurosis therefrom. ------------ Not that tech development hasn't been an acceleration, but the timeline presented here is sketchy at best. Maybe some wild dogs were starting to co-evolve with humans 80k YBP but the whole penned cattle thing is closer to just 8 or 10,000 years ago. And useful aqueducts preceded their Roman perfection by most of a millennium. Tech development is surely amazing, there's no reason to hyperbolize it into disinformation.

It wasn't intended to serve as "disinformation" but rather a metaphorical allusion to the concept of a technological timeline. My choice of "penned cattle" certainly qualifies as precedent to the building of aqueducts. Some people on these forums need to lighten up just a little bit. This is a forum post not thesis defense. Perhaps you can understand the concept of A coming before B? Domestication of animals certainly occurred before the building of aqueducts. That was all I was trying to say. Take a pill.

[ppsage]

Promoting the notion that technological civilization is ten times longer than evidence supports is disinformation of biblical proportions. It's a very simple matter for any competent and conscientious writer to indicate clearly the metaphorical nature of his assertions. Just because it's the internet doesn't mean we should be able to lie with impunity. -------------- The oldest known pills are from a 140 BC (2146 YBP) Roman ship wreck, but, although no evidence has come to light yet, I think they're probably quite a bit older than that because the technology to make them is pretty simple.