Does Evolution have an Unrecognized Flaw?
By Chet Shupe
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In terms of quality of life, we modern humans are staring into an abyss, regarding what the future will bring. Concerns ranging from governmental failure, economic instability, mental illness, social isolation, substance abuse, family dysfunction, international conflict, and habitat destruction are already threatening to overwhelm us. How is it possible that we, the most intelligent beings on earth, find ourselves in such a disquieting situation? The increasing degree to which modern humans suffer from the complexities and stresses of our institutionalized society is a red flag that is being ignored. Could it be that the above issues are not real problems, but simply symptoms of our modern way of life—the mounting evidence of the incompatibility of our modern world with the way Homo sapiens evolved to live?
Despite continual research into our prehistoric past, the answer to the question of what’s gone wrong eludes us. It eludes us, perhaps, because we presume that evolution’s process of natural selection always improves a species’ ability to survive, never detracts. It has never occurred to us that evolution could make a mistake.
Of course, we recognize that evolution is not perfect. Environmental changes sometimes outpace a species’ ability to adapt, causing extinctions. Nor is natural life ideal. Every individual must manage life’s uncertainties, regarding such things as securing food and shelter, and coping with the possibility of loss of life, via predation or conflict.
Indeed, the reason our ancestors invented civilization was to eliminate these “flaws” of Nature—life’s uncertainties. We moderns still believe that humans can eradicate life’s uncertainties by force of manmade laws—a clear indication of how completely we have rejected mankind’s natural way of life, a way of life, without which we wouldn’t be alive, today. In our effort to make the world a safer place, we’ve overlooked a profound fact—that despite the imperfections of natural selection—evolution has triumphed, by making it possible for countless species to live in sufficient harmony for life to flourish on this planet!
At least that’s how things were for hundreds of millions of years, before we humans made the innocent mistake of subjugating ourselves to centralized systems of authority. Now, only six thousand years later, it’s hard to visualize our species as living in harmony with anything. Indeed, in view of the anxiety from which we moderns suffer, we are finding it increasingly difficult to find personal contentment within the context of a complex artificial world.
Does evolution have an unrecognized flaw? Has it produced features that compel humans to do things that are not conducive to our own, or our species’ wellbeing, much less the wellbeing of life on earth?
Mankind’s present state of affairs provides evidence that this is not only possible, but has already deteriorated the condition of the human race, and its future prospects. Blithely, we see ourselves as superior to the animals, because we have powers they do not have, one being the power to organize—and live—in mass societies. In the rush of constant human progress, we have never stopped to ask ourselves three key questions:
Has living in mass cultures increased our contentment and happiness, or has the complex civilization that has resulted produced ever-increasing emotional isolation and social unrest? Has our species become derailed from its normal evolutionary trajectory? If so, how do we get both our personal lives, and our species’ life, back on track?
To realistically address that concern, we must first acknowledge something that common sense has been telling us, all along: The future is unknowable. To attempt, as we do, to control it to meaningful ends, by force of manmade laws, prayer, and other methods, is to suffer from the illusion that the unknowable can be made knowable, by conscious intent. The difference between humans and the other animals is that animals are not afflicted by that illusion, while civilized humans universally suffer from it. Why are we living for the distant future, when none of us know, with any certainty, whether we will be alive tomorrow?
Animals live in the moment! They are true to their feelings—their emotions, their spirits—while we moderns live for the future. We regularly ignore how we feel in the moment, in order to comply with plans through which we intend to use life to our own ends. Our species is in trouble, because of this! Generations after generations of humans have committed the same innocent-but-fateful error, by believing that legal systems place us in control of our destiny.
As willing subjects of our institutions, and the beliefs upon which they stand, we routinely sacrifice our emotional/spiritual lives on the altar of future control. All of these are things that animals do not do. It’s not that animals are more intelligent or spiritual than we are. It’s just that animals lack the unique linguistic skills evolution gave to Homo sapiens, thus, they remain emotionally engaged in life’s journey, unconcerned about their ultimate fates.
Yes, you heard it here! Our unique linguistic ability to share concerns about our wellbeing, into the distant future, has compelled us to institute and maintain the very systems of governance that have derailed our species from its normal evolutionary trajectory. Before our ancestors created those systems, humans were as emotionally alive to the present as are the animals.
The question before us is: How do we get life back on course? Above all, we must stop entertaining questions like that. Any question regarding the distant future that begins with “How do we…?” is based on the illusion that, like gods, we control our destiny. Humans are like all living beings: We are born to participate in the process of life, not control it. The illusion that we are in control leaves us no choice, other than to institute laws to realize such control. But life, as evolution created it, is a process to be celebrated, not an object to be perfected. Complying with manmade laws forces us to ignore the innate feelings that evolution programmed to inspire us to celebrate life’s process.
For our species to regain its normal evolutionary trajectory requires that we regain our spiritual freedom, by surrendering all designs on the future. With no future to attend to, we would be free to emotionally engage in life’s process. As simple as it may seem to surrender our designs on the future, we may not be capable of it: Virtually everything that civilized people value is grounded in the illusion that we control our fate, by creating and complying with civil laws. Under the powerful influence of that illusion, humans long ago became separated from the essential driver of consciousness and motivation—our feelings. To regain our spiritual freedom, we must rediscover our intimate evolutionary connection with our feelings—the inspiration for all animate behavior.
A species’ emotions evolve just as its physical features do. Natural selection genetically programs feelings to reward individuals with pleasure, for serving life, and punish them with pain, for not doing so. Indeed, emotions are the foundation on which animate life stands—they alone inspire behavior that creates the order required for life to flourish on this planet.
Animal behavior creates life-sustaining order, not because animals are good, but because—like us—they want to do things that make them feel good. To feel good requires that we be spiritually honest, that we be true to our feelings. Only spiritual honesty connects us to the moment, thus also to life.
But how, one might ask, can we, as institutionally subjugated people, be true to our feelings, when we must be true to the laws of sovereign states, to materially survive? Well, we can’t—so we suffer.
Institutions seduce us by asking us to surrender our inborn desires for only a moment, in order to realize “the promised land.” This is how institutionally imposed order possesses the “languaged mind,” thus, also, the human soul. Every moment we spend ignoring our soul-felt desires, in hopes of realizing an idealized future, that moment becomes lost to our spiritual lives. And those moments add up—eventually, to lifetimes.
The ability of institutions to subjugate the languaged brain is so profound that people have seldom, if ever, regained their spiritual freedom, once subjugated. Even the authors of Genesis mythologically took note of this problem. They proclaimed that, to prohibit mankind from returning to Eden, God placed a cherubim with a flamethrowing sword, to guard the path to the tree of life. That sword represents the punishment civilized humans must endure, each time we dare to be true to our feelings, whenever the activity required to do so conflicts with civil law.
Like all animate beings, we come into the world expecting that satisfying our inborn desires is ample justification for our behaviors. But, to survive the altered reality created by the languaged brain, we are taught to justify our activities with plans, laws, and beliefs—regardless of how we feel. How do we get out of this trap, which, by “gifting” us with language, evolution set for us? If it happens, it will occur naturally, never by effort or intent. But, before it can happen humans must learn what life is about. From our innate wisdom’s point of view, life is about our species survival, not our own. Once we recognize that life is about the survival of life, itself, it will become evident why, to receive the emotional rewards evolution grants all beings for serving life, we must honor our emotions, not institutionally imposed rules or plans.
To us, as beings who think our possibilities are limited only by our imaginations, the spirit’s goal of species’ survival seems remarkably limited. But keep in mind that animals find contentment in life, because they are emotionally free to participate in its process—dangers, conflicts, untimely deaths, and all. And if we were spiritually free, so would we!
