The De-evolution of human kind

I was talking with someone the other day about the "advancement" of humankind and it just struck me. Are we more advanced than we were 200 years ago? The air we breathe is polluted, the food that we eat is genetically engineered to look appealing and grow in harsh conditions, but has a fraction of the nutritional value as an organic heirloom plant (not to mention the fact that they use so many pesticides). Meat is contaminated as well. Steroid and hormone injections give us the "most cow" for our money, but the conditions that the animals are kept in are so inhumane that the animals body also releases chemicals as a physical symptom of a depressed state.
Sure, we're living longer, but what about quality of life? Is everyone so afraid to die that they'll stay on oxygen or whatever just to squeeze out a few more seconds on this physical plane? The advancements in medicine are highly overrated in my opinion too. So we're finding a cure for cancer. We wouldn't have needed it if there weren't so many cancer causing agents in our food, clothes, homes, etc... My uncle is a doctor of physics and he was telling me about the fluid state of plastics that we use in food storage. Did you know that plastic is not entirely solid, and they "allow" for a certain amount of "transference" into the food being stored. There are several reports coming out about how this has adversely affected health for decades now. It's not that they didn't realize it...it's that it was too costly to fix after they realized the dangers. Does this sound like an advancement? Wouldn't an advanced society eliminate the causes of the diseases instead of profiting from them? I'm aware that there are many other diseases that aren't traced to carcinogens, but don't the death rates and population rates balance out?

Sure, life was hard 200 years ago, and you might have suffered from war or disease (not that we're running short on those today) but wouldn't a truly advanced society know how to co-exist without trying to blow each other up? Wouldn't an evolved society spend their resources on curing disease instead of fighting wars? I see where we've sacrificed our morality for convenience, and traded community prosperity for ego driven gain.

Our air, food, and water qualities have all deteriorated, but we can drive to the store now (more pollution) instead of taking a horse and buggy (natural fertilizer). We can make a thousand gidgits a minute, but who takes pride in the craftsmanship? We can fight wars for the politicians, but where is our voice. Even our basic freedoms and liberties are being compromised.

What do we have now that sets us aside from our counterparts 200 years ago. Something that is so great that it justifies how we treat each other and how we have treated the Earth. What is that something that we just couldn't do without? Please show me something to restore my faith. Show me something beyond convenience that sets us apart.

OK...I'm done

 

I totaly dig what your saying.... i read in the paper the other day that NASA and some other scientists have brought dead dogs back to life and that in a year they will be able to bring recently dead people back to life......and within 10 years it will be comon medical practice...... whats the point of that.... dead is dead.... ya know

 

all i know is all this is costing the earth, and on these scales the individual is awarded by the meritorious society they are a part of, with the products of destructed natural land and sea masses and exploited resorces including desperate poverty.
perhaps property is theft and anachy is civilised and arent there just too many humans.
best wishes

 

We're doomed.

 

we are our saviors and our destroyers

 

The only reason they make the stuff is because people buy it.

Stop buying meat sold in plastic, raise your own chickens, forget the useless gidgets made with no pride in craftmanship...take responsibility for our own choices, embrace death as a natural occurance and the market for crap and souless dogs will dry up.

We've been brainwashed into being so insecure and nondescriminating, the corporations are just using all of us and we are letting them.

We hav'nt lost everything yet, but man some people have got to wake the f!@# up...my grandpa always said 'kiss'...keep it simple stupid.

 

I already raise organic veggies, have animals, and NEVER buy plastic. I think if my dog (who I love very much) died, I'd find another one, and let him RIP.

So is everyone agreeing that we haven't really advanced, but have kinda regressed?

I agree, we need to rely more on ourselves, and less on the market based economy (a con enemy). Stop supporting the corporate whores! But how do we, as a society, get back to basics? How do we evolve now? Or do we continue the downward spiral?

 

how do we get back to basics? one person at a time and the only person you can really control is yourself. so we're all personally responsible for evolving out of being over dependent on stuff and corporations and 'experts' to tell us what we need.

me personally? i try to stay away from plastics as much as possible. i use re-usable items in place of disposable ones (i use cloth menstrual pads and clean with dishclothes rather than paper towel or sponges). i try to buy only when i *need* something, not just because it's there and available. and when i do buy in stores, i generally don't use the plastic bags provided, i bring my own or carry items out without bags. and when i do buy, i try to buy from locals rather than mass-market items (fruit and veggies from the farmer's market as an example). i don't own a car - i don't even have my license anymore - i walk or bike where i need to go. and if my destination is out of walking/biking distance i carpool or take the bus. it always amazes me that i manage, as a single mom of two, to go grocery shopping, etc, without wheels, but that most of my friends can't imagine doing anything without a car. we've become a lazy 'take the easy way out at any cost' society.

i think it'll be slow going. people are terribly brain-washed that they need to buy in order to be happy, that 'experts' have all the answers, that driving is the only way to get around...

have you all seen The Corporation? excellent documentary.

-z

 

You dont tend to do much evolving in 200 years, unless your a bacteria, in which case your doing very to be typing. Rate of evolution is a funtion of complexity of the organism. Viruses evolve incredibly fast, they have no inbuilt copy protection so their DNA mutates very fast, they run through a lot of possible combinations very quickly and as a result dont take long to find a winning structure.

However by the time you have something as complex as a human things move a lot slower, firstly we have levels of copy protection in our DNA so matating is prevented as far as possible. Also if it does occur in a cell then whatever that mutation is must not affect the cells ability to communicate and function with the rest of the body. In humans you have a lot of sensitve components that all have to interact and if anything changes then the other parts have no way of knowing how. Generally in humans random mutations tend to screw things up very quickly, cancer i guess is the most obvious example. This is called the evolutionary brick wall, we still evolve just very slowly.

 

we may evolve slowely, but what if we were to stop that evolution by any means...technoogy...we can use it to aid in our eveolution possibly, and we may also screw it all up by rushing it...and not letting nature do what it does.

 

"You dont tend to do much evolving in 200 years"

I understand what you're saying Fat Tony, and I agree, that type of evolution (physical) is an extraordinarily long process. But what I'm talking about is the hype that we, as a society, have transcended the backwater thinking that "limited" us in our growth. In the last two hundred years we've gone through an industrial revolution and a technological revolution. We've seen electricity become a common household convenience, we've seen the invention of autos, planes, spaceships, computers etc...By all accounts that I have read there has been more "progress in the last 200 years than in the last several thousand. In the span of mans existence here, I'd say that's rather significant. What I'm asking is ...is this really progress? I've thought about this a lot recently, and I think I have the answer. This age of discovery could in fact be called progress if the benefit outweighed the harm. From where I'm standing, it doesn't. The benefits are for the few, and the harm is to everyone and every living thing on the planet.

 

........more scientists are jumping on the leaps and bounds boat for evolution


I'd want to be a lizard like Tom Paris........

 

yeah, apparently human civilization is slipping down the crapper.
so you know what that means.
the shit is gonna peak, and then a new era of greatness will begin, this one far more powerful than any previous renassance, especially since the whole of earth is now established. just as the birth of america set a new precedent for individual freedom, the next jump in society's collective consciousness will bring a level of peace that has never been on earth since man came into the picture, with governmental, educational, financial, technological, and environmental revolutions. fear not, well dig ourselves out of the hole we made.
and that thing about the dog brought back to life...i dunno...that just seems fucked up. death is death.

 

I agree with the first post pretty much. We have poisoned our envrionment (and thus ourselves) in our "progress" which causes us to have a lot of diseases that didn't used to be common. Sure, we wiped out smallpox and others, but now we have all this cancer from chemicals and radioactive elements we've made, we have heart disease from poor quality food, and on top of that, now we have all these stress related diseases, due to overcomplex lifestyles, overcrowding in cities, and stressful jobs. This is brand new, at least on the scale of it. So we traded the old diseases for new ones.

I will say, our medical advancements have been astounding and should not be denigrated. But where is the disease prevention? And the fact that the doctors forgot about and ignore the mind, the whole-person approach in favor of seeing patients as a sac of symptoms makes me unhappy about how this wonderful advance is used. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, and most of our modern diseases could be prevented in many cases, especially the stress ones. But this is rarely talked about, because there's no money in it, at least not compared to the official "drugs n surgery"

I do disagree on the war part though, war has always existed (in fact we have it pretty good right now), and people very rarely had a voice. We in the USA and much of Europe do have a voice, even if sometimes it seems like we don't. It's slipping but the rights are still there.

I agree with one of the other posters too: they make it because we buy it, and it's up to us as individuals to choose not to buy them. We still have self-determination, you know, so we have to make the effort. If everyone else won't, well, have your own personal boycott of what you don't like. Maybe others will start to join you; if not, well, you can't force them, and at least you are helping yourself.

 

i think about this often, how could i not living where in america..but i agree with so much that was said here and its sordove sad to see so many intelligent people really percieving what could potentially be such a beautiful world being so fucked up and potentially destroyed.

on a little lighter note, they have a new field in college study about plant therapy, that is totally legitmate now. so, maybe we ARE evolving, or degressing or what have you, realizing the strong connection man has with nature and the amazing healing nature of plants. they've proven to lower blood pressure and promote a healthy heart. also help with depression and stress, sordove like having a pet, something to take care of that doesnt judge you. and having a plant in a room without one is so much nicer in my opinion, love nature. and i hear there is a LOT of money in anything horticulture or plant-related, and there always has been. even during the great depression people were buying plants, so perhaps this field will really grow and people will bring themselves a little more back to the garden so to speak. i dont see humanity evolving anytime soon realistically, i do see vast opprotunity for improvement and much we can all do though if we evolve our own being and help other souls to evolve.

i personally buy only organics with me and my mom, all that we can anyway. im vegan, shes vegetarian and i feel just doing that makes an enoooooormous difference.the meat industries are so bad for the environment in so many ways. biggest cause of water pollution?soil erosion?famine?rainforest destruction? its all linked to meat eating. look it up sometime, or ask me about it.

its impossible to be totally organic where i live, or anywhere in the US probably. well i dont want to say it is impossible but it would probably prove to be a difficult journey, and perhaps not worth the time and effort after all the people you coulda turned onto more organic products and simply supported that rapidly growing industry. organic food IS becoming much more popular if you look at it, some places are better than others i imagine. one grocery store here doesnt carry a single organic product, nother one a little more farther away but not too far for a bike ride(another thing i do a lot) has a huuge section dedicated to organic products and sustainable recycled environmentally comscious cleaning products and paper towels i just discovered that i thought were only at the health/whole/natural food stores. plus i gotta farmers market here which is like a whoel food store basically only with organic produce which i love to support. its always just a really nice atmosphere there. not much local organics cuz the lady is still new to organics herself relatively speaking, but its decent and im definatley gonna support her hopefully growing business. also, san francisco and ontario canada and several other places now have composting programs as reult of this. not only do they have recycling and trash bins which generally really suck for the environment, they have composting bins for organic waste for farmers to compost, which is an excellent idea and i suggested it to our environmental commission here which is actually a pretty chillin little organization. they said they are still getting some folks the big blue regular trash can sized recycle bins right now though, but hes definatley gonna keep it in mind. i just told him all about how beneficial it proved to be for the cities that have the program now, and how much cash it saved them and just good energy it brought in. see how big of a difference and ripple effect one individual can make? its inevitable we evolve into composting eventually, the methods we are using now are not sustainable in the slightest... and i bet my city will be there before some, possibly because of me.

alsooo, mow lawns with a mechanical old skool mower. like you said, gas mowers and this technology are a relatively recent thing, created for the sake of what, laziness, nothing more. basically every adult knows this is why they exist basically, and some people are almost addicted to them it seems, which is a sad thing to see. they dont even make a good cut on a lawn, they burn it and cut it too short and do something else someone once explained to me i should know about. i mow mad neighbors lawns make mad bills though. just got a mechanical edger too after discovering someone with a mechanical one on my block. didnt know they had those but it works fantastic and im sure ill rack in a little more cash for that though edging is a silly concept if you ask me. sure its a little more hard work and excercise, but arent those things we should value if were an evolved society? it feels so good to do things like that anyway, excercise is like gettin high sorda, releases endorphins.

hope remains, and there is MUCH we can all do to make such big differenes. not consuming stryfoam or plastic, carrying stainless steal mugs instead of when we go places. using burlap bags or backpacks at the grocery store. buying organic, growing our own food, planting trees, not consuming factory farmed meat or inorganic stuff, supporting hemp foods and products, seriously, there is so much opprotunity right now to make so many differences, and it ALL makes a difference and joins the collective shifts and changes happening on planet earth right now all the time. lets try to fix the balance up some and plant some positivity and evolution and hopefully help save creation, or some of it. or help some of it, just do some godamn good things sometimes, or less bad things. little things go a long way as far as example go, like the guy who turned me onto that mechanical edger. now maybe ill turn someone onto that who sees me. or maybe now someone here will turn onto onto organics or vegetarianism, then maybe they turn someone on, and so on and so forth hopefully and make a really big collective difference.

 

........just look at a room full of nascar fans, then look at a tapestry depicting a medievil battle.......






we've lost a shit load of ground.......

 

Go look at Roman forums killing thousands of 'beasts' for political reasons and such. The technical abilities of the seven wonders of the world and those lovely pyramids..

No we have not lost any ground at all..we are just about the same.

 

but the roman forum were doing something


and compare that to nascar.......

 

Both sports, pointless and ridiculous sports.. thats my point

 

I'd pretty much agree.

Human nature is human nature and it isn't about to change anytime soon. (In regards to the origanal poster's comments on war, greed, etc.)

Technology has definitely advanced, inproving our lives, and at the same time, every advance has negitive consequences in some way or another.

In my opinion, we're almost the same overall.