Travelling on an invisible Road

There was this random thought that I had the other day, I don’t remember when exactly but I guess I was watching a documentary on T.V., when the thought hit me like a battering ram, as people, as humans where are we headed? With a feeble life span of six to seven decades we humans dream of things as if we were gonna live for a billion years, hell our planet wont be living for that long.

Everyday begins with aspirations, various sorts of tensions and man made problems that we all care about. But never has man stopped in his tracks to think about something that actually left me stumped.

Where are we headed? Do we have any control on our future ? As individuals ? As a species? I guess not. To be precise we never die, I’m not being theological or a religious fanatic. My statement here is based on scientific logic. Technically we pass on our genes, our DNA to forthcoming generations. Not only us but every species thrives to spread their genes as vastly as they can and propagate into nature to sustain their particular species in this large biosphere. This simply is the law of nature. Hence speaking we never die we only transform from one to another.

But to think of human beings to be evolved from Neanderthals who in turn evolved from lesser apes all over the world, we see a pattern, a very simple pattern, man adopted to his lifestyle and evolved accordingly, the apes were in need of continuous food supply so they habituated seashores and riverbanks, continuous interaction with water gave their forthcoming species certain changes in physical appearance, like webbed fingers. I am not backing up the aquatic ape theory (wiki for more info) as I personally feel it is far fetched. Then the Neanderthals for some reason became more erect made complicated tools and the homo-sapiens that came later made sure their species a much efficient and resourceful species prevailed.

Now that our species has already undergone so many phenomenal changes from the first homo sapiens, this never-ending adaptation process will go on as much as it can.
One cannot say weather the biological complexity will increase or decrease here because adaptation involves inclusion of external factors like environment, food, resistance to diseases etc etc.

We are today not susceptible to certain diseases that are forefathers were, similarly our future generations will be more immune, on the other hand technological advances are headed today towards ease of life, man has automated everything that not long ago was a back breaking toil for people. Thus on the other hand human today are less physically fit than our predecessors. I keep hearing to stories of longevity and strength from history and today this story has changed. Eating habits have changed, nutritional value of food has changed, there are myriad factors that are currently effecting us.

As the old native American saying goes the Axe forgets but the tree remembers, similarly we as an individual never give importance to these things but our body remembers, it makes minuscule changes and alterations in the genes and the forthcoming off-springs are born with those changes, just like Darvin explained the long necks of giraffes. Now in this case what those changes could be in humans no one can say but we can pin point the aspects that might lead to these changes.

In a computerized world where each and everyone of you reading this is more proficient in computers than your parents, you shall inadvertently give birth to kids who are obviously more proficient than you! The future humans have to be hence technologically sound, unless a global step is taken towards physical fitness, the future generations will only have big brains and nothing else.

There is a theory that says our sun shall bulge into a red dwarf in a billion years and expand so much that the first two planets will be engulfed and earth which currently lies in the “Goldilocks zone” shall only remain as a dead ball of fire. Some day, long before this happens the future humans might even leave this planet. They might reach and colonize other planets for in just a few thousand years of coming into being we have developed tools to reach mars, imagine technology taking a leap only a million years into the future, why should we deny the possibility of such phenomenal feats? Unless there is a meteorite that comes gift wrapped and wipes us out like our beloved dinosaurs, we are bound to develop and evolve progressively.

The mere understanding of the universe is something I think is the most responsible factor for our development. other species on this planet cannot do that. The most intelligent species after humans are the orcas and dolphins but their primary motive in life is to propagate and eat thats all! So they evolved into apex predators and shall continue to do so. Similarly human motive is to gain more knowledge. We do not live our lives only to have kids and feed them and die. We live to achieve, dream, aspire! hence we are writing that in our genes generation by generation. Inadvertently teaching our future generations to be more intelligent. Our bodies on the other hand are adapting to these new factors. We have found ways to manipulate our own genes the very blueprint of our species and are now designing babies. The day is not far when we evolve into a more efficient and stable species.

But that again is just a possibility, numerous factors must be taken into consideration.

Sometimes I sit back and wonder. All those UFO sightings and horseshit conspiracies we see around us and the ancient Incan drawings of astronauts in their pyramids. Who knows if they are just time traveling humans of the future.

The Waterman