Is humanity something special, or just another animal species? This question poses a false dichotomy, which entire schools of philosophy have unfortunately bought into (we do have a tendency to buy into false dichotomies and go overboard on both ends of them; just look at American party politics for another example. But that's another article...). What I would say, in response to Delirium's recent article, is that humans are a very, very special species of mammal. Here's why.
Evolution by natural selection was once the universal constant of life on Earth. The environment was king over all else; if a selective pressure appeared, it would reshape or eliminate all the species it effected. Many plants and animals evolved in a direction that gave them the ability to create their own environments, in different ways (beaver dams, ant nests, etc) but they still acted only in according to the niche evolution had carved out for them. If the environment changed sufficiently, their countermeasures would amount to nothing, and once again they would be plunged into speciation and made to transform into a new type of organism in order to adapt. This is still how it works for every species in the world...except one.
Our unique set of adaptations gave us the tools we needed to pull the leash from nature's hand and fix the collar to her neck instead of ours. Our awareness of the realities of the natural world and ability to force it to adapt to us, rather than the inverse, is shared by no other creature in the known history of life. Upon becoming a technological society, we reached a point where no environmental conditions WHATSOEVER can force us to speciate; we deal with everything using our technology. Even if Earth were to be hit by a meteorite and a mass extinction ensued, I don't think we would change biologically at all. Our society, culture, and way of life would all change, but I think our descendants would still be genetically compatible; we'd sooner live in hydroponic bunkers than allow that, and we have the means to do so. Nothing could ever make us grow scales, or wings, or lose our eyes, because we can force our surroundings to accommodate our biology. In giving rise to humanity, evolution outsmarted itself.
WE BEAT NATURE. WE WON THE GAME.
But we are still animals. Aside from our phenomenal intelligence, we aren't very different from the other primates at all. Same set of instincts and social dynamics as most great apes. Same range of diseases and psychoses. Similar dietary and environmental requirements to some. We like food, and sleeping, and sex, and other animal things like that, because there was never any point at which we stopped being animals. We truly are just apes...but we're really, really, REALLY fucking smart ones. We're an animal with the power of a god.
And that makes us special, and different from any other animal. Humans are a "type of mammal" in the same way that the space shuttle is a "piece of metal." We are what happens when evolution upgrades a system until that system is advanced enough to upgrade itself and tells its creator to fuck off; a Darwinian Singularity. In having escaped our biological niche, we became different from everything else in nature, but we still are a part of it.
Porous skin, stomach acid, calcinous endoskeleton, and a waving flag planted deep in the corpse of Darwinism. We're the animal who won.
"Our awareness of the realities of the natural world and ability to force it to adapt to us, rather than the inverse, is shared by no other creature in the known history of life." We sculpt the environment around us for our immediate and short-sighted self-gain. The environment does not adapt to us. We are not above the environment in any way. Every single one of our inventions must first be derived from our environment. Our food cannot grow, cannot live, if our environment sways just but a few degrees, and that possibility is ever-presently more likely.
We are extremely unique animals, and our specific avenue of evolution is truly fascinating. But I feel that hubris is our worst enemy as far as our specific evolutionary disadvantage.
So far "Intelligent Historical Humanity" has only really existed not that long, but just a blip on the time line of the History of Life. So far, no living creature has survived forever unchanged. I see no reason to believe that we would be an exception. Climate change, global catastrophes, Geothermal activities, astronomical phenomena, those are all things that we really have little control over, but we would have the intelligence to get through almost all of them if: We can first get past our own hubris and over consumption.
Because as smart as we are, we are inevitably tied to the environment because we are in the end only just a piece of the Earth, or the environment that surrounds us. Without Oxygen, we are nothing. If we get too far away from 98 degrees, we are nothing. Without food, which has to be grown from a healthy environment, we are nothing.
I never denied any of this. What I said is that we, alone in the animal kingdom, have managed to change our lifestyle faster than our biology can catch up with us, and that we've eliminated natural selection.
Woo, great victory. We're almost outside of nature... and what else is there? It's so much easier to remain at (least to some extent) an animal with all the rewards and consequences of a natural order than to do... whatever else there is to do.
People struggle all the time in pointless replicas of nature, self created systems to reproduce the same conflicts that have driven every species around today to remain around. Ecology, economy, it's all the same shit. Some parts of our species may have shoved it out of nature, but most of it is trying to claw it's way right back down to the bottom where things are solid.
tl;dr we have self determination, most of us don't want it, those who do have no idea what to do with it
In the most basic sense, humans are nothing more than animals. We place a higher importance on ourselves because we have a higher intelligence than most other animals on the planet. It is true that we have beaten in Darwinistic idea of natural selection, but at the time did Darwin believe humans to be animals or was he operating under the popular belief of the time that humans were the great superior being second only to god himself?
Humans are in fact animals, in every sense, the only thing that separates us from the other beasts are our tools. I agree that we are the animals that won. When you look at how we've evolved, without tools we would have been almost completely if not entirely wiped out years ago.
We are effectively the most useless animal in existence, we don't thin out sick or deformed animals from their herd, we help them. We destroy the habitat of every other animal for our own when there is no need. We try to control nature and prevent natural selcection. We have no true purpose with among the other animals.
What I am saying is that we do not fit in with the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans don't naturally do anything to keep the Eco system functioning, we have a tenancy to destroy it. Nothing that we do is needed in nature.
Our ability to adapt is what makes us unique. We lack fur coats and sharp claws, but whatever we don't posses we just build. Without that one thing, we'd be nothing.
Sure you can say "Blah blah we're no different from monkeys and other animals", but what's the point? It's almost like saying that we are like fish because we both have two eyes.
What is the point of this? Are you trying to "One Up" on Delirium or actually post something? Looks to me like you are just trying to one up Delirium which makes this article pointless in my opinion. If you were not trying to one up Delirium I would have seen this more worth wasting my time reading and possibly refreshing. But no. I do not find nor see this as useful. This type of thing is what google is for when you are bored and want to know about "Special Mammals" called humans. It doesn't matter if we "Won" over "god" or whatever you are trying to say other then evolution. We DO evolve through tinkering with items to make something new, our intelligence evolves and our bodies evolve to better combat diseases and natural disasters that could potentially cause risk to our existence. We still do adapt to the world around us so I do not see how you can sit back and say we do not and that it rather adapts to us. That in my opinion is a crock of shit. Google more.
No Eyeless is writing an article in response to Delirium's question (article I'm pretty sure is over the 5000 character limit that's available to comments I believe), and an intelligent answer at that of course there's some things I disagree with but they are a matter of opinion and even then are still intelligent.
It beats the brainless muck that's been posted since day one of this version of KU... Erhh AKvoice. You don't even know what you're talking about when it comes to this so I suggest you sit quietly while the adults talk about it. For your information also, this isn't something that you just copy off google/wikipedia, this is the stuff evolutionary biologist are debating to this day quite fiercely might I add. There is no consensus and this is a writing about someones opinion on the matter that's directly related to the article it's replying to.
I am arguing with Delirium. He made his case, and I made mine. This is how debates take place.
As for your own arguments, I think you are misunderstanding what I mean by "evolution." In my article, I used the word to specifically mean evolution through Darwinian selection. And we have - with the exception of the very poorest and most forgotten humans on the planet - indeed beaten that. Technology is not Darwinian evolution; it is the thing we used to defeat it.
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