Boneasse said:
So Earth has been around for a pretty long time, yea? Scientists and other good folk have traced the evolution of man, among other things, back to several millenia ago.
Whether primates were our ancestors or not, or we came from the sea originally, humankind has evolved through the times and will (if we don't destroy our planet) continue to do so. But we're not perfect, and it has been a while since we last evolved.
So I pose this question, to you, my fellow Escapists;
What do you think will be the next step in the human evolution, and when will it happen?
[sub]Take a guess or give us some scientific mumbo-jumbo! Throw it out here.[/sub]
Edit: Can't be bothered to be scientific? Then just post what you think would be cool! That'll work too.
As far as it goes, the course of human evolution is already pretty obvious if your paying attention. People become smarter, faster, and stronger with each generation. We constantly see athletic records being broken for this reason, as well as the simple fact that we suffer a lot of social problems where children are concerned because they have been progressing intellectually (becoming smarter, faster) than our society wants to acknowlege or deal with, especially seeing as it still doesn't come with the emotional maturity and experience that one would expect with that level of intelligence. This is why we have so many "shocking" cases of child criminals, with kids doing things that people think they should not be capable of. The increased capabilities and intellect combined with childlike attitudes and an as-of-yet undeveloped moral compass means that on some levels we're living an omni-present "evil child" novel or movie. Of course such sociology (there has been a bit written on it) has little place here.
The only kind of flashy POSITIVE evolutionary change that we might see would be the development of psychic powers. Of course that's pushing it, but it's remotely possible due to the fact that some scientists have allegedly found that we are verrrrry slowly using more and more of our brains. Depending on what those by and large "inert" portions of the brain actually do, if anything, we might see something impressive coming from that direction in following generations.
Being a cynic however, I also sort of suspect we might see negative evolutionary changes, or simply put evolutionary defects. The reason being that humanity is overpopulating, and despite being self aware, we have so far been unwilling to do what is nessicary to keep ourselves in check.
Some of you might remember hearing about how all living things with genders have the DNA in them for both genders. In cases of extreme crisis for a species, animals have literally changed gender in an attempt to rebuild the population and keep the species alive. This was a key point in the "Jurassic Park" concept even if somewhat downplayed in the movie, the whole "nature finds a way" bit was in the movies, as well as a point about how shocking it was to find a pregnant dinosaur since there should not have been any females at all to keep the population stable (ie only what they wanted to clone).
The point here being that such things can apparently work in reverse as well, and it's quite possible that we'll see people born with genetic defects (or developing them) intended to reduce the population rapidly. Perhaps even seeing an overall effect similar to "The Happening" (minus the killer plants) or whatever.
Some fringe scientists I remember reading some stuff about have theorized that one of the reasons why we might have so many sickos, sociopaths, and nilhists nowadays is because such people are being produced with the intention of them killing other people to reduce the population. We've done a pretty good job at keeping war down to the point where the number of humans steadily increases, and if one argues aggression is intended as a survival instinct to prevent overpopulation it's possible we're wired for this to happen. People tend to think that because we are self aware, and can control a lot of our base instincts, that somehow humans are magical. In the end we still react on an instinctive level and simply justify what our system is telling us within our minds, it's part of how we work. People are by and large organic computers running off of electrical impulses and chemicals. This is why things like hypnosis and deprogramming/brainwashing work, not to mention why we can adjust behavior (typically to make the mentally ill more normal) with medication. It's amazing what "mind altering chemicals" can do to a person on a lot of levels because of the huge influance chemicals play in who we are. At any rate, it's unknown how nature and species-wide events happen (some people seem to suspect pheremones form a sort of meta-computer for a species in addition to affecting things like sexual attraction), but they can.
See, in a personal sense we'd think that a biological change that killed people off in massive numbers would be bad. In the big picture though when you look at survival, resource depletion, and pretty much breeding ourselves out of existance something like this could be "good" objectively. Animals like lemmings pretty much committ suicide by instinct for the sake of the species as a whole.
The point here being that with the problems I see, human evolution might not be anything we'd consider good on a personal level. Our own inabillity to control our breeding causing us to develop some kind of self-destruct mechanism or whatever.
