Thesis

I have recently become interested in two truths: The miracle of human evolution and the uniquely destructive nature of the human animal. How do we reconcile these two realities? I will attempt to explore this issue in the coming months, and some of my explorations (as I research these topics) will be posted on Pict Grooving.

The migration of mankind from Africa to Australia and (later) Europe, Asia, and the Americas is an incredible story. The survival of Homo sapiens while so many other hominids have gone extinct speaks, in Darwinian terms, to our capacity for adaptation ("It is not the strongest of a species that survive, but those most adaptive to change," Darwin wrote).

The similarity of the 20th and 21st century human population explosion to the frenetic mitosis of cancer cells places our world and our species in a precarious position. Our ability to kill simply for pleasure is unprecedented in the natural world, and our simple-minded tendency to destroy our ecosystem speaks to an infancy in evolutionary terms.

Will we, like Homo erectus or Australopithecus before him, soon go extinct? The evidence seems, frighteningly, to suggest that. How will our unique abilities—such as the ability to create art for art's sake, or our tendency to destroy that which sustains us—save or doom us.