Culture and Niche

This must have been blogged before but rehashing...

A common mistake when thinking about Evolution is to think that Mankind is the "most" evolved and the "best" evolved.

We need only cite his impressive domination of the planet with technology and wizardry to place him at the top of teh evolutionary tree - the pinnacle of Lifes work.

This can be recognised from the Genesis story where God makes Man to be special in his creation.

Yet as Darwin himself noted - remove the earthworms and very quickly there would be no Man. The soil is cultivated not so much by Man as by Earthworms.

Even more dramatic is the contribution of bacteria. In number and mass bacteria dominate all other lifeforms. They evolve the fastest. The are the most evolved, adapted to every condition on earth. If any major catastrophy hits Earth while man is banging out financial agreements to fund research to solve the problem, bacteria will be ahead of the game evolving a solution immediately. Bacteria are so important and integral to life that even our own bodies are filled with bacteria handing everything from defence to digestion in the gut. The mitochondria that create energy in our cells are ancient bacteria that have have symbiotic to our cells. Without bacteria there is no Man.

So how well evolved are we then? We we occupy a niche. Stick us next to a deep sea thermal vent and we are suddenly hopelessly ill evolved. We are adapted to life in water, trees and savannah. Our cities and our environments are modelled around our adaptations. Put a whale in a city and it dies.

This mistake has another head. The idea that Western Society is the most advanced. It is exactly the idea of most evolved. The idea that progress takes a line. Bacteria were the first organisms and remain the first organisms. Life has tried other solutions, man being just one.

Likewise many cultures exist. Hunter-gatherer was the first and arguably still the best. But many other cultures have evolved. Exactly the same arguments apply. Place a Brazilian jungleman in the modern city and he will die. Place a well educated Harvard graduate in the jungle and he will die. Their two cultures and knowledge base are inappropriate to each niche. Thus we need to consider "relevance" when we think about "best"...

And this draws out the key point again taht everything is interconnected. To understand something it is no good looking at its "essence". Essence is empty and is created by what lies around both substantially and conceptually. To see what a bushman is you must put him in teh bush. To see what a American graduate is you must put him in university or the city. Swap them around and you see that a fish dies on the beach and a rabbit dies in the sea. Which is best? without environment it is an impotent question.

So it raises another point. What is a fish? We like to list its physical characterists. But actually this is not an answer. Because to see what a fin is we must see it swimming. Maybe the fin is used for walking. We are long familiar with animals so we have a deep repetoire of physical forms and what they "do" so it is hard to go back and examine this. See a "leg", even in an ancient dinosaur and we think w know what it "is". It is only a leg when we see the dinosaur walking with it. Organisms in the famous Burgess Shales raise many questions about what things "are".

So when we say that a fish is evolved for the sea its a profound issue. Because a "fish" is also that which we find in the sea. Evolution theory goes far behind the normal conceptions of "what is". It operates in a world where to know what the sea is, we need to know what a fish is as well... and vice versa.

Nothing in this universe can be plucked into empty space and time and examined on the slab. Just as there is no nail to hammer into the space-time continuum to call "stationery" there is place to take a thing to call it "pure thing" or "pure essence". All things are relative. The fish in the pickling jar is what it is because we know the fish in the sea. Were there just a "fish" in a pickling jar and no fish in the sea it would stop being a "fish".

The DNA records people need to recognise this. And the idea of preserving "species" by preserving habitat is slightly amiss. The preseving of habitation is the same as preserving "species" - they are equally important - they are the same thing.

This then applies to world cultures. Preserving the rainforest people, is preserving the rainforest, it is preserving Humanity. How dangerous and ignorant this idea of "best" and "progress" now looks! How bad and unprogressive!