716
design argument proffered by Paley, versus adherence to natural selection. This
debate rages on today, despite the fact that just between 1973 and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, in 2009, an estimated “100,000 [+] peer-reviewed papers”
had been researched and published “on neo-Darwinian evolution.” A startling and
paradigmatic saturation of the scientific community.
7
Given the intellectual staying power of the idea of natural selection, the coming
great ethical hurdles suggest the challenge in formulating some logic, a kind of
integumentary system by which there is reason to seek an actual ideal in natural
selection. Such a connectivity begs the question, though, of violence in nature and
its empowerment in the common hominin. No annals have ever recorded the statistical comparisons between the two great sides of sanity with any level of (mathematical) confidence, except to note how sublime, on the one, and how vile and rapacious
an organism on the other.
8
Nor are there other known newly born species like ourselves with which we might compare our own ontological progress.
79.3 Walking Sharks and Superego
The nine known species of walking sharks (Hemiscyllium spp.), for example, have
evidenced the newest known shark adaptations (approximately 9 million years old)
in 400 million odd years of shark residency. Not coincidentally, these young species
are enlisting behavioral qualities favoring short terrestrial trips and remarkable
resiliency in the face of shifting and blanching coral reefs (their lifeline), as well as
dietary balances more likely to embrace a herbivorous tendency. Humans, the
youngest of all large vertebrates, have, it might be argued, relied upon a very different rapid adaptation locus, namely, the Self or Superego, as it has long been optimized through aggression and possession, and continues to accelerate an
unprecedented biological sovereignty of mind.
The full picture of the human brain’s mass and energy can be divined in the
summation of its destructions, to paraphrase Picasso. Whereas selection favors
exogenous input—such as the local rebirth following volcanic and seismic change—
humanity’s grave digging has covered every cubic meter of the planet. There are few
remaining inputs that can be said to be wild, a topology that is surely undercutting
remaining opportunities for the kind of natural selection Darwin and walking sharks
preferred. Indeed, without greater, large-scale marine habitat protections across
parts of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, walking sharks are likely to vanish.
Global inbreeding and its concomitant invasion of the human imagination
have essentially homogenized our map of activities and potential. The only ideals
that have been spared are those which, from very inception, have forever eluded
7 “Darwin: the legacies,” by Andrew Kelly, in Darwin – For The Love Of Science, Edited by Andrew
Kelly and Melanie Kelly, Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, Bristol, UK, 2009, p. 257.
8 See “War and Peace,” by Max Roser, Our World In Data, https://ourworldindata.org/war-andpeace, Accessed January 17, 2020.
79 Ecological Emptiness
design argument proffered by Paley, versus adherence to natural selection. This
debate rages on today, despite the fact that just between 1973 and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, in 2009, an estimated “100,000 [+] peer-reviewed papers”
had been researched and published “on neo-Darwinian evolution.” A startling and
paradigmatic saturation of the scientific community.
7
Given the intellectual staying power of the idea of natural selection, the coming
great ethical hurdles suggest the challenge in formulating some logic, a kind of
integumentary system by which there is reason to seek an actual ideal in natural
selection. Such a connectivity begs the question, though, of violence in nature and
its empowerment in the common hominin. No annals have ever recorded the statistical comparisons between the two great sides of sanity with any level of (mathematical) confidence, except to note how sublime, on the one, and how vile and rapacious
an organism on the other.
8
Nor are there other known newly born species like ourselves with which we might compare our own ontological progress.
79.3 Walking Sharks and Superego
The nine known species of walking sharks (Hemiscyllium spp.), for example, have
evidenced the newest known shark adaptations (approximately 9 million years old)
in 400 million odd years of shark residency. Not coincidentally, these young species
are enlisting behavioral qualities favoring short terrestrial trips and remarkable
resiliency in the face of shifting and blanching coral reefs (their lifeline), as well as
dietary balances more likely to embrace a herbivorous tendency. Humans, the
youngest of all large vertebrates, have, it might be argued, relied upon a very different rapid adaptation locus, namely, the Self or Superego, as it has long been optimized through aggression and possession, and continues to accelerate an
unprecedented biological sovereignty of mind.
The full picture of the human brain’s mass and energy can be divined in the
summation of its destructions, to paraphrase Picasso. Whereas selection favors
exogenous input—such as the local rebirth following volcanic and seismic change—
humanity’s grave digging has covered every cubic meter of the planet. There are few
remaining inputs that can be said to be wild, a topology that is surely undercutting
remaining opportunities for the kind of natural selection Darwin and walking sharks
preferred. Indeed, without greater, large-scale marine habitat protections across
parts of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, walking sharks are likely to vanish.
Global inbreeding and its concomitant invasion of the human imagination
have essentially homogenized our map of activities and potential. The only ideals
that have been spared are those which, from very inception, have forever eluded
7 “Darwin: the legacies,” by Andrew Kelly, in Darwin – For The Love Of Science, Edited by Andrew
Kelly and Melanie Kelly, Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, Bristol, UK, 2009, p. 257.
8 See “War and Peace,” by Max Roser, Our World In Data, https://ourworldindata.org/war-andpeace, Accessed January 17, 2020.
79 Ecological Emptiness