Coyote's Den

Evolution

Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

How many creatures truly have the capacity to anticipate the future and plan for it? Supposedly humans do... if so, they are not using the ability on a wide scale.

Often, I hear people say "there is no answer" when what they really mean is "I don't like the answer". Sometimes, the right answer is very hard... sometimes it seems impossible... but when you want to achieve a certain goal, then you either do what you must to reach it... or choose not to reach it. I think also that many times, people say they _can't_ do something, when they actually could... but it would be hard. It is far easier on the conscience when you are unable to do something you ought to, as opposed to merely being unwilling to do it.

I'm a coyote person. What do they do? They survive. They work with what they have... they take what they can get... they stay coyotes, but change to meet the needs of their environment. Since coyotes die a lot, they make sure to make more coyotes. Since critters with large close families all in the same place tend to get killed off in huge batches, coyotes live separate (in the west, anyway). Coyotes are practical and adaptable. There are enough of them that they can try out new ways of getting by all the time. There need to be lots, because some of the things they try end disastrously. What do coyotes do to survive? They learn. They adapt. They evolve. Coyotes do not wish to die out... ergo, that means adapting to changing circumstances. Coyotes are one of the oldest... some think THE oldest actual canid still existing today. They've managed to adapt their behavior to survive in every kind of climate and situation for over a million years. And through all that... they've managed to remain relatively unchanged in form.

I think that the red wolf in me... very closely related to coyote... might just be the part that watches out for things other than the individual. I feel that the red wolf I feel a closeness to is a symbol of a sacred trust... a relatively recent obligation on my part. If the individual lives at the expense of it's race or it's environment, it's not very evolutionarily viable in the long run, is it? Individuals will always make the greatest leaps... but co-operative groups will always have the greatest effect. To be truly viable, one cannot only worry about one's own immediate needs. One must worry about one's kin, one's kind, one's world. One must care enough to do this. Things that do not care about what comes after them die out, if they have the power to affect their world but don't care how they affect it. Sex drive is okay for small dumb critters with no thumbs. It'll usualy suffice to get em by... but the world is changing... love for one's children, love beyond beyond one's self... THAT was a helluva invention. Love for one's family, one's mate... one's siblings children... even better. If you learn to love the grass you walk on, the food you eat... now that is something... because it ensures you will HAVE grass to walk on, air to breathe, food to eat, beauty to enjoy. And that your children will, too.

Not that coyotes don't look out for things beyond themselves... they do... ask any coyote that is living all alone so that it's mate and children are less likely to get killed. Some of y'all may be shocked to hear this... but many coyotes mate for life. Even ones that see each other only rarely!

I don't think humans retain, in great enough quantity, the instinct to care for things outside themselves. First they learned it was easy not to respect the stones and earth... then the plants... then the animals... then humans not like themselves... then humans like themselves... then anyone but themselves... now many do not care for their children even, or their parents. I think many of them have learned not to even care for themselves.

They certainly don't care about whales or wolves or rain forests or oceans, or blue skies or the future. Not enough to do anything. Eventually, that lack of care means that they won't have been supporting things that keep humankind alive. And so they will die. Maybe everything else will too. Unless something occurs to change that course... that's what's gonna happen. I firmly believe this. If some humans... or someone else... does not change that course... that's what will happen. I've met a lot of people that say "Nature and Mother Earth are too powerful for mere humans to affect, so nothing we do will matter". I've also heard "Well... even if everything dies here, life will begin anew, even if it's only bacteria". I'm sorry... but I think those are copouts. Reasons not to do anything. And frankly... I don't like bacteria enough to think they are a good trade for everything else. Great... a ball of polluted rock covered with bacteria and dead things. That's a great thing to waste eternity on. Pardon me if I mislike that idea, okay?

We must move to change our inertia. Inertia ignores wishful thinking completely. Inertia is that little rule that unless something happens to change the state of something, that state will remain the same. If something is moving in a certain path, it will continue to do so unless something changes it's path.

Now... all I/we have to do is figure out how to fight inertia. Ideas welcome. My werecard has had this stuff in it for years, and I've heard no suggestions.

I'm going to go a little into the Mythic here. I'll do all sorts of anthropomorphizing of abstract forces. Bear with me.

An important question... which is more powerful and natural a force? Adaptive life or entropy? What will make the difference? Life can choose to be alive... that is not to say it WILL choose to fight entropy.. but it CAN. Entropy cannot choose, but it can wait for life to quit trying. Life, in order to continue, must create a self-sustaining cycle... a system that functions like a perpetual motion machine. It must be able to change as the circumstances around it change. But whatever change it makes, it must choose something that is self-sustaining. Life that only takes will eventually run out of things to take.

What tools did life truly need to evolve in order to fight entropy? Will. It needed will. And desire. The will to do so and the desire to do so. And sentience... the ability to figure out how to do something. I think that Life (itself) must want to exist... because Will, Desire and Sentience certainly exist. And I think also that life needs Love... love being that force which makes one life care what happens to something other than itself. Because otherwise... all that kind of life would do is make itself happy and not put it's will, desire and sentience to use in making life as a whole continue.

Can humans choose to evolve? Maybe. If not... can something else take their place? Maybe humans were only a by-product or an intermediary step, along with certain other critters. Some life must have evolved to do certain other duties than be sentient, willful or loving or desirous. Look at plants. So which life forms (and I suspect it would have to be more than one kind of life, more than one kind of species) must evolve for the specific purpose of allowing life as a whole to continue?

Something that not only possess the capacity for, but actively utilizes Sentience, Desire, Will and Love. Something that decides what to do in order for all life to continue, and ACTS on that decision.

Co-operation, while a neat trick, a necessary one for efficiency's sake, is not the whole thing. Co-operative effort without all the above gives you anthills, termite mounds, wasp nests... and big dirty cities full of rapidly reproducing people that cannot be controlled by disease, predation, or anything else except the eventual lack of resources. Bad juju. Humans, or whatever succeeds them must (I believe) use those four things I outline above... and probably co-operation too. I doubt it'll work so well without the tool of co-operation. It'd be like trying it without thumbs.