I think I've been trying for a long time to see where everything is going with Life™, where it must go, where it has always had to go.Imagine we are watching a game being played by unseen hands. We reckon we understand the basic rules of play, sometimes we can even predict moves before they're made, but because we've never actually seen a game completed, we cannot be sure we know each rule that governs it. Nor can we be absolutely sure of the purpose of the whole business, nor if indeed there is an end or a purpose involved.
So. The game of life.
Life is a game played by one player. The Life-player has pieces of finite existance which can produce copies of themselves, if they can aquire enough resources to do so. The game is played out on a multicoloured board, the enviroment, the universe. The aim of the life player is simply to continue to play for as long as possible.
The handicap is that the life-player's pieces are consumers, not producers - the resources they consume they cannot replenish.
And that is it. Simple. But like any game that is superficially simple, underneath, the strategies of play are infinitely complex. Too complex for us to fathom anyway. But perhaps, rather than attempt vainly to chart each rock in the river of the world, and map the absolute path of each living molecule in it, we can instead just use what little we know, and take a brave guess.
So, what do we know..?
You know those kid's toys - there are different shaped holes - A'a and B's and numbers and stars etc. And blocks to push through..? You remember them. Throw the blocks away. Now - take some child's play-doh, a good irregular fist-sized lump, and push it through a hole. Then take another fistfull, and push it through another, different hole.
The play-doh is undifferentiated-life. The rack of holes is the enviroment/universe and the physical laws that govern it, like gravity, for example. The impetus of your hand pushing the doh through, was time.
You have now two new forms - let's say a star-shaped piece of doh, and a C-shaped piece. They are different, they have different properties - the C-shape rocks naturally in place for example, whereas the starshape stands still. But the important thing to remember is that these traits are only temporal - tomorrow perhaps the doh exhibiting them will be pushed through another hole and be changed completely - and that the play-doh, whatever shape it may be at any particular time is still just play-doh underneath.
I mean to say that - For all our differences, our inter-species fighting and competition, myself and the bacteria that kills me are the same. If the bacteria wins, and fills the universe, we have all won. Because when one form exists, however great or small... When one form exists, we all do. Or can do, in time.
But I don't think it will be bacteria-shaped play-doh that takes over the board. Why..?
The properties that can be aquired in the course of the game are not equally temporary. Not all of them are finite in nature, when some are aquired, they stay. Some forms are better than others.
Pushing play-doh into another shape requires time and energy. Imagine pushing a square block through a hole only a millimeter wide. It would be better if you found another square-shaped hole somewhere else on the rack and pushed it through that instead. This is what life does when faced with enviromental difficulty. It moves.
A method of mobility is a property that stays.
But what if there are no square holes..? Then you find one that is the nearly the same shape - a slight rectangle perhaps, and squeeze yourself through that. Imagine though, a piece of play-doh that could switch between two forms without much effort - square or rectangular, as required..? Let us then say - square=carnivore / rectangle=herbivore / shapechanger=omnivore
Diversity of food-source is a property that stays.
Imagine now a great, lumbering super-lump of play-doh. It is indomitable and terrifies all the other types of play-doh around. All quake in fear beneath its shadow. Tyranno-doh. Then of course, another rack of holes comes along, and unfortunately, none of them are big enough for Tyranno-doh to fit through. In fact, as luck would have it... They are all really, really small. Shit. Tyranno-doh gets stuck. And passes into history.
However, there was another type of play-doh that, rather than press itself into one great ball, kept itself separated, each blob of doh only ever so slightly different from its brothers... And when the holes come, as many of them as possible leap through the same hole one after another, keeping as much as possible of the species alive. Each, though different, works as one. And survives, where a larger form of comparable bio-play-doh-mass, would not.
The ability to form a cohesive society is a property which stays.
Imagine now a type of play-doh which has grown great burrowing teeth, like those huge mole-machine tunnel-diggers from extreme-machines on the Discovery Channel. This time, when the mole-play-doh is faced with a different shaped hole to itself, rather than alter its own dimensions, it digs straight through. It alters the rack to suit itself.
This is us. With our technology. Changing the world to fit our shape.
Being and active shaper of the enviroment, rather than simply a passive conformer, is a property which stays. Technology is a propety which stays.
This is getting way too long.
Basically, I am trying to show that 'natural' evolution, and 'social' evolution are the same. And that though we think we are creating our own path, we are simply being made to obey the same rules on a different level.
Our technology and our hard-wired instinct that human life is innately valuable ensures that as soon as we are able, we begin to prevent natural death. At this point, many 'unfavourable' genetic factors that would have furthered the evolution of our species naturally, are circumvented, compensated for by science.
Natural evolution naturally hits a stumbling block of its own making.
