Thursday, January 30, 2014

Can evolution be our downfall?

Professor, forgive me for my crudeness, but I felt this was the most accurate image I found that expresses my feelings.
Alright, so, I was at my boyfriends house a few weekends ago. My boyfriend and his father were watching some football game that was going on (GO, BLAH BLAH! WOOT WOOT! SCORE!) and I, of course, was bored out of my mind (sorry if you ever read this, love) so I began to read the first chapter of this course (Module 1.1 The Biological Approach to Behavior). It's fairly towards the beginning of the chapter so you might think "Oh, yeah, she found this SUPER interesting...it was only interesting 'cause she didn't have to read much after that." Sorry, "friend" but no, this is not why I felt this was the most interesting of topics at hand. I came across the four types of Explanation: Physiological Explanation, Ontogenetic Explanation, Evolutionary Explanation and Functional Explanation and I had an idea about evolution. 
           For as long as I can remember I've been under the impression that the term "evolution" was always, and I mean ALWAYS connected with natural selection. It didn't occur to me it would just be an act (or idea) on its own without the stigma of dying weak members of a given species relentlessly dragging their useless bodies to some sort of life force. In the link I posted, it explains the term evolution simply means change. Funny how my idea of evolution evolved after watching it, huh? 
             Anyways, I was most keen on Evolutionary Explanation if it isn't obvious already. According to the book, Evolutionary Explanation is the, "Reconstruct[ion] [of] evolutionary history of a structure or behavior. The characteristic features of an animal are almost always modifications of something found in ancestral species (Shubin, Tabin, & Carroll, 2009).  Here is what I want to talk about: "Evolutionary Explanation also call attention to features left over from ancestors that serve little or no function in the descendants." 

Click the link for examples of Vestigial Traits humans possess. (Sorry, guys, you just don't need 'em!)
 http://io9.com/5829687/10-vestigial-traits-you-didnt-know-you-had

My question is: Are (Physical) Evolutionary Vestigial Traits the only traits we have acquired through time/change? Has society inadvertently bonded behaviors such as watching TV(this includes ads),  drinking, using drugs (that are not grown from the ground i.e., LSD, Heroin) using cell phones, lack of human contact due to technology being more easily accessible into what it is to be "human"? If it hasn't, can it?  


 This is a video about a new technology that could possibly control the products we buy by means of mind control. Advertising to a whole new level.


I find this so interesting because I notice, even with my own family that the quality of relationships has become quite lackluster and I question if it’s because of what society has molded us into. We have all of these techy devices enabling CONSTANT communication, but when did our thumbs become our voices? When did having a few drinks become the only way to be honest or drugs give us outer body experiences? Have we relied so much on outside sources to make us “feel alive” that we forgot to? We’ve done something to ruin the meaning of humanity…can we fix our “evolution”?