A point on a line

A huge number of people believe that we are an end stage. That humanity is the culmination of either design or evolution. I don’t know about design. I personally don’t believe in it, but I’ll leave that alone for today. Today, I want to talk about the belief that we are the end result or an evolutionary process.

People who hold this belief resist any form of change among humanity. They want us to physically continue as we are. They oppose any future modification that might become possible. Many of them divide all medical advancement into two broad categories. The first category is best referred to as ‘healing’. It is where people are brought back to the average, which is a state these people see as optimum. Then there is a second category which we shall call ‘improvement’. This category is concerned with advances that actually enhance those treated beyond average.

This group of people believe the first form of medical advance is alright, while the second shouldn’t be used. They are afraid that we will lose our humanity to these improvements.

This is interesting, because in truth humanity is but a smudge on the line of the evolutionary process. There is a fantastic philosophical question which encapsulates what I’m trying to say. ‘How many grains of sand does it take to make a pile?’ Hard question to answer, isn't it?

A pile is a concept that we’ve created, which in truth has only a partial bearing of reality. Concepts are models we use to make decision making possible. For that reason they are often drastic simplifications of reality. Concepts are also highly malleable, often changing with time.

Humanity is such a concept. Since it is such a malleable concept we will never lose our humanity, because we will simply continue to reinterpret it as our understanding (and we physically) change(s).

But they have another reason they oppose these types of advancements. They say that they don’t feel it’s natural. I’m not sure what natural is anymore (as it seems to be a concept that is even more malleable than humanity) but I think they are talking about that it isn’t evolutionary. It’s messing with the logical progression of the processes that have brought us into existence in the first place.

There is an assumption in that, though, that I think should be backed up with some very strong argument rather than just implicitly assumed. That’s the argument that science is somehow outside evolution. I’ve seen no evidence to that effect.

Science is just the newest stage of evolutionary growth and it is in no way outside the, dare I say the word, ‘natural’ process.

Now, I’m not saying that we abandon all caution and race headlong into physical modification. All I’m saying is that we should not just oppose it out of some falsely held principle.