Part One of Two: The Selections
Natural Selection vs.
Human Selection
There is a difference between "The Origins of Species," or "Natural Selection" meaning, nature selects who should and shouldn't survive based on traits and so forth, and what we call it nowadays, Genetic Engineering, or cumulative selection. We do this to plants and animals; in other words, breeding by control. In the old days, this was called planting and harvesting, similar to Bible. Darwin took it a step further by pointing out the obvious, as the number of organisms increase, and when they do, all will not be able to survive, just the selected few, or many, depending-but let's look at it from a different angle.
The Ship Angle:
It is 1720 A.D.; you are a Negro, soon to be sold as a slave on the New Orleans Slave platform, in the center of town. The ship was made to hold, 350-slaves, it has 520 in its hall; you will be in those cramped halls for three months. Twenty percent die, because of scarce resources, space, suffocation, and disease. We see here a slight difference in ability for certain groups to survive: the old, weak, and the very young, vs. the strong, able bodied and young adults.
Imperceptible to a causal observer, but all in all this spells out death to certain organisms, of the first category; nothing to do with natural selection, nor genetic make up, per se. Instead environment plays the biggest part (if taken out they would survive);if not the ruthless and callous breeder of disease, man himself being the biggest cause for the indirect selection for death.
The Scientist is looking backwards for a critical theory on selection for our species today... let's look at a million years, the expanse of time, impresses the Scientist for some odd reason. He tells us, given this amount of time, organisms will adapt to their environments...
Indeed they will, but we don't need a million years, a few generations will work just fine. In Patagonia, there are a species of birds that live on cliffs, six inches wide. They have been for about eighty years now, since the environment has been shifting, with the decline of the glaciers. I've seen this in person.
They live, eat, and sleep, also make love on those six inch wide cliffs. This to me is simply adaptation. One changes life styles, because of the environment. Put me on a small deserted island in tomorrow, in the Pacific Ocean, with only a fishing pole and coconut trees, as big as a parking lot, and you'll see a bronze native running around crazy in a short period of time, but if there are enough coconuts and fishing bait, I'll survive, and I don't even need a generation, a few weeks will do the trick.
The Criminal Analogy
We don't need bloodhounds for tracking criminals, we need better laws. If the imprisoned criminal didn't work in the Roman days, or was useless to the Romans as for labor, he was killed. He was not to be a burden on society, the tax payer.
This new concept of "I'm sorry," was not good enough back in those far-off days, sorry didn't pay the bills. Nor will 'sorry' feed the family that the thief stole all the cabbage out of the poor farmer's cabbage patch or garden-but lo and behold, the thief is 'sorry,' never thought of that.
So you see, even the criminal has an adaptation trait, he knows the laws, its variations, its usefulness, he knows them better than the farmer.
I'm getting a little off track here, but only humans are so careless as to breed from his worst lot.
Article (2-25-2011)
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