After man, who’s next?

Did the question ever struck your thought on what will happen to the future of humanity. Given the complexities of this common period, are we yet to evolve?

 Evolution in a plain sense means continuous process changing form simple to complex or simply turning to a better sate. Man’s evolutionary trace is founded on the idea that humans descend from apes. Then this ape turns to a man through various external changes in the course of time. This process, as what Charles Darwin coins, is Natural Selection. The one who fits with the nature is the one who is most likely to survive the next generation. Therefore, it is humans who adopt the order of nature. By adaptation, we change biologically to cope with the natural standard. Until now evolution does not cease to end its job. It is still a living machine that is meant to changes us.

Experts have been dealing with this Darwinian thought. A lot of theories came in to define the dilemma surrounding man’s evolution. But between and among these theories comes the Charles Darwin of our age – Chip Walter. He filled the words in AllThingsHuman.net and www.chipwalter.com. He also writes for Slate, Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American. His latest book “Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story Of How and Why We Survived,” shares simple but astonishing views on the evolution next door. The book was available last February 29, 2013.

One of the book’s arguments is that Natural Selection will mutate man as it mutated the previous living things. And that it doesn’t end. Humans, as the last apes standing, are not exempt from biological alterations. But adaptation will not be initiated by nature. In this contemporary era, technology shares the role of mutating humans. It begins form the very food we eat to the gadgets we use.

“In ourselves we may finally have me our match: an evolutionary force to which even we cannot adapt.”

-       Chip Walter

Man, as rational animals, are highly creative most especially on their needs and wants. We are holistic animals with formidable mental faculties, innate emotions and compact physique. We have been busy changing the earth. But every action equates to different consequences. Man’s creations cause many consequences including the very end of our human existence.

Aside from the technology that will stirs the alteration of human. Stress comes in as a psychological factor which may change the biological structure of humans gradually.

Gradual change to due to technology will commence. Man will change artificially change due to genetic engineering. These new forms of man are called transhumanists. They will transcend the boundaries that we have now including our current biological constraints. They are the next versions of human. Their capacities go beyond the normal speed, strength and other human qualities. Walter also underscored that blood especially its hemoglobin may be commercialized and be set as a commodity needed for survival. The male and female species will be passé. Man’s reproductive identity will be futile; meaning our capacity to produce offspring will be less possible. The creation of humans will be on genetic centers. 

Asteroid collision and global cataclysms will not only be the threat to humanity but even our very own creations. It is in these future events that we are changed and an artificial natural selection is established. This clearly modifies the order of natural selection by which man has been used to adopt with. Vividly, it is man’s invention gives birth to consequences that threaten the humanity’s existence. 

The book provides an innovative approach to continue the perspectives of Darwin. It draws a modern essence on man’s future evolution.