Pmca88 Posted July 27, 2009 Posted July 27, 2009 Individuality is becoming ever more a rarer and rarer thing. Individuals are now frowned upon by society at large. Is this a new stage of evolution, in which humans are in the early stages developing a collective consciousness? More and more people are conforming to "normality",-definition of normality being- adhering to a standard, pattern. Is this the start of the abolishment of the individual? People dressing the same, behaving the same, eating the same foods, engaging in the same activities, (I shan't give examples as I'm sure each of us can think of many) at what point can it be said that they think the same, that they think...collectively? Nowadays true individuals all seem to posess an ability to acknowledge others beliefs, others individuality and respect them. Concordantly the "normal individuals" seem to cast out the "true individual" for being abnormal. So a possible stage of evolution, toward a collective consciousness?
insane_alien Posted July 27, 2009 Posted July 27, 2009 the existance of groups does not preclude individuality. you can be an individual and also a member of a group that have similar interests. take these forums. we are all individuals that share an interest in science. naturally, we wish to communicate with people with a similar interest and this forum provides the means with thich to do that. i am sure you have a circle of friends with whom you share many of the same values, and to the outsider it would look like you were carbon copies of each other even though those inside your group would reffer to each other as individuals. the same does apply the otherway round. in every group there are individuals with distinguishing aspects to their personality and behaviour. just because you see them as all being the same is likely because you are not looking close enough. just as from a distance all snowflakes look the same, yet i challenge you to find two identical ones. 1
Pmca88 Posted July 27, 2009 Author Posted July 27, 2009 Yes this is quite true, all the same it is an interesting idea, lol!
CDarwin Posted July 28, 2009 Posted July 28, 2009 I think we reached your 'next stage' in the paleolithic. Culture is a kind of collective consciousness.
Fuzzwood Posted July 30, 2009 Posted July 30, 2009 We are the humans, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated So yeah, it's more of a sociological than a physical evolution.
OliviaMcQ Posted July 30, 2009 Posted July 30, 2009 On a similar note, has anyone been born without an appendix yet? A healthy baby, of course, just minus an appendix? Also, do you think we would evolve out of our appendixes? Would it be beneficial? Does anyone think that maybe someday we might need them again? Just wondering.
insane_alien Posted July 30, 2009 Posted July 30, 2009 appendices have evolved to fill a different niche. they aren't vital to human survival but can be quite important. they'll reboot your intestinal bacteria should you encounter a 'clear out' so to speak. be it intentional(laxatives) or diarrhea from an infection.
Sisyphus Posted July 30, 2009 Posted July 30, 2009 Whether the appendix will disappear depends on which effect is more important to reproductive success. The "reboot" capability insane_alien mentions, or the occasional death by appendicitis. My guess is it will evolve to take on its new role better, and decrease the instances of appendicitis.
Mokele Posted July 30, 2009 Posted July 30, 2009 IIRC, some humans are born without an appendix (just as some are born with other internal oddities), but it's not that common. they aren't vital to human survival but can be quite important. they'll reboot your intestinal bacteria should you encounter a 'clear out' so to speak. be it intentional(laxatives) or diarrhea from an infection. It should be noted that the above is a mere hypothesis - there is no actual empirical evidence that this function is correct. The same goes for all the other suggested uses. There's plenty of suggestions, none of which have any supporting data.
CDarwin Posted July 30, 2009 Posted July 30, 2009 What I've read is that the appendix is extremely hard to get rid of by gradual steps, because the narrower it gets, the most plausible path to it disappearing, the more susceptible it is to infection. So, we may be stuck with them just because there is no selective intermediate appendices between the ones we have now and nothing at all. Of course, if some people are born completely without them than I don't suppose that matters.
GDG Posted July 30, 2009 Posted July 30, 2009 (edited) On a similar note, has anyone been born without an appendix yet? A healthy baby, of course, just minus an appendix? Apparently, there are people who lack the appendix congenitally. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedappendices have evolved to fill a different niche. they aren't vital to human survival but can be quite important. they'll reboot your intestinal bacteria should you encounter a 'clear out' so to speak. be it intentional(laxatives) or diarrhea from an infection. There's an interesting discussion regarding that in Wikipedia. IIRC, the appendix also has a particularly high density of Peyer's patches. Edited July 30, 2009 by GDG Consecutive posts merged.
Mythranil Posted September 30, 2009 Posted September 30, 2009 they aren't vital to human survival but can be quite important. they'll reboot your intestinal bacteria should you encounter a 'clear out' so to speak. be it intentional(laxatives) or diarrhea from an infection. I'd also heard that the aforementioned bacteria will actually pull back and 'hide' in the appendix during such a disturbance.
gbg112 Posted October 14, 2009 Posted October 14, 2009 I have often wonder about a collective forming , afterall if you look at our society (in MED countrys) we are like agigantic body . We have telephoen and internet - nerves , We have roads - blood / lympth , we have farms - leaves , we have sewers - lympth sewage farm -kidneys government - brain e.t.c. See we are like a great big body.
Mr Skeptic Posted December 11, 2009 Posted December 11, 2009 From xkcd.org/: "Natural Parenting" I think that we will see a lot more of either people who want to have children or are unable to prevent themselves from having children. People who are too lazy to have children and the trouble they bring (or ecologically conscious, worried about the global population), if there is any genetics for that, will be selected against very strongly.
forufes Posted December 12, 2009 Posted December 12, 2009 if a colective consiousness is the next step for the human puppets because they tend to live and think almost the same.. what does that make of the puppet masters' evolution? aren't they human too?
jake.com Posted December 13, 2009 Posted December 13, 2009 evolution isn't directed. it is the product of either environmental change or genetic change. unless the appendix starts having a negative affect on the human body, or it becomes a completely unneccesary waste of energy, it will remain in the human body 'forever'.
PAL/SECAM Posted December 22, 2009 Posted December 22, 2009 Next stage in human evolution?? it would be rather involution than evolution
dttom Posted December 23, 2009 Posted December 23, 2009 You are right in memetic terms. I don't deny there are, and should be, some cross-relationship between this kind of evolution, or rather cultural evolution and the genetic evolution, but if it is to say memetic is taking more importance and showing a trend in replacement I'm afraid it would never be the case as long as an organism relys on genetics for existence.
Galindo Posted January 18, 2010 Posted January 18, 2010 it seems to me that the further we move along this age of technology, the further we drift away from a big humanistic way of life that we have been missing for thousands of years...
marjoleinbastin Posted January 18, 2010 Posted January 18, 2010 There is a very interesting and thorough article on this topic in this months Scientific American.
Mokele Posted January 18, 2010 Posted January 18, 2010 it seems to me that the further we move along this age of technology, the further we drift away from a big humanistic way of life that we have been missing for thousands of years... You mean the whole "dying of cholera" way of life? Thanks but no thanks.
Galindo Posted January 18, 2010 Posted January 18, 2010 You mean the whole "dying of cholera" way of life? Thanks but no thanks. No...What if we as humans are missing a big chunk that the ancients possessed-such as the Mayans. They obviously had something right if they were able to view the stars the way they did. But the way we think today is preventing us from this "ancient" way of thinking because we only care about money and material goods that weren't available years and years ago. These possessions control they way we think and treat other people.
Mokele Posted January 19, 2010 Posted January 19, 2010 What if we as humans are missing a big chunk that the ancients possessed-such as the Mayans. Then why did they all die of smallpox? Seriously, the past was not some mystical magical natural fairy-tale. We were *never* like the Navi. Pre-civilization humans were and still are constantly wracked by disease and frequently engage in wars. Seriously, go actually *visit* some modern "primitive" tribes. They aren't singing Kumbaya all day while communing with nature and sucking ambrosia from flowers. They're working *hard* to grow crops and hunt food, they lose most of their kids to illness before they even grow up, and they'd stab their own gods in the testicles for a year's supply of anti-malaria drugs. Ever hear of sickle-cell disease? It's a genetic disorder prevalent among those of African descent, but it's mild form grants immunity to malaria. Stop and think about that for a second. Having a gene that means 25% of your kids *automatically* die, resulted in *more reproduction* than having no defense against malaria. Kind of puts things into perspective. Seriously, come off the whole "noble savage" "ways of the ancients" shit. It's been proven wrong, can be seen as wrong by anyone who cares to visit these tribes, and is really annoying. These people wage constant wars, treat rape as a general fact of life, and rarely live past 40. The leading cause of death in many extant primitive tribes is either war/murder or disease. That's not based on shitty movies, it's based on actual people actually going there and actually counting who died of what. There's no magical peace or amazing spiritual meaning in the "old ways", just lots and lots of diseases, mostly diarrhea-based.
toastywombel Posted January 19, 2010 Posted January 19, 2010 Mokele is right, as time and technology have progressed human kind, on the whole, has progressed. Life spans are greater, we are better connected, we can communicate faster, we can respond to emergencies faster, we have more advanced medicines that are based in science not mysticism, we have better roads, and lower crime-rates today than at the turn of the 1900's; And it is definitely better now than in Mayan times.
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