mankind

THE BUSINESS, MANKIND

veeyem

The history of the Biocosm undoubtedly reveals the fact that our ‘living planet’ rejects the living species, who falls short of the requisites or who misbehaves – posing a threat to the ecosystem or interrupting the feed back loop.

Examples are aplenty. The great lizards; Dinosaurs ruled the world for 180 million years (an impressive period of time) to become extinct around 70 million years ago.

The, so presumed, more evolved hominid. Australo pithecus, appeared on the planet only 4 million years ago to remain on the face of the earth for a short span of 2.5 million years. Later, hominids of better intelligence (?) like Homo habilis, H. erectus, H. neanderthalis emerged for short periods, to get extinct in a couple of million years. All of them belong to our genera. We humans are scientifically known as Homo sapiens meaning the ‘wise man’.

The modern man (Homo sapiens) appeared only 250000 years ago. How recently! Unfortunately we are unreasonably conceited - deplorable ignorance!

(It was James Lovelock, an atmospheric chemist, while working as a consultant in NASA, proposed the idea that the planet Earth as a whole is a living, self-organizing system. This theory is known as ‘Gaia theory”.)

The mounting evidences are putting into test and challenging, the widely accepted ‘Neo Darwinian’ theory of evolution, which is based on the concept of natural selection through the survival of the fittest by competition. But, according to Margulis (a microbiologist who had done extensive research on microorganisms) the impetus of evolution is not competition but co-operation. This theory is known as ‘Symbiogenesis’.

Lamark, who proposed the theory of evolution for the first time, postulated that there is an innate nature in every living being to get evolved.

Mankind is only a test specimen of the Cosmos, which could stop to exist or become extinct in a short span of time. We should be very happy if we are, at the least, a link to a higher form (superman?) or play the role of an ancestor. But the way the things go, the prospect looks very bleak – molesting the environment with total disregard and disrespect to the mother Earth. We are accelerating to the end point of our existence. As we have named Homo habilis (skillful man) the future species may rename us as ‘Homo foolish’ (‘foolish man’ instead of ‘wise man’)

When are we going to stop playing God? Mankind may be an ultra short passing business of the Cosmos.