The Madman

i guess if it has arisen(?) in one locale, we can assume it will arise elsewhere, hopefully in a location with a high human population.

thanks for the feed-back omnimutant. i guess there's no way to prove it, but my ideas were independently formed. it's a self consuming circle then, isn't it... we need to develop the "technology" to keep us alive, but we do this because the previous technology kept the weaker genes in the mix, allowing them to spread. this promts us to contine developing the tech. and so it goes...

Our species has done a lot in the relatively short time it’s spent here on earth. We’ve mastered fire, discovered cures for deadly diseases, put men on the moon, explored the depths of our planets oceans, and unleashed the energy of the atom. Throughout the process, however, we’ve pushed countless species into extinction, polluted the air and water, exhausted many of earth’s natural resources, and offset its climate. But, for a moment, let’s put the negative consequences felt by our environment due to the rise of man aside. After all, this essay isn’t about those consequences; it’s about the ones a little closer to home. We tend to think of the human a race as getting stronger and stronger all the time. As a whole, we no doubt are. Within the next few decades we may put humans on another planet and discover a cure for the common cold. Thanks to modern society and its benefits, the human race will continue to strengthen and expand. But how will the individual human fare? Medicines can cure just about anything these days and vaccines are improving all the time (naturally, they have to). The average human life expectancy, as a result, is also on the rise. Despite all these things, the individual homo sapien will, from nature’s point of view, become weaker and weaker. Let’s work with examples and hypothetical situations for this one, since they seem to make everything more easily understood. Little Jimmy falls terribly ill when he’s 8 years old. The problem isn’t unknown in children his age, though, and a cure is available for him. Lucky break for Jimmy, he can grow bigger and stronger, and will later find a mate and have children of his own. He will live his life until some other deadly virus is caught that can’t be cured, or until old age catches up with him. What does the human race get in return? Jimmy’s weak genes are thrown into the melting pot that is human DNA, and of course, more babies. Now let us also assume that the mother of his children, Linda, has a family history of breast cancer. Though she will not contract it until long after she has had three children (all boys) with Jimmy, the gene is passed along none the less. Of course there is a possibility that these genes won’t be passed down to any of Jimmy’s and Linda’s offspring. But in this grim example, we now have three humans walking around with at least one deadly gene each. In nature, no cure would have been available for Jimmy’s sickness, and he would have died young, taking his recessive gene with him to the grave. Likewise, someone in Linda’s lineage may have not reproduced before the untreatable cancer took their life. Thus, no Linda. The human race would have been stronger physically speaking, but the modern society these people were born into had a cure, and gave them life so that they may (we hope) obtain a greater appreciation of the world they lived in, and make contributions, however small, towards a better society. I am not advocating in this essay that we should leave the weak and sick to whatever nature has planned for them*. Though we would be left with a much stronger, yet smaller population, the means don’t nearly justify the end. I only felt the need to raise the awareness of those not in the know. Our society is very much a double edged sword. *Reading a magazine like “People”, you will occasionally come across a story of how a baby is born with a deadly birth defect. These defects are either very rare, or are brought on by the mother’s inability to refrain from drugs during pregnancy. In these stories, the child makes a “miraculous recovery”, usually with a lot of help from a team of doctors. The result is a severely deformed child, both inside and out. In cases like these, I fell no qualms about not letting the child live. It would not benefit society in any way. In fact, it would only take away. It would not reproduce. It would not be able to appreciate life.