Evolution and the Spiral of Technology

Driven by the ever-greater advances in technology, human life is changing at an increasing pace; this, like all acceleration, is unsustainable and must lead to a crisis in the near future. We are ill-adapted to our sophisticated world because we have the genes of our ancestors the hunter-gatherers, whose way of life humans have followed for 99% of the period of their existence. We suffer from living in an environment ever less like theirs. It causes physical and mental disease, disrupts traditional family life, and to a large extenet deprives children of the care and love they need to become happy and well-adjusted adults. Our exploding culture is a consequence of our evolutionary history especially over the last 5 million years, which also has been accelerating. In the earlier stages slow cultural changes altered our ancestors' environment and so influenced and further accelerated their evolution. Nowadays changes occur so fast that there is no time for evolutionary adaptation; and in addition, modern medical methods save the lives of children and adults who would have succumbed to the environment, so we are no longer subject to natural selection and do not evolve. Accelerating evolutionary change in a species presages early extinction; but in the case of humans the far more immediate danger is the disruption of society caused by exploding cultural change and advancing technology. The steamroller of change will be hard to stop in today's materialistic and profit-oriented milieu. We have become so dependent on technology that to a large extent we cannot afford to abandon it. A realistic objective of political pressure is to prevent further technological advances. Individuals and families can do much to help themselves by simplifying their life-style.Shennan, Douglas H. is the author of 'Evolution and the Spiral of Technology' with ISBN 9781552125182 and ISBN 1552125181.