Rate of Change

One of the arguments against the idea that humans evolved to their current state is that it denies the innate "special-ness" of humanity. If humans are not so much different from other animals, the thinking goes, how can it claim a privileged place? Whether humanity is "deserving" of a privileged place in the grant scheme of things is open to debate, but it's pretty clear, to me, anyway, that a lot of people understand that humans should operate under their own set of rules, if they don't already. One way that this manifests itself is in the idea that human evolution should be a matter of political will, at the species level, rather than a response to environmental and/or social pressures, like it is for other lifeforms.

There are a number of ways in which "human nature" gets in the way of people's ideas of what the world should be like. A primary one is the fact that humans have a habit of forming themselves into groups of varying sizes and setting themselves against other groups, if not then remainder of humanity, in ways that produce zero-sum outcomes. Politics the world over produces example after example of this, and it has, for pretty much the entirety of human history (and a good stretch of time prior to that).

For someone who wants to see a golden age of human cooperation and prosperity, this is clearly a sub-optimal state of affairs. And it's not rocket science to understand why. The misery and suffering that humans routinely inflict on one another in the name of marginal gains here or there comes across as utterly pointless. (Now, to be sure, that depends on one's understanding on what it means for something to have a point, and that's really what it at issue here.) But still, this is the way that humans tend to be wired, and there was a point in time during which this not only made sense, but was important to the survival of the species.

And for all that people will concede that point, the follow-on tends to be, "Well, it's time for humanity to evolve beyond that." Which is fine, except for the small problem that this isn't how evolution works. And it never has been. For all that, the idea that human beings should simply be different than they are, and so the change should just happen strikes me as a surprisingly common one, especially in left-leaning political and social circles.

To be sure, I think I understand why. It's not like it takes much to get people to concede that there's a lot about humanity that they would like to see done away with (although what exactly the outcome of that would, or should, be tends to be open to debate). It's easy to look at a massacre and say "we should be able to do better than this." But the reason we don't "do better" is that the underlying reasons for human behavior are varied and complex, and wrapped up in a lot of factors that are much more resistant to change than they are often given credit for.

It's entirely possible for evolutionary pressure to do away with the human propensity for intra-group infighting. But it takes more than wishing to bring that pressure about.