Again another war is over, Saddam Hussain was smashed and ‘hibakushed’. A question was rising from different parts of the world during the war and will be asked during the next American lead war(?), among common peoples assemblage in local teashops to the think tanks discussion tables, as Edwardo Galeano asked, “Who elected George Bush as the President of the World”?
Americans are fooling the World, undermining the international mandates created in their auspices only, and blindly ignoring humanitarian concerns about which they used to be worried a lot, with out any attrition. They defeat or corner anybody who questions them. When they massacre, the whole World seems subdued, when some body else kills they leaps into the scene. Americans are encroaching the whole World physically, economically and psychologically. Any thing of American is most admired globally at least by the latest generation. Their technology, currency, music, lifestyle, food, etc..etc…What is so special in them? In fact, nothing other than a strong economy, technology and a European legacy. The game is of nature; we are only coins.
As per our present knowledge man or Homo sapiens originated about 150,000 years ago, in the African continent. From there, he migrated to different parts of the world. Human beings acquired the art of writing just 5000 years back only and so more than 99 percent of our history is turned and termed as prehistoric period. We don’t know how many populations might have been created and or destroyed during the period. Finally, in the historic period mankind has been divided into six main races and distributed over six main geographically unique areas. There they developed their own culture and technology Men having a quest for adventure and enough resources, made friendly and deadly explorations to different parts of the world during these periods, which created certain mixing of genes and cultures. Later, these cultures retained their uniqueness.
As many Anthropologists claim, Man is the most successful species in the World. We have invaded the whole parts of this biosphere: using planes the sky, ships and submarines the sea, canopies, mountains, forests, and even space. Virtually we are ‘ruling’ than any other species although how much dominant right from beginning of life. During the course of time we the human race forgot one fact that we are also a species, one among the millions of species of living organisms existing in this biological World. In the words of Foley “Another unique species”. As far as the species concept is concerned, the terminology might have been invented by us but the fact “species” was a discovery. Any product of nature is susceptible to changes in the system and is bound to be under its control.
Right from Aristotle’s Scala Naturea -the first attempt for animal taxonomy (classification) biologists maintain man at the top of the evolutionary tree. We have many reasons for this and all of them are true too. However, it was a bone of thought from many decades ago that what is going happen for the branch of the tree with man at top. Will it proceed confirming that evolution is a continuous process? At least more than fifty percent of the mankind thinks it wont proceed, but it is just as we thought nature will be under mans control, at the beginning the era of science and technology a few centuries ago. Now the latest trends show that evolution will proceed.
Evolution- some fact sheets
Evolution is not a simple thing as it is spelled or has been defined. It is complicated or the most complicated concept next to the universe. Evolution is survival of the fittest. In a simpler way it is the emergence of new types of organisms from the pre-existing ones. During the course of evolution, many organisms were evolved and from which new ones emerged and got destroyed. The factors producing the new forms from the pre existing forms are many, while they act individually or collectively. The emergence and survival of the new types can be the result of the change in environment and at the same time, each newly emerged organism contributes to the further changes in the environment there after.
In a constantly changing environment, those which acquire more efficient adaptations to acclimatise to the changes will survive while others either migrate to a modified environment or perish. Migrants survive if they are able to find a suitable environment. Some times the organisms change by mutation. Mutations (sudden change in the genetic makeup of an organism) in lower organisms cause changes in body colour will destroy the camouflage of the organism with its present environment and lead to easy predation. If the new colour provides better camouflage the new variety will be liable to lesser predation than the old variety and gradually the old variety will be replaced by the new one , since the old one will be preyed upon more than the new one. Any way if the environment changes or the organisms change, one group or a population of a species with most favourable characters to an environment is usually supported by nature, while those with least favourable characters get eliminated- this is called Natural Selection. In this way, one species gets divided in to two or more new species for survival.
Natural selection has several ways of action and mutation is one of them. Those organisms that are physically weak die young due to predation. When an organism dies without producing fertile offspring’s it is considered as “genetic death”. This occurs in the animal world, when severe disabilities occur either by genetic changes or due to non-genetic reasons. The severely disabled ones will be predated before they attain sexual maturity. By genetic death, many of the unfavourable genes are eliminated from a population.
Physical segregation is another method of evolution where accidental segregation of a small group at two habitats where the direction of change of environment may or may not be in same. These segregated groups of same species will have different adaptations or modifications and finally result in the formation of two species. This mechanism is called allopatric speciation. There are many other complicated mechanisms with different terminologies but more or less similar to the above described methods of evolution.
In higher organisms with cognitive abilities like monkeys, there occur high levels of grouping which are structurally unique having hierarchical relationships. These can be placed above groups as societies where the beginnings of the trend to form civilisations can be traced. Here each group takes its own share of natural resources available for the species at the ecosystem level but the sharing is never in equal proportion and they fight and the winner group takes as much it requires and the looser has to migrate from the area or territory.
Man and Natural selection
From the post Mesolithic period man began developing technologies, which protected him from environmental changes and stresses. Natural selection by natural means never acted on humanbeings after the Mesolithic period. After man began his social life and settled agriculture, a high level of division of labour came and it became the duty of the mighty ones to protect the disabled. Hence the handicapped is not being predated. With improvement of technology and emergence of medical science treatment for all sort of pathogenic infected diseases and now even for some of the genetic disorders is available . In human beings even dwarfs produce fertile offspring’s, patients with diabetes live above sixty years, asthma patients survive in any sort of environment and mutations if not severely lethal are eliminated from gene pool. Therefore, we flourish without much hurdles, but with all deformities. We are trying at the same time to eliminate many pathogens and many lethal genes in our own ways by bypassing nature. Culture is the mechanism of adaptation in man of which technology is the driving force of cultural growth. In this biosphere mankind has been divided into many races or populations with or with out clear genetic uniqueness but with cultural uniqueness. Substantial gene flow is occurring among these populations but mostly the interbreeds accept the culture of one of their parents. So culture remains without any genetic background.
In the cultural history of man, towards the end of Palaeolithic some of the cultures became more efficient in exploitation nature than others. These societies dominated and started developing sophisticated instruments. They not only succeeded in the fight with nature but were able to get rid of other technologically less sophisticated populations and from there mind took over might. The process was the competition for resources or simply social spacing. Social spacing is defined, as the flourishing of one population of a species over the other population suppressing the latter when the resources of their common habitat is limited. Since during that period the resource was splendidly available at some unexplored parts of the world, the defeated ones migrated and flourished elsewhere and the process repeated. This process is the same in monkeys too but here the winner wins not by muscles but by technology. The story told by many unexcavated civilisations was no different, including Harappa and Mohenjodaro. But there were enough places for the defeated to settle and thrive if not massacred. This shows that man also was influenced by nature as any other species. The main uniqueness of mankind the brainpower was sharpened more and more by experience and allowed man to survive any were in the world and explore any damn part of this world.
During the last 500 years 4000 – 5000 languages disappeared from the world. This means that a large amount of culture and populations have vanished. So the play is continuous and has never slowed down and all these changes we learned through molecular and paleantological studies took place about 150000 years ago and with a speed unrecognised by those populations.
Any organism depends on its environment for resources to survive. The ultimate meaning of resource is matter and energy. Here matter covers the materials, which are used for the constructive purposes only, materials including food, and other consumables which inside in our body are utilised for th purpose of biochemical changes involving energy changes involving chemical energy. In all populations competition occurs mainly for food and mate. In the present world mate is never a limited resource, but food is. Food is not matter of competition in higher levels among Man because those who don’t have food usually are technologically so poor to fight with the others.
Man is a community which will be satisfied not by the energy supplied by food only, but other forms too in much higher proportions. The ultimate source of energy for this biosphere is Sun and each population gets its quota of solar energy directly and indirectly in many forms. The total radiant energy reaching the outer surface of earth is estimated to be 13x1023 K Cal over a year. There will be seasonal with latitudinal variations. Only 48% of this energy reaches to the surface of biosphere. Out of what reaches the biosphere only one percent is available for chemical fixation for green plants through photosynthesis. When the per capita requirement is less than what is required for a comfortable living, we started to explore the energy stored in this biosphere which can be considered as the deposits of the excess of past. Now it is the main source of energy for ‘other purposes’ - oil.
In the last 500 years there occurred three major ecological changes in this world. One is the population explosion of humans, second the tremendous increase in their per capita energy consumption and third the tremendous decrease in green plants. All the three changes cause a heavy decrease in available per capita energy. Demand for extra energy increased than the decreasing per capita solar sourced energy quota. The need caused inventions. Europeans invented the large quantity of manpower in the Dark Continent. Those men were technically poor than Europeans. So there started slavery. What ever may be the reason, the system continued until man made cheap distribution of other easily accessible and user friendly forms of energy like oil and electricity, which is predominantly produced from oil. Man continued his search for a new source and invented the cleanest energy, that is nuclear energy, but later understood that it is not as clean as we thought. We are on search; Nitrogen, Hydrogen, etc are here waiting to replace oil. But oil remains unchanged.
Oil is a wonderful resource. It provides not only energy but also it provides man kind with myriads of other materials essential for today’s life. So, as far as the present situation is concerned oil is the resource of the era. The recognition that oil is exhaustible and going to exhaust created a social unrest in human in the recent years. Usually the phenomenon of social spacing comes in action when the resources exhaust considerably or are in short. Here in case of oil, man behaves as any other organism of nature, which needs to survive at any cost (up to the survival of its fellow beings too). He indulges in diplomatic cowardness, international fowl plays and cold blooded war.
War is not a new phenomenon for mankind. We have seen deadly wars in the prehistoric period in epics and in the latter period, some of which we used to call as great wars and those warlords as great warriors, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar are examples. But wars which occurred recently in the historic period are not called so. We never used to call the world wars as great. This may be since man has been changing his attitude towards everything in the course of cultural growth. Theodsins Dobzhansky wrote in the 1970’s “by changing what man knows about the world he changes the world he knows, he changes himself”; he gave a clarification for his words that “All changes are directed by knowledge”. Recently another situation has built up that some of the Americans believe that the gulf wars were great or at least in favour of the Americans. This is also due to the same fact told earlier that they know that they are in a rat race and those who succeed only will withstand. That is why even after thousands of years of cultural growth, the phenomenon (let me call it as) never reaches to an end. It exists in all levels of life, acting in a less manner of humanitarian concerns . Everyday we are on war. War amazingly has a large number of dimensions.
Life is a war for many and not only for Iraqis, Afghanese, Kurds and the fighting army personnel all over the world. The blues of scuttles never end. Every day somewhere, some groups migrate from their home permanently, not to improve their status of living but just to survive . There are 25 million people in this world who were forced to abandon their mother towns due to ecological reasons including natural calamities. This number is increasing every day at the rate of 5000 per day. What will be the fate of these people, nobody with a normal IQ may think that most of them will be able to lead a comfortable life any where in this world. Since this world supports no more gypsies they are simply going to die (we do not account the the mortality due to cholera , tuberculosis, malaria etc.). Moreover globally 1,60,000 people migrates per day to cities from the county side. Many of them will directly go to prisons or to the dirty slums around the cities and die in contagion. The increasing number of prisoners in the Developed and Underdeveloped countries prove it. Totally these are the defeated groups that have to perish.
Other than the migration caused by own will, we are evacuating many from their native areas, which provides a living. It is like resettling fishermen who know only fishing from the seaside to the city of New York. Gane and Gwi Bushmen of Kalhari were evicted from home by 2002 February itself. But even then around 100 Bushmen remained there. Now the International Finance Corporation- a part of World Bank has allowed $2 billion for Kalhari Diamond Ltd. for the diamond explorations in Kalhari where these 100 Bushmen reside. Bushmen don’t know how to live anywhere other than in their land. This is the mother land of the Bakgalagadi tribe also. This is only one of thousands of examples we can cite. Here three or four small populations were destroyed, they were socially, economically and technologically weak too. But this destruction makes a bigger population next to them as smallest and to be destroyed next.
These are not the ecotones of Economics and Ecology but true Ecology. Economy never can be considered as something not biological. In his book the lecturer of IIM Ramprasad Sen Guptha described and proved that the economy is a part of Ecology, biodiversity is a resource in true sense and what ever we produce either service or goods are from the natural resources and what ever we discard as waste is to the sink of nature. Today the resources including land are saturated, if any body has to consume more, then some body has to sacrifice that much either collectively or individually. But the energy sector faces a major shortage. The same circumstance leads to many in human actions like slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and globalisation etc.etc Those in the society with more sophistication succeed while others helplessly howl.
Saddam constructed his castle over the 12% of the total oil reserve available in this world like the bush men settled over the biggest diamond treasury in the world. He was not at all ready surrender it for the greed of technologically and economically higher population. Might got it by might keeping the humanitarian eyes closed. Bush men were easily taken off but Saddam gave Bush’s men some pinches on the back. These shows a gradual social spacing Americans with a European legacy where the Great British are slowly encroaching. Isn’t t in all in sense?
The Synthetic theory of evolution (Neo Darwinism) recognises many processes as to result in evolution. One among these is the genetic drift. Genetic drift is the general process of random genetic fluctuation in gene frequencies, which lead to the loss or fixation of one gene. White complexion in human is a recessive character in human beings, black is dominant. Actually since this character is controlled by multiple alleles, many genes should be recessive for European to be white. Now most of the black people want a change to the recessive character, struggles for such a change and the global cosmetic industry has myriads of products to assist them. That shows we are in a shift or drift. This may not be completed by the assistance of the cosmetic industry only and hence individuals tries biologically also by selecting more white partners during marriage. The importance given by all sorts of human populations during marriage for complexion can be evaluated by logging in to the thousands of matrimonial web sites. If the different human populations want a recessive skin colour and tries in always for that definitely, we are in a drift- a genetic drift. Here nature uses cognitive and cultural characters than predator pressure.
Gulf war first or second are not the beginnings of the fight for oil. In Guatemala, more than 200000 people were massacred or disappeared during a civil war associated with the eviction of indigenous population in for making way for oil exploration in Izxcan region. The force of the operation was US- backed coup. France’s eye on the oil wealth of Algeria extended the movement of liberation of Algeria from France to nearly a decade and made the movement the bloodiest war in African history. So there will be wars in future for oil unless it has been replaced by some thing else. In all the wars, Americans will win too. The defeated can be Indians, Russians even Europeans.
I am not capable to suggest any solution for this, but firmly believe never wrong. Everything is energy ,even the dress we ware the food we eat because the cellulose is an energy enabled assemblage of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, spin and weaved by energy, then cut and stitched by too. It is fantastic that the energy contribution in dress is far higher than the matter contribution. As this in all matter we identify as “matter” the energy constituent is more and so only it is becomes simply predictable that those who have energy will survive. Bush did nothing but acted as simply as an “alpha male” of a monkey troop does. A question remains “is there anything in an alpha monkey as human?” Due to the present confusion in me I couldn’t find an answer to whether there anything, as human.
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