Adapt or Die – The Implications of the Theory that Climate made Human Evolution Possible
How can we avoid the fate of the Dodo Bird?
The Dodo bird went extinct in 1626
Like many of you I have often asked: “Why do such terrible things happen in life? How can there be a “good God” if the innocent suffer? Etc.” Well although I don’t have THE answer a recent article I read on human evolution gave at least at partial answer. My thinking is relatively straightforward. We all, that is all people and all species, get stuck in a rut because it takes less energy to stay the same as to change. However, because the world around us is always changing we are forced, against our wills, to change but because we don’t like change there is pain and suffering. In other words, our suffering is because we think we are in control and are too lazy/incapable of making the needed changes – until it is so late in the game that pain becomes inevitable.
Let’s start off with that article I just referred to:
“The course of human evolution over the last 2 million years was shaped by habitation shifts linked to astronomically driven climate change, scientists suggest in a new study. “Our study documents that climate played a fundamental role in the evolution of our genus Homo,” Timmermann says. We are who we are because we have managed to adapt over millennia to slow shifts in the past climate.” [1]
Now, to date this only a theory, but it is a theory that I find both appealing and relevant to our current climate disaster. What it does is make me feel both more optimistic and more realistic about our chances of overcoming our current environmental/social challenges. The message I choose to extract and apply to our current predicaments is that change that FORCES us to change, or die, is a GOOD thing. And within that framing I acknowledge the fact that since change is so hard and requires so much energy we resist it – until it is obvious that if we don’t we shall die. You might object by saying: “Well, this is all very well at the level of a species but it certainly has nothing to do with my life!”
Right now I have 4 good friends who face large personal challenges that could over whelm them – if they cannot adapt. One lost his job. Another is moving. Another is selling his company – the proceeds of which are his retirement fund. The last just went through major heart surgery and is slowly recovering. None of them “deserved” the stress and challenges they are now enduring. It is simply a fact of life that life has kept them “sharp” by giving them constant challenges and because of this life experience I am confident that they will change and adapt to the new lives that are coming their way. Adapt or die – it’s that simple, as long you understand that “death” includes social and emotional death.
The same logic could be applied to this nasty war in the Ukraine. It seems that Putin is refusing to acknowledge that the world has changed – the Soviet Union is no more and it cannot be rebuilt. He may “win” the war in that he grabs some territory, but I surmise that because he is unwilling to change and adapt and turn Russia into a nation that others can look up to rather than be afraid of, he risks reducing Russia’s image and power. In other words, by not adapting he is killing the Russia of the 21st century that has yet to be born.
Finally, since the picture at the top of this essay is that of a flightless Dodo bird it is about time I referred to it? The obvious question is this: “What does the Dodo have to do with human evolution and adapting to change in my life?” First, the myth that Dodo’s were incredibly stupid and that this was the cause of their extinction. Wrong. Just like us, the Dodo was not stupid – it was just overwhelmed by sudden changes in the environment brought on by species brought onto the island by Europeans who ate its eggs. The strong hints of this lie in the fact that Dodo’s belong to the same family of birds as the pigeon. Pigeons are so smart that they were successfully taught to discriminate between Monet and Picasso paintings — and they have also successfully cleared the “mirror test,” a feat that few non-primates are capable of. The extinction of the dodo is a cautionary tale — one that we haven’t listened to well. Invasive animals introduced by humans continue to wreak havoc on ecosystems and individual species — it’s estimated that outdoor cats alone kill anywhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually.[2] Unfortunately, despite the demise of the underestimated dodo, it seems that we’ve learned little over the past few centuries. The plain fact is that like the relatively smart Dodo we risk being over whelmed by challenges that risk killing many of us if, like the Dodo, we cannot quickly change and adapt to the new world around us. [I am not a member of the club who believes in the risk of human extinction, although there are many who are],
So that’s the happy message today folks – you can live a wondourful life, along with the rest of our species and the thousands of other species who we are in the midst of making extinct, IF we change. It’s up to you now to embrace change instead of being frightened of it. Whether that means going meatless or to stop driving or flying or to vote differently or to have fewer children – well, that’s your call. At the end of the day all of us want to simply enjoy a rich and happy life, and I believe that is only possible if we stop trying to continue “business as usual” as the Dodo did [through no fault of its own] or actually become the intelligent beings we imagine we are.
References
https://tenderly.medium.com/was-the-dodo-bird-really-a-dodo-5bf43c988c4a
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