As we know, life in our neck of the woods, has been around for 3 billion years and
animals as we know it, for over 500 million years. Has evolution been a drive for perfection?
No, it is about survival of the species. With each step of evolution, we have become slightly
better in some aspect of survival. Life developed improving techniques for survival.
Motion is one such aspect, the animal that can move slightly faster than another, can
increase its chances of survival and if species can move slightly faster, the species can
increase it changes of survival. Or if enough creatures/animals in one species can adapt
quickly enough to changing environmental changes, it can better survive those changing conditions.
But this is all evolution 101, but what of non physical adaption methods. I would class
two aspects of this type, one is thinking, the brain and its ability to think out an solution
and the other is emotions. Recall we have over 500 million years of life improving its chances
of survival, (not perfection) So emotions must play an evolutionary role in our survival that
has allowed us to survive to this point. We can see the evolutionary point of such instincts
as fight or flight, but what about such emotions such as love, anger, hate, pity, sadness, among
others. These emotions have clearly helped us adapt better to changing conditions or they (emotions)
would not still be in humans. As a thought experiment, try to imagine dinosaurs with our emotions.
A t-rex with sadness or anger or hate or pity. …
I cannot imagine such animals having a need for such emotions as pity. imagine a t-rex with pity
and feeling pity while chasing down a deer like creature like bambi. That emotion might prevent
the t-rex from catching and killing bambi and thus may lead to starvation. Emotions for such hunting
animals such as a t-rex or shark or lion might end their chances of survival. a hunting animal such as
a shark cannot have such an emotion as pity, but humans, we are a hunting animal and yet do have
pity and love and sadness. We must have those emotions because it did aid in or help our survival
as a species. We see emotions in animals such as dogs and cats, we can see anger in dogs and cats,
(don’t feed a cat at its dinner time and you will find out what anger really is)
It is quite possible it is BECAUSE of emotions, human beings are the so called top of the food chain.
But we are also rational creatures. Aristotle called humans, a rational animal. so we can think and
rationalize moments and events and people. this has helped our survival as a species. So the ongoing
struggle between the two, the rational and the emotional, which has gone on for thousands of years is
just a struggle between two sides of the same coin, a means of survival as a species.
Without one or the other, human beings die out, millions of years ago. Perhaps that is why
such hominids as the neanderthal and homo erectus did not survive. They did not have either enough
rational thought or enough emotions or perhaps both. We shall never know but evolution has made
it clear, we need both to survive.
Kropotkin