As of right now mankind is at the top of the food chain. We have been for longer than anyone can remember. Most organisms on this planet have to adapt to their environment, but we've taken a different route and make the environment adapt to us. We use tools and technology to overcome our physical limitations when it comes to the world. An anteater developed a long snout and tongue in order to continue feeding on ants that built burrows that were tall and narrow. One could argue the easier or at least more direct method of dealing with this problem wouldn't have been to alter their physical appearance, but instead to simply knock down the anthills. Instead their method ensures that they can continue eating ants and the ants can continue building their hills. In a strange way it's almost like the path of least resistance. Really it's a long way around to come a short way back. I'm not saying that man doesn't come up with some ingenious ways to overcome problems, but our methods are often based on changing the situation to suit our needs. In a sense we've stopped evolving, at least on any quantifiable level. Sure our technology has gotten better, but we're no better capable of living in sub arctic temperatures than we were a thousand years ago. If the world's clean water literally dried up tomorrow we wouldn't be able to live in the desert to any degree better than those who live there now, which is focused more on survival than anything else.
Now I know a sudden and drastic change would likely limit any species ability to survive, at least in the short term. Still we can visibly observe how so many creatures on this planet have altered their very bodies in order to keep up with the changes in this world. Meanwhile we're roughly the same way we've been for thousands of years. We may live longer and be larger than those who came before us, but that's because we've made advances in medicine and generally have more food to eat. For the most part we don't have any incentive to evolve because we feel like we've got this place mastered. The world supposedly bends to our will so why should we change when things are obviously working so well for us as they are?
For a long time I used to wonder if reality was the same for me as it was for everyone else. Was the color orange I saw really the same color orange someone else saw? How would we ever know that we were seeing different things? Along with this there seemed to be a set way to do things. If you wanted to write a sentence in English you had to follow a certain structure. If you wanted to throw a free throw and not have it drop like a useless brick on the basketball court, you had to throw it in an established manner. If you wanted to earn money you had to follow the rules decided beforehand on what services or products were worth something, otherwise you wouldn't earn enough to rub two dimes together. Basically if you want to do really anything then you have to follow what those have proven to be successful in the past. Sticking with what's tested and true means that for the most part you know what your chances of success will be, at least to some varying degree.
Every so often someone wanders off the beaten path and tries something radically different. Sometimes this abrupt departure results in an expected failure, but there are those rare times when it works beyond all imagination. Without those people who are willing to stray from the pack we might never have the society we do today. I wonder if these offshoots are the way modern man evolves in a situation where evolution is almost unneeded. Galileo changed the way people perceived the world. Monet changed the way people perceived art. Stephen Hawking changed the way we perceived the universe. Each went counter to what was already established and by doing so took mankind beyond what they thought they knew to something more. Now those people made significant changes to our shared perception, but every day there are tiny little variations on the conventional, some of which are quickly discarded and others that become the new standard. It's not always easy to recognize when you should stick what works or step off the path.
