Is evolution speeding up?

Anyone ever seen the animated feature "Waking Life" ?Its basically a collection of essays about consiousness and what reality is.. but there is an interesting bit about evolution..

It is that evolution is happening in ever increasing frequency. It took 1st humans maybe a million years to advance.. then next it took.. 100's of thousands of years for life to change... then only a few thousand years for life to change yet again... then 100's of years...

Life is currently totally different in less than 100 years... so if this cycle continues we will soon be able to see evolution happening right before our eyes.. until we reach a singularity...

Just an idea.. but it seems plausible...?

How are we different now than we were 4000 years ago. I mean, back then, people were angry with politicians (Socrates invented the fine), kids didn't listen to their parents, and everyone wanted to write a book.

The only thing that has evolved is our toys.

DC

I think Stephen Hawking has a few relevant and interesting points to make in his essay about Life in the Universe:

www.hawking.org.uk...

Hmmm... maybe a better statement would be that life isnt evolving just our 'lives' and the WAY we live is... I mean, most of us no longer worry about storing enough food to last the winter.. basic survival is mostly no longer an issue.. we are free to explore other possibilities..

Yup, our knowledge is increasing faster, not our genes.

There is no set speed that evolution follows. I can speed up or slow down relative to some other speed, but not relative to evolution's speed. So evolution is not speeding up or slowing down since it has no set speed.

Originally posted by Calculon386
I mean, most of us no longer worry about storing enough food to last the winter..

Those crazy Mormons. If this is a qualification for us having NOT evolved, well then, these guys are OLD!

Man, I better log off before I get in trouble!

DeltaChaos

i guess that got cleared up fast...

clarifying-> evolution? or adaptation to environments?

i was going to submit that the evolution process
is variable....so any 'speeding up' (if factual) is only a
hiccup in the process... some propose that evolution
does not grind along, incessently, inexhorably? BUT
makes great leaps in short time spans with small
variations in between, possibly for millions of years
of same-old-same-old...then BAMM! another divergence
and flourishing of new forms of life

One possible cosmic script---is that there's a regular pattern of mass extinction events....then as whatever
survives has a wide spectrum of life niches to occupy
and is free of fierce competitors, the race begins...

Until, space borne precursers or even Galactic bacteria
or viuses survive the earth environment, acouple of
millenia later...there's another Jurassic Park or Disney World or Bizarro Woild?! End lap #1, BOOM!

oh yeah..life goes on....long after the meani g s ne .
~&~*~&~*~X

It seems, in my microworld, that whenever i become
arrogant & pridefull that i've got the answers....BOOM

It may well work as such in the macroworld too.....
smirking at wacko survivalists & catastrophe abiders...
might just come back to smak pop culture in the face !!

just a thought...

Originally posted by riffraffalunas

i guess that got cleared up fast...
.....
clarifying-> evolution? or adaptation to environments?
oh yeah..life goes on....long after the meani g s ne .
~&~*~&~*~X

It seems, in my microworld, that whenever i become
arrogant & pridefull that i've got the answers....BOOM

It may well work as such in the macroworld too.....
smirking at wacko survivalists & catastrophe abiders...
might just come back to smak pop culture in the face !!

just a thought...

Excellent... thank you for your thoughts

it's just our technology that's evolving so fast. with that comes increases in knowledge. it's me belief that when a being learns to use tools and create new tools that evolution comes to a stand still. hence why people don't move things with their minds. we have created machines to do it for us.

holy crap....youve seen waking life??????

thats a movie im seeing on my movie weekend. we are doing nothing but laying around watching movies, and eating toast. nothing else.

oh and sleeping naked, but that doesnt count.

waking life, jsut for seeing that,

I'm wondering if I have evolved different than many of the people here in the Southern US. I prefer and am comfortable with temps in the 60's or around 71 but many here in the South prefer upper 70's or even 80's as comfortable. I feel like I'm roasting in their heat. I can wear short sleeve shirts in the 50's and still be ok but others act like it's freezing if it's only 71. If you evolve you may start feeling like an alien.

Anyone read "New Dawn" magazine?

In Australian this magazine this month has a bit about this.

"Is A New Race Emerging?"
"Children of the New Millennium"

Seems we are evolving and genetics cannot be held accountable.

Generally the generation born 1982-2004 seems to be the evolved, out of the ordinary, different...

There seems to be an extreme jump in intelligence, concerns "nonverbal intelligence" - the ability to know or intuit information...


There are 3 types of children being born now.

Super Psychics, The Indigo Children, and Children born with AIDS.

The Chilren born with aids...For instance..here is one child. They tested him at birth and at 6 months and he tested positive to aids. They didn't test himagain until he was 6 and when they did he didn't have AIDS anymore. Completely AIDS free. And no trace of ever having AIDS or HIV whatsoever. He had unique DNA petterning that noone else had. Instead of 20 codons turned on in the DNA...these kids born with AIDS have 24 active "turned on" codons and they show resistance to disease that is quite remarkable. They seem to be immune to everything.

The Super Psychic children get all tests 100% right no matter what test they are given, what's in it, or how hard it is.

This has puzzled thier parents who often lament "I have a kid who knows everything....what do i do about this?"
These Super Psychics are like Indigo Children...

Some lady said these Indigo Children (the colour people see around them psychically)...she highlighted how technologiclaly oriented she has found the new generation to be, how unusually confident, fearless, and strong they are, with quick, active minds and a non-attached, almost objective way of regarding the world around them (which enables them to be innovators or killers with equal ease). They are influenced by the colour vibration of Indigo (their psychic colour around them).


Not just that...But IQ's are up all over the place...and it's not just due to schooling, genetics, or any other seemable factor.

And the weird thing is....It seems to be related to shifts in spiritual awareness and a sense of a higher being....changes in consciousness.

i suggest reading 'awakening to zero point' by greg braden. he makes a great argument for the switching on of codons in dna as a function of evolution. (incidently, his new book, 'the god code' is a study which indicates that HEBREW TEXT(!) is written on our dna sequences. they have decoded a sequence which reads, 'eternal god in the body'. it's words integrally written on our dna! if it is proven that the code is no coincidence, there will be no more skeptics.)
also, google 'terrance mckenna' 'timewave zero', for a look at a graph of the evolution on earth as an accelerating, repeating pattern. (which reaches infinite speed in 2012).
if you really like to think abstractly, do a search on 'gabriel's horn', a geometric figure that looks like a herald's horn(you know the ones they blow when the king or queen come into the throne room). it has a starting point, but as it reaches the bell of the horn, the surface area becomes infinite.

p.s. i loved 'waking life', too. frickin' great flick.

There is no proof, at all, that we are evolving as a species.

Good old Otze the hunter frozen over 4000 years ago would fit into our society easily without attracting notice. And the neanderthals would fit in as well.

Just because we have gained knowledge does not mean that we have evolved. I am sure the eqyptian architects of the Pryamids were just as smart as architects today.

Don't mistake better food, health and living conditions that have changed the physical dimenensions of people as evolution either.

Stick a child of today back into life 5000 years ago and they will grow up looking like those people.

DaRage,

What I'm seeing is a schism between the intellectual/spiritual haves and have nots. I've run into quite a few Indigo Children who were just so perceptive and aware beyond their years it was spooky!

Unfortunately the majority of the rest (child and adult) seem to be working slowly towards flunking Drooling 101.

The whole 2012 thing makes quite a lot of sense to me, at least on an intuitive level. At a very young age I started trying to plot the course of what I called "The Convergence", I tried to anticipate the converging trends of all the various elements that seemed to be looming on the horizon: overpopulation/overconsumption, global economic collapse, etc. Now that a couple decades have passed there are even more elements of that nature to take into consideration that all seem to be reaching a boiling point at about the same time. Calderas, Peak Oil, Big Things in the Sky Coming to Kill Us, etc.

I personally feel that the singularity will be a period of some sort of rapid shift upwards (4th density, or whatever you want to call it) for those trying to evolve on an intellectual/spiritual level, and kind of an evolutionary reset button for everyone else. Probably a vain little pipedream, but beyond all the research it feels right intuitively.

Ludi

Originally posted by DaRAGE

Not just that...But IQ's are up all over the place...and it's not just due to schooling, genetics, or any other seemable factor.

And the weird thing is....It seems to be related to shifts in spiritual awareness and a sense of a higher being....changes in consciousness.

is this just in australia or the whole world? if its the whole world, then TRUST ME, its NOT because of schooling. the education system here in america (texas, at least) has been going on a downward fall since it started.

I don't know, we just had a lady try and cash a million dollar bill at Walmart.....perhaps evolution is going the other way? At least for some folks....

Originally posted by Gazrok
I don't know, we just had a lady try and cash a million dollar bill at Walmart.....perhaps evolution is going the other way? At least for some folks....

Gazrok, you crack me up man.

I don't think evolution is speeding up at all. I think it is slowing down more than anything.

Mr. M

Originally posted by Gazrok
I don't know, we just had a lady try and cash a million dollar bill at Walmart.....perhaps evolution is going the other way? At least for some folks....

Caught that on the news last night. Unbelievable...