Creeva’s World 2.0

Pic­ture from here

There is always a new health craze that will make us live longer, be smarter, pro­cre­ate faster, etc. etc.   The ques­tion I have is this truly the right thing to do.   It seems kind of self­ish to me.  For exam­ple preg­nant women these days can’t smoke, can’t drink alco­hol, can’t drink caf­feine, can’t change lit­ter boxes and that’s just the tip of the ice­bergs.   They also must take vit­a­min after vit­a­min to ensure a healthy preg­nancy.   I’m not say­ing it’s wrong.  I am also not say­ing it’s some­thing that should be change.  I am say­ing how­ever it’s selfish.

We may be enhanc­ing and increas­ing our own lives and the lives of our imme­di­ate off­spring, but what about a few more gen­er­a­tions down the road?  While the old say­ing goes “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” isn’t the oppo­site also true then “What ever makes it eas­ier makes us weaker”?  As a species evo­lu­tion, hard­ship, and adver­sity is some­thign that gets passed along genet­i­cally and our chil­dren hope­fully evolve because of it.   If every mother was a crack addict doesn’t logic tell us that gen­er­a­tions down the line that even­tu­ally babies would be immune to crack, all we need is that mutant gene to crop up and bang no more crack addic­tion 2000 years from now.

Caf­feine itself used to have teh effects of a harsh drug.  We have so much caf­feine in our sys­tems these days it’s con­sid­ered noth­ing to our bod­ies, we’ve built up an immu­nity to it’s effect for the most part.   I know that a few months of no-doz and vivarin inspired nights got me to the point that I needed a whole box to even effect me at one point (no I don’t do caf­feine pills any­more mostly since it’s a wast of cash over the last decade).  Bod­ies build up immu­ni­ties and we pass those along to our children.

There is one point in time where we can become self­ish how­ever,  this is after pro­cre­ation.  After we have passed along our dam­aged genes to our chil­dren and they learn how to deal with them, they in turn can hope­fully gain strength from them and turn them around, then they pass them on to their chil­dren and the cycle begins anew.  When we have our kids and get past the age where we can have chil­dren, then we can become self­ish.   This is where the evo­lu­tion cycle is a moot point, unless of course your donat­ing sperm, eggs, or DNA to be passed down to future gen­er­a­tions.   Once we are no longer pass­ing down genetic mate­r­ial there will be no evo­lu­tion hap­pen­ing and it will stag­nant.  Since we don’t need to nec­es­sar­ily die sooner, it then is allow­able from an evo­lu­tion­ary stand point to extend our lives with what­ever health craze is in existence.

I may come off as cold and not car­ing because of this post, and I know I hold the same self­ish for my child as does every­one else.   It is self­ish though, it holds back our species from evolv­ing against these prob­lems.   So I may say that this is part of the solu­tion, but in the end I’m just as much of the problem.

I swear hear­ing what my par­ents endured with toys that their gen­er­a­tion must be immune to lead poi­son­ing — only their gen­er­a­tion didn’t pass it down to ours.