Evolution Versus Consciousness

As Daniel Bor examines consciousness in The Ravenous Brain, it is easy to observe that consciousness has been one of man’s greatest allies, slowly enabling human-kind to become what it is today. It is through this evolution of human consciousness, developed for millions of years, we have been catapulted to the top of the food chain, even as we lack the powerful physical aspects. Despite these physical shortcomings, our consciousness makes it so we can change, learn from, and make better use the world around us, allowing us to develop the use of tools, better memory and more complex thinking. It should be noted though, that as helpful the consciousness is, it has taken over our evolution, as it dominates our genome as “20,000 genes, 80% of the entire [human] genome, are required to create and to support its proper functioning” (Bor, 59). With the amount of time, energy and structure each person needs to pour into his or her conscious to get to a functioning level, it has drastically hurt us at an evolutionary point of view. It has taken away the ability for humans to reproduce quickly, thus crippling our chances to evolve rapidly. This lack of plasticity goes on, as the slow updates in our DNA leads us to have a tougher time evolving and accepting new environmental conditions and predators, making our chance of extinction more likely than a bacteria who can reproduce every 30 minutes, compared to our 25 years (Bor 63). One major aspect of consciousness is that allows humans to survive is ability to learn through environment feedback (Bor, 65). This massively improves human-kind’s odds of survival in this dynamic world, but this system is limited, as much of learning is unable to the passed down genetically, as there is no new genetic information added with every lesson a human learns. Consciousness helps to cover its evolutionary detriments here, as it has created other pathways, resulting in learning being able to be passed down in spoken or written language or via demonstration, allowing beneficial lessons to still span generations. Even so, with all of this, one can easily gather that while the evolution of our consciousness put us ahead of all other organisms, the evolutionary stagnation it has now caused can now lead to disastrous results within an ever-changing environment.

Moving on, this problem of our non-changing DNA can quickly be seen in pathogens simply deceiving  our immune system, leading to a quick and easy infection. One of the best examples is that of the flu, as it evolves seemingly every year, confusing and tricking our immune system with new strains (Bor, 54). This inability to keep up is due to the stagnation of our DNA, resulting in the flu being able to easily fool our immune system, year after year. This is the same for many different pathogens, as their ever-changing offenses run circles around our slow evolving immune system. With even greater consequence is the creation of superbugs, via the misuse and over-prescription of antibiotic, antifungal and antiviral medications. While all of these do their job well, they cannot kill those that are resistant, and as a result, leave those same resistant superbugs with no competition, allowing them to flourish. They have now become a major issue within the medical field; to the point where 23,000 Americans die annually do to these resistant infections; most due to the major resistant diseases of MRSA and Clostridium (Peeples). Those infected with these hard-to-fight infections have little chance for survival, as their internal defense are overwhelmed, coupled with no solution from external sources. Looking at this issue from a wider lens, humanity overall would then be unable to evolve a resistance, due to the slow reproductive rates, allowing the superbugs to go unchecked. In addition to this initial threat, the overuse of medications in animals has also created even more resistance for bacterial and viral infections. These animal based infections, transmittable from animal to human, are now sprouting from the use of medication in healthy livestock, with recent studies showing no benefit for the original medication (Peeples). These various superbugs go on create the perfect storm, as now as human-kind is unable to evolve, even with this new threat looming. It has become a situation where the products of our consciousness have had unintended consequences, and now we are between a rock and a hard place. Without the chance to undergo rapid evolution to acquire resistance, we now look to our collective consciousness to bail us out of the problem it has created. We look once again to not change ourselves, but our environment to make up for our evolutionary shortcomings. One can assume that solution will just be with a new wave of drugs and medications, but what happens when we have new resistant and lethal strains, but we are unable to develop the cure?

Sources:

Bor, D. (2012). The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. New York; Basic Books, 2012.

Peeples, Lynne. “Antibiotic Resistance Warnings Remain Unheeded, Experts Say.” HuffPost Green. Huffington Post, 10 October 2013. Web. 16 October 2014. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/09/antibiotic-resistance-agriculture-animals-superbugs_n_5953986.html>