Opinion: A capacity for progress is the next step in human evolution.

[Union Yes]

Agree?

Disagree?

Other?


The OP header is my answer, in my opinion..

[slackmaster]

1. Please define your terms

Specifically, what do you mean by "progress", "step", and "evolution"?

I think it would be absurd to try to predict a direction for a change in the expression of alleles over time, because that kind of evolution follows environmental conditions which are inherently unpredictable.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. The capacity to regrow a limb would be really fuckin' handy. (Excuse the pun)

Or a pouch, that might be good.

[MilesColtrane]

3. Political progress? Technological progress? Social progress?

What are we talking here?

[The2ndWheel]

4. Disagree, as I don't

think of evolution in terms of steps, and certainly not in terms of steps in a diagonal line going upwards to the right of the graph.

I also don't think every human has to evolve in the same way. In addition to that, if every person doesn't evolve in the same way, I don't see that as making one person less or more evolved than another, whatever the hell less or more evolved means.

I look at progress the way I do directions on a map. There is no reason why the sun can't rise or set in the north, other than that we call those directions east and west. Why don't we look at maps upside down? Is there really a northern and southern hemisphere? Eastern and western? No, they're stories that we tell. Just like progress, because we think of evolution as a process that has steps, and is going somewhere, undoubtedly upward.

Unless progress has some ultimate destination, then it's really a meaningless word, because it has no end. If it did have an end, once we got there, would we stop?