A World Askew

Let me frame a hypothetical situation for you... Imagine a world in which Africa reigned supreme. Let's say that Africa was like Europe as it is today, or arguably, America. In this case, it would more or less be Africans ruling the world. Can you imagine a world where Africa is the center of commerce? The center of this Earth?? Perhaps I would not even be living here, but instead, in some country in Africa.

This is of course an unfathomable idea, but more importantly, a question can arise out of this fictional situation. How and why did we end up the way we did and how did they end up the way they did?? Most of which is purely a of game of chance so to speak.

As we all know, the beginnings of human species started on the continent of Africa. It was the cradle of civilization as we know it. From said cradle of human civilization, spread our ape like ancestors into the wild. As our early ancestors spread across the globe, separate evolutions occurred all at once. Some of our early ancestors ended up dying out, their kind too weak and unfit for said world. On the other hand, we as a species grew finding our ultimate niche.

You would think that the evolution of purely human traits such as reading and writing evolved in one location and spread to the rest, but in fact, most of these were independent inventions of our kind. Of course some of these more formal human traits did indeed spread via trade routes and what not, but it is amazing how such things as writing is a unique human evolution. There has been evidence of writing starting on its' own in such places as Mesopotamia, China, Egypt, etc. The question remains as to why would writing start in these places but not others?

This goes back to why and how some countries or continents excelled over the rest. Some of which developed the civilizations to be able to create the tool of writing, while others found it unnecessary to cultivate it into their civilization. Perhaps it was not needed in the more simplistic of societies, versus a more advanced one required such a tool. Again I may be going in circles, but such advancements as writing is what sort of propelled some of these civilizations to the power houses that they are today. Simply enough, what created the groundings for said civilizations to develop?

I give it a simple word, resources. The reason why certain boundaries on this planet are blessed with more of an abundance of pertinent resources is due to latitudinal and longitudinal boundaries. In sum, luck or chance more than anything else. If you were to cut the world into separate regions, especially in terms of latitude, some regions are more climatically enriched in comparison to others. Furthermore, it becomes easier for one civilization to communicate with others due to geographical boundaries. We as humans are best when in communication with other civilizations. It is an age old story, we learn and progress, as we learn to give to others as they progress. Simply put, the reason why some triumph over others is as simple as geographical boundaries. Luck of the Irish so to speak.

A Return to Normalcy

I watched this intriguing web series on vbs.tv about this man living out on the fringes of the arctic with his wife. He is hundreds and hundreds of miles from civilization, and of course, enjoys being as such. This man embraces the natural beauty that has been granted to us and thus lives off the land and the animals.

I had an epiphany of sorts while watching this... Why do we as men/women divulge ourselves in so much of our technological wonders? If you truly think about it, as we advance more and more in technology, it is only doing us more harm than anything else. Granted, fine, there has been advances in medicine that allow us so much more freedom and life. In reality though, is all of this really necessary? Wouldn't we be perfect content without all of this and living in an almost ignorant bliss?

Human civilization as a whole has only really been around for a blink of an eye. If you were to say that the entirety of earth's existence lay in one calendar year, our human existence has only been around for maybe the last minute before hitting the next year. In perspective, that is absolutely nothing compared to the whole of earth's life span to date. I guess the point I am trying to get at in this manner is we really don't matter do we? In the long run, our existence is merely a speck upon the spectrum that is the earth's life. Now, let's take that minute of human existence and divide it into parts. The twentieth century, or this last speck of technological marvels, is probably significantly less than a millisecond of that minute.

These tens of thousands of years of human evolution is really only a minute on earth's life span. We all know that is nothing. More importantly though is our evolution from a simple neanderthal to our current status as a homo sapien. As we evolved, obviously our structures have changed as well as our capabilities. What I mean by this is that, since our earliest conception as a homo sapien, our bodies and our structures have not quite changed significantly. What has changed significantly, on the other hand, is our lifestyles.

Put it this way, for the most part, we are genetically and biologically more accustomed to a life style of a hunter gatherer (perhaps even minor subsistence farming). Some may like to put it as a "caveman." What have we saturated ourselves with in this modern time?? We have way too much artificial crap that we insert into our bodies, stresses that should not even exist, no constant source of exercise, and the list continues. We as a civilization are so tied to our devices and our modern pleasures that we as a civilization have fallen far from our original ancestors and our natural being. I for one am not exempt from said situation... I enjoy all these modern pleasures and most definitely cannot live without it...

I am not proposing that we ditch all of our modern pleasures for we all know that this is impossible. What I am merely stating is that, in a way, these advantages of modernity are in a way pulling us away from our inner humanity. In fact, life would be so much simpler without all of that. The almost dire apocalyptic like situation we are in during these current times would have been completely avoided... Though, clearly.. it appears that progression is seemingly inevitable... Another question that begets a question....