Under Pressure

Since Man stood up and hunted his way to the peak of the food chain, Mother Earth has not supplied him the environmental impetus to improve.  No predator, no storm, no earthquake, no disaster short of global sterilization can put pressure enough on our physical evolution to make a difference.  This is not to say things don't change; societies, governments, and economies are constantly evolving to meet the needs of Man.  But only the most pervasive, stubborn, and deadly of environmental forces can change the true face of Man.

That would be us.

We have evolved into the position of being our own enemy, our own predator.  Finding even the smallest example of external adaptive pressure is difficult. Villages in India that are ravaged by tigers and local disasters are hardly out of the stone age, and the tigers are still losing.  In the short term, we are not forced to adapt physically to environmental pressure; instead, we develop a tool, pass a law, or some other sociological adaptation.  It is a situation we unconsciously recognize, but simply don't acknowledge often, if ever.  What we must adapt to is growing technology, shrinking space, longer lives, and faster pace; we need to adapt to living in concrete hives while remaining human.  These evolutionary pressures come from within society and each of us.

This isn't an entirely healthy situation.  For instance, large cities are arguably an example of a geographically isolated population.  Like the Galapagos Islands, the central urbanized areas of the world are isolated microcosms of evolution.  Survival strategies are developed that have no basis in the larger ecosystem of our Earth, social traits take hold that would normally be culled by predatory or environmental pressure.  Freed of normal restraints and bereft of normal sustenance, humans are experimenting with survival in our man-made desert islands.  As we well know, these adaptations could be non-survival traits when confronted by the wider ecosystem around them.  From such situations mass extinctions have occurred.

It isn't an entirely unhealthy situation, either; the alternatives are fairly grim. There could be no evolutionary pressure at all, simply a long, smooth slide to degeneration, devolution, and oblivion.  In that case, Canus Sapiens could be digging up our remains millenia hence and wondering what could have possibly taken down the hominids that touched the moon; perhaps they'd be theorizing about killer asteroids or nuclear wars.  The opposite alternative is something arises that challenges the human race for that top spot in spite of our technological prowess, our ability to plan and cooperate, and our down-and-dirty ruthlessness.  The nature of that unknown, unstoppable 'something' would be the essence of nightmare and slasher movies.  Perhaps that helps explain the popularity of horror in book and film; the pressure to look over our shoulder for the next predator is a lot older than our present ecological enthronement.  

The pressure has costs.  Some people internalize the struggle, becoming predatory monsters.  Some internalize the plight, and become passive victims.  Some few stand aside and decry the process.  Most just forge ahead, blindly, stubbornly, humanly facing the challenge of evolutionary pressure.  Despite it all, we seem to be working out so far.  Is it chance that when our self-struggle is most extreme, our accomplishments are greatest?

Can you feel the pressure?