The Ramifications of Human Evolution

Our next stage of evolution is, perhaps, one of the most sought-after scientific advancements amongst finding alien life and the cure for cancer. The evolution of Homo Sapiens from the original single-celled amoeba is a marvel of a process almost unfathomable to evolutionary biologists because of the sheer magnitude of branching out of cellular systems. There are incredible ancillary benefits to the evolution of any system, just as there would be in the evolution of the Homo Sapiens to the next stage on their evolutionary chart. However, the progressing evolution for Homo Sapiens may not prove to be as organic as the previous ones have been. The higher-thinking abilities available to the human race have led to scientific discoveries that themselves may be the steppingstones to an artificially induced evolutionary stage. This paper will not only discuss the benefits of such an evolution and their advantages to the species, but it will also discuss the ramifications these benefits on the planet and its resources.

First, to address the necessity of evolution. Darwin’s evolutionary theory of natural selection, albeit actually describing reproductive fitness and not general fitness, provides a sound template to address the need to evolve into the next stage of humanity’s evolution. Due to mankind’s unsustainable models of development, the Earth is now regressing into an unstable environmental state, which may lead to even more catastrophic climates and disasters. Until this situation can be reversed or weathered-out, humans need a biological safeguard against the sheer might of nature — that safeguard would be a greater ability to protect ourselves in case of heinous disasters that lead to thousands of deaths across the globe. In addition to this, the Earth is also being depleted of its natural resources at a faster rate every day, giving rise to the fact that it cannot harbor growing human life for long. These needs give extreme importance unto the resilience of human beings and methods of increasing it. An artificial evolution would adapt the human race in such a way that we would be able to withstand the harsh conditions on Earth that will eventually occur as a response to our massive carbon footprint. Over millennia, evolution has been the answer to problems plaguing species. When animals had to get away from larger predators, some of them, now known as birds, evolved the ability to fly. No consensus exists on whether birds evolved when animals started gliding from trees or jumping from the ground, but there is a consensus on the fact that the ability birds now possess to evade land-based predators has solved the problem of their threatened lifestyles. Humanity could attempt to eliminate some of its problems, as stated earlier, by inducing its next evolutionary stage artificially. The transhumanist (H⁺) movement is a movement dedicated to the preservation of the human race by advancing characteristics such as strength, agility, lifespan, resistance to diseases, and more. It is the belief that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations. It is one of the less radical approaches towards evolving humans to their next intermediary, or maybe permanent, state of existence. The scientific basis of transhumanism is gene-splicing and editing in order to bring about a desired benefit that did not exist or remained dormant previously. A reduced analogy of this would be to equate transhumanism to “bio-hacking” — and while they are similar, transhumanism deals with high-level scientific processes such as gene-sequencing, whereas biohacking could be something as simple as consuming more protein to aid in the growth of muscles. Transhumanism, however, is a concept still to be implemented on a large and successful scale.

There are immediately apparent benefits to such a transformation to humans. For one, humans that are alive and well today would be able to cash in on the advantageous points of the transhumanist movement. Depending on what the focus of a person’s particular enhancement is, different aspects of the human body could be strengthened massively. By affecting the protein structure of muscles, human strength could overthrow its current limitations and members of the human race would be able to avoid the multitude of disasters they experience on a daily basis. By living for longer periods of time, individuals would be able to lead more productive lives with the ageing process further spread out over a longer amount of time: prime performance would last for multiple decades instead of just one, causing a massive surge in productivity across the globe. The lethal effects of a lot of chemicals could be completely counteracted, so as to reduce deaths caused due to accidental ingestion of these chemicals.

While this world sounds like a utopia, one cannot ignore the foreseeable impacts of a super-race on an already-dying planet with finite resources. An evolved human would consume far more resources as compared to both Homo Sapiens and archaic Homo Sapiens or Neanderthals, simply to sustain the power granted by the next stage of advancement as a species. This can be said simply by observing the exponential jump in resource consumption since the previous stage of human evolution to our current one. This increased usage of resources would not be because of a physical need to consume — just as the evolution from Neanderthals to Homo Sapiens saw the rise of agricultural and industrial revolution, the next stage of evolution would lead to greater advancements that would require more resources. The aforementioned surge in productivity caused by longer lifespans would cause an even larger hit in the number of resources consumed on both a private and commercial scale. Human population would swell to unimaginable numbers due to the delayed natural culling, that is death, due to increased lifespans and resistance to viruses and bacteria. Assuming that this evolutionary device was rolled out slowly to people worldwide, crime rates might increase if those who are evolved seek to hurt those that aren’t. It is true that the intervention required by police and other governmental resources would decrease due to enhanced abilities but these increased crime rates due to personal attacks would far outnumber the decrease and cause a larger consumption of resources overall.

Taking a look at the matter statistically, it is a fact that Earth bears resources just enough for four, maybe five, billion people. Those are resources enough for the sustenance and lavish lifestyle of the four billion people that inhabit a planet that is similarly sized to Earth and, presumably, has the same type of resources. Life and population growth on Earth as it is currently is not sustainable in the first place. This births a conundrum: transhumanism-based evolution is both a need and an impossibility. A race of next-generation human beings that would consume more resources is definitely nothing our Earth could currently support. Transhumanism making strides of progress towards their goal of an enhanced humanity would usually be worth backing in its entirety because of its fairly low-risk high-reward returns, provided standardized clinical trials are implemented. However, with an unsustainable model of resource consumption, it doesn’t bode well for the future of our planet. Even in the case of exoplanets with additional resources of their own that humans could actually migrate to, it still isn’t economically feasible to transport the four billion excess people Earth will soon have. This is perhaps the largest logistical problem to plague the adoption of transhumanism to better the capacity of the human race.

There is also the topic of the psychological effects of evolving almost immediately. This is one of the affordances of an artificially induced evolution: it has the ability to affect the human race at an unbelievably quicker pace than previous instances of evolution have been able to. The psychological effects of such an event on an entire planet’s population is difficult to discern effectively. However, it is safe to assume that with billions of people acquiring abilities they did not have before, however minute, can cause disruptions to break out everywhere. For example, in the case of a man evolving to a stage with increased strength, he might be inclined to test these abilities out in the open. It is a matter of the inherent good and bad qualities of the man himself what he will choose to do — something mundane, virtuous, or evil. The statistical possibility of all events spread out across the entire world’s population is equally likely, so a quantization of disturbance among social spheres is unlikely to be found unless data someday exists. An evolution like this would not just affect people psychologically, it would affect their reality. Things that were previously inaccessible to humans without the aid of machines could possibly be brought within reach. To state an example, we can imagine an instance where the world was to evolve to become more physically capable. As a result, they became faster. This would not only bring about psychological change, but it would change what people are able to do. Previous world records for athletic events would be smashed, the need for vehicles to travel short distances would decrease drastically as people would be able to traverse greater distances in shorter amounts of time, and other events of the same kind might take place. Due to this evolution, the environment we have constructed for ourselves — stock markets, businesses, governments, legislature — all of it would be subject to change in order to keep pace with the changes brought about by evolution. The impacts of an artificially induced evolution, primarily by virtue of its incredibly rapid implementation, are spread out on a spectrum ranging from a logistical nightmare to the creation of an elite race without time being lost in the process.

The transhumanist movement would be a game-changer for many industries and a revelation in terms of productivity and industrialism. However, it simply doesn’t work due to the finite set of rapidly decreasing resources that we have currently on Earth. The necessary conditions for transhumanism to establish itself as the next stage of human evolution, Earth would need an immediate injection of resources from another planet and a safe and efficient method of gene-splicing that would carry out the effects of the evolutionary biological code. It would take a long time for an evolution of this kind to spread across the globe in the case of individual administration of a serum that changes genetic composition or structure, but a much shorter time in case of an airborne/waterborne/communicable bacteria/virus that affects human genetics in the same way a serum would. Although the time taken for each method to present a hundred-percent transmission rate varies greatly, it is insignificant as compared to the amount of time natural evolution would take, if another stage is even likely to occur. To summarize, it would be necessary for an efficient and safe delivery method of an evolution-inducing material to human beings along with the existence of ample resources to adequately sustain a race of beings that is more dependent on resources than it previously was. We currently don’t have a goal for human evolution – what would we want to mitigate against in Earth’s upcoming reset? In today’s rapidly deteriorating environment, there is no dearth of natural disasters the Earth won’t harbor. Before we even begun the next evolution, we would need to be able to identify humanity’s greatest natural threats in the coming century. Second, we don’t have a delivery method – this is perhaps the least worrying part if we wanted to implement the transhumanist ideals. The state of gene therapy and molecular biology in the modern world has led to breakthroughs in health science that we once couldn’t have imagined. Lastly, we don’t have the resources. It is a mathematical impossibility for a planet built to house four billion people to house seven, or more, billion. This becomes even more true in the case of a super race. While an artificial evolution may be a theoretical Hail Mary, it simply isn’t feasible enough currently to even warrant an effort.