Richard Dawkins once said that Darwin's theory of evolution which helped our species to survive, evolve and thrive, specifically the behavioral elements which have helped humans become the dominant species in the planet are actually not suitable as moral and ethical principles to take humanity forward.
Image Source for Steem Icon
Third image: self-sourced
Counter-intuitive, isn't it,
coming from an evolutionary biologist whose life's work is to present to the world the irrefutable proof how life has evolved from the single cell organisms in a primeval ocean to what it is today?
Addition of the textbox and the quoted text is by me.
In fact, it makes the most sense coming from an accomplished evolutionary biologist like him. If you think about it, or have studied evolution in high school or later in life, you would know how evolution works.
The fundamental principle of evolution is
Survival of the fittest
Through millennia, Mother Nature has time and again appeared before a dwindling species and declared her verdict
"Thou art weighed in the balances of nature and thou art found wanting"
Mother Nature, however, has not been unbiased during her trials or before the trials even. She has rewarded some species with blessings and others with curses almost with no rhyme or reason. This has loaded the balances against those species which She would come before and sit in judgment, the verdict being never to be seen again on the face of the planet.
Many millennia later, her favorite child, man, called these blessings:
Mutations
Since the beginning of life has Mother Nature's law of survival of the fittest and her reward and punishment system of mutations dictated life or death of countless species.
Humanity, or in scientific terms Homo sapiens has always been her favorite when it came to survival instincts and mutations.
But man is different from all her children. Everything he got from Mother Nature, he used it for his benefit. He killed the Neanderthals and assimilated the last few remnants of that hominid species into his own to ensure that he became the universal master of the whole planet.
In his struggle for existence, in his quest for power and dominance, he destroyed ecosystems, made deserts out of forests and is now responsible for the sixth mass extinction to have ever been seen on this planet and the first one to be caused by a species. And so this mass extinction is being called the Anthropocene Mass Extinction.
His struggle for existence became his struggle for the imposition of his ideas on others. Not only has he destroyed the environment and put life on the entire planet in danger, he has not been kind to his own brothers.
Since prehistory, he has created groups and tribes and kingdoms and nations and religion. He has killed in the name of countless belief systems which according to him were all true no matter how contradictory they were because he never had unity of thought and belief. He believed something and his brother would believe something else and they would fight on it and the brother would get killed.
And this goes on and on and it seems it will never stop.
All the above characteristics of humanity are often very starkly visible on the Steem blockchain and have the capacity to destroy what is being built. People often act and fight here with such selfish interests it reminds of the very nature of man and makes one shiver.
We may destroy this platform unless we collectively take steps away from this natural state of affairs.
We cannot fight among ourselves here. We should not. We should not keep selfish interests above the collective one.
And in order to achieve this, another trait of humanity is what can help us and that trait is of being a social animal. The only difference from the societies and groups of old is that this society has to be one huge society, one huge family to include everyone so that no one is left behind and everyone works towards the betterment of others.
That's the way to take ourselves forward. Blockchain and many other digital technologies have the potential to bring into this planet an economy of plentifulness for the first time ever in history.
We must ensure everyone gets the benefits and no one fights. I think this is possible because I have seen such positivity in Steem which I believe will defeat the natural instincts I talked about in detail.
That day, when the plentifulness helps everyone on this planet, we would have become truly evolved.
Click on the banners to learn more about each community
Hilariously, one of the central appeals of the blockchain and decentralization is to incentivize good behavior in the face of these tendencies. Hard to say what the long term will look like because we are just starting to form coalitions to target bad behavior, all working in the current system. It's a simple system with complex dynamics. But if we cannot curb obviously bad behavior, where the measure of badness is proxied by the steem price somewhat, we need to change the rules and agree on the change. If the bad actors have made it all the way to the top, then we are kind of screwed.
Another rambling thought... At some point these bad actors will jump ship because they know they are behaving badly and how it affects the price. A new governance could form at that time to recover. But will it be too late in terms of winning the blockchain social media wars? Time will tell...
That's a very important question. What happens when the bad actors, who really are in here for the short term gain or who don't think the future of Steem and/or blockchain is bright and want to squeeze the max out of the system, jump ship? Will it be too late or too devastating for a recovery to be possible? Only time can tell...
This is exactly what I mean whenever I type "it's human nature" in my articles.
Glad you see this as I see, because it will undoubtedly be a problem we will have to collectively face.
Reason must rise above impulse and genetic programming.
And the reasoning must be collective good and not individual wealth.
I couldn't agree more! We have to support the collective here. A win for Steem is a win for all.
and a win for all is a win for Steem :)
Lol
Hey Svk,
I hope we don't destroy Steemit like we have most other things. We gotta stick together and keep the good goal in mind ♡ Abundance for All!
Abundance for all!! Let that be our mantra!!
@svkrulze, ultimately, each of us can choose to be a force for good regardless of where we are on our journey in Steem. I believe that there are way more good apples than bad in the bunch. So, it's my hope that as individuals, we each continue to grow stronger in skill, strength and, relationships so that collectively, we can move the needle in the right direction.
Yes, very rightly said @karencarrens. I do see a lot of hope in how people reach out to each other and help each other out. There will always be problems and bad actors, but I think do-gooders are also aplenty and we will be successful in our endeavour
Nice piece, even with the abundant many still want to take all thereby stepping on others to get up the ladder.
I don't think people try to sabotage anybody others that way, only that there are a lot of ways of unfairly claiming a larger share of the reward pull without actually putting in the effort if you have the money or the backup someone with money
Well I agree to it a great extent, but I think from my personal point that we are missing the fact that specifies evolved in different ecosystems and evolution of species happened within their alike races. Anyways always pleasure to read interesting and well articulated information :)
I didn't quite understand what you meant by that... evolution didn't happen in silos for the most part and different species interacted with other species and their environments
Survival of the fittest is not of itself a bad thing. In can be a very good thing if the "fittest" means who posts the highest quality content.
Trying to fight the evolution and economic incentives of the steem platform may be a futile effort. Instead, it may more sense to understand how to shape the economic incentives so that quality is more highly rewarded than quantity.
I do not wish for everyone to fight the economic model here. All I wish is that the community here grows together to help each other out.
I certainly want the community to help each other grow but since the platform is open and money is involved, people try to take advantage of the community. These people want to get the maximum money for the minimum contribution. I think Steemians should come together to help figure out how to make these types of bad actors less profitable.
Yes there are community efforts going on to this end but again the community is divided on what is right and what is wrong
What changes would you make?
with my limited resources, I try to encourage good content as much as I can... I promote discussions and plan to help newbies in a bigger way as soon as I am little more vested in SP
I think that's a big part of the solution. If more people like yourself just contributed in consistent meaningful ways, people gaming the system would be less of a problem
Hiya SVK
I agree about the endless murder caused by belief. It tells me our species still has a lot of evolving to do :D
I dunno about that. I think the microbes are winning by a long jump. There was a number going around that bacteria cells outnumber our own by 10:1 but recent studies show it's about 1:1. Not bad really. These microbes out-mutate us too (faster generation turnover). They'll be here long after we're gone.
Dunno how workable this is. It's in our nature to scramble for position. If people feel they're losing their place, they'll use whatever tools they have to keep it or they'll fade away and their steemit genes will 'die'.
Thanks. That was an interesting read.
Cheers
Anj :)
Actually, this really good prose by @prydedefoltz demonstrates the scarcity mentality and how some people behave.
You are right about the microbes and many other species who will end up outlasting us. I wonder how we will cope with a dying civilization and how it will eventually happen.
Me too. But on the bright side, nothing in this galaxy can outrun a dying sun :P
There's actually a series of fantasy stories called Dying Earth on this premise. A distantly future earth when the Sun is slowly dying.
They sound cool. I love speculative fiction. Thanks SVK.
cheers
Anj :D
haven't read them, but in my list
Oh really!! Its a great philosophy
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 23 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 25 SBD worth and should receive 60 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigi am confused about it
Congratulations! This post has been chosen as one of the daily Whistle Stops for The STEEM Engine!
You can see your post's place along the track here: The Daily Whistle Stops, Issue # 62 (3/3/18)
The STEEM Engine is an initiative dedicated to promoting meaningful engagement across Steemit. Find out more about us and join us today!