An Abstract Journey To Philosophy

I'm sure we've all had those moments where you look up at the sky, finding yourself lost in the sheer size of the darkness, if you're lucky to live in a non-urban landscape you might find that darkness separated by the distant twinkles of stars. You look up, in awe of sky that cries out for answers of endless questions and despite all this, despite the enchanting moonlit sky, the taste of promise in the crisp air, you find yourself thinking “perhaps I should switch my regular toothpaste with Sensodyne, I do miss Slush Puppies”.

This isn't merely an essay looking to question advertising techniques and neither is it about the pleasure of pain free teeth. I'm looking to quench my thirst for understanding of how humanity made the transition from our evolution being influenced by Mother Nature to Human Nature. 



Picture your average, nuclear family*. Every family has its days where you no longer find yourself in the house that you live in or a family you live with. It's more like the House of Commons and you're surrounded by testy members of parliament, all with their vested interests. Your once close and younger brother, with whom you share each other’s secrets with and have fond memories of playing ball together suddenly turns into an unfamiliar face who seeks to support change that will modify the very fabric of  the voting system to determine what’s for dinner. Or perhaps your father feels that, as the official leader of the house decides to get rid of all existing notions of the chore chart. Wholly disregarding all heath and safety matters along with forgetting that without a solid structure, civilisation as the household knows it will be irreversibly changed forever!

(*A nuclear family consists of a Father, mother and children.)          



Perhaps this does sound familiar to you, and it’s my belief that it should. It's by no coincidence that society on the whole and the day-to-day happenings of the world affect the habits of our families and how we interact with others on a social level. It interests me because I do find it's rather Darwinian. Our environment influences us whether you wish to accept it does so directly or indirectly. Whilst it used to be Mother Nature and natural selection as the source of this influence it is now, and has been for quite some time now, human nature and how we interact with each other that influences us and therefore, the future of our evolution is in our own hands.



Scary isn't it? How Wayne Rooney might very well be an influence on our evolution, more likely a step backwards two-hundred-thousand years (Anyone who says Neanderthal's were extinct might want to revisit that theory.) Or how our pursuit in technology to make our lives easier will make us so dependent on robots in the future that it results in a mass take-over of the earth where we're harvested for our bio-energy (see 'The Matrix'.)

As I begin to digress I will return to my point. Whilst Mother Nature, natural selection and simple fools luck has evolved us into sentient beings, has our mother been made redundant like when a child is no longer in need of a parents support? Just like every caring mother, she'll always be there for us, for good and for bad. She might even have a hand in our demise (god forbid you anger your own mother to such a degree) but it is my belief that with our sentience, the ability to reason and to process emotions as powerful as empathy we have reached a point where we are driving our own evolution, the stabilisers are off and we are now, to a large extent, controlling our own future, whatever that may be.



I believe we made this transition through seatbelts. Perhaps not seatbelts alone, but the concept that natural selection no longer plays a substantial part in how the human race grows and prospers. From whose got the biggest chest to whose got the biggest brain, whilst we're still judged on the size of particular muscles because natural selection is too basic to cater for the needs of our sentience we have made the concept largely irrelevant. We as human beings are far too complex in our society to be controlled by the parameters of nature and have for a very long time now been drawing out parameters of our own.



With this comes excitement and fear. Excitement, for we truly are controlling our own fate as a species. It isn't a question of allegiance to science or religion, free will allows us to pursue our own goals and agenda's whole-heartedly, whether you’re a scientist or you’re religious, you are free to pursue your aspirations and this to me, seems like an incredible opportunity.

However, I'm doused with fear because as everyone knows, people can get greedy, their proverbial shoes no longer fit them and they seek to impose on other people’s freedoms. Current affairs across the world don't go far to put my doubts to rest, quite the opposite. It's times like that when you read about another tyrant, civil war, genocide or a mixture of them all that you really wish your Mother Nature or some omnipotent being would just take the reins back and make all your troubles go away

Just like how my parents still say to me “We want to give you room to make your own mistakes”.  They say it is important for me to learn in my own way from stumbles I encounter in life and I do agree with them on the matter, something I will more than likely find myself saying when I have children. But surely there is only a finite amount of room for mistakes before we are deemed unworthy of such responsibility? It would only take the aggravation of a super power to decimate an entire country and its population, throwing us into another ice age but perhaps, without meaning to sound too pessimistic, that is what evolution is all about, the start of one cycle and the end of another.



To put a conclusion to this admittedly vague adventure intended to skim the surface of the philosophy of our existence, I hope I have succeeded in igniting a spark of curiosity to your mind, as the reader. Hopefully that seed of question will grow to plant questions in your mind that you seek to answer yourself. It may be very true, that we are like distant, unknown stars in the night’s sky, insignificant at first sight. Yet each of those stars has a story and something with a story always has a purpose, because what would be the point of a story without one? Every one of us has the capability of influencing our own future, our own evolution, however small you may feel it is. It’s like dropping a pebble into the sea, the effects are only apparent to the observer but drop a gargantuan amount (perhaps a Brobdingnagian amount) of pebbles into the ocean and I promise you, the world will notice.