[MD] Oneness, Dualism & Intellect

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
Rather I think it's presumptuous to claim anyone can observe evolution is
occurring. 

[Arlo]
Evolution occurs on both micro and macro scales, with the macro usually
evidencing the greatest leaps and changes. Macro-level evolution, such as the
evolution of species, is typically only ever inferred by witnessing that things
were different in the long ago than they are now. At any given point in time an
observer would of course be led to think, this is "it", evolution has now
stopped. Neanderthal man would have little to observe to indicate that one day
"he" would evolve into "us". From his vantage, he was as good as it gets.
Should you time-travel back 300 billion years, and witness the simply algaes
and bacteria that constituted the entire biological level, you would see
"nothing" that would indicate that one day these simply single-celled things
would evolve into "people" and fly to the moon. Evolution, on the macro-scale,
can only ever be viewed retrospectively, and although we can infer that a
natural process that has been active since the beginning will continue to be
active, we can't predict where "we" will be in another 300 billion years.
Maybe, like the Ousters in Dan Simmons' Hyperion quadrilogy, we will evolve
into beings capable of inhabiting the vacuum of space. Maybe we will, like the
Gamesters of Triskelion in Star Trek, evolve into pure thought energy. Who
knows. But the illusion of the present is always, in every age and every time,
to appear to be "the pinnacle of evolution". 

We appear to suffer the same illusion. Incapable of accepting that "man" is part
of "nature", we exempt him from the natural processes we see around us,
historically and in the immediate now. In an effort to divinify him, we
consider his existence to have sprung into being, fully formed, the result of
some also-external "god". Proof, this is, that "man" is uniquely separate,
apart and rules over nature.