The Devolution of Evolution: End of Story

Brad Blanton

Somewhere back there about 225 million years ago the evolution of mammals began when cold blooded reptile like creatures called synapsids lived in swamps and had a great big fan growing down their backs to absorb and disperse heat as needed. As the weather changed back and forth over a long course of time, they got tired of the inefficiency of that air conditioning system and became warm blooded creatures so they could still move around when the weather was cold and get warmer. Over the next 70 million years we new warm blooded things eventually came to be “mammals” because we evolved mammary glands and “placentals” because we started birthing our young out of our bodies.

At about the same time we quit hatching our young and started birthing and nursing, we began developing a “second brain,” a kind of thin overcovering of brain tissue on top of the reptilian brain, that appears to have something to do with caring for and protecting our young. Whereas reptiles, if they happened to be around when their eggs hatched and they saw their little offspring critters running around would simply eat them along with anything else that was running around, we mammals would generally protect our young and take care of them until they got big enough to take care of themselves..

This second brain, that apparently had to do with caring and protecting, is called the limbic brain. For us primates it sits in the middle between the reptilian brain and the neo cortex (the “thinking brain” that evolved later on in we primates). The limbic brain is the source of Buddhist compassion, and (in cooperation with the neo cortex) the military industrial congressional complex (we have to “protect and defend” our children don’t we?) This central human task of melding and using the three brains has turned out to be a hell of a job, and has been the source of lots and lots of aberrations in human behavior and a variety of romantic idealistic sentimental forms of insanity. (The general who kills thousands of his own troops and innocent women and children on the “other side” and then weeps because his remaining troops may not get to go home for Christmas, for example.)

Given that we are possibly coming to the end of our relatively short species life span we can ask the question, just before our mutual demise “Where did we go wrong?” Here is the answer I have stolen from many writers about that question. We were evolving along O.K. until about 10,000 years ago when we made a big mistake. We started locking up the food. Then people who had locked up food could make other people do things for them in order to get food. The military industrial congressional complex that still runs America even under Obama is the ultimate total fuck up that evolved from that terrible wrong turn we human beings made about 10,000 years ago. From that came (1) capitalism, (2) war to protect the store, (3) the military industrial congressional complex, (4) global warming and our next big featured upcoming event!—(5) the end of humankind! (Yaaayyyy!)

The walking dead amongst us (the perpetrators of this progression) no longer have the capacity to care—perhaps because their neo cortex went kerflooey and overwhelmed their limbic tendencies. (Think of Generals, the general population, General Managers, General Electric, General Motors, etc.)

At exactly the same time those limbic lopsided looneys (say Dempublicrat politicians, for example) have led us on the road to perdition, many of the rest of us have actually expanded our capacity to care, to include much more than our immediate family, in fact, to include all sentient beings. Now isn’t that a hell of a thing?

The very thinnest chance still exists for the survival of humankind. It depends entirely on the takeover of the world by the people who care, even though the walking dead currently own it.

e.e. cummings wrote a poem about caring and all those who care, and how they are different from the ones whose ability to care has been overridden. And then I too wrote a poem about this whole problem of the trouble between the caring and the careless, and outlining the thin chance we have to keep on living on this earth if those who care come into their own and take back the world from the careless.

Here is e.e. cummings’ poem and after it, my song:

the great advantage of being alive
(instead of undying) is not so much
that mind no more can disprove than prove
what heart may feel and soul may touch
-the great(my darling)happens to be
that love is in we, that love is in we
and here is a secret they never will share
for whom create is less than have
or one times one than when times where-
that we are in love, that we are in love:
with us they’ve nothing times nothing to do
(for love are in we am in i are in you)
this world (as timorous itsters all
to call their cowardice quite agree)
shall never discover our touch and feel
-for love are in we are in love are in we;
for you are and I am and we are(above
and under all possible worlds)in love
a billion brains may coax undeath
from fancied fact and spaceful time-
no heart can leap, no soul can breathe
but by the sizeless truth of a dream
whose sleep is the sky and the earth and the sea
For love are in you am in I are in we.

e.e. cummings