Why is human evolution out of harmony with the cosmos?
Man's frenetic evolutionary activity is putting the survival of the planet and the human species itself at serious risk. Wars and pollution seem to contradict the cosmic harmony that governs the Universe. Do ancient myths, such as Original Sin or the story of Prometheus, tell us about an "alien" intervention on natural human evolution? Is man really a virus for the Earth?
“I wish to share with you, Morpheus, a brilliant intuition I had, during my mission here. It happened to me while I was trying to classify your species. I suddenly realized that you are not real mammals: all mammals on this planet instinctively develop a natural balance with their surrounding environment, something that you humans don't do. You settle in an area and multiply and multiply until every natural resource is exhausted. And the only way you know how to survive is to move to another rich area. Is there another organism on this planet that engages in the same behavior, and do you know which one it is? The virus. Human beings are a widespread infection, a cancer on this planet: you are a plague. And we are the cure." (Agent Smith – Matrix).
Why is man not in harmony with the cosmos?
Evil is undoubtedly a real phenomenon that can be experienced throughout human history. But at the same time it is also an inexplicable mystery. What is its origin? If the cosmos and human nature were radically evil, how do we explain the nostalgia for the good that inhabits the human heart, the rejection of evil and injustice? On the other hand, if the cosmos and man are good, then how did we arrive at this perversion?
Evil is often justified as an absence of good, but if we look carefully at man's actions in history, we cannot limit ourselves to describing evil as a lack of good, but as a real perversion, a perversion of the sense of 'being and existing. Evil degrades and rapes man. It places him in contradiction with himself. It is nothing else, therefore, than nonsense and perversion.
People ask themselves: is there a problem in the relationship between man and man and between man and creation? Is there a wound in the cosmic harmony that distinguishes creation and that man is unable to realize in his relationship with nature and with himself? From many quarters there are signs of a profound discomfort in the human heart, as if this world were not ours.
It is not clear whether we humans arestrangers to it, greedyworms who have fallen here by chance, and why we have reduced this planet, one day our welcoming cradle, into a hostile and threatening world, such that it takes on our characteristics of destructive greed and of indifferent cynicism.
Man, from guardian to predator of creation
Perhaps we need to go to the unknowable day in which man no longer perceived himself as nature, as a son of the earth. As a man of nature he discovers himself as a man in nature, with nothing similar to himself. It was then that he felt himself master of the Earth and no longer its guardian, ruler of everything, to forget the horror of his fragility and his destiny of death. He reduced all things to "objects" to be kept at bay and exploited as he pleased.
This is how human culture was born, the technological culture of domination and rational, cold exploitation of nature. For a while, things are going well. Technology lends a hand to man's domination of the earth, until the criterion that directs every choice on the planet becomes the economy.
The man-master grabs what is economically useful and in the way in which it is economically advantageous. If he serves, a territory is devastated and even poisoned. If he serves, he heals an enemy or a wounded worker. If he is of no use, he is left to die.
The "new economy", as it is defined today, in addition to devastating nature, crushes man, preventing him from living, unless he belongs to a small number of privileged people. Because creation was stolen from everyone and became the property of some, with the complicity of those who defined private property as a divine right.
Thus the economy becomes daily uncertainty, war, cancellation of human rights, lies, senseless subversion of nature. We owe it to the economy that today, very often, it is not a President but the "Bank" who presides over a State.
Technology is the armed arm of the economy, an economy that nullifies human dignity and which enslaves it to the greed of a few groups that influence the life of the entire planet. The atom helps him win a war, but it pollutes generations and generations. Biology assists us in human fertility, but it is not its problem if one day we will plan, according to our needs, a generation of athletes without feelings, or dull and obedient soldiers, or meat for sexual consumption.
Genetically modified organisms can increase production, but Monsanto feels innocent if we later discover that we have poisoned ourselves with our money. Paradoxical but true: the economy doesn't know what to do with man, it doesn't want human nature which in itself is connected to everything; he just wants his own self-preservation. That is, basically, the idolatry of the dollar and commodities.
This civilization which every day, with respect to men and things, is characterized by the cynical disposable, has not yet managed to make us forget that if we are not masters of nature, we are nevertheless inseparably connected to it, so much so that defacing creation is a gesture self-destructive, and despising man predisposes one to attack creation.
A humanity without feelings, purely technical, does not even notice the disappearance of thousands of animal and plant species. He feels no nostalgia for a beauty sunk into nothingness after millennia of walking on the earth. After depriving a large part of humanity, we have also deprived animals and plants of their rights. This speech, in Western logic, is taken for idiocy!
Can a plant, an animal have rights? The point is that, feeling ourselves masters of everything, we recognize the right to life of whoever we want, according to convenience. We begin to reduce the plant and the animal to objects, thus opening the way to being ashamed of how much animal there is in us! To the point of saying that even certain humans are submen, devoid of any dignity. And we decide who should live and who should die.
Was man born to destroy?
Is man biologically destined for destructiveness? What dynamics hinder or facilitate the possibility of a multicultural society? With the end of the Cold War, many hoped that an era of peace would open up, in which much of the resources aimed at maintaining the balance of terror could finally be directed towards improving humanity's living conditions.
It didn't happen that way. Only the typology of conflicts has changed, with a decrease in those between states, an increase in internationalized internal conflicts, i.e. those which, while maintaining the epicenter within a state, end up involving other nations, and an unaltered continuation of other internal conflicts, but with the potential involvement of an ever-increasing number of people, also in relation to the spread of terrorism.
Is it possible to look at this phenomenon from a scientific perspective? Can science help clarify the main factors that influence the risk of conflict and mass violence?
The question may appear out of place, or at least out of time, to those who believe that with the Holocaust and the atomic bomb, science has "lost its innocence" and put an end to the last of the "great narratives" that had allowed cohesion social and inspired the utopias that have occurred in the history of humanity, to open the doors to that post-modern society described by many sociologists, from Jean-François Lyotard to Zygmund Bauman, which, having become "liquid" and devoid of meaning of community, tries to find it again through the creation of identity ghettos that are more indifferent than tolerant towards others and always ready to enter into conflict.
Is Humanity a Virus for the Earth?
We may all be less human than we think. At least that's what new research suggests, revealing that the human genome is partly a virus, to be precise the Bornavirus, which brings death to horses and sheep. It seems that 2 million years ago, this virus inserted some of its genetic material into our DNA.
The discovery, published in Nature on January 7, demonstrates how these RNA viruses can behave like retroviruses (for example HIV) and integrate stably as hosts of our genes. This research work could allow us to understand much more about our evolution, revealing how the current world is also the result of the work of a virus contained in each of us.
“Knowledge about ourselves as a species has been slightly misinterpreted,” says Robert Gifford, paleovirologist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. In short, we did not take into account that human DNA also evolved thanks to the contribution of bacteria and other microorganisms and that our immune defenses made use of that genetic material to defend ourselves from infections. It appears that up to 8% of our genome could harbor genetic material from viruses.
In the study, Japanese researchers found copies of a Bornavirus gene inserted into at least four different areas of our genome. Research conducted on other mammals has revealed its presence in a vast number of species for millions of years. “They provided evidence of a fossil record with traces of Bornavirus,” says John Coffin, a virologist at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and co-author of the study. “This also tells us that the evolution of viruses did not go as we thought.”
In the results of the study, researchers led by Keizo Tomonaga of Osaka University found that two human genes are very similar to the Bornavirus gene. Scientists say this “prehistoric infection” could be a source of human mutation, especially in our neurons. At this point we can only agree with Agent Smith of the Matrix in his belief that only one other organism on the planet behaves like man: the virus.
That mysterious evolutionary leap of Homo Erectus
Zecharia Sitchin in many of his books states the theory according to which, in a very remote past, a group of extraterrestrial travelers from the planet Nibiru, called Anunnaki, descended on Earth to exploit the mineral resources of our planet.
According to Sitchin, needing manpower for the extraction of minerals, the Anunnaki thought of genetically manipulating the terrestrial species most similar to them, grafting their own DNA into it: a hominid, Homo Erectus, was chosen.
Is it possible that this intervention could have altered the course of natural human evolution? Could our rapid evolution, incapable of harmonizing with the times and rules of nature, depend on this?
New findings complicate the debate between those who believe Homo erectus originated in East Africa and those who argue for an Asian origin. Homo erectus would have been able to make sophisticated tools as early as 1.8 million years ago, which is at least 300,000 years earlier than previously thought. This is stated in a study published in Nature by a group of paleoanthropologists from Rutgers University and Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago, occupying vast areas of Asia and Africa. And it was in East Africa that it was long believed to have evolved, but the discovery in 1990 of equally ancient fossils in Georgia opened up the possibility that it originated in Asia.
The new finds further complicate the situation as the tools found alongside the Georgian fossils from the Dmanisi site are small cutting and scraping tools that show rather simple characteristics similar to those of the Olduvai culture, while among those found in the western Turkana region, in Kenya, there are axes, pickaxes and other innovative tools that anthropologists call "Acheulean" type, which allowed an animal to be slaughtered and dismembered for eating. The skills involved in producing such a tool suggest, among other things, that Homo erectus was capable of “anticipatory” thinking.
“Acheulean tools represent a major technological leap,” noted Dennis Kent, one of the study's authors. “Why wouldn't Homo erectus have brought these tools with him to Asia?” The tools analyzed come from the Kokiselei site, where they were collected together with part of the immediately surrounding sediments in order to date their age.
Speaking of technological leaps, it is worth remembering the mysterious myths that narrate the birth of civilization and technology. Almost all human cultures tell of a deity who in the mists of time taught humans the manufacture of objects, agriculture, the arts and civil laws.
Just think of the Greek myth of Prometheus who stole fire from the gods to deliver it to men, or to the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl, who at the dawn of human history delivered wisdom to men, and finally, to the biblical story of original sin in which man, seduced by a serpent, leaves the cosmic order to become "similar to God".
The ancient and mysterious myths of “Original Guilt”
Almost all human cultures have myths that tell of a "guilt of origin", of an ancient event that would have "deviated" man from his natural evolutionary path. The best known is certainly the one told by the Bible and according to the interpretation of a 3rd century Christian author, Irenaeus of Lyon, Adam's sin was a sin of impatience, a desire to skip ahead.
Although already created in the "image and likeness" of God, man gives in to the lure of the serpent who promises to make him equal to God. But who is this serpent? Is it possible that ancient extraterrestrial beings have modified the human genome, intervening unduly on the natural evolution of humanity?
