The human race’s cognitive and behavioural adaptation to cultural evolution stands in sharp contrast to the continued adaptive efficiency of other organisms, including those that cause a threat to human species survival; the current coronavirus challenge being the dominant current example.
The Darwinian notion of adaptations only necessarily ‘good enough’ to survive in a given environment is stark. The tension between variation as both an advantage and a stressor is in constant play in the human social/cultural world and makes for an anxious state of affairs. That adaptation to the challenges of cultural environments could be more successful, there is no doubt. Human cultural evolution at the macro species level is an ongoing toxic struggle to get beyond the ‘good enough’ to something ‘good for all’. Given that variation is inevitable in a process of evolution by selection then this may not be possible. The thought that such a state of affairs may be a forlorn aspiration is depressing.
Whether the human race will self-annialate as a consequence of its withering tribal maladies or be eradicated by evolving toxic organisms in the natural world is less certain than the likelyhood that one of them will eventually prevail.
