Humans

I've always been fascinated by the idea that human beings became the dominant species.

Based on Darwinian theory, we shouldn't be.

We are not the strongest or the fastest. We have no natural protection from the elements.
In any climate, we require some sort of covering for our hairless bodies. We are not naturally camouflaged. Our faces and skin shines in the night. Our eyesight and hearing are not superior to most other animals.
We cannot swim without a lot of effort. Nature has given us no special advantage in the water.



We do not reproduce quickly or easily. It takes nearly a year to foal a human, and during that time women are vulnerable in many ways.
Our children require at least another 4 years before they can keep up with a walking pace. During that time, even animals much smaller than a child can kill them; and they are susceptible to many maladies.

It takes another 8 years by most estimations for the child to become productive. The child becomes productive about the time they can conceive more children, which seems like a weakness in the natural plan itself.

Broadly, what made humans the top of the food chain are two factors: 1) society, and 2) tools.
What one person can imagine, another can build. Whether we are talking about a rake or hoe, or a machine to take us to the Moon.
But even that advantage cannot happen unless we are in some sort of society. The myth of the loner, the self sustaining man, is just that - a myth. Without the support of other humans, an individual is easy prey for most of nature.

One of the products of imagination was money - a means of transferring value from one product or idea to another.
Money has proven as valuable to human nature as language, the wheel, law, agriculture, or even civilization itself. Civilization is just another product of our imagination, after all.

Indeed, humans now live in a world of our own imaginations.
We are our own dream world. If you look around you, there is nothing in sight other than plants and the ground that is not the product of someone's imagination and someone else making it into reality.
We have even tamed the plants and the ground.

Another of our inventions is war.
When one group of humans came to think it necessary, we gather together to force ourselves on another group of humans. And we have made this into an art.

All throughout the history of civilization, war has formed and reformed our world, adding more and more to every civilization.

Can we find the same power of imagination to overcome the challenges we face? As oblique as history is on the subject, there is ample evidence we can.

Paul