October 7, 2009

• The Evolution of Man (or Woman)

  I can remember when I was younger all the uproar about evolution and the fear of us being taught the “theory of evolution” in school.  At a young age I hardly ever gave the whole issue a thought.  I was raised in the Catholic church and I knew that we weren’t evolved from the slime of the earth or from monkeys or whatever the current thought is. 

  Then about ten years ago I was hired to teach science in a private Catholic high school and the issue came up again, only this time I did have to give it a bit of thought.  Actually more than a bit of thought, I had to think a great deal about evolution.  I had to be prepared to teach my students something concrete about this issue that was not only in line with the teachings of the Catholic church but also something that they could wrap their own intellects around.  Not so much that they could embrace my feelings about evolution but that they had to be able to draw their own conclusions.  I have probably already shocked those of you who are misinformed about the Catholic church or about what evolution really is.  Thinking that here is a self-proclaimed Catholic woman saying that she had an opinion about evolution that was more than “there’s no such thing and that’s it” which, it has been my experience, those who are misinformed think that all Catholics believe about this issue.

  On to what I have concluded about evolution and what I taught my students.  When we came to that chapter in the book I never even had them open the book.  I didn’t want the kids minds clouded by scientific terms and theories.  I wanted them to listen to what I had to say before we ever read what the intelligentsia had to say.  I taught them that to believe that we came from some pond scum or from some other species of animal, no matter how much that creature may resemble us physically, is intellectually ridiculous.  That was not what evolution meant nor was it what it was about.  But I do firmly believe in evolution on a greater scale.  I believe in the evolution of life, of society, of the heart, and the character, both of the individual and the collective.  I believe that without some kind of evolution, and for the better I might add, society and individuals slide backward into a lesser state, they devolve.

  Individually we evolve all through our lives.  As babies we evolve from selfish, self-centered creatures who are focused entirely on our mouths and stomachs.  This is necessity and nothing to fault us for but still it is true.  It is survival.  We must eat and therefore we seek to fulfill the urges of our stomachs by filling our mouths. 

  After that stage we evolve into little animals.  We can feed ourselves and we are ambulatory but we are totally unsocialized (a term that I despise but there it is).  We are incapable of interacting with others successfully on our own.  We still need our parents or others who are more evolved than we are to help us learn the tools necessary to survive in the world of other human beings.

  Once we have passed this evolutionary stage we slow down somewhat in our process and perfect our skills.  We, hopefully, move our focus outside of ourselves and onto others.  Near the end of our lives we do seem to devolve back to the early days of our childhood and become totally dependant on those around us.  Our focus again becomes our survival on an even more primative level.

   

  • 8:05 pm
  • 7 Comments