Evolution obstructed!

As we move into more automated homes and jazzy home theater systems, are we cutting ourselves off from a very essential component in our environment called Nature? The more we lock ourselves into our rooms, the less resistant we become to diseases.

Isn't a construction labourer more resistant to common cold and fever than I am? Is a guy richer than me and one who's not seen or felt anything of nature less resistant to virus and bacteria than I am? As we go through our so-called economic 'evolution' the less resistant we become to changes in nature. Weather changes inflict diseases, change of water cause colds and fevers all over. A guy who lives in India is quite resistant to diseases and pollution. When you take him and put him in an environment where everything around him is more protected like say in the US or Australia, he's doing great while he's there. But the moment he returns to India - he needs mineral water, he gets bronchial diseases and can't step out in the traffic! What's happened to his body's ability to fight the disease?

In the animal world, there's no concept of medicine. How does an animal survive a disease? I guess, only the fitter ones survive? The weaker ones are eliminated gradually and what you have is a gene pool of strong individuals! As the genetic pool keeps its variety and strength, it aids in evolution. Over centuries and millennia, the need to perform some particular activity lead to some adaptations and consequently evolution. In the human world, we have successfully prevented this from occurring!

The invention of Penicillin was a revolution indeed. It was a revolution that prevented many deaths at that time. But, the bacteria we were fighting got stronger! Today, penicillin is useless. The dosage of antibiotics have increased - so have the strength of many of these antibiotics. But, what's happened to our bodies? What's happening to our WBCs which are supposed to fight anything external? Weakened! By what? By our own action of cutting ourselves off from the rest of our planet!! And fighting every damn problem with external medicines.

Today we have WBCs which can't do anything on their own. Whether it's a skin acne or common cold or headache, there are scores of people who love to chew their antibiotics and 'just get rid of the damn disease'. Hello, what happened to your patience? The next time the same bacteria would've learnt to survive that stupid drug. Next stop? Stronger anti-biotic!!

Imagine a completely different situation. I'm talking about a world without drugs and medicines. Our WBCs would've become stronger? Result? Stronger lot of humans. So that's the evolution we've arrested on the biology front.

Now, we have automated accounting and counting. The human mind slowly loses its ability to think. As we get greater to automated lifestyles, the human mind draws a mental map of familiarity. And what happens when this mind is taken out of its familiar territory? Chaos! Insecurity! Take the simple example of the art of counting and mental arithmetic. Growing up in India, the best exposure to arithmetic came from the neighbourhood grocery shop. The kanaku pullay or the accounts guy always seemed to have a way with numbers. Today with automated cash registers and billing systems taking control of the world of arithmetic, even simple addition and subtraction has become quite an arduous task for the mind.

Automated lifestyles prevent evolution of the second kind - of the mind! If everything is so well taken care of by the system in which we live, what does the mind do? It wanders into so many feelings and thoughts. As we grow into emotional islands, we start suspecting everybody of deceit! Anger and frustration grow ! Alas, that is the evolution of the mind obstructed!