NATURE'S ARROW

The "Nature as teacher" and "Nature as Bible" concepts in some minds bring up this question: "Can it really be that -- as Darwin's Survival of the Fittest suggests -- the stronger is supposed to dominate, maybe even enslave or kill, the weak, like an alpha wolf within his pack, or when the wolf pack falls upon a herd of grazing deer?"

That line of reasoning overlooks a basic feature of Nature as manifested here on Earth: The evolution of Life on Earth has shown direction. With the definiteness of an arrow shot at a target, that direction was from among simple beings mechanically behaving as their genes dictated, toward us humans, of whom some of us some of the time can think and feel beyond the dictates of our genes.

Over many millions of years, in mid flight, Nature's evolutionary arrow passed through a landscape populated with organisms like reptiles, birds and early mammalian species who displayed behavior that sometimes was complex -- as building a nest of a certain kind -- but behavior still guided by innate impulses rooted in genetic coding. Among the most powerful such gene-based, innate impulses were and are the sexual drive, and the urges for status/identity, and territory/property.

Especially nowadays it's worthwhile to think clearly about which features of our thinking and feeling derive from genetically based innate drives -- the urges for sex, status, property, etc. -- and which are rooted in the higher mental domain reserved for humans. That's because at this moment in our history ever greater parts of humanity are misled by the "Survival of the Fittest" concept. They look at Donald Trump, for instance, see that he's a big winner in the sex, status and territory department, and decide that he's an exemplary being worth following and emulating.

But, Nature's arrow passed right through the evolutionary landscape featuring ever more aggressive competition for sex, status and territory, and continued beyond. Now the arrow is entering the domain of feelings and abstract thought liberated from genetic programming -- and there well may be other domains even beyond that.

To honor a winner in the sex, status and territory scene, while disregarding the significance of the thinking and feeling we humans are capable of, is to pervert one of Nature's most sacred teachings. To conduct our lives in harmony with what the Creator of the Universe has shown us She "wants" -- by sending Her arrow toward humans who can think and feel beyond the limits imposed by genetic programming -- is the highest goal a human can aspire to.