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Viewed in the broadst perspective
This development represents the second major turning point in the course of events on this planet
The first occurred
When life originated out of in organic matter
After that momentous step
All living forms evolved by adapting to their environments
Thumumutation and natural election that is the genes adapted to the environment as was evident during the climatic upheavs of the playdocine
But with the appearance of humans
The evolutionary process was reversed
No longer did genes adapt to environment
Instead humans adapted by changing the environment to suit their genes
Today a third epical turning point appears imminent as humans growing knowledge of the structure and function of genes
May soon enable them to modify their genes as well as the environment
Humans and only humans have been able to create a made to order environment or culture as it is called the reason is that only humans can symbolize or invasion things and concepts divorce from here and now reality
Only humans left
And only they know that they will die
Only they have wondered about the universe and its origins about their place
In it and in the here
After with these unique and revolutionizing abilities
Humans have been able to cope with their environment without mutations
Human culture became the new non biological way of having fur in the arctic water storage in the desert and fins in the water
More concreently culture consists of tools
Clothing
Ornaments
Institutions
Language
Art forms and religious belies and practices
All these have served to adapt humans to their physical environment and to their fellow humans
Indeed the story of humanity is related in the following chapters is simply the story of a succession of cultures
That we have created from our paleopythic origins to the present day
When humans used their superior brains to change their environment
To suit their genes
Rather than we opposite as had been the prevailing padtery in the past
They made a quantum leap ahead of all other species on this planet
This explains why humans today are the dominant species after a modest beginning in africa's svevana
But this raises a puzzling question
Why are humans today seemingly incapable of controlling their environment
Which they ave themselves have created
Why are they discovering that their own homemade environment is becoming less and less fit for habitation
The answer seems to lie in the basic difference between genetic and cultural evolution
Genetic evolution functions
Viogene mutations which is favoured by selection become dominant in the population
In the biologically brief period of a few thousand years
This was the evolutionary path that led through the sucession of hominutes from australia piyfocus to homo epienons
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By contrast cultural evolution occurring through the introduction of new tools or ideas or institutions can change and has changed societies almost overnight
Witwitthe how steam power affective entire globe in the ninehundred th century
How the internal comvsation engine did likewise in the twentieth
And how nuclear power and computers are transformed our environment today so much
So that albert eyn owned us
That humanity now faces either new ways of thinking or unparalleled catastropgh
The key problem appears to be the time lag between technological change and the societal change is necessates the reason for the leg is that technological change usually is welcoming quickly adopt it
Because it improves productivity and living standards
Where as social change is commonly resistted
Because it requires self oppraial and adaptation
Which are threatening and uncomfortable
This explains
Today's paradox of humans acquiring more and more knowledge and being more and more able to change their environment
As they wish yet they're not being able to change their environment
To make it or livable in short our problem as a species is to balance our every expanding knowledge with wisdom in how we use that knowledge
We shall see the following chapters that learning how to balance knowledge and wisdom is becoming so urgent that as einstein as born as our future as a specious depends on the outcome
We shall see that this problem of balance has risen repeatedly throughout human history
And is rising today more frequently and urgently as our knowledge is growing with every increasing speed in our wisdom failing to keep up