Evolution among us

I like to learn from history to explain the things happening around us. I feel that many lessons from past ages can still be applied today and tomorrow if you take the time to apply them properly.

What older lesson is there than that of evolution? It’s always applied to the context of biology and how we have arrived at this current juncture. 

Well, I like to see evolution as a tool of analysis and apply it to more than biology, juxtaposing it against revolution. When I do, I see that we’re evolving on a global scale in so many ways. Our judicial and financial systems grow to adjust to the increasing globalisation and amazing technology that’s now prevalent.

Evolution describes mass extinctions as environments and ecosystems change, and the creatures and food chains that depend on them are replaced by new ones adapted to newer ways of life.

Archaeologists are coming to accept that dinosaurs died out over hundreds of millions of years as multiple changes to the environment occurred that they couldn’t adjust to. 

Yet crocodiles and frogs apparently survived unscathed. They were built to survive. What’s special about them?

We aren’t completely sure, but in the case of the crocodile, their cold-bloodedness, which allows them to survive almost a year on just one meal, would be a distinct advantage against warm-blooded creatures that typically feed every day.

For me, the relevance to legal and financial situations such as markets is that all the models on which these and all other systems depend relate to the environments and, in effect, ecosystems that they have been designed to support.

Well, there have been so many political, ideological, technical and social changes throughout history, particularly in recent years, that the environment that everything exists in is just changing so fast that it’s threatening to change ecosystems faster than they’re able to adapt.

Entire markets, such as software and hardware, are based on business models that now, with open source and cheap production methods, seem archaic, even anachronistic. For me, it truly feels like we’re entering an exciting new era simply because people can adjust faster than organisations and policies, so the natural order and food chain can’t keep up.

By food chain, I mean large markets with entrenched monopolies. The holes in the old business models are becoming increasingly apparent, and the justification for the status quo is constantly challenged. 

Just like the large swathes of private land that were given over to the public in the UK around the 1900s, land that was once off-limits to only a few is now open to all to enjoy. Closed markets such as the phone industry, news, and others are now being opened up, and barriers to entry are changing. 

This means a different food chain and natural order is emerging and it’s totally fascinating being around to see it happen. Mainly because things are so open now

Further reading

• Evolution ‘began before there was life on Earth’, study suggests
• Experiment Evolved Multicellular Life In Just 600 days:
  • In an oxygen-poor environment, multicellular life evolved. Follows the oxygen science I am learning. 
• Avalon Explosion: Life on Earth Didn’t Arise As Described in Textbooks;
  • The Avalon explosion demonstrates that multicellular life first proliferated when there was less oxygen, not more, which overturns previous thought.
  • We know that animals and humans must be able to maintain low concentrations of oxygen in order to control their stem cells and, in so doing, develop slowly and sustainably. With too much oxygen, the cells will develop and mutate wildly and perish in the worst case. It is far from inconceivable that this mechanism applied back then,” concludes Christian J. Bjerrum.
• Turing patterns, 70 years later Alan Turing’s seminal paper on morphogenesis describing a mechanism to explain the patterns observed in nature