SPECIES

Being a science student the most interesting chapter I have studied in my 12th std was regarding Darwinism. I always wondered how we are linked to the apes?

It was surely uncomfortable when I thought about it for the first time, like how do you answer when someone asks you: - 'what did your family traditionally do?' Answer: - 'well, hang around the trees; you see my forefathers were monkeys'.

  To speak only scientifically the statement is quite true because if we compare the ape gene pool with ours (human) the there is almost 95% data redundancy.

  How do we interpret the statement? It practically means we are no better to the apes. But on second thought we are not quite alike either. So now negating the above mentioned similarity posses its own set of interesting questions like: -
 
 1. What is the hallmark of being 'human'?
 2. What is it that makes us really 'human'?
 3. Why are we successful?
 4. What ensures that we keep on propagating our species despite of   evolutionary pressures?

  There could be more but these are what struck at the very first go.
  
  These questions sound too intellectual, philosophical and may be too taxing to the human brain, but it's not the matter that is complex except that it is unusual. We normally agree to facts without challenging them, so when posed by a fundamental query it seems, challenging something too pious to violate.

  So let's analyze one by one.

  1. What is the hallmark of being 'human'?

   The answer is quite simple, yet noteworthy 'the remaining 5% of different genes'. It's just how we have been able to express these different genes to develop a completely new organism, 'Homo Sapiens Sapiens'.



  2. What is it that makes us really 'human'?

    It's our ability to feel, to perceive things multidimensionally, to analyze situations quickly, and to think of answers, to think of more questions, find answers to them too and build logic so strong that it is transformed into a reflex arc.
   The most quintessential aspect of human nature is 'curiosity'. We almost always do things basically due to curiosity. To satisfy curiosity with dogged efforts by delving to the depth of the matter is the exact other side of the 'curiosity' coin.


  3. Why are we successful?

 We may think that if all the points have been previously noted this question is nothing but repetition.

  No, not so. You see thinking from different angles, being curious and satisfying curiosity only does not ensure existence. The major reason for our success has been 'application of thought'. It means we are the only specie to have not only continuously 'invented', 'innovated', 'improvised' things but also probably the best ones to have reinstated what we call 'teamwork'.
  The outcome has been utter resilience to vanish from the ecosystem.

   
  4. What ensures that we keep on propagating our specie despite of   evolutionary pressures?

  It is important to be resilient, but how do we ensure we remain so?
There is seemingly mundane yet elegant answer to this: - 'Adapt'.
Adaptability has been the backbone of human success.

Here is where we demarcate ourselves as 'humans'.

All the points we have seen like curiosity, perseverance, inventions, innovations to teamwork when used harmoniously and applied at the right time gives us what we call adaptability.

 No wonder why Darwin himself gave the essence of his theory of evolution as: - 'Survival of the Fittest'.  

  Yes, for a very long time I have been repeating something most of us would have by hearted to pass 12th.But its time to prove we are humans.

Time for some basic thinking to be done.

I pose this entire matter as question to you all; give the best possible application of this matter.

There is of course an interesting link to what we do now and how we do it?

If you can answer it possibly you can learn how to be a human again, if you give up (very un-human to behave) I will gladly write the answer, but till then give it a shot.

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Dhairyasheel Patil

MBA- I, (IMERT)