In keeping with my theme of having more interesting thoughts when I'm asleep than when I'm awake, I woke up yesterday thinking about the evolutionary nature of ideas.
I think. in between dreams, I began to believe that there was some kind of 'Selfish Idea' theory parallel to Dakwins's 'Selfish Gene'. The Dawkins theory basically says (and I haven't read it, so this might be entirely wrong) we can think of evolution as genes trying to pass on their material. Human beings (and life in general) are the vehicles, allowing them to achieve this end. We're being used!
Anyway, in my sleep-addled brain, I must have thought that ideas were the same. I thought the human brain was merely the tools that ideas used to reproduce and grow. We are merely the vessels in which ideas live, devlop and reproduce. Pretty cool, huh?
Except it's bollocks, of course. When you're not drowsy in dreamland, it's obvious that it doesn't really work. Ideas couldn't exist without brains. Brains produce ideas. Ideas in one person aren't connected to those of someone else.
But it did get me thinking about ideas, and their evolutionary purpose. If we assume (and it's a big assumption) that humans are the only life forms to have ideas, and that animals act only by instinct, what benefit is it to our survival? Clearly ideas help us to thrive and improve ourselves, not only by giving us ways of achieving our basic needs, but in widening the possibilities of what we can achieve.
But in animals, the process seems to be a bit more shallow. Other lifeforms seem to evolve quite happily without ideas. I wonder why we needed them. It's almost as though evolution had taken us as far as it could by itself, and had to come up with a way to let us evolve ourselves. That's probably why humans are better than animals (and we are; don't let any animal rights person tell you you're worse than a duck, you're probably not). We're not just progressing linearly (is that a word), we're evolving outwards.
The side effect of this is we're aware of evolution, and are not so strictly constrained by it. We're arrogant now. We're all like, "Yeah, the Panda is shit, won't breed, and would have died out ages ago, but we're gonna keep it alive! Fuck you, God! We run the show now!".
Having said that, I'm sure this is all part of some higher-level evolution. It might be evolutionarily beneficial to fuck with evolution. It might even be beneficial to write this blog...
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Hey, everyone who likes Harry Potter, if you're tired of reading my foolish thoughts, go and read Lucy's fanfiction!
You can find it here:
http://ls269.deviantart.com
Her foolish thoughts are much more entertaining, well-written and beautiful.
Even if you don't like Harry Potter, she sometimes writes journal entries that will give you insight into her warped mind.
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We've been renting lots of films lately, so here are two quick reviews:
Seven Samurai
Excellent, funny, action-packed, revolutionary. Quite long though.
Superbad
Pretty good, generally funny, definitely not revolutionary, Michael Cera is great as usual, not enough tits for a teen movie.
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That's all for now. Actually, now that I think about it, Seven Samurai didn't have any tits in it, so it can hardly be called excellent...
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