Why such a waste?
August 16th
Again, that was one of those books which I wanted to put down after the first 50 pages. There was too much technical and scientific talk with tables and diagrams and confusing acronyms regarding the basics of genetic research. I persevered and the other 3/4 of the book was richly rewarding. It is a great and concise primer on the development of the human brain from the time of our common ancestors with other primates to modern developments of the Homo sapiens mind. And that w an extremely perilous journey to the point where we are right now. Well, some of us — I still consider most of the politicians and religion peddlers and journalists as (at best) half-brain personas.
One thing I read in this book bothered me a lot. It has to do with changing and increasing the brain size through all the different evolutionary steps. It started with 400 cubic centimeters around 4,000,000 years ago, increasing with small steps to about 1500 cubic centimeters around 60–70,000 years ago and then DECREASING to the current 1250–1300 cubic centimeters. The growth from 400 to 1500 cubic centimeters is quite unusual because it doesn’t relate to increased intelligence. The stone tools used during that time show very little advancement, only some refinement. There was no language through all this time, and ergo — no consciousness. There was no art or development of artificial shelters or changes to group hierarchy. And then a curious thing happened — as our brains started to decrease in size, humans started to develop language and art and consciousness and a sedentary way of living with agriculture and power structure and religion and money.
But more curious is this question — why through evolution our brains were increasing in size, when there were no evolutionary benefits to it? Why there was a development of an internal organ that needs to be well protected and one that uses so much energy that carnivorousness had to be invented to keep it satisfied, without the increase in size translating to an increase in intelligence? Why was nature so wasteful in developing modern humans and our brains? Nature and evolution don’t favor extravagant spending of calories and energy on something that is rarely and only minimally used. That size came in handy once modern human consciousness was developing, but nature couldn’t have such an outlandish idea beforehand, right? Why develop something that might be useful only millions of years in the future?
And we still don’t use all the brain power we theoretically have. And our understanding of how brains work is still a work in progress. And we are not even close to understanding nature and development and varieties of our consciousness. And we might never get there since we need to use our brains and consciousness to understand their nature, and they might like to keep some secrets from us. And how would we know if our brains and minds are truthful with us?
