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Change for Change's Sake

We share this world with many who are fulfilled spiritually by their efforts to change the way others think.  While I have the tendency to condemn this practice, I believe that many of us progressive thinkers are getting a little ahead of ourselves these days in our desire to stomp it out, and we’re all paying dearly for it.

As an evolutionist, I believe this trait can be traced to a need to survive at some point in our history.  Here’s the recipe for human survival:  Large portions of faith and tenacity mixed with intolerance and a pinch of innovation.  All it took was one innovative person to start agriculture, but it took many to sustain the practice.

Nature's Puzzle

Millions of years ago, nature ran into a new problem. In its bag of tricks which allows a given species to carve out a niche on this planet, a new one emerged. In addition to size, strength, agility, instinct, vision, hearing and smell, new elements were added to this palette - elements that included intellect, reasoning and invention.

And so Nature's great puzzle came into being - a puzzle that has kept man perplexed for millennia. How does nature allow such an ability to evolve for survival purposes, and what is the true fertilizer for this ability? The answer to the latter part of the question is interest. Yes, nature had to make things interesting. Otherwise, a sentient being would never care enough to continue to thrive. As for the former, all of us are lucky enough to live in a time when nature is still figuring this part of the question out.

Have you ever seen an interested fish?  How long can you hold a dog's interest?  When you see a cat stalking its prey or playing with a toy for minutes at a time, is this really interest?

Human beings on the other hand have done amazing things - both good and bad - because of interest.