Evolution might be a myth!

Recently I heard from a rather entertaining Irishman that the probability of a big cat in an African conservation area catching prey is roughly the same as the probability of a pedestrian being knocked down by a vehicle in Britain. Not very high, in other words...

Intrigued as I was with the news, I rewound to about a week earlier, in the middle of our African safari, when we were spotting lions and lionesses by the dozen.


The image I had in my mind of the lioness, a 3-foot tall, 5-foot long 150 kg killing machine was a wee bit different than what we ended up encountering. We were expecting a fierce predator, intimidating to venture near, an animal in whose vicinity potential prey dare not tread. Thank you, National Geographic. What we saw in reality, though, was a completely different story. Lions and lionesses being nocturnal, normally rest during the day. That we expected. That they would look like cute stuffed animals, we did not!


Maybe they were habituated to humans, maybe they were plain bored, I can’t put my finger to the exact problem, but the fact is that they barely opened their eyes when our vehicle was 3 feet away from them! This behavior was universal too. Fearlessness? Maybe. We were still impressed with their demeanor (though that could be plain envy, I mean, sleeping all day long?), their grace, their carriage. Admittedly though, seeing 40-odd lions and lioness sleeping in the wild was a little disappointing.


Till that day.


So there we were, on our way out of Serengeti when we came across the most thrilling part of our trip, one that would stay etched in our memories for a long time. We spotted a bunch of lionesses, on the alert, and a pack of zebras in the distance. Creeping upto the herd, the primary lioness came in plain sight of the zebra herd around 20 meters from them. Zebras are either very brave or incredibly stupid. I mean, lionesses may be lazy, but they are apex predators! 10 meters. 5 meters. Nothing. It was only when the lioness started actually running full speed toward the zebras that they finally realized they needed to get away. And that they did in style, complete with a cloud of dust and all. The hunt failed and the lioness returned to ground zero, with the zebras observing from a safe distance.


Just then, a lone wildebeest in search of water, came skipping and hopping right into the area where the lionesses were. I mean, I have heard a lot about survival of the fittest, animal instinct, sharp sense of smell and hearing etc. The wildebeest demonstrated none of these signs of evolution. Two lionesses took strategic positions and gave chase. The wildebeest did the first intelligent thing of the morning by changing direction midway through the chase, thus escaping death by a whisker. Another failed hunt. That was two on two in the space of a half hour. Given the information that there are a few thousand lions in the East African conservation areas, I was wondering how they manage to catch anything at all! Of course, given the information on the probability of an actual kill, I put it in perspective and realized that just because these predators are primed to chase and kill doesn’t always mean successful kills – in fact, more often than not, the hunts would be fruitless (or animal-less).


Gives one some perspective on human work life…people are skilled in their own ways, primed to execute the job they are paid to do (ok, not all people, but this remains the assumption). But the actual “kills” that meet or surpass expectations are few and far between. These kills keep one alive (in a manner of speaking), but if they don’t happen for a long enough time, survival is threatened. People who make kills/scavenge on other peoples’ kills survive a bit longer. In time, we’re all weakened, unable to perform kills routinely enough, and have to make way for those who can.


How much have we really evolved?

It's all an illusion

Wise men, sages, philosophers, even the occasional misguided scientist, have all said this about life and everything material at some point or the other. I’ve read my fair share of books that talk about how everything around us is a product of our own imagination, we make our own reality, as we visualize, so we become, and so on.

One of the hardest hitting visualizations of a related theory, of course was The Matrix series. The only difference being that in the said movie, an external entity had created an illusionary world for human beings.

Recently, I read “Hypnotizing Maria” by Richard Bach, and as has been his habit, he made me sit up and carefully evaluate life as I know it. The book takes over where his “Illusions” left off, and leads us into a journey of life evaluation, which, I might add, is never pleasant. Questions like “who am I, really?”, “what is life, really?” etc, start cropping into one’s mind, waking one up from the carefully orchestrated slumber that one prefers to be in the state of.

Confusing, to say the very least, is my state of mind when I think of all this “illusion” business. Afterall, enough people in the world have written about it, the wise old men have spoken about it – surely there must be some truth to the concept, right? And then I look at my life – if I pick up a stick and hit myself really hard (let’s keep that hypothetical, shall we?), I’m pretty sure its going to cause me physical pain – very very real physical pain. Of course, the prophets of the “illusions” theory would say that I have been bombarded with suggestions since I was a child, accepting that if a stick hits me, it will cause the sensation of pain, and further, that pain is an unpleasant situation. They would say that these suggestions that I have accepted, are now so deeply ingrained in the fiber of my being that it is almost impossible to “un-accept” them. Or as Morpheus tells Neo in my favourite movie, “we never free a mind once it has reached a certain age – the mind has trouble letting go”. But the plot is that Neo does manage to let it go – takes a bit – namely, him dying, but he does…

And this brings me to my next question – does it need to take something as drastic as the end of the physical life in order to realize that life’s an illusion? Can’t say about that, but once I die, my life wouldn’t be very real to me, will it?

All in all, though I am still undecided about how illusionary life is, next time someone suggests this theory to me, I’ll probably pinch them quite hard and ask if it felt real…really, only so that they don’t get me thinking!