How Will We Evolve?

Léo Azambuja

A friend of mine showed last month an article on how the British were about to vote on allowing babies to have DNA from three parents. He and others were shocked that this was about to happen. I even heard the name Hitler.

The logic was that a baby would have less chances of inheriting genetic diseases if certain genes were swapped with genes from a third person. I didn’t really think much of this, as my initial reaction was, “why not adopt?”

However, it sparkled a debate about genetically modified humans.

How are we going to evolve? If Darwin’s theory is correct, adaptability is what leads to evolution.

However, while animals adapt to their environment, evolving over time, our environment is just making us more susceptible to failure as a species.

We adapt to financial markets, wars, famine, mass killings, religious conflicts and a technological revolution that is making us dumber and dumber.

We have poisoned the Earth in the last 100 years more than any other animal species has in 4.5 billion years.

And we poison ourselves too, with processed food and tons of medicine that treats symptoms rather than causes. We poison the vegetables and fruits we put in our bodies.

We torture animals needlessly. We make them live miserably, cramped in small spaces and in inhumane conditions. Then we butcher them and eat them.

I watched a comedy show not too long ago, where the comedian joked that in order for him to survive, an animal must die every day. Well, it’s probably more than one animal. I’m guilty too, I admit it. It’s not just the food, it’s the shampoo, soap, clothing, oil and the list goes on.

Are we really that superior to other species, and yet we cannot see what we are doing? Is it OK, just because we can? If so, if an alien race took us hostage and did the same to us, would it be OK?

If the human race wants, suffering can end today, right now, for everyone, including animals. All we need is compassion. Sounds cliché, but it’s that simple. Compassion will lead to a lot smarter decisions, about the environment and about us.

My only hope is that our children will be smarter than us. Yet, I don’t see it happening. We have become so dumb and detached from the universe around us that we might have to experience a near-extinction to realize what we have — or what we have lost. We are heading that way, undoubtedly.

And that’s why when I saw that article about babies with genetic information from three parents, I said that the only way we might evolve is to genetically engineer smarter humans.

Who wouldn’t want to have smarter kids?