EVOLUTION

A living beings need to perform many tasks to meet their daily physiological needs that keeps him in the fragile line of life. The more efficient the body is to resolve its tasks, more favourable conditions for competing in advantage in the struggle for survival. 300 thousand years ago, a Neandertal had to go well in performing some tasks , such as hunting , so it could give him favourable conditions to compete on advantages in other important tasks, such as to achieve a healthy partner to ensure the transmitting of his genes in future generations and accomplish his biological legacy.

In modern times, we do not need to get out of the house with bow and arrow to ensure our lunch, but we must work to ensure the money for the supermarket. The biological purposes do not change, we continue fighting for our natural resources to ensure the body stable ; what changed was only the tools. Also today, the people who better develops his tasks , such as hunting, or working, is the one who will probably get the best results (wage , salary) , and thus it will assemble better conditions to compete for survival and prosperity . In this new game, with the same purposes and different biological tools, the skill and ability of the body to extract its resources of the environment still determining their success or failure in the fight for survival.

Two factors determine the success or failure of the body: the genetic factor and the environmental factor. The genetic factor little changed in our scale of time and we do note have control over it. Moreover, the environmental factor, it is malleable, plastic and we can manage it for positive or negative during our current experience.

The genetic factor is easy to see with the trivial example of giraffes. Millions of years ago, a random genetic change expressed in the giraffe, a long neck, which allowed them to reach the remaining foliage at the top of the trees , in this way they could get food easier than the short neck giraffe , increasing their chances of survival. Such that , in course of time, the long neck giraffes have been prospered and the short neck giraffe had been extinguished. With human being , the analogy is the same, but the random changing genetic expressed a nervous system more developed than other species, enabling us to solve problems more effectively, such that the Homus sapiens realized that using a piece of stick  could also reach the fruit on top of the trees , to defend himself and hunt more efficiently than his competitors, putting an advantage in the struggle for survival .

But with the exacerbated growth of human population ( today 130 million people born in the world per year) and with limited natural resources, the Homus sapien found in his path a new enemy : himself . Against this new enemy, there is a battle more balanced because the opponent has the same genetic baggage and therefore the same biological arsenal . I mean , to have a brain in our modern fight it only guarantee an even in the struggle for survival. It may seem an exaggerating , to qualify another human as an opponent , even more to be unselfish is a unique mark from the human being , but just see the news today, or take a look at our neighborhood , we are surrounding us by walls .Who are we protecting from ?

If, in the current struggle, we are genetically even to our adversaries. How then, can we compete in advantage in the struggle for survival? . Simple, by the relation that we maintain with the environment. This relationship will determine if you will enhance, or atrophy our capabilities (guaranteed genetically) to abilities and skills that put us into real advantage in that fight . The more skilled and qualified we have been , more favorable conditions we gather for competing in advantage.

So if our relationship with the environment lead us to changes in the body, it is up to us to identify those relations and optimize them . That is, if you keep  unfavorable habits to maintain biological life (eg smoking and alcoholism) your body will disqualify , or get sicken putting us in a disadvantage in the fight for survival, on the other hand, if you keep habit that optimize the ability of your body (eg studying and practicing sports), you will aggregate better conditions to compete in advantage and probably you will prosper in you life . Today the struggle for survival, living or dying, may not be as well patent, but we can express it in another way: to have a better or worse quality of life.

So today , we will only get to evolve our biological tools through out reading, studying, learning, practicing sports, socializing and connecting to the positive sources , those can do better for us and for the world . The gene is random, We do not have control of our phenotypes , on the other hand the relationship with the environment is likely to control and choices and is where we have our chance to change for better or worse, let's not waste the precious heritage of living .

Happy 2008!

E Miyake