Living and
working in Winters I don’t get an opportunity to drive much, I usually only get
in the car once a week and the extent of that drive is often just down to Vacaville.
I’ve always loved driving and I’m good at it too (if I do say so myself). I
started drivers training shortly after turning 15 and got my license the day I
turned 16. I’ve never been in an accident and my one and only speeding ticket
was when I was 18 during the Carter years when the maximum speed limit was 55
and I was doing 80 in my dad’s Mercedes. To me Driving feels natural, like the
car becomes an extension of my body even to the point where a lot of my actions
are “unconscious”, kind of like being on autopilot.
I know I’m not unique when it comes
to being one with the car and that’s what I want to reflect on today. Recently
on one of my drives I was deep in thought as I cruised up the 505 and was
thinking about human evolution. In particular I was thinking about the question
of how over our million plus years of evolution we humans developed the physical
and mental skills to do something like drive a car, something that’s only
become possible over the last hundred years.
How is it that my brain and body can
react to an action that is happening at over 10 times the speed that I could
normally run at? Where does the coordination come from to make a decision based
on something that’s happening a mile ahead? Why can I make a split second
decision without even thinking about it when something happens right in front
of me?
And that’s just me, an average human,
driving an average car. What about racecar drivers who are doing everything
even faster? Or for that matter what about flying? That takes the concept of driving
to a whole other level, it’s like going from two dimensions to three dimensions
by having to not only think about front and back but also up and down. How did
we develop that skill set? It’s not like our ancestors were riding around on
birds instead of horses.
Or maybe they were… what if
somewhere back down humanities evolutionary path our DNA combined with humanoid
visitors from another planet? That would probably give us the ability to do
things we wouldn’t have naturally evolved to do. OK, OK, just kidding. With the
modern science of DNA testing I think alien DNA would be a big red flag. I
would also hope that if we had been visited by aliens they wouldn’t have just
screwed us and left. But now that I think about it, that’s actually a fairly
common human trait.
But seriously, let’s get back to
human evolution. Some people worry that modern technology is changing too fast
for us to keep up or that children multi-tasking on computers and phones will
affect their brain development. I’m not sure about the short term effect of our
rapidly changing technology but I’m confident that humans will adapt. That’s
the thing about our evolutionary journey; it’s made us a very adaptable
species. It’s given us the ability to go from horse power to space flight in
the blink of an evolutionary eye.
Now I bet some of you are wondering
why I’m talking about evolution as a given and not considering God’s roll in
this. The simple answer for me is that the theory of evolution is backed by
empirical evidence and God is a product of faith. I personally believe in facts
not faith but that’s just me and I know I’m still in the minority.
I think that the reconciliation between fact and faith is the
next major evolutionary hurdle that humans must face if we are going to advance
and survive as a species. Especially since Faith is the driving force behind
most of the violent conflicts we still see in the world today, the conflicts
that could possibly cause our extinction. Also the science of Human history,
anatomy, and psychology is becoming almost indisputable in its explanation of
how and why we got here as a species.
My hope is that the more indisputable the science, the harder
it will be for rational thinking people to still believe in an all mighty
higher power and that the Human drive for knowledge and truth will win the race
against religions need to prove that “my God is the one God, or else”.
Oops, almost missed my exit, I shouldn’t fantasize so much
while I’m driving.
To view the column in it's original form go to page 11 of the following link. Winters Express 6/22/17
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