Human’s Descent of Evolution & History

January 2022

Written by Instructor Liam Vander Wyk

We are the most powerful species on this planet. That goes without argument. Any contestion to this point is absurd. We have removed ourselves from the natural cycle that Gaea intended and only death keeps us from being Gods. Antibiotics, industrialism, governments, domestication, philosophy; we have secured ourselves a position so high in the natural order of the universe we are unharmed by anything and consider only ourselves. Yes, sharks and bears can maul us, but they cannot topple civilizations and systematically murder us. We perceive ourselves as the harbingers of justice and the culmination of intelligence. As a species, we have achieved perfection. Any contestion to this point is rational.

Evolution is the result of bottle-necking. Stressors to a population promote advantageous traits; survival of the fittest. Humans have not undergone any genetic development for some 100,000 years and history is proof enough that we are not without stress. Thus, our supposed perfection. Yet, we are different from the humans 100,000 years ago. We are more advanced and articulated. It is in our environment we find change. Humans’ feats are defined by our use of tools and technology.

One of the most prevalent examples of this being World War I. Some of the biggest technological leaps in history all happened within the span of two decades. Planes, radios, cameras, chemical weapons, motorized transportation. All things developed on account of the Great War, aptly named due to its global stress. Going back even further, the tale of Okinawan Kobudō is also testament to our evolution. The story tells of a samurai clan taking away Okinawan farmers’ weapons because of restrictions placed by the Japanese government during the Meiji Era. We are our own stressors. Humans are our worst enemy, and without those like Hitler, like Genghis, without Ivan The Terrible, all notoriously infamous people, we would not be better.

The farmers of Okinawa adapted. They developed a style of Martial Arts relying on the tools and equipment they carry for farming to fight back and reclaim their lifestyle. We evolve through our environment. We change how we interact with the world. This is our march towards perfection.

Whether the Okinawan story’s continuity holds true in the books of Martial Arts historians doesn’t invalidate the point being made. It serves the knowledge that we are most afraid of each other, we distrust one another, and we fight. This is something we all know, history and literature prove this. So, the question raised is what self-imposed tragedy will befall the human race, and what will the future of humankind look like after the dust has settled? After we’ve systematically murdered and toppled civilizations, how much further will we find ourselves from the natural order?