Some of the pressures which are present that would tend to select out the more intelligent individuals are wars, famines, and other natural disasters. It seems reasonable to conclude that a more intelligent person might find creative or adaptive ways to survive a famine, while those of lesser intelligence would be at greater risk. During wartime, a more intelligent person would have a better chance of finding an effective way of avoiding death. He would at least have the competitive edge. Even in our society today, the military is concerned that the level of intelligence in the typical average enlistee is below normal. If so, during battle this would result in an increased death rate of less intelligent individuals. It would seem that the more intelligent a person is, the greater the chance of avoiding an accident during wartime or peace. Whether any or all of these arguments are valid is probably irrelevant to the extent that until now there has been a continual upward evolution of intelligence, and any reversal is likely to be temporary. There are any number of pressures that humankind will continue to face in the future, and which will be likely to continue the upward trend or increase of intelligence guided by natural selection.
It would seem as if intelligence has found a way to purposefully increase itself in an evolutionary upward direction. One of the major hypotheses of this theory is the concept that the evolution of intelligence continues, and will continue perhaps without limit, at least to the same degree that the universe is limitless. Intelligence has continued to evolve until now, and there are reasons which will be cited that might effectively argue that this evolutionary process will continue at a non-linear accelerated rate. If so, the implications are spectacular if not awesome. For example, several important questions can be asked, including:
| 1) Where will humankind be in one hundred years, one thousand years or ten thousand years?
|
| (2) As intelligence increases, does social consciousness increase as well?
|
| (3) Will humankind achieve higher states of consciousness as time passes? Will the ordinary state of consciousness, in a more evolved species, approach or become what we now can only occasionally experience in an altered state or "peak experience"?
|
Barbara Brown also sees the need for a purposeful "separate organizing mechanism" that is operating beyond chance. She believes that if the genes that determine which animal life survives are merely the result of chance, then it would seem that the more complex animal lifeforms would take proportionately longer to evolve rather than the reverse.25...Brown states that precisely because animal life does evolve in as orderly a manner as it does, and because the evolutionary process is accelerated in the evolution of complex forms, therefore a force or operational principle has likewise simultaneously evolved to influence the orderliness in which life is expressed.26
 | 
Netscape CTRL + D
MAC Command + D |  |
page 11.4
|
