From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Wed Aug 07 2002 - 19:40:13 MDT
Lee Corbin also wrote...
> The fact that people will sacrifice for "the cause", for the sake
> of a waitress in a strange restaurant, and so on, would if
> we aren't careful completely obliterate the notion of *self*.
Yes, and from that realization one gains a sense of enlightenment (or at
least I do).
My ego wants very much to believe it is somehow in the design or plan of
nature that "I" should exist and persist as an individual. However a proper
understanding of evolution reveals that nature's only real design is that my
*genes* should exist and persist. My physical person exists only as a
vehicle through which these genes can persist and move into the next
generation.
This idea of "self" that you and I harbor in our physical brains is also a
very convenient tool for our genes, because a gene is more likely to
propagate if its host organism has the ability to think and self-reference.
If nature and evolution were about the survival of "you" and "me" then we
would never grow old and die. We grow old and die because we become useless
equipment after the age at which we are likely to have finished rearing
children. In fact we may be programmed genetically to self-destruct to
provide more resources to the young.
-gts
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