05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 The Sad Evolutionary History of Humans

I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toi...
Folksonomies: evolution big history
Folksonomies: evolution big history
  1  notes

Come out of the wilderness as a brute, filled with terrors, and constantly subject to a cruel world.

18 MAR 2012 by ideonexus

 Pride in Evolutionary Ancestry

How I hate the man who talks about the 'brute creation', with an ugly emphasis on Brute. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of ...
Folksonomies: evolution enlightenment
Folksonomies: evolution enlightenment
  1  notes

Cummings takes pride in descending from arboreal ancestors and distant jellyfish.