It’s Charlie D’s birthday, so I thought it fitting (pun intended) to do a quick review of the wonders of evolution. There’s been a lot of mud-slinging in the past 150 years, and one cannot escape the irony that evolutionary theory itself is involved in the very struggle for survival that it attempts to explain. And of course, understanding why religions fear and denounce evolution can be explained by evolution. Now that’s a theory! Let’s have a look at some of the finer points and what they mean for you. 

Evolution takes place on the gene level
None of this “survival of the fittest”. It is not the individual who struggles to survive but the individual genes inside him. This distinction is super, super important. Not only can helping someone lead to personal benefits in the life of an individual, it can benefit the common genes in both parties which will are helped to live on over generations. The closer the relation you have to the person you are helping the greater the genetic reward, and the stronger the innate drive to help. This also explains the love/hate relationships in so many families. On the one hand, you love them because you share the same genes, but on the other hand, you try to use them because you don’t share all their genes. Parents feel compelled to give to their kids, but are always expecting results inline with their wishes. Sibblings too have an innate love for each other but will always fight over toys and compliments. It is a constant back and forth of altruistic behavior and competition.

Biological evolution occurs when traits in individuals lead to improved genetic proliferation
Since humans got so good at manipulating their environment, physical traits no longer provided a big enough advantage to warrant changes to our DNA. As a result, we stopped physically evolving some 10,000 years ago. This means that our bodies were really best suited for life 10,000 years ago, including our brains. If you want to understand your brain, you’ll need to put everything in the context of life at that time. If you want to feel good and be happy, look into what was natural and fulfilling back then and you’ll be sure to feel a certain innate joy in partaking in those activities. Hint: physical activity, natural foods, contribution, sex, and achievement did a body good. Cheating, lying, there were no unhealthy foods, sitting on your ass all day was also not an option….but all these things did a body bad.

Evolution is not just a biological phenomenon
Actually, everything is evolving. Quanology (and other scientists) contends that evolution itself is simply a manifestation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. That’s right: entropy. That cool word you learned back in high school is actually the motor behind evolution. In its quest for equilibrium in an ever expanding universe, entropy is constantly looking for new ways to dissipate energy. And it gave evolution the job for living things. If Jesus is the son of God, then evolution is the son of entropy. That being so, the real goal of evolution is to dissipate energy and the genes which contribute best to the universe’s energy dissipation needs at the current moment in space/time will get to do their thing while the others die off. Right… It therefore happens to be that evolution doesn’t care how it fulfills the universe’s energy needs. It can do so with genes, but also other things, like cultures. Cultures evolve just like species evolve. Some traits get some cultures farther ahead than others. To find out what cultural traits fare best, you need only look at the most successful cultures in the world. Some are doing well and some are not. And the ones that are not will need to change… we don’t make the rules, we just follow them.

We are still involved in evolving
To continue from the last point, the good news is: we are still evolving. While we quit biological evolution (that was sooo 10,000 years ago), cultural evolution continues. See Quanology’s article An Introduction to Cultural Evolution. Every day we are learning new traits which will help us adapt to the fast changing environment we live in. And just like with biological evolution, these traits can be passed on to future generations.

Cultural evolution and biological evolution have different plans for you
Like having two parents who want different things for their child, biological and cultural evolution want different things for you. This will lead to bouts of confusion and frustration. It’s natural. You can’t make everyone happy. Can’t be the Spiritual Leader of a Generation and the owner of a Hedge Fund. But human creativity was spawned in trying to appease these two demanding parents. Morality itself evolved as a template for successful living on the cultural side of things. See Quanology’s article on The Evolution of Morality.

Men and women are playing the same sport but have different equipment
When God was handing out reproduction methods, humans must have been off watching Lost. Sexual reproduction, though a great way to end a game of ping pong, does not come without its share of pitfalls. Although it ensures that men and women must live together in a certain degree of harmony, its biological implementation ensured that they should seek completely different traits in a mate - with men focused on quantity and women focused on quality. And so male aggression was born. With women being so damned choosy about the men they reproduce with, men are forced to compete. This means, war, greed, crime, and bar fights. But also art, technology, interior design, gourmet cooking, and luxury automobiles.

The third layer is upon us
Biological evolution is the first layer in our existence, cultural evolution is the second layer, and the third layer is already here: digital evolution. Those jag-offs with the bluetooth headset in their ears are actually highly evolved individuals. They get it, and we will all soon emulate them. It freaks me out too but hear me out. Evolution is simply Mother Nature saying yes or no to a series of choices. These choices deal with genetic survival. She says yes, and a choice gets implemented. She says no, and it goes back to the drawing board. Nature has the ultimate say in what flies and what doesn’t - not the government, not the UN. If nature likes it, it’s gonna happen. And nature likes communication. Nature likes effectiveness - anything which ultimately leads to energy dissipation. The acceleration in technology is completely in line with the increasing needs of Nature to dissipate energy (as the rate of expansion of the universe increases). So nature loves technology. People doing three times as much work in a day is the nicest Mother’s Day present she could get. And at the end of the day, that stupid ear piece does allow you to call more people than a phone in your pocket. And this is just the beginning. Look at the incredible growth rate of the internet. The blogging engine this site uses is used all around the world and has facilitate the expression and compilation of unprecedented loads of garbage. There are technologies being developed right now that would blow your mind. It’s all happening so fast… The point of all this is that these technologies become extensions of its users. It’s all part of the same storyline: we adapted opposable thumbs to help us use tools better, we “adapted” spears to help us hunt better, and we will soon “adapt” chips in our brains to give us omnipresent computing power and globally integrated systems to guide our cultures.So, that’s evolution - 150 years old, and still evolving.

Note: Charles Darwin is certainly a historical giant. But, let’s face it, the time was ripe for humans to get what was going on around us. If he didn’t discover and detail evolution, someone else would have. In fact, someone else did: Alfred Wallace - Pete Best to Darwin’s Ringo Starr. Now, that’s not to steal his thunder - the glory is all Darwin’s. But let us not confuse Darwin as a person and a scientist with evolution as a theory. It was 150 years ago, the theory has since been adapted and tweaked, all for the better. Hell, Darwin didn’t even know about genes back then - and, as you see above, the differentiation to individual-level evolution is fundamental. For the sake of proper discussion, I’d like to try to leave his name out of it and focus just on the theory. I’m sure that’s what he would have wanted.

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“Money is what makes a man not funny”.

Just saw Niall Ferguson interviewed on the Colbert Report. He says “anything can be money”. True that. But I’d like to clarify what money is. Money is energy. If that sounds a little “New Age”, forgive me. I’ll give it legs. Wait. Let me stop real quick to eat a hand-full of nuts.

…2 minutes later.

Ah, that’s better. You see, I can’t think straight if I’m too hungry. The little mouse in the wheel in my brain doesn’t have enough energy to run. So I need to eat - recharge the batteries with food. And food, is of course, energy. Not just “converted to energy”, it is energy. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity states that mass and energy are interchangeable. In the example of food, let us not forget that the food we eat is digested and broken down into sugars which act as a sort of fuel for our bodies. Coincidentally, fuel is a form of energy… How do we get food? How do we get fuel? We buy it, with money, which is energy. 100,000 years ago there were no grocery stores and no gas stations. So, people had to hunt and gather for food. And they had to gather dried wood to burn fires. And you bet they were hungry after all that hunting and gathering. Damn straight. All that work takes a lot of energy… They didn’t have money, but they had energy (which they got from food, which is also energy). Manual labor is energy. Farmers harvest crops and then sell them to me for money. I would harvest them myself, but I don’t have the energy or the time. Now time is not energy. It is a forum where energy plays out it’s roll - a stadium, if you will, where energy sings its set of rock ballads. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, money.

Money is Energy
People constantly fight over money. Coincidentally, they also always fight over energy, over power. There is a never-ending and continuous power struggle going on in the world. All human interactions on every scale are ultimately power struggles, fights for energy. They become harmonious when the parties involved both perceive they are getting more energy than they are putting into it. And it’s entirely possible that both parties are getting “richer”. Life is not a zero-sum game. But if one or both parties perceive they are losing energy, a fight will ensue. Don’t believe me? Try this. Guys: don’t go to work for the next month. And gals: don’t cook dinner for the next month. If you’re horribly offended by these two stereotypical examples from 1953, feel free to substitute anything you do with regularity that your spouse or partner relies on. It won’t take long before your significant other brings this failure to your attention. If it lasts too long, you’ll get a fight - a fight over commitment and responsibilities. But what lies underneath is energy. If you don’t go to work, there is no money and the two of you will take a step back in life. Why? Because money is energy and you are trying to accumulate (and then dissipate) energy. If dinner is not cooked, then you may not eat. If you do not eat, then you lose energy… Get it? So both parties are trying to gain energy and rely on the other to help them along. Otherwise, why are you together? You may very well enjoy each other’s company, but once the courting phase is through and the deal is sealed, the work begins. And just like in a business, if the one party is not living up to the agreement, there will be an issue. And relationships ultimately have lots of issues. That’s OK. The good relationships get those issues resolved.

Everything is energy
I’m not going to pretend to be a physicist, but most accounts seem to agree that matter (excluding the dark kind) is made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of particles, and on and on until you get to these ridiculous scientific entities like quarks and shit. For more info, see here. Fah sho, there is much the average person does not know about physics, yet physics governs everything you do. Ultimately you can’t understand yourself until you understand physics. And I am sad to say, we will probably never really understand physics. It’s just too complicated. It dangles on the outskirts of human intelligence. The smartest motherfuckers in the world don’t understand physics completely - and they’re physicists. No matter. (Pun was not intended, but it just goes to show: there are some freebies in the universe). The point is, everything you do is somehow tied to the Laws of Physics. It’s just a question of connecting the dots from The Laws of Thermodynamics to “buying a lottery ticket”.
Tis true that everything (ie, matter) is equal to energy only through the eyes of Relativity, not Newtonian physics. But try throwing out the distinction and looking at everyday things as if it were energy. What do we “have” which could be thought of as energy, or even as money? What things, other than money or goods, can be valuable? Think about this: Money is only valuable in relation to what you can do with it. It’s just paper. Gold is the same. Everything is the same. If you have a million dollars in the bank and then inflation goes up 10,000%, you can no longer do much with that million. So the value is not inherent in anything, the value is in the ability to do something with it. Nothing has value unless you can do something with it*.   The value of money (or anything) is strictly related to your ability to dissipate energy with it.  And you can dissipate energy with money, but also with other things. Let’s take a look at some more energy dissipaters…

Thoughts
Yes, some good thoughts are worth money. A good idea may be worth money. In effect, the song American Pie was nothing more than a “good thought”. Keith Richards, and numerous other artists, claim that songs just “come to them” - they “found them”, or God writes them and they just heard it from him. Like finding a pretty stone on the beach. That stone may be worth money. So is the riff to Satisfaction. In that sense we see a thought as having value, having energy.

Thinking styles
Thinking style can be very valuable. It is shown that certain ways of thinking lend themselves to greater output and effectiveness. And yes, an effective thinking style is something you can acquire. Something you can invest in - put energy into in hopes to get more energy back. And something you can transfer - both positive and negative thinking styles will rub off on those around you. These italicized words ringing any bells? That translates to green, my friend.

Belief systems
An empowering belief system also pays well these days. The belief system that includes “you can accomplish anything you put your mind to” won the editor’s choice award over long-time rival “life’s a bitch and then you die”. Believing one over the other will have a profound effect on your effectiveness. This belief system is not tangible, yet it translates into tangible things: money, a good job, a good relationship, a good life. What’s more, it’s one of the few things of value you can pass on to future generations which is not taxed. Think of it: invest now in an empowering belief system and watch your value (your GPP) go up and you can treat it as a tangible asset which can be passed on to your kids (kids largely take on the belief system of their parents) so they can enjoy the benefits as well.

Status
Have status will travel. Any son of a former president can attest to this. Status, just like any other form of energy, can be increased or it can be wasted. Win the World’s Strongest Man contest and your status will increase, and you’ll be able to do more. Doors will open up for you, people will buy you dinner, athletics companies and shampoo brands will offer you sponsorships. All these perks serve one goal only…(dissipating energy - just checking in case you are totally missing the theme of this article, and website…). Get caught backstage injecting steroids with your Swedish rival Hans and your status may fade.

Location
Locations too have energy. You can do more in New York City than in Muncie, Indiana. And big cities dissipate tons of energy. By the sheer fact of being in a city, you have more value than by being in the middle of nowhere. Want to increase your wealth? Take a bus to New York. I always feel great to go to a city and feel re-charged when I leave. There is so much going on and you feel the power and the vibe and you feel like you can do anything. And indeed, you have a better chance of doing anything in a big city.

Now there is a slight twist to this: being in the majestic arms of nature also feels good. It feels good because there is a lot of energy being dissipated and you feel connected to it. It is indeed a spiritual feeling. You may not be doing the dissipating, but it’s happening all around you…and it’s wicked cool.

Potential vs Kinetic Energy
As you may recall from 8th grade science class, energy takes on two forms: potential energy, energy being used; and kinetic energy, energy stored up waiting to be used. The examples above are all potential energy - they give you possibilities to dissipate more energy but they do not necessarily do so. What still bothers me in this whole theory is the transferability of it all. See, in life, you dissipate energy, then you die. Money can sit in a bank account as potential energy, and when you die, it will maintain its energy level. Thoughts and belief systems too can be transferred to the people around you. They can be transferred to your children, and in that sense, they too maintain their energy level. But what if you have thoughts with high energy levels but die before you do anything with them? Is the energy gone? Can’t be. Energy can’t disappear, it can only be transferred. Sure, you will rot, and that’s an exercise in energy dissipation, but you will not rot any better than someone with dumb ideas. Any help out there? I’ll try to answer my own question. All these things have a certain potential value, but since something is only valuable to the extent that you can do something with them, they hold little value at the moment they are in your head. Taking them to the outside world is when they really gain value. Maybe that’s why it’s such a “high energy process” to write, or to share your thoughts with someone. They’re all nice and safe in your head, but the real guts come from bringing them into the world. I was very nervous the first time I wrote a blog article. It felt very strange and vulnerable. But my thoughts gained value once they were shared**.

Ergo, money is everything. To say that money is simply an exchange for goods or services is missing the real story. If thoughts and skills could be transferred with money, they would be. You may freak out at the idea of “downloadable mind-sets” 200 years from now where high school basketball players can upload Michael Jordan’s game face, ie his set of thoughts as he plays. As technology progresses, the distinction between energy and money will slowly disappear. We all can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future when money disappears all together, and a new form of currency will have to take its place and the value of everything will be determined by how effectively it will dissipate energy.

* That Picasso hanging on my wall is valuable since I get to look at it. And somewhere in the process of evolution, someone deemed this a high-energy activity

** Yes, we can all debate the actual value of these thoughts. Remember, “good and bad” are fictitious connotations. There is only valuable and invaluable. Some thoughts may be good but if nothing is done with them (maybe nothing can be done with them) then they have no value, even if they are pulled out of your head and into the world.

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