Life As Evolution

By Rima El-Boustani. Rima, 30, lives in Szczecin, Poland. Please read her article and leave thoughts and comments below.

Life is no less interesting from being equipped with an enormous variety of people. While time and space may vary and change, the fundaments of human psychology remain the same. We have heterosexuals, homosexuals, women, men, children, babies, the intelligent, the unintelligent and all manner of criminals. People are consistent in their psychology – everyone fits into and is defined by some category or other; their only exception being the nature of the tools at their disposal.

The only change that may befall the person is their growth from child to adulthood and adulthood into old age. Regardless, growth is both constant and dependent on the confines of the world each person inhabits. This can be different for each person – some people live with riches, while others are poor. The list goes on. However, it seems clear that with or without trying, people must become better, more advanced versions of themselves as time progresses.

People must gain wisdom – even if only by grace of experience – as they age and mature. For example, a child begins by knowing nothing, but ends fluent in at least their mother tongue – hence they become something they weren’t in a manner of speaking. This example can be furthered to showcase how prior knowledge can affect future knowledge – essentially, because languages grow and new words are introduced, someone speaking English in the sixteenth century would have a very different vocabulary to someone speaking in the twenty-first century. They both speak English and they both start at nothing but the self they are is different based on the passing of time having changed ideas and things. Location or space also affects a difference of self. Someone living in India is more likely to speak Hindi instead of English or Dutch, for example.

To further this example, in general, people in India must partake in a poorer life than in England or America, despite inhabiting the same Earth at the same time. Thus, they have two different experiences that exist parallel to each other. As these ideas show, life itself exists in parallel and in perpendicular with time and space. So, too, does change. However, life and change can also be considered as a random act. For example, an idea can permeate into something real from no prior background existing, such as the computer, and a person with no access to wealth may become rich at random, perhaps winning the lottery.

Access to technology, information and contact has proven tremendous in transforming the information age. It could be true that ideas existed before but were forgotten before they became anything real, either by a lack of tools or knowledge to make them exist. It is also true that ideas can lead to new ideas and that many ideas out of context might result in nothing – for example, the internet without the computer is nothing. It would have no potential and no purpose without the medium of the computer to render it both practical and useful.

Before the computer, books were used to spread knowledge. Before books, people talked. Before speech – I’m not quite sure. Monosyllabic grunts? Although books and the computer have been huge in spreading and recording knowledge, it is the medium of language that has truly changed the face of this Earth. All else is simply a medium by which to spread that which we can express, but language makes the information sensible and understood.

By the evolution of language, we have been able to express the ideas that have transformed the world and changed our lives. A person living from one to ninety in the present time will have the potential to create a larger presence in the world with their ideas today than that same person living in centuries past. More ideas exist today which can be developed and advanced. People have a greater access as regards turning something from idea to object – once fulfilled, the idea becomes knowledge. As more ideas permeate the market, the reserves of knowledge increase too. And this leads to a higher degree of future knowledge, because we may all learn from the past. One may see the past as a vast and large public library, something open to all to learn from and advance their own ideas.

Thus, if we look at the past up until the present, we may see an evolution of ideas. These are as evident as the evolution of people and as obvious as the evolution of a person during their own life. It seems clear that we do all become something we weren’t as life progresses: whether we look at the passage of time in years or in centuries, time is fundamental to progress and progress to evolution. It is a beautiful aspect of life that we end differently to how we began and with such a mismatch of people interacting, life is truly interesting.

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