Thursday, September 04, 2003

Evolution
"Man must from time to time believe he knows why he exists" (bold my emphasis) (GS,29)

The very thought that all our purpose in life is a self-delusionary, yet necessary is certainly mind boggling!

This is almost the same as saying that all knowledge is relative, or there is no real knowledge (a postmodernist account), but we all must believe in that there is real knowledge.

I disagree with Nietzsche's fatalism. Simply because I think we have not just evolved into 'a fantastic animal that must fufil one condition of existence more than any other animal'(29), but that we have become entirely different creatures.

Nietzsche's convictions, which seem to follow from an evolutionary account of life, are surpassed by some modern accounts of evolution that hold that cultural evolution (memes) elevates humanity unto a different plane from plainly the genetic evolution of mere animals. Coupled with truly random fluctuations at the quantum level, I believe we must reject all crude fatalistic accounts that seem to follow from evolution.

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