The Science of Suffering, Part 1: Evolution and the Modern Human Mind

Steven Parton
7 min readAug 29, 2018
2001 Space Odyssey: Ape evolves understanding that bone can be used as weapon/tool

For all of our art, culture, and impressive technological achievements, humanity is still simply an animal whose mind and body was shaped by evolution for one purpose: survival.

And evolution has a simple, yet coldly-logical procedure:

1) if an organism develops a mechanism useful for survival, allow it to live so that its ancestors may have that biological advantage.

2) if it develops a useless mechanism, or is poorly suited to a change in the environment, then kill it off so future ancestors aren’t also weak and easily killed.

The DNA of every living creature is a constant experiment against this simple filter. Genetic variations alter the way an organism’s DNA is ordered, and this change is then put to the test by the chaotic challenges of that organism’s environment.

Chaos Versus Order

This dynamic of chaos versus order isn’t just restricted to DNA, either; in fact, it’s the fundamental battle at the root of all existence.

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Steven Parton

Host of Singularity Radio (anchor.fm/singularity-radio) & Society in Question (anchor.fm/society-in-question) / Author / Psychology & Neuroscience researcher