Does Human Nature Evolve ?

(From Long Essay)

It may be the case that various psychological features of our species may change through some sort of evolutionary process, spanning thousands or millions of years. That view seems consistent with evolutionary thought, given that the prevailing theories currently hold that the features of humankind evolved over thousands and millions of years, in adaptation to circumstances.

So, it would follow that this process is continuing as we speak, though, likely, unnoticeable to most if not all of us, due to the graduality of the process.

Having said this, I wonder whether concerning myself with how various individual human beings can make an impact on such changes to ‘human nature’ would be meaningful. To what extent do the ‘choices’ of individual human beings have an impact on the evolutionary processes regarding the psychological features of our species?

In light of my daydream about some sort of super-sentient or some type of new creature that, through some sort of ingeniousness which is inscrutable to ‘ordinary humans’, meets its needs while doing less harm than humans, I wonder, as a sort of casual thought, whether, for example, Ghandi’s approach of non-violent resistance was more than his particular means to address the political situations he faced.

I wonder whether Ghandi was prototypical in some way, signaling what may be the beginning of some sort of step forward in terms of the evolution of the human psyche.

By writing ‘step forward’, I don’t necessarily mean that such a change would be an improvement or would not be an improvement. I am not arguing that evolution is an ongoing process of improvement.

To speak about improvement implies a value system. Based on my starting point for this essay-that a perfect state of affairs would be one in which there was complete satisfaction for every sentient being, I deem that I do not know if, somehow, human evolution involves a process whereby human beings, in sum, more closely approximate the perfect state of affairs.

The stumbling block I have had with Ghandi’s approach is that, through it, a person does not achieve the goal of avoiding causing suffering. It seems to me that to refrain from causing harm or pain to certain sentient beings, one, at least in some cases, necessarily, causes harm or pain to happen to some other sentient being or beings.