Future of Human Species: Oliver Curry’s Research Review Essay

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Introduction

Professor Oliver Curry teaches political theory at New York University in London. In 2006, in the summertime, he wrote an essay about a future human being. He claims that the essay was a fiction of future human beings, but the media released it as scientific research and that this evolution will take place.

According to the report, Professor Oliver Curry writes that there will be two species of human beings by the year 3000. The report says that the men will be tall, 6ft to 7ft tall and will live longer (120 years). He said that people will be healthy, because of the diet they take. Men and women will look for potential mates by physical feature as healthy, youthful, and fertility. Modifying techniques as cosmetic surgery will homogenize our appearances. According to him, the evolved human being will have different features different from the current one, for example, men will have bigger penises, their faces will be symmetrical and they will have deeper voices while women will have glossy hair, hairless smooth skin, larger eyes, and pert breast. He says that racial differences will be forgotten as people from different regions will interbreed to produce coffee-colored skin. The long life, chiseled physical features, and perfect bodies will be at that age.

Ten thousand years which follows will be a dramatic change in the appearance of the human being as people continue to rely on technology. The dependence on medicine will make people’s immune systems weakened and they will look child-like in features. According to him, the feature will be good.

By definition, evolution is a gradual change in the appearance and behavior of organisms that are brought about by changes in genetic makeup. Genes are responsible for building living things, any changes or modification leads to mutation which gives a novel gene resulting in evolution.

1000 Years to Come

According to the research, evolution takes a long time to take place; examples are of research done by the scholars’ that shows that mammals evolved 200 million years ago to have the present features, primates evolved 50 million years ago. It is said that human beings and chimpanzees split 6 million years ago and it took 100,000 years for a human to have the present features and so we cannot expect the evolution to happen in one thousand years to come. From this evidences of evolution, we can say the professor was scientifically wrong. We should only expect changes in the living style because of industrialization and the changes will be on products not of natural selection but changes in genes and desirable traits on artificial selection.

Another point is that there is no guarantee that we expect good things to happen in the future, like being More intelligent, having a long life, being attractive, and so on. This is because things can change to be opposite, people can have a short life, they can be more stupid or they can be uglier. On the other hand, no one knows if human beings will be around in the future, they may go extinct, maybe they can be hit by asteroids, or maybe eaten by an alien race.

The story is about people growing taller 6ft – 7 ft, living longer (120 years) and the improvement of life through genetic engineering, cybernetic implants, living healthier, most accomplished lives, living long and flourished life because of good diets, and better education is not all about evolution.

According to him, he writes that women with lighter skin color, smooth hairless skin, glossy hair, large eyes, a pert breasts will be more attractive in future life while men will also take steps to be attractive by improving their symmetrical facial features, taller, having high testosterone to improving the square jaw, deep voice, bigger penis and so on. Looking into a deeper sense of evolution all these are not evolution but improvement in human lifestyle our existing biology.

10,000 Years

The assumption that biological evolution goes together with cultural evolution and that advancement in technology will improve human evolution as well as give him a better life in the future is a wrong idea in some sense; this is not true as the opposite may occur. As we depend on technology, our genes will not function so well example improvement in treating fertility will lead to increased infertility, that is, many people will rely on artificial insemination artificial wombs and surrogate mothers. This will lead to an increase in cesarean section in natural mothers. This shows that over-reliance on technology will lead to loss of our natural ability, dependence on medicine, having high hygiene which will make our immune system fail its functions. People will need hermetically sealed bubbles and breath using filter respirators.

The development in the computer system, on the other hand, will make people communicate using only their thoughts not their mouth. This will have a greater effect on their vocal cords, brains and the muscles which control the area, which will make men lose their Adam’s apple and women on the other side will not be attracted to men because of their physical features like muscular, large vocabulary and deep voices but they will be attracted to smart men, that is, men with critical thinking and colorful imagination. As we rely on technology, less do we rely on others, virtues as love, respect, and trust will be lost. This will affect family affairs, trade matters leading to more conflict, people will be self-centered and without sympathy. So we can see that Curry was wrong about social life and we can say that humans will adopt some domesticated animal behavior like being effectual, pampered, spoiled, and juvenile.

The 100,000 and 1,000,000 Years

According to curry, the human species would be divided into two species, the upper class, and the underclass. He says that extreme people can mate leading to genetic inequality in population, and the formation of new human species in the same geographical regions, for example, super champions meeting during tournaments can intermarry and give super attractive children who are an upper-class group with tall, thin, symmetrical, clean, intelligent, creative and healthy while the remaining extreme is also left to mate by themselves to form the underclass who are short, stocky, asymmetrical, grubby, unhealthy and less intelligent.

The fact that human beings can reach and occupy other planets which have different gravity forces ecosystem, day length, and climate, and the planets being too far for easy migration and the formation of new species different from each other in different planets is wrong. A human being on a big and heavy planet which is dark and cold will resemble short, stocky, pale skin, have a low metabolism rate, and will have longer circadian rhythms, while humans on light, small and fast-moving planets will be tall, thin, have a fast metabolism, dark in the skin and shorter circadian rhythm. Both in the extreme planet will adapt the local climate, food, and immune system leading to different species.

There is nothing inevitable when talking about the evolution process. Evolution does not aim at anything, it has nothing to do with inertia and in simple words, it has no goals. Evolution only depends on the mutation of the genes and the environment. Also, the extreme socioeconomic division of humans diving into two species, one being tall, thin, symmetrical, clean, healthy, intelligent, and creative other one being short, stocky, asymmetrical, grubby, unhealthy, and not bright requires strong pressure from the environment to do so.

If we want to predict evolution, we should put in mind about two important factors;

First, we should know which mutation will arise. This is a hard question even to our scientists today. It’s hard for scientists to predict which gene will be modified, or changed at a particular place to give a novel gene. Changes or modification of particular gene gives novel gene which will result to a different organism with different features. This process of gene modification and development into so-called evolution requires a very long time, for instance, human beings have taken 100,000 years to evolve to the present state. So it’s wrong to say that the coming one thousand years will mark the evolution of human beings to a different one and also predicting the outcome of the evolution is a hard decision to make. We don’t know about what will happen in the future and we should leave the topic of the future human being. Looking back, our ancestors never predicted about our present humanity but they just concentrated on their life alone so we should not think more about the evolving human being but leave the topic to the future generation so that they can experiment and see the changes which took place between now and that time. Our present role should just think about how to improve our living standard and how we can eliminate the hazards which we are causing to the environment which can either affect us or can affect the future generation.

The second most important thing to consider while dealing with this topic of evolution is the surroundings of the future human being. Nobody knows the surroundings or the environment the future human being will experience. The climate at that time will determine the adaptation of the future human being and this leading to evolution. For example, the advancement in industrialization may have a negative impact on human being through pollution leading to health hazards which can make the future generation to be worse than anyone can think of.

Conclusion

Professor Oliver Curry is a political Scientist but not a Scientist; we can say that it was just through his imagination that he thought that geographical and social mobility is a new thing on our planet earth. His own fact that geographical and social mobility can produce people with uniform coffee-colored skin in the year 3000 is misplaced. The fact may also be a political one as according to him the essay was meant to be a fiction of the future human being which changed to be a true researched essay through the entertaining TV channel – Bravo. People have migrated for the past thousands of years, an example is the black Americans who have lived and intermarried between different races for some years but we have never seen them having coffee-colored skin.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Future of Human Species: Oliver Curry’s Research Review." September 28, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/future-of-human-species-oliver-currys-research-review/.

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