~Chapter Eleven~                                                                                   IN THE DIN--- "Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who did not wish to hear it. " ---Samuel Butler If people insist on blind faith, why not trust more faith in what we call our gut instinct? As we all know, it's usually the best thing to trust if there's any doubt.  Look around.  There's an awful lot of doubt in the world.  A large number of us doubt whether or not mankind will be around that much longer.  That's a terrifying thought, even to the most hopeless among us.  No wonder most people prefer living out their lives in blissful ignorance.  Too much awareness can lead to the conclusion that it's usually best to stay in denial.  If you summon up the courage to see what's going on around us, it's unsettling, the things that are being allowed to transpire. If this is humanity's last hurrah, it will come about largely due to a refusal to do anything about it. Watch the news, if it can even be called that anymore, and try to connect the dots.  It's amazing how insistant people seem, on staying oblivious to what's really going on.  It's ironic to think how most of the world's woes would disappear, if only we'd start insisting on knowing what's really going on behind all those closed doors.  Freedom has gotten to the point where it's taken for granted.  Even to the extent that it's slowly being stolen away.  By the time we become aware of how a noose is slowly being fashioned by the conservative agenda, it will already be drawing tight around our throats.  Other than that, things will be just peachy. Obviously, we're trying to find some ways to take action within the context of these essays.  Any comprehensive plan to change our trajectory will probably be scary at first.  We tend to cling to the familiar. While navigating these new avenues of thought, our grip on the wheel will likely tighten.  At least then, it'll be our turn to drive.  As things stand now, we're all being steered in the wrong direction by those tenants of conventional "thinking." As we take a sharp turn now into new territory, and if we should find ourselves headed toward a big scary tree, the worst thing we can do when in a tight situation is panic. Outcomes needn't necessarily be disastrous if you can remain cool and collected.  At the signpost up ahead, our next stop...     How about we start coming up with some specific examples of what we're trying to say here.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  I'm bipolar, so extremes are something with which I've gotten familiar.  No sense in holding back now. To use a couple of extreme examples, consider a baby who's fallen out of a third story window.  There've been some accounts of unattended infants falling from even higher distances, but a thirty foot drop is good enough to make this point. Miraculously, the little guy survives, and with little or no serious injury.  "How can this be?," you ask. First of all, the kid doesn't weigh all that much, so the impact of the fall is lessened. More important than that though, is in how the newborn hasn't yet learned the meaning of fear. The baby's comparatively calm and relaxed. That's how injury and death was avoided. If an adult were to take that same tumble, bones would have been smashed.  A person tends to stiffen in preparation for sudden deceleration (that's the medical term for getting flattened after impact). Suffice it to say, we'd have been ultra-tense, and our tissues would have been too rigid to allow for the absorption of energy upon landing. As another example--- Who usually gets killed when a drunken driver hits another car?  In most cases, it's the passenger of the other car who's killed, with the drunk getting out alive.  Intoxication, as most of us have experienced at least once, creates the kind of relaxation possessed naturally by a fearless toddler.  So, while we're not falling from an open window or smashing head on into a intoxicated  motorist, there's sufficient enough stress in our lives to tense up a bit for sure.  It's time to relax.       Ok, so we need to find another way to not feel so tense.  Hopefully, not to the extreme of being as oblivious as the drunk or the infant.  A lot of troubles could be averted, if we'd only learn how to take another perspective.  We should learn how to let go of the wheel, and see where the road takes us. It all comes down to instinct.  It knows more than you do. How do you think instincts were developed in the first place? Natural reflex is based on hundreds of millions of years of redundant programming.  It's what takes over when all else fails.  It's the culmination of experience and chemical response that tells body and mind what needs to be done in order to survive.  If the body feels fear or pain, it's afforded a huge quantity of adrenal response. Before you know it, you're either fighting better or running faster than you ever thought possible.  The same is true of the gut feeling. Intuition is to the spirit, what adrenaline is to the body.  If there's a crisis of faith or reason, then your soul has a way of letting you know what to do.  We feel this as intuitive reasoning.  What we need now though, is more than just a feeling to go on.  We now need that inspired, intuitive response. We need  to find a way to act on these feelings. If we feel that something's not right, then it probably isn't.        The decisions made so far in history by politicians and clergy haven't felt exactly right, although those currently aching to steal back the big wheel, will say they're on the right.  Maybe all we need to do is to find some of the wild intuitive leaps that have been made by people throughout history, and see how such inspirational alterations in course came about in the first place. People have claimed to have seen visions of a better future.  These are the sort of visions that were often featured prominently in religion and prophecy.        Dismissing the upstarts and the deceivers who wanted only personal recognition or power, you're only left with a precious few that just may have been the real deal. Earlier, we were talking about how our perception of time is at best, limited. It's easy to sit here and sound all mysterious and enigmatic, especially where proof is such a hard thing to find.  Sometimes, all we can go on is intuitive reasoning.  I hope we can do that now.      There are many things that might sound preposterous if they're unable to be backed with any sort of solid evidence. That's where pure instinct or intuition comes in. This might be easily dismissed, particularly by those with more rigid ideals of skepticism. Most reasonable people would agree that certain degree of cynicism is a good discipline to have.  At least that way, you're less inclined to go leaping off headlong into believing in anything that comes your way. That's what gave us the world we live in today. People have been whipped into such desperation, they'll believe almost anything; so long as it gives them a feeling of security.  A good skeptic has learned how to ask questions, before reaching any drastic conclusions. Of course, there can be too much of a good thing. A person can become too skeptical. Wherever extremes are involved, truth resides someplace between them. It's good to have an open mind, but not so open, as Carl Sagan always said, "that your brains will fall out." Let's try to be fair here. Maybe we can agree for now, on the potential merit of pure intuitive reasoning for now. We can use this intuition for instance, as it pertains to our construct of time. Einstein felt it in his gut that " it's all relative." In his ultra-famous thought experiments, he knew that time wasn't something that could be measured by a mere watch or sundial. He reasoned that even light must be moving in the form of waves, otherwise, there'd be no place from where time could migrate. To study this a little, it's fortunate that we don't have to go chasing after time. Somehow, it's always been so good at coming to us. We'll talk about such things at length in due time, but for now, know only that there was nothing for Einstein to go on by way of actual proof. Later though, as the means became available through future technologies, his theories were fully verified. Many of his theories have since, been proven to be true (we'll touch on just how later on). Einstein is a more famous example of how accurate human intuition can be. All you need to do is listen, like he did. How did he know? The truth is, he didn't. But his inner voice sure did. He, like all vessels of change, had a great gift for intuitive reasoning.      Chances are pretty good that I'll not soon adopt any religious vows, but I feel it's only fair a compliment should be made to at least one of them. Here's one more remarkable tribute to intuition.  The inner voice of reason is given free reign in the Hindu faith.  There was this vast time scape felt instinctively in Hinduism that was truly expansive for any age.  The religion contemplates such huge scales of time, that it became a foreshadowing of modern cosmology.  Few religions hinted so accurately as to the true age of the current cosmological cycle.      The Rig-Veda foreshadowed today's astronomical figures of the universe and its true age, and the numbers suggested were unimaginably big.  They speak of a Brahma day consisting of 6 thousand mahayugas, each of which is akin to some 4 billion years.         That's an incredible bit of deduction, and aside from religious zeal perhaps, there must have been enough gut feelings to go around in the hearts and minds of the Hindu practitioners.  They must surely have had more than just an inkling into the universe and its age to have come so close to matching modern, scientific estimates as to how old this universe is.  The Hindus had laid down their Sanskrit  6000 years before Christianity, and it's just as much in accordance with modern astrophysics, as it is with mythology.     In this ancient text, we're also told that we and the universe in which we exist, are but a product of Vishnu's dreams.  And at the end of the Brahman century, he will awaken.  On that day, the universe will cease to be, until Vishnu dreams us all back again.  Like with all religions, Hinduism too is only to be taken as yet another human metaphor.  But what a metaphor.  The Hindu account of the cosmos eerily predicts the more modern version of this myth, modern cosmology.      Most astronomers (cosmologists) believe that the current universe (the one we can directly observe) is between 12 and 15 billion years old.  It's still busy expanding today, coaxed outward by the inertia given it by the big bang (or in my opinion, it's being drawn toward the gravitational well of another universe that's nearby).  If you're a supporter of this theory, and you believe that gravity will reassert itself, then the universe will collapse back into its "dreaming" state as a singularity of spacetime.       If this turns out to be true (or if our perceptions make it seem true), then the Hindus were dead on correct.  Not only with their projected age of the universe, but also with respect to its ultimate fate.  After all of this of course, we can only assume that Vishnu (the universe) will stir again, and the cycle is repeated.  Any way you slice it, what a remarkable piece of intuition. Ultimately, change does occur.  It's routine, and the overall pattern remains intact.  But if we're wrong to look at myth as but a way to reduce the complex into the simplistic, which is to say--- if gods alone are to give the universe its being, and not impervious nature, then they are sure to look upon us with great pity in our naivete.  If we're lucky, they'll decide to forgive us our arrogance in crediting nature, and not a god, for how we arrived to become so beligerrent.  If we only imagine that there's such a thing as progress, or that anything is really changed with our fall from grace, or even if we take pride in our beautiful cathedrals and great works of art, then the gods I think, will take pity on us.  For even with all of our potential for good, our fatalistic attitude has remained popular for centuries.  We have so far anyway, insisted on our unhappiness so that we can appear to be profound. Our self pity is reasonable, if we choose to throw away all that we've gained so far as a species.      However, it's time to stop sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves.  If there is a god, then why hasn't he yet come charging to our rescue?  And if there's not, then what are we waiting for? Even those practicing Judaism give us room for optimism in the future in their own slanted version of coming change.  Author Tim Ferris helped me out with finding this one: "Evolution follows a path of ascent (though they're no doubt referring to ascent to heaven, parenthesis are mine) and thus provides the world with a basis for optimism.  How can anyone despair, seeing that everything evolves and thus ascends?"       Even Christians have given a nod to the evolutionary process, albeit an inadvertent one.  With the arrival of their savior on the Earth, sweeping changes were made (a form of evolution).  The Christian people saw how their previously stagnant world was forever changed. The problem here though, is that further change is needed, 2000 years hence.  The movement started by Jesus, began and ended with his presence among us.  To the Christian, any further change will only come about with his reappearance.  Specifically, and in strict accordance with biblical prophecy, a stage call by Mr. Christ himself is long overdue.       The question in this case would have to be, even if such a celestial event were to come (if it hasn't already), who among us would actually be able to acknowledge such an epic unfolding of events? Seriously, what's everybody expecting to happen?        I find it unlikely that any one of us would see Jesus, even if he was standing in line in front of us at the grocery store.  Anything short of his cart being filled with breads and fishes, would leave us clueless.  The modest manner in which Christ moved among his followers would preclude him from having the kind of pizzazz that would be mandatory to get attention in today's climate.  In America, everything's based on attitude.  The louder, the better.  I don't think that's Christ's style.  He's not the sort of person who would go around trying to draw attention to himself, especially after what happened the last time he was here.  More importantly, what would he look like?          Probably not like he does in most of our minds.  To most of us, he'd appear as described in the artistic interpretations by all of those great, 16th century Renaissance masters.  Christ would have to look just like he did in all those paintings that depicted him. That's the only look anyone could accept.  If Jesus didn't return complete with the long hair, the robes, and at the very least, a goatee (which would really go over big with the kids today), then he'd receive little notice.  If Jesus were to be accepted as the son of god, then he'd probably really have to look the part.  If Jesus came to us looking like he probably did in his last appearance here, he'd likely be stopped by authorities as a mid-eastern terrorist suspect.  Right after they made him use a stick deodarant of course.        And even if Jesus did manage to get passed customs, his fashion sense and style (or lack of it) was perfectly acceptable 2000 years ago in the middle eastern desert, but today? This poor man would be thrown into a loony bin somewhere, especially if he ran around saying "honest to god, I am the son of god, really I am.  What's a taser?"        Christ would have to find some convincing manner by which to make his return known to the world. His claim of being the messiah returned would doubtless, be left with considerable resistance.  I mean no disrespect at all, but seriously--- I don't think even the most devout Christian would accept such a claim.  The reason for that is simply because it's not something anyone is actually prepared to accept, despite claims to the contrary.  Besides, if Jesus did appear on our world, there'd be no further need for Christianity.  All those priests, bishops, and popes would be out of a job.  Who'd want to listen to these buffoons, when the real McCoy was back, and preaching the good word? He'd be back, but I'm not so sure how popular the demand would be.        The world would once more be faced with great change.  People's fear of it would more than likely be greater than their feeble, spoon fed variety of faith.  Not to mention the fact that there'd no longer be any excuse for people trying to extricate themselves from all the so-called sinners in the world.  Like the man himself once put it, "Let he among you who is without sin, cast the first stone."        All you evangelists? So much for your superiority trip over all the other losers out there.  There'd always be the possibility that you wouldn't make the cut.  What if you're left with the others here on Earth, to wage war on sin?  Wouldn't you feel short-changed and stunned by the fact that you weren't taken in the rapture, to join the big cheese in heaven? How strong will your chosen faith really be, when facing your first real test? Talk about your changes.  I have to say, that felt kind of satisfyin.'        We all want change of one kind or another, but doubt whether we'll witness it in our life time. Not much happens in the average human life span, but there are a lot of people alive today who truly believe their savior is coming. What a stroke of luck if it should happen right now.  Imagine how stupid the non-believers will feel, should the rapture come.  Even if it does, what if it's still a few decades from coming? There's that pesky, and far too short human life time again.  Damn. But, as we will see, even our definition of what a life span should be, will also be radically altered. It's pretty likely that the aging process, and even our definition of death will come to be dramatically reinterpreted in the decades to come, assuming humanity's still around by then. Despite the claims of the creationists, things inevitably will change, including attitudes.  It's just that we're all so busy looking to the future, or denying that it's already here.  That's because we still feel its passage only one second at a time. Changes are constant.  They take place all around us, and on every level. Your body sheds between three and four pounds of dead skin cells every year, but the only evidence to support this fact is in all of that dusting with which you're constantly trying to keep up. Fully 80% of that mess you wipe from your end tables and television screens, is good, old fashioned, discarded skin cells. Eeeeewww!!!        Every winter, the sun's apex gets lower with each passing day.  This is chronically hard on the body I inhabit in this cycle of experience, with the brain being vulnerable to the resulting shorter days.  It's called S.A.D., or seasonal affective disorder.  There are inevitable consequences of shorter days, and less direct sunlight.  Such consequences aren't only reserved for people with chemical imbalances.         Everything alive just seems to give up the fight.  Leaves, deprived of photosynthesis, begin showing their true colors with the absence of their green chlorophyll.  They give one final sigh on the branches they called home for a season in the sun, and ultimately commit suicide.  By the time they hit the ground, they're already dead.  Air masses shift, and the winds get cooler and drier.  Things start to sound different, no longer buffered by relative humidity, and things get crisp.  Bodies react to this as they had for millions of years. We can't fool them with our warmth giving heating systems, nor our cheery sun lamps.        We've removed from our lives, the long, cold, and dark winters of our past, but our bodies prepare for winter nonetheless.  On average, people living in the northern hemisphere tend to put on the pounds, much to their annoyance.  But this is the perfectly natural way that all animals have to build up reserves of body fat.  It's to better survive the winter, when food will be more scarce.         Grain storage and indoor greenhouses, along with domesticated livestock haven't been with us all that long, so it will take a good deal more time before our evolutionary past gives way to our self-determined present.  We no longer need to dig through the snow drifts of half a million years ago, hoping to find tender roots and shoots, but our bodies don't know that yet.  We start craving extra carbohydrates, and we put on the fat for winter.        That too will change one day, but often, change is arduous and tentative.  Sometimes, it would be beneficial to speed up this process.  Sometimes, if you need something to get done, you have to do it yourself.  It's time to recognize why we do what we do, and then to take action.  That's not going to go over too well with those who expect someone or something else to do it for them.    That brings us, at last, to what these essays are all about.  It's time to begin taking a little responsibility for our own actions. Which isn't to suggest that there won't be a lot of new options along the way, to help us get to where we're going.  If we can remove the politics and profiteers, there will be, in a decade or so, miracle cures for virtually all diseases.  If this is to come about, we'll have to begin choosing our own battles, rather than fighting the battle others have told us to. The war against disease is a good enough place to start.  That particular battle will take place on the level of the subatomic.         There will be designer genes that make the dalliances of today look like medieval leech therapy.  I'm personally, even more jazzed by the fact that we'll finally get our flying cars as promised us in the Jetsons.  We'll tackle transportation in time, but first thing's first.     Consider the things we'll be eating in the future. Our food will be so perfectly engineered through tissue cloning, that the toilet paper business will become obsolete, as will our sewage treatment plants.  Put bluntly, there will be no waste products to work out of our digestive tracts. I'm sorry, my mind is getting ahead of itself.  We've got lots to talk about it seems.      As was enigmatically hinted in the introduction, it will literally be a world in which anything imagined, will be added to the reality of our own choosing.  And like all of the technologies so far developed, future such technical achievement will borrow from what the natural world has so long inspired us to dream about.  Taunted for so long by nature's miracles of flight, color, taste, and incredible skills of survival, it's only a matter of time before we learn nature's secrets, and copy them.       Within 20 years, we'll learn to exceed them, especially when we're rid of the rhetoric of today.  With lobbyists, false morality, and other political posturing out of the way--- then the bar can finally be raised.  It doesn't take a Nostrodamus to see that to some extent, this potential is already being realized.  But the technology of the immediate future will not be the sole focus of the essays to come.  You can have the most clever gadgets and cures, or the most cunningly designed brains and customized cells, but what good are they if they're not being shared by all?         The genetic cure for all disease, and even eternal youth will be with us very soon.  But who among us will be made privy to them? Will it be all of us, or only those who can afford these new standards of living? If the attitudes of the now are any indication, then you'd best start picking out your burial plot.  Something on a hillside facing the galleria might be nice.         Therefore, when we speak of change, we have to go beyond the mere physical.  We must also address the ethical, moral, and the spiritual implications of our future. An absolute intolerance for inequity, inhumanity, and blind ambition must take precedent.  It will be quite a task.  Are we ready to meet the challenge? I'm asking for my own sake, as much as for anyone else's. It's not a simple question of choice anymore.  We no longer have the platitude of time, since most of the things we'll be talking about, are happening as we speak. Taking into account the popularity of conspiracies, do you actually believe it's not at least a possibility, that humans have already been cloned secretly by militant or covert factions? In the past, as soon as something is declared illegal, or unethical, it's simultaneously already going up for sale somewhere underground.  With all the belly aching being done by the conservative agenda about cloning, it's at least possible that they're already implementing this new technology to serve their own needs.  Just because they say they're against, doesn't make it so. Seriously, how much harder would it be to manufacture a human slave, or organ donor, than Dolly the sheep? If that sounds alarmist, then consider what most people were thinking the second they heard about cloning being real.  We're not suggesting that an evil empire is manufacturing cloned slaves, but is it all that tough to imagine? As for the potential to corrupt these new technologies, you needn't look very far into the past to see that this is almost always, exclusively the case.  Power structures haven't changed in the least, since Caesar learned how to divide and conquer.  But the quantity and the nature of the kinds of power available sure have.       We're not talking about slings and arrows anymore.  Even the hydrogen bomb will give up its seat as the most powerful weapon yet devised.  While the anti-matter bomb could be a part of our reality within 25 years, so too will be alternate energy sources like cold fusion (actually, it will be called hydrogen extraction when the technique is perfected).  It will be powers like these that will supply enough free energy to light and heat the entire planet.  They're also the most likely candidates to power ships that will allow us to leave it. This will be done cheaply and effectively, especially when we learn how to extract hydrogen from desalinized sea water.         Fossil fuel is already being phased out. Have you checked the price of gas lately? It goes up, it goes down, with every week as unpredictable as the other.  This trend will most likely get worse before it gets any better.  What could be responsible for all this price gouging? I'm surprised more hasn't been done to rob the middle East of its oil.  Maybe the oil giants have been made aware of alternate energy sources, and are making a last scramble for the cash. Maybe they're sensing their own demise.  Assuming they know how to read anything but Farsi, maybe they've seen how the writing's on the wall. Or maybe our patience is just being tried, making us come to demand this new energy.  So we'll be more receptive to alternate sources of energy, it's possible that we must first be made sick of the old ones.  We'll talk about some of these new power sources soon enough.  Right now though, let's just touch a little on cloning.  In order to understand it however, we must first look to how nature has been doing it for billions of years.  Don't worry, it won't take that long to sketch out a brief outline. Nature is resplendent in its diversity.  Different conditions have always made it necessary for an utter insistence on change.  In geological time scales, such ecological shifts can come at the drop of a hat.  It is in this potential for diversification, that the bottom line for survival is drawn.  Certain primal life forms have splintered into the myriad of creatures we know of today, each one perfectly suited to the lifestyles that their contrasting surroundings demand.  This division is conveyed within the boundaries of a given species as well. Domestic horses, dogs, cats, cattle, and a few other animals, have all become an inseparable part of our lives.  In so doing, they were tailored into artificially derived versions of evolution called selective breeding.  This opposes Darwin's natural selection, and it gives the indication that we've already begun foraging into genetic engineering.  At least since the advent of cross breeding we have.  We've taken it upon ourselves to create new subspecies of flora and fauna that are designed better to serve our needs.  No one gives this a second thought.  It's perceived as natural, even though clearly, it's not.  Despite human intervention however, the basic design of a cow for example is unchanged from the original bovine forms that made hybridization possible to begin with.  By definition, a species is determined by those animals and plants that are able to produce offspring with each other, while keeping intact, those common genetic links that breed true among them. Big cats like lions and tigers have been successfully bred in captivity. Ligers are a genetic meshing of these two cats.  Technically, a new species has been willed into existence.  A Kodiak bear can sire young with a polar bear.  Each of these delineations in a given species are nothing more than small adjustments in the genetic code, allowing for a given specialization to take place.       And yet, do the same thing with humans, and the fundamentalists go nuts.  All races of humans are really just different breeds, each carrying in their genetic code, those qualities that were garnered from differing respective environments.  But we don't refer to interracial mixing as cross-breeding.  Certain types of people really hate the idea of interracial mixing.  I don't get this. I call this a good thing.  Maybe the intermingling of such genetic diversity will actually benefit our species.  We're only human, and that goes for all of us. Here's yet another example of the kind of attitude shifts that are needed, for the new era of humanity to begin.  It's ok to talk about the other animals, and how they evolved. But to talk in such a way about the all important humans, then it's a whole new ball game.  For that reason, it's probably better to drop talking about we special humans for now.  The exact same point can be made if we go back to the cross-breeding of the two bears.  We're still talking about the advantages inherent in specialization.           Before continuing, let's make it clear that evolution is NOT a theory. It really exists. Without it, there'd be nothing but stagnation. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of having to defend fact from the kind fiction that's always being woven by the fundamentalists. With natural selection, the best genetic traits are carried on into the next generation, making the outlook for  species survival all the better.  The same is true with selectively breeding those characteristics that are considered optimal for specific tasks.  In the case of our bears, small cosmetic alterations have been made with mixing the genes of each.  Both the grizzly and the polar bears each have certain hereditary features that insure survival in varying climates.  The polar bear is designed to efficiently slap on the amount of blubber needed for sub zero weather.  In so doing, it's dispensed with a need to hibernate, unlike its North American cousins.  The paws of arctic bears are 20 to 30% (female and male respectively) larger than those of the others.  This adaptation lends itself extremely well to a nomadic lifestyle, where navigating in deep snows is a prerequisite for survival.   With enlarged feet having a greater surface area, the polar bear's paws are the genetic equivalent to having fur covered snow shoes. This kind of specialized evolutionary change can seem to be almost magical.  How does an animal know what adaptations are necessary in order for it to survive? Of course, it has no idea how to adapt consciously.  Fortunately for we who evolve, woven within the workings of natural selection is the credo, "survival of the fittest." In order for any species to flourish, changes have to be incorporated fairly quickly.  That's where mutation comes into play.  The genetic codes of all life are constantly being "proof read." This monitoring of the double helix happens on the molecular level, and goes on with the everyday business of making frogs, lizards, cats, trees, and people.  Tending each strand of DNA, are these tiny proof readers.  Proof reading molecules busy themselves by unzipping the rungs of the ladder so that each strand can then be joined with another strand that's usually happening by.  They then create another DNA helix by placing the right enzymes back into the inherant design.  They're careful about which enzymes are put back in.  They're uncontested at what they do, and have been doing it since DNA first appeared on the scene here between two and three billion years ago. But like with everything else, even these little DNA proofreaders aren't perfect.  Every so often, a mistake is made.  When that happens, a new enzyme or protein is accidentally woven into the genetic material of a particular species.  When this slight altercation is made, a mutation has occurred.  Usually these changes are so minute, that the integrity of the animal's lineage isn't altered to any noticeable degree.  In fact, each time a baby is born, human or otherwise, there's bound to be some type of mutation.  This is why there are slight,  usually only cosmetic subtleties among individuals.  Blonde hair, blue eyes, freckles, hair textures, albinism, these are the usual suspects and are most likely, the products of mutation.        That hardly answers the question as to how such small mutations are responsible for one species dying out, in favor of one that's more evolved. No one said a thing about one species being more evolved than another in order for it to survive.  It's merely blind, dumb luck that permits one to live, and another to recede into ages passed.  Of the few studies (few, because the science hasn't been around all that long yet) done so far on mutations, and why they can be beneficial to a given organism, most were done using insects.  That's because the effects of mutation usually don't become noticeable until several generations have passed.  So far, no geneticist has been willing to spend his or her entire career scrutinizing each newborn human child.  Understandably, most want to see results in their own lifetime.  Mammals, and other of the more complex species, have been counted out, so far as research goes.  Insect studies are the way to go. That said, here's a good example of what mutation can do to insure survival in a given species.  In this case, it's the gypsy moth.  You don't see many white ones these days, when until around a century ago, nearly ALL gypsy moths were in fact, white.  How did this come to be? Mutation is the answer.  All insects like moths have many recessive genes. These are genes that exist in DNA strands, but are rarely used.  There are so many of these recessive genes in fact, that even with billions of years of evolving behind them, only a tiny percentage of them will ever be expressed.  If you remember our less than perfect proofreaders, sometimes they make mistakes.  Every now and then, what would normally be a recessive gene,  is suddenly thrown into the mix.  Sometimes these innocent mistakes, and the mutation of cells that results, can be a very good thing indeed. With the advent of industrialization, scientists took great interest in the innocent little gypsy moth, and other species as well.  Why? Because they noticed a sudden appearance of what was once almost unheard of.  They began seeing more and more moths having speckles.  And the more time that passed, the more speckles they saw.  Within 20 years, or roughly 2,000 generations of moths later, there were almost no white ones to be found. How could this be explained? It was natural selection.  You see, with industrialization, came something new to the natural world.  Soot. Lots and lots of ash was suddenly being spewed into the air by all of the factories that began popping up everywhere.  And as you probably already know, ashes tend to cover everything, including trees.  Particularly, birch trees.  In the days before smokestacks, a white moth stood a pretty good chance of not getting eaten, because of how well it blended in with the white bark of the birch.  So, if you were born white, you lived to make other white moths.  If you were speckled, you became lunch long before you had a chance to continue your line. Thank goodness for mutation, and the less than perfect proofreaders.  If not for the "speckled" gene that was accidentally woven into the moth lineage many hundred of years before the industrial revolution, there would be nobody left to carry on the mothy way of life.  Suddenly, because of the soot, speckles were all the rage. That's due to the tendency to help you blend into those soot covered birch trees.  I imagine all the speckled moths had the last laugh on that one.  You see? Not all mutations are a bad thing.  It also shows rather nicely, how evolution favored one kind of moth over another.  It's the same thing with speciation, only that kind of physical change requires much more time.        There are still so many people, especially here in the States, who will never allow themselves to believe in the concept of evolution.  I really fail to see why this reality is such a threat to so many.  Maybe it's really very simple.  The idea of evolution removes humans from the center of all things, just like learning that the Earth revolves around the sun removes us from the center of the universe.  If something like the idea of mutations can be used in order to explain the diversity we see because of recessive gene traits, then why not entertain such a notion?        Those tenants of fundamentalism see it another way. Earth's diversity is so much more comforting to them, if it can more easily be explained by the notion that god did it all himself. To them, god created all life as he saw fit. Evolution suggests that maybe god wasn't satisfied with the original results, so he decided to change them accordingly.     That makes sense I suppose to someone who's terrified at the prospect of any change whatsoever. I just don't understand that at all. I hate to rub anyone's feathers, but evolution's here to stay. How do we reach people who refuse to look deeper, if it's even possible?