Quotes from Chip Walter

Today we are even manipulating the DNA that makes us possible in the first place—a case of evolution evolving new ways to evolve.

We are the only primates that can tap our foot or move our body in time with a specific rhythm. It's wired into us, but not into our chimp or gorilla cousins, which tells us that it is a trait that like language, big toes, and toolmaking evolved sometime over the past seven million years.

Today we are even manipulating the DNA that makes us possible in the first place—a case of evolution evolving new ways to evolve. (Think about that for a moment.)

My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt. —William Blake

The question now is, can we survive ourselves? Can we even manage to become the next human?

Creativity isn't the only way we strive to matter and gain power, but it's the most functional, sensible way. It doesn't require greed or jealousy, envy or outright violence, all of which can be highly effective, if immensely damaging, methods for gaining power. But these don't reveal a fit brain. Creativity does. It is the most impressive way to earn the attention of others. And thankfully, over the long haul, it works;

we are a kind of elaborate tool in the unconscious service of the DNA swimming around inside us, determined (if strings of molecules can be determined) to make more copies of itself.

DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. —Richard Dawkins

The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past, fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep. —Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey In