Survival: The Ultimate Mission. Robert M.D. Skaf

risk taking was part of our daily life as recently as a few decades past - in fact this way of life still exists in some parts of the world. Modern life has engendered a new human. We do not worry about where to find the next meal. We can drive or even walk over to a grocery store and pick what we want. This was not the case in the past. The simplest attempt of gathering food or hunting was rife with danger. Yet, hunger left you with no choice but to take the challenge. Many hunters fell to other predators, yet many more carried on with the mission of survival. Many fishermen drowned, yet many generations continued on challenging the sea. Even farming is a gamble. One is never certain how the crop is going to turn up. Even in our modern times, most farmers and food providers still take a chance. It was much more difficult when most of us lived on farms and had no other means to sustain themselves. On top of having to deal with angry nature, most of us were always falling victims to wars and conflicts. Risk taking and gambling is etched in our brains and it is part of our DNA. We cannot survive without it. Bad to gamble worse not to gamble at all. An adage I often use when friends wonder about gambling and risk taking. We are all born with a drive to explore the unknown. We all have a sense of the insecure world we live in. We are all puzzled by the many mysteries of life, mystified by the role fate, randomness, happenstance, coincidence and luck play in our daily life. Randomness, coincidence and chance are for real and cannot be denied. They are at work all the time and everywhere. They are present as stars and planets form, as atoms fuse, as celestial bodies collide, as elements come to be and they are present from the day we are born. These are the forces that are able to play a role in the formation of cosmos and they sure play a role in our lives. Not only did we acquire emotions, feelings and desires, but, nature also saw to it that they were to be acquired at random. Millions of students attend schools and learn the same subjects; they all have emotions; but, it is the random emotions that thrust some into liking physics and other into preferring subjects such as chemistry, mathematics, biology, literature and etc… Whoever coined the phrase (life does not come with a guarantee) does not have to worry about any challenge. This saying will always be relevant, for no one will ever know what tomorrow will bring. Gambling brings us face to face with this challenge. It is a reflection of our deepest desire to explore and conquer the unknown. Perhaps this is one of the reasons so many of us develop an addiction to this activity. If all the foregoing seems to be complicated, sorry this is the way things are. Basically, all what I am trying to say is that emotions, desires, longings, sentiments and many other feelings cannot be the by- products of biology. We have seen the systematic and methodical rules by which biology conducts itself. Though every step it makes may be logical and every decision it takes may sound reasonable, emotions are not part of any purely biological existence. For instance, as a species bees are magnificent in every respect. In terms of efficiency; the contribution they make for the survival of plants and trees; the way they recycle everything, saving the environment from any harm - intentionally or unintentionally; the precise and complex method by which their colonies build honey combs of wax; the harmony and cooperation among the members; the discipline, the selfless dedication every bee adheres to for the sake of others are admirable quality to say the least. One may go as far as to rate them as highly intelligent - we certainly can learn a lesson or two from them when it comes to the conservation and the protection of the environment. Yet, as efficient and intelligent they may be, individuality, creativity and innovative spirit are not part of their society, for they have no emotions, desires, longings nor do they exhibit any feelings. And this is not the only downside facing such homogeneous societies. Like so many species, each bee is the exact copy of the other which may spell danger when the whole colony is faced with a sudden threat. Extreme weather conditions for instance has brought death to a huge population of bees, a new virus could wreak havoc and may bring an entire subspecies to the brink of extinction, also a newly emerging predator could inflict the same tragic genocide. During the nineties, African bees, dubbed killer bees, almost annihilated the entire bee population indigenous to South America. We may be as susceptible and vulnerable, but thanks to our individuality and creativity, we are better equipped than bees, and as far as I know any other species to deal with unexpected threats to our survival.

      As one can easily observe, only humans happened to have attained this strong desire to invent, create and explore. Other species may share the same desires with us, but at a scale hardly noticeable. Beavers can build perfect dams, the majority of birds are able to build sophisticated nests; ants and bees are renowned for their ability to construct complex structure to house their colonies; trapping spiders are supreme web spinners; still, none of them has gone beyond the basic requirements of survival. Why? They did not have to. They evolved on earth and up until now, there has not been a need for them to be more creative or inventive than what they are. On the other hand, our desire to invent, create and discover seems to be boundless. And as far as I am concerned there can be only one reason for this discrepancy: our emotions happened to evolve on a different planet just as we did. As long as this planet offers the same hospitable conditions, there will be no need for any species to be more creative and inventive. In fact, there is no need even for us to come up with anything new, yet we all know this is not going to happen. Reason and logic tell us that by learning from others we can survive and do well. However, our desires cannot be satisfied unless we as individuals are able to surpass the status quo. It is this longing, this deep emotional desire to create, invent and discover that helped reach this level of sophistication. The brain is happy in copying others and repeating their maneuvers; by learning the common thinking and observing the common practices; one can easily secure his or her self-preservation; but, as it so happens, we are not emotionally satisfied by just learning. Our evolutionary emotion makes it imperative for us to invent, create and discover. Furthermore, without longings, without the desire to achieve the impossible, our creativity and imagination would be at a great risk of becoming stale. Early on, we have discussed how a created force ends up controlling its creator as is the case with gravity and electricity; things are no different when it comes to emotions. The brain and the mind may be the creators; however, human emotions have evolved to command the overriding role of poking and prodding the mind and the brain into never becoming complacent. Examining the way progress takes place, leads me to this conclusion: evolutionary biology may have produced the brain, the mind may be synonymous with intelligence, however, evolutionary emotions made sure they keep expanding. This type of evolution, where emotions have a more prominent role than biology in shaping a species, does not occur with any other species. With this observation, one can really see why I strongly believe in us having a much earlier pre-earth origin. It is no coincidence that we feel a need to populate other planets, it is because our innate instincts tell us that all the inventions, all the technologies, all the sciences, all the arts and all the innovations humanity may attain would amount to nothing if we are doomed to be destroyed as this planet makes its final rotation in a few billion years from now. Of all the species that make this earth their home, we are the only one aware of this ultimate catastrophe. Our greatest challenge would be to succeed in surviving beyond this planet. We know this because we have been through the same tragic event before -perhaps several times. We are trying so hard to discover new hospitable planets because we have achieved the same feat before. Unlike other species, our evolution has never been purely biological, because biology alone is not going to help us survive beyond this planet. It has been demonstrated in the preceding sections how massive particles or non-particles can create their own forces, living things are able to create their own forces as well. Our species was able to create this forgotten force we call emotion. This force had to be acquired for a good reason: it was needed. On this planet, this boundless force is hardly a necessity; we definitely can survive without it. It was acquired on a different planet where there was a need for it; and where without it our species would have faced complete extinction.

      Before ending this chapter I would like to go back to Darwin and his theory. It was stated earlier on that no one is disputing the fact that all species evolve including us. My expressed opinion was that due to the size of our brain it was impossible for us to have had originated on this planet. Having other unique components such as vision, creativity, desires and emotions, is another point in my argument. For any species to acquire something so unique and so abstract - as opposed to being biological - require a long period of time, we can’t say for sure how long, but it would certainly take a lot longer than the time we have been on this planet. Although different explanations were proposed, to cap off, I must go back to the time our planet became hospitable to life. We know that planets can be made of different