Info-Psychology Timothy Leary
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
25. A Wide Variety of Future Post-human Forms Will Emerge.

The evolutionary process schedules mutations with a relentless continuity. Every living organism plays a part in the evolutionary design.

There are eight answers to the basic question, "Who am I and where am I going?" In terms of genetic teleology the question is: "In which direction am I mutating?"

The genetic perspective is taboo and frightening because it forces us to face certain embarrassing facts:

  1. The human species is an incomplete form which is undergoing dramatic changes.

    The human race (and, indeed, life on this planet) is now at the half-way point. In three billion years we have evolved from uni-celled organisms. In the years to come we shall manifest changes much more dramatic.

  2. The rate of evolution is accelerating.

    The human condition is changing at an accelerated rate in terms of physique, neurological function, ecology, density and diversity of population, etc. Consider the human situation 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, 10,000 years ago. Now assume that the same rate of accelerated change continues. How will we evolve in the next 25 years? The next thousand years?

  3. The evolutionary process produces an increasing spectrum of differentiations. The present human gene pool will evolve in many different directions. It is probable that hundreds or thousands of new species will evolve from the present human genetic stock.

    The social implications are startling. Of the next hundred persons you meet it is probable that each will evolve into a new species as different from you as the rabbit from the giraffe. About 75 million years ago certain insectivore species (lemurs) contained the seed-source from which the 193 varieties of primates, including the human, were to emerge.

To understand yourself, to understand the human situation it is useful to project a prospectus of how the human species is going to evolve.

Much of the conflict and confusion which characterizes the current human plight can be gentled and clarified if we accept the fact that we are genetically very different from each other and inexorably pre-programmed by DNA template to evolve in many very different directions.

The work of geneticists like Paul, Stein and Kleinsmith suggests that histones mask the half of the DNA code which contains the futique design of the organism. If it were possible for one to pull back the histone curtain and see the blueprint of one's genetic future one would have a most revealing answer to the question, "Who am I and where am I going?" The question must be posed in the first person singular. The error of genetic democracy led Gauguin to ask, "Where did we come from and where are we going?" The question can only be asked, "Where am I going? What genetic futique do I carry in my genes?"

Each of us transmits a pre-coded design of future organisms very different from current human stock and very different from most other humans.