The recently-released X-Men: First Class (which, for the record, was an excellent film) depicted genetically unique ‘mutants’ with skills so amazing that some of their members saw themselves as a new and improved species. It’s wonderful to think that a lucky few might one day be able to create magnetic fields with a wave of our hand, or hypnotize with a stare, but sadly these things are not even physically impossible, but evolutionarily impractical. Even if nature dictated that it was time for one man to shoot high-powered lasers from his eyes, what evolutionary purpose would this serve?
Thinking a little about that, we’re led to an even bigger question: in what way could humans keep evolving? It sounds like an incredibly pompous question, especially coming from a person that could be outrun, outswam, outflew, and outlived by many other members of the animal kingdom. Yet there is some logic behind it. Humans are unique from any other animal through the way that they utilize the environment around them; more often than not, instead of adapting to it, we make it adapt to us.
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| In Soviet Russia... |
