Saturday, October 29, 2005

Another dimension

A friend once told me that fear is the most primal of our emotions. I never went to verify this fact. I was not keen in doing so for a long time…

Blindly assuming what my friend told me to be true, I asked myself, ‘why is fear important?’. I was expecting an answer for why we have emotions; but instead I had bumped into another realm.

When we perceive some immediate danger or threat to life we begin to panic. As consequence to this we take to our heels. Sometimes we may fight against our fears, but that is different. Running away from danger is one of the most primitive of actions, but seemingly one of the most important ones, because that is arguably why we have survived for so long.

We unconsciously don’t want to get ourselves destroyed. We don’t want to feel pain, suffering or face death. Remarkably, this is how we evolved. This is probably why you don’t see mass suicides because of some irrational reason. (For e.g., once believed lemming rats running out to sea).

With this concept in mind I developed another idea; I gave the term survival a new significance – a new meaning. It is not survival of the fittest. It simply means merely staying alive. It is not about natural selection either. I believe the evolution of every species on earth somehow supports or reflects this idea of survival.

Both survival of the fittest and natural selection has something in common. I think they signify or suggest competition as a means to stay alive. The idea of survival is no different; it does suggest competition as means to staying alive. But there are other things this idea suggests. You will learn more about it in the coming blogs…

But this argument should be viewed at from a philosophical perspective only. And I am only saying this thanks to the forum people from the biology-online.com; I had this confusion whether this can be viewed scientifically or not. But now I think it is safer and probably healthier to look at it philosophically.