How Natural Evolution and Artificial Design Differ

Natural Evolution

Nature never has any preset design for anything but allows evolution of living organisms in accordance to their prevailing circumstances with the purpose of adaptation. Converse to this, human intellect first conceives a design for something in accordance to prevailing conditions of usage and then constructs it accordingly. So, the inducing factors behind an evolution and construction are different. The constructed things may be made for any type of existing or future, natural or fictitious conditions while the evolution works only for prevailing circumstance. However these may be artificially created.

In evolution, the thing adjusts to circumstances by itself, hence is applicable to living-beings only while a designed thing is non-living though it may imitate animation. Here in this article, I am to examine the two processes for their contribution to evolution and development of human civilization, naturally and artificially.

Artificial Design

Circumstantial and Conditioned

Evolution takes place depending on circumstances while for a construction, conditions of usage are studied and the design is prepared accordingly. Circumstances are that prevail at the particular time and place, therefore evolution is subject to particular time and place. For this reason, a number of living organisms may evolve into different things at different times and at different places.

For a design, human intellect does not limit itself to particular circumstances at a place or time but may perceive quite differing conditions for the usage of the thing, prepares design accordingly and then constructs the thing as per the preconceived design. Therefore, evolution is circumstantial while the design is conditioned.

Living and non-living Things

Evolution process generally takes place on its own in a living organism through its response to the prevailing circumstances. Such things can’t be designed and constructed, at least with the knowledge we have till date. The form and structure of a living organism, for this reason, does not remain stable over time but keep on evolving to adapt to the prevailing circumstances.

However, with imposition of artificially imposed conditions on a living organism, it may be made to respond to these and evolve accordingly. This is the process how human intellect has been forced to evolve over time to the high level it is today. Artificially imposed norms of human civilization on the intellect have been forcing it to keep on evolving gradually and regularly since the time when humans decided to settle at fixed places and develop themselves in to civilized societies. The process of evolution continues through generations of living organisms due to passage of genetic information from one generation to the next. The process of evolution is usually slow needing time through some generations of the organism.

Non-living passive things may be designed to suit any perceived conditions and then constructed. Since, these have no capability of responding on their own to given circumstances, their forms and structures remain stable and there are no natural generation links hence information inheritance.

Evolved Design

It is not that human intellect can’t evolve anything as nature keeps on evolving living organisms. I began constructing my home without any design or pre-conceived notion. It began with the existence of a 8-feet diameter underground chamber constructed by my father as a gobar-gas plant long back. I made a passage for the chamber and with some finishing touches, it works as my bedroom, cozy during winters and cool during summers. Above this, I began constructing my home by working for about 2 hours a day laying bricks for raising walls and then covering walls with roofs.

I call this home as evolved to met my needs gradually. It has taken years and is still incomplete and evolving. But this evolution is not on its own, it needs to be engineered by me artificially. Therefore, technically it is not an evolution but a slow process of realization of needs and then designing constructing.

Introversion is a Precious Asset of Personality

A so-called expert recently characterized ‘Introverts’ as those preferring less of stimulation from external sources. I differ with this perception of introversion, and would like to call it an attribute that stimulates the external environment to the least possible degree. The difference in the two perceptions is quite alarming, being the difference of preference of the person about inputs or outputs.

An introvert person does not like to project him/herself to others but likes to be contented with the self. Introversion is not related to the person’s interest in others but to interest in him/herself. Of course, this also results in his/her liking for minimal stimulation from the environment.

According to psychologists, one half to one third of persons of a society are introverts depending on their respective social cultures. Let us see here what is introversion and what it is not, to understand its significance in life.

Introverts often envy extroverts about their ways, and try to imitate to be like them. Anybody, trying to pose who he/she is not, is bound to fail. Whenever, an introvert imitates an extrovert, he/she fails and thus, entering a phase of losing self-confidence and cultivating a feeling of shame and inferiority complex in him/herself.

There is no person an introvert or an extrovert in absolute terms, but everyone is a mix of introversion and extroversion, with different individuals naturally gifted these traits in different proportions. One must cultivate in him/herself the attributes in which he/she is rich in.

What the introversion is Not

The Introversion is not shame, shyness, or suppression of one’s talent, as many extroverts would like to assume. Let us see some such negative traits are and their difference with introversion.

Shame

An important factor keeping some persons keeping away from sights of others is shame for a feeling of guilt for some mistake committed by them. However, if the person realizes his/her mistake and commits not to repeat it, there is no need of being ashamed about. We all may commit mistakes in-spite of our working with good intentions. Those who don’t work, commit no mistake but the blunder of not-working.

Introversion is not same as being ashamed for something about the self. However, a shame may make a person introvert, but an introvert is not necessarily ashamed of anything. Introversion, in itself, is not a shame.

Shyness

Shyness is a fear of going wrong in front of others so, a shy person hesitates in presenting him/herself to others in general, but for no particular reason about his/her conduct. Shyness is born out of lack of self-confidence in the person and hence lack of contentment from the self. Introversion does not make a person deficient in self-confidence or contentment, but on the contrary, an introvert is more contented by the self that an extrovert who is dependent on others for contentment from the self.

Not Suppression of the Talent

Introversion is not suppression of one’s talents as most extroverts opine. Introverts show their talents using media which are quite different from those used by extroverts. For example, an extrovert is often a good orator while an introvert might be in another field like authorship, designing, invention, etc.

The art of extroversion has an essential component of impressing others – truly or falsely. There is no place for impressing others in an introvert’s agenda. His/her objective is to produce the desired results calmly. Therefore, while an extrovert reserves a big chunk of his/her energies for impressing others leaving less for the actual performance, while an introvert puts all his/her energy into the performance. The extroverts create apparent results fast but transient while introverts create slow yet long-lasting results.

Reading, studying, inventing, meditating, designing, thinking, cooking…or any number of other quiet and worthwhile activities are favorite pastimes of introverts while the extroverts spend most of their time and energies in talking.

The introverts don’t project or hide their talents, but keep on using it and leave it to others to appreciate rather than project these to impress others like the extroverts keep on doing. Thus, the introverts make better use of their capabilities than that by extroverts.

What the Introversion consists of

Introversion is a state of mind that is constituted of many other subordinate attributes of mind, such as modesty, creativity, scientific temper, etc.

Modesty

Modesty is keeping reserve in front of elders as a display of respect to them. It used to be highly appreciated in women and expected from civilized women. This is now considered an old-fashioned trait complied by rural women in developing and under-developed societies. Modern and western-cultured women are allergic to this word, once considered to be an ornament of the women. In fact, modesty is an ornament for every human-being but not understood and appreciated by wild beasts.

Silent Creativity

Indeed, creativity is always silent, and its chosen home is introversion. Extroversion is an impediment to creativity. Most of the creative endeavors are from introverts only, however many of these are stolen by extroverts and projected as theirs. This has been the traditional job of extroverts.

Scientific Temper

As said in my previous article on comparative study of Art and Science, introverts are gifted with scientific temper better than extroverts. However, extroverts have a knack of materialization of scientific concepts. All scientific developments are gifts from introverts to the humanity with a majority of extroverts.

How Introverts and Extroverts Differ

Introverts have a world of their own different from that of the extroverts, for some exclusive differences between the two groups of people.

Thinking and Expressing

An extrovert often says before thinking and may repent later, while an introvert thinks before saying something to ensure not to go wrong. This is also indicative that introverts are more sensitive and sensible than the extroverts. Even then, extroverts manage their lives better than introverts are able to do for their wide gap in manovering capabilities.

Doing and getting things Done

Extroverts are better mangers than the performing creed of introverts. Therefore, while introverts can perform better than extroverts, but the extroverts know better how to get a thing done. This may be said to be better managing capability of extroverts.

Extroverts suffer from a psychosis of taking credit for others’ works, so are not liked by performers – mostly introverts. This develops a general disliking to an extrovert. For the same reason, performers prefer to work with and under introverts. This makes introverts to be better leaders than the extroverts.

Group-working

Introverts prefer working in solitude, therefore, often fail in group working often organized in schools and training and appraisal exercises to enhance creativity and productivity in individuals through induction from others. Although, this may bring some introverts out from their cells of introversion, for most other introverts, such exercises prove detrimental sowing seeds of inferiority complex in them.

In a group environment, introverts fail to express their dissent even if they may have it. This leads to suppression of their feelings and may cause complications in personalities of introverts, such as shame or inferiority complex.

Usually, introverts are often considered inferior by extroverts, but the introverts have no negative feelings about themselves or the extroverts, hence are more humane and with positive outlook about others. The extroverts often suffer from superiority complex.

What Introverts must Realize

1.    Introversion is a better way of living in the sense that introverts keep their ultimate goal in focus while extroverts try to derive maximum benefits for themselves by dominating and exploiting others and their innovative ideas. Thus, introverts make better business leaders than the extroverts. In fact, most of the people prefer working under introverts rather than under extroverts. Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks and most of the world’s greatest philosophers have been introverts.

2.    Introverts are made for being creative rather than being productive. They must focus and remain limited to the field of their strength – the creativity.

3.    Everyone is an introvert to some degree as even an extrovert works through first being an introvert.

Economic Worth of an Individual

Key to progress in quality of life and development of human civilization is economy for which probably each of us works through personal income to family income to national economy, and finally to economy of the whole humanity. Though direct worth of a human-being can't be based on his/her economic status, no worth survives without economic well-being.

Economy means basically keeping balance in income and expenditure. Each family unit of today has most often a single source of income but with many ways of expenditure. Important expenditure heads may be enlisted as food and health, clothing and housing, and education and entertainment with their ideal average share of 50 : 30 : 20. Mismanagement of human affairs has added one more head of economic exploitation through Aristocratic politics and faked Divine terrorism. Exhibitionist tendency of humans has further distorted how people spend their earnings. Average human-being are forced to provide, directly or indirectly, about 30 percent of their incomes to political and religious head. This has distorted the average share of human expenditure heads to about 20 : 30 : 20 : 30 for food and health, clothing and housing, education and entertainment, and charities and taxation, respectively. Each of these heads counts in progress and development of individual to humanity levels.  

This distortion in expenditure heads has adversely affected humanity with cost of increment in crimes and blockade of civilization advancement. The results are noticeable needing no keen eyes.

Politicians, administrators and religious preachers make the richest class of people with probably no or minimal productive work while hard-working humanity under their control has been struggling for survival.  

Mismanagement of economic affairs is the worst in public domain accounts of governance and religions leading to economic and social corrupt practices as premium business of humanity.

About 70 percent of humans on global level suffer from one or more of chronic diseases. This suffering goes to about 90 percent in many nations of the World.

Crimes have been on the rise continuously since recorded history of humanity leading to more miseries of average humanity. Moral values in humanity haven vanishing.

Commercial considerations have penetrated to matters like health, education, justice, etc which need be covered under public welfare for overall development of human civilization.

Economic Classification of People

From Economics point of view, there are broadly three ways people live by by their own will or under compulsions.

Lavish Living

This lifestyle aims at spending lavishly principally for three reasons -

To seek comforts, luxuries and conveniences,

To seek high status in society, and

To cover up for sense of insecurity

For adopting this lifestyle, the persons are required to earn enough to make their two ends meet for which they keep no consideration of right or wrong practices of earning money. Most of the persons of this lifestyle keep too busy in maintaining their economy that they find no time for enjoying life through family and social relationships, entertainment and recreation, and most importantly through paying attention to keeping good health. Therefore, this lifestyle makes the person more and more miserable as they often age with three types of problems -

Health : Most of the lavish spenders develop vices, particularly of womanizing and alcoholism, which reflect on their respective health. The health problems raise their heads as the persons advance in age. Since such persons do little physical work, resilience of their bodies is often low making them more prone to attack by diseases. 

Exploitation : Lavish spenders try to purchase everything, they need even rarely, at whatever price. All such price tags have high margins for manufacturers and traders, leading to their high level of exploitation. When such persons are young, their earnings are high and they don't bother for such exploitations. But with advancement in age, their earning power dwindles with corresponding increment in their worries about the exploitations. Moreover, for keeping their social status high they are expected to contribute more for social purposes. This also enhances their exploitation, hence the worries.

For their involvement in illicit activities for more and more income, people of this class try to compensate them psychologically through charitable acts with reliance on godly and religious exhibitionists, making them super-rich with no productive work by themselves.   

Economical Living

 As far as economy and quality of life are concerned, middle class people with limited earning out of their hard work serve their purposes of life in optimum ways with care about what they get from market for the prices they pay. Some of these people try to appear like the lavish spenders in their possessions with shopping cheaper things from the market for their low incomes with the result of accumulating third-grade materials in their homes and worries of maintenance of these. In the process, they get exploited. Another section of this class tries to keep a balance in quality and prices of materials they shop, hence bargain with selection of the best options within their limits of affordability.

Just Surviving

A third group in the humanity with limited resources and means of living under their command keeps on struggling for survival within their poor incomes. Most often, they rely on inferior products hence suffer with poor health. Even good quality of medical treatment remains out of bounds for these people. They have no entertainment means except having sexual pleasures, hence produce large families to feed. This makes them more poor, sick and problematic. Life expectancy and education remain the lowest in these people.   

Psychological challenges to one's Economy

First, there are necessities, then, we create needs for conveniences and then we have wants for progress, comforts and luxuries depending on how we perceive our needs and wants. For all these things we focus on getting money. But we rarely seek happiness through contentment of or satisfaction from what we already have or even set a limit for what would be enough. Thus the craving for more of wealth goes on, but there are exceptions to this. These exceptions are not for the reason that they don't have necessities, needs or wants but for the reason that they have barriers in getting inflow of money by all means for their self-imposed moral discipline, unlike common people generally do.

Here, I would focus on why persons deny getting rich through self-control for their own psychological barriers of morality and ethics. 

Crimes and Corruption

Government and employees and those of some large private organizations often involve in corrupt practices for monetary gains through misusing their official powers. Some mighty persons crush weaker persons for monetary gains. Some others involve in thefts and other crimes for such gains. Such persons and groups thereof economically thrive through anti-social activities, still there are a few who won't involve in any of such activities even if they have opportunities and living in poverty. This bar on the self is imposed for keeping up their moral values and conscientiousness. Thus, moral values etc become another block of economic prosperity.

Habitual Pleasure Seeking

Fermentation was originally devised for curing skin ailments. Later, people found that the fermented beverages have intoxicating effects which provides a sort of unusual pleasure to the drinker. With this concept in progress, fermented drinks have become sources of intoxication, hence, pleasures ruining economy of a huge number of persons on the globe becoming habitual of intoxication. Then, people devised many other ways of intoxication which dipped more persons into intoxication and economic wreckage.

Similarly, many other bad habits of seeking pleasure, such as going to prostitutes for sexual pleasures, etc ruin economy of a great number of persons who don't consider consequences of such short-term pleasures.  

Fatalists

Indian society was taught by a poet named malook Das in the following words -

iaNh djs u pkdjh] ikgqu djs uk dkeA nkl eywdk dg x;s lcds nkrk jkeAA

This means that birds etc don't work still survive. So the poet's advice is that the God looks after all. Hence, no need to work. Though all people might not have read the advice, but most of the religious-oriented persons believe in working of fate that pre-decides future of everyone. With this concept in mind, such persons keep on looking for comforts and conveniences of life without working hard for these. This keeps the poor people poor forever. 

Gambling is a game in which a bidder is promised a bounty against investment of a small amount of money, provided his/her fate is favourable. With this hope, the gamblers keep on putting at stake whatever they have and lose everything they had, thus ruining themselves.

Charities and Donations

I like to go on my pleasure or research tours like a hermit with minimum luggage, mostly a few books, notebook, pen, pencil, some dry foods like roasted grams, a mat, a sheet of cloth, and one spare dress etc all kept in a shoulder bag. Hairs on my head are generally long and many times, my beard, too, grow long for no-shaving on the way. If the place I visit is a pilgrimage, people mistake me for a beggar like many others on such places, and donate things to me without my asking. In such a case, firstly I refuse to accept but if I fail to convince the donor, I handover the materials so received to somebody else needing or looking for such things. My consideration on this is that I don't live on charities but depend on my work only.

Once, after a free meal at a religious place in high mountains (called Bhandara in India), I began washing used utensils there to work for the food I had taken. The organizers of the Bhandara requested me not to do that but I didn't relent. Later, a person came to me and told me that I was snatching means of his livelihood there by washing the utensils which was the work assigned to him. I got his point and stopped the work. After that I refuse to accept free meals in such Bhandaras.

So many of us have such inhibitions in their minds which put them in trouble or inconveniences of economy at odd places, while many others with no such inhibitions and making such things as means of their livelihoods enjoy riches after some begging.  Here I would be dealing with such inhibitions affecting one's economy.

The most powerful community of India at all times is habitual of living on charities and donations without any hitch through generations, while many other communities and persons hate living on such aids from others. The governments often promote in poor people living on their aids, and most of the persons are eager to listed as poor to get the benefits. Still, there are some who are averse to such assistances for keeping up their social status and self-esteem. Thus, consideration of self-esteem in getting something for others is the first challenge to economy of some persons.

Charities, donations and welfare schemes work as deterrent to one's economy in reverse way too. People dependent on these don't like to work hard for survival or progress thinking that they will get something from others for survival. Thus, these social parasites block their own way of hard-working for progress.  

Status Complex

Most of the persons don't like to do mean jobs like sweeping, domestic help, etc for their consciousness of their social status thinking what others in their society would think of them. Some such persons go far from their native places for taking up such petty jobs without telling the truth to their close social contacts. In both of these practices, persons' economies are adversely affected.

Persons in India celebrate marriages and even death of veterans of their families through feasting others to keep their social status high in others' eyes, even after borrowing money for such celebrations. Thus, status complex is another block on economic progress.

Some persons involve themselves in charitable activities just for being appreciated by others though their personal economy may not afford a charitable act. They just compete or imitate those who can afford, and thus ruin their economies.

Perfectionism

Many persons choose to do their jobs perfectly even losing sight of practicability or economics of the task performance. In the process, they ruin their economy. Although doing a job perfectly is not a bad idea in itself, but all aspects of a performance must be looked into during execution. All tasks don't need perfection for economic and many other reasons. Not only this, even in a task needing near-perfection, some components may not be as important as others, and the performer must pay his/her attention in accordance to the importance of different components of the task.  

Economically Worthy Human

Money serves very important purpose of happy survival of an individual. But if a person goes beyond psychological barriers to economy outlined above, a small quantity of regular income proves sufficient in providing happiness of living. Important points in this regard are worth mentioning here.

Properly selected food items, and their quantities and quality can keep a person healthy with longevity and resilience needing no medical services.

Adequate protection from climatic extremities through clothing and shelter is a necessity of modern human life. Due to current scientific knowledge of humanity, these facilities may be so designed so as to become no economic burden. For example, a home may provide all the necessary comforts of life without provisions of artificial illumination and temperature control.

After informal education from parents, children need formal institutionalized education which contributes to national worth, hence need be freely and uniformly arranged by the government from public taxation. This would improve on national worth without burdening individuals economically.

With cultivation and promotion of social discipline in society, all defense, crime control and justice machinery of the government may become redundant or reduced to minimal. This would lead to a society free from exploitation improving upon economy of every individual.

Religious faith must be limited to individual life, hence its public display must be prohibited. This would save people from psychological and economic exploitation by religious preachers.

Involvement of government in individual's life must be limited to management of common resources, with minimal taxation on people saving them from working for serving lavish politicians and administrators.    

Above-said are hypothetical provisions which are beyond materialization in near future, hence should not be waited for by individuals for leading a happy life. But every individual must review his/her own lifestyle to remold it closest to the ideal situation in light of the above-said clauses, and make him/herself happier and a worthy human-being.

Practicing Intellectualism

Just opposite to the above-discussed organic sensitivity, the brain works sensibly through its logical reasoning and thinking faculty. Humans have the most evolved brains of all the species of life on the Earth. The brain gets its input of experiential information from memory, its process is thinking, and its output are commands to sensory and actuary organs of the body to act accordingly.

A living-being has two types of interactions with the external world - sensory to pick up information, and actuary to influence the external world. Former interaction is carried out by five sensory organs - eyes, ears, nostrils, finger-tips and tongue, while the latter is carried out by five actuary organs - speech, arms, legs, sex and excretory organs, of the body.   

Both the sensory and actuary organs may perform their functions in two ways - subconscious and conscious. The subconscious performance is carried out fast under control of the mind - the neuronal network spread in the body. For example, 'seeing' is a sensory input at subconscious level while its counterpart 'watching' is a conscious sensory activity. While a subconscious sensory actions leave no or a light impression on the memory, this doesn't enrich the person with more experiential information, conscious sensory activity of watching deeply records the information gathered in the memory which may be retrieved back later and utilized if need be. Similar differentiation applies to all the five sensory organs of a body. Thus, only conscious sensory activities add to a person's experiences.

Our actuary organs too act in two different ways. Routine reflexes of the body caused by instinct of survival and safety are operated by the mind with no involvement of the brain. Even oft-repeated activities by tongue, hands and feet, and excretion organs may also be performed at subconscious level under control of the mind only. Such operations are performed fast by the person. Conscious working involves a long process of tracking relevant experiential information from memory, thinking and commanding the actuary organs concerned, hence it is time-consuming and somehow inconvenient to lazy persons.  

Subconscious approach is based on habits and controls only oft-repeated sensing and activities by the body, while every new activity essentially needs conscious approach with involvement of the brain. Conscious actions leave a deeper impression of experiential information on the memory for future uses. But even oft-repeated activities may be taken up consciously through involvement of the brain.  This slows down the activities as compared to those with subconscious approach, but keeps the brain always in active mode, hence sharp. The sharpness of the brain and its remaining in ever-active mode expedites conscious activities somehow.

A person has the options open to him for each sensory and actuary operation for putting into subconscious or conscious mode. Based on this, he/she gets enriched by experiential information and capability of putting his/her brain to apply for solving a problem. All intellectual and creative activities by a person need involvement of his/her brain, hence are conscious activities. Persons too much habitual and dependent on the use of their minds only can perform routine activities faster but become incapable of using their brains for intellectual and creative activities. Thus, intellectualism requires regular practice of using of using brain by a person.   

It is not that the habitual practices have no positive role in human life and only intellectual practices are sufficient to serve all purposes of life. Habitual practices save on human resources and their capabilities, hence essential from economy point of view. It is similar to production at mass scale of a developed is essential to make it available to the large human population, while development of the product using creative talent is also essential without which no production would be possible. Thus, both the conscious and subconscious activities are essential to human life in overall perspective.

Therefore, if you want to be an intellectual some day, do most of the sensory and actuary activities consciously, and make it a habit of your body. You would soon find a quantum change in your outlook, ways of working and your favorite things to do.

Grand Meanings of Human Life

Fundamentally, meaning of human life is derived from basic human instincts of survival, progress and procreation with the purposes of living a lifespan and continuing it through generations in line with natural design. These are natural demands of life applicable to all known forms of life, but human life has evolved differently from what natural life is, as a superset of natural life. This means that the human life includes all that what nature demands from life plus a few things more. The cause of the additional things is the evolution of human intellect to a high level as compared to that of the other forms of life. This has caused evolution of three more instincts in humans.

Memory - Memorizing experiential information and using it whenever needed,

Curiosity - Being curious, hence making efforts to know things in vicinity, and

Imagination - Imagining what is non-existent and trying to develop them

Directly and indirectly, all these three additional instincts aim at improving quality of human life. Therefore, a meaning of life may be contributing to improve quality of human life. With this idea, let us examine some meanings of life through basic and additional instincts of humans.

Basic Meanings

Survival

The human experience proves that lifespan of an individual form of life can't be endless. Thus, every birth is complemented by a death. Therefore, survival is not the meaning of life but a healthy survival can be the meaning of life to an individual. For this, the individual is required to take care of health resilience and agility which are included in true meaning of good health.

Progress

In living beings and also in every organic system, regular changes are inevitable. These changes may be for betterment of the system or for its decay. Therefore, even for avoiding decay, betterment has to be adopted to by an individual in his/her life as an organic system. This betterment is renamed as progress through which the individual seeks and creates more and more convenience and comforts of life.

Humans have made rapid strides in this respect but many such efforts have become counter-productive for their adverse effects on health resilience and agility. Therefore, a balance between health and progress has to be made through trade-off between the two. For some individuals, this may be the purpose of life.

Procreation

Humans procreate with the intention of surviving after death through respective generations carrying their genes. Thus, genes appear to be immortal providing an apparent immortality to an individual. But this can't be ensured as a break in procreation of generations may be possible at any stage for various reasons. Secondly, marriages introduce amalgamation of genes from different sources, therefore, after a few generations, the original individual's genes may be present in individuals in part only. Say, a new born may have facial features of his/her one ancestor, body structure of another, characteristics of some other ancestor, etc. Therefore, the individual's set of genes gets lost through permutations and combinations of genes from different individuals down the generation chain.

Thirdly, with continuity of a certain practice different from the original practice for three or more generations, the genes undergo modifications. This upsets continuity of genetic inheritance from an ancestor.

Thus, surviving through genetic inheritance can't be the purpose of life for an individual. Through procreation, an individual can only contribute toward continuity of life on earth.

Procreation being futile for an individual for immortality through genetic inheritance, the humanity has successfully sought another purpose of getting sexual pleasure in process similar to that of procreation. Therefore, all sexual intercourses of humans don't aim at procreation which is the case with other forms of life. This makes sexual pleasure as a possible purpose of life for some individuals.

Advanced Meanings

Propagating Human Experience

Lifespan of memory records of experiences of an individual may be extended through transfer of information through generations for taking advantages of these for betterment of human life. Creating written records of experiential information through use of languages, enhances this process further. Therefore, propagation of human experience to the future generations may be a purpose of life for some individuals. Some authors may be working with this contention.

Probing the Unknown

Human instinct of curiosity may compel some individuals to improve human knowledge base through efforts for knowing the unknown. The science behind this process is to probe the unknown through what is known. This may be the meaning of life for some individuals benefitting those who seek more knowledge.

Imaginative Innovation

Human capability of imagining what is non-existent until that time works for seeding innovations through lateral thinking for improving quality of human life, but this has potential for misuse too for creating like atomic weapons to destroy a part or the whole of humanity. Whatever be the case, this may be the meaning of life for some individuals leafing to more innovations in the world which may improve or decay quality of human life.

The Grand Purpose of Life

We have seen above that various meanings of life have some potential subscribers for their own choices and provide benefits in their limited ways. Therefore, the humanity is in a process of differentiation for pursuance of different meanings of life based on basic or advanced instincts by different persons. No purpose is capable of taking the whole humanity to a higher level. In the process, some humans pursuing their basic instincts as their meaning of life may remain what they are today or even get degraded. Others pursuing their advanced instincts for their meaning of life with the basic instincts relegated to routines of life may evolve further. As a result, the humanity would get divided into humans and super-humans. This takes some of us to pursue a grand meaning of life to evolve to super-human level through conscious pursuance of advanced meanings of life.

This point of further evolution of only a part of humanity is supported by the evolution process so far wherein only parts of species have been evolving to higher levels under circumstantial differentials. Even the humans evolved from species still existing on earth in their forms of pre-human evolution. Differentials in circumstance and practices keep on creating diversity in evolution levels within each species of life, thus giving rise to multiple species from a single species.  

To summarise, the whole of this treatise, those willing to evolve to super-humanism must consciously pursue their capabilities of memorizing and recording human experiences, curiosity to improve upon the human knowledge base, and imaginative creativity, while the basic instincts of survival, progress and procreation get pursued through their routines. Those who fail to do so and keep on relying on the basic instincts only would remain as ordinary humans. 

Body can be Alive without the Brain

A recent suicide attempt in my neighborhood and his progress through ongoing medical treatment have been educating me on functioning of human body and their control by the person's mind and brain. The suicide victim is in hospital with doctors assuring his family members of a full recovery. Condition of his body which was stout and healthy otherwise, except the head injury due to shooting point-blank through frontal portion of the brain, is improving.

On passage of 10 days in hospital, he is able to breathe without external aids of oxygen and ventilator, his heart beat is normal, he opens his eyes, and is sensitive to touches on his skin. Apart from nutrition injected into his body, he is being tube-fed milk which he seems to be digesting. But there is no action from any of his action organs. It is not known whether he is able to understand what his sensory organs sense from the external world. Doctors attending him say that he would take about two more weeks for speaking and affecting other actions. With this set of information, I am trying to separate mind and brain functions in monitor, control and regulation of a person's body condition, sensory inputs and output actions. Accordingly, provided here is a functional constitution of human body with incorporation of its mind and brain.

Physical Body

Apart from mind and brain, human body has three sets of parts -

Sensory organs - palms and soles for touches, eyes for visuals, nostrils for smells, ears for sounds and taste buds for tastes.

Action organs - tongue for speech, arms with hands for handling things, legs with feet for walking, sex organs for reproduction, two excretion organs, and the body in general for other movements and expressions.

Life support systems - breathing, digestion, blood formation and circulation, etc

The Mind

Routine sustenance of these systems of body is looked after by the mind without any support from the brain. Therefore, the body may sustain or remain clinically alive even if the brain is dead.  This seems to be the present condition of the patient mentioned above.

The mind of a person is composed of many sub-minds with one in each sub-system of the body. All the sub-minds are attached in form of glands to the network of neurons spread throughout the body. Apart from taking care of routine sustenance of the body sub-systems, the mind reads body's special and contingent needs and desires, and communicates them to the brain for further instructions. Thus, the brain has no direct communication with parts of the body.

The Brain

The brain resides safely inside skull and is connected to the body through an intricate and comprehensive network of neurons, termed the mind. It has three functional parts -

Body sensing and control centers for interpreting inputs from sensory organs, issuing instructions to action organs and taking care of special and contingent needs of body's sub-systems,

Memory to keep record of experiences of the body with the external world and providing the recorded information to thinking faculty whenever needed,

Thinking faculty to analyze experiential information and take decisions for actions through the body,

Thus, the body can be clinically alive without intervention of the brain, but can't sense the external environment or take any action.

My View differs from Medical Science View

Medical science practitioners are of the opinion that the body can't sustain without the brain. So in their opinion, if a person breathes, his/her heart beats, and he/she digests food, his body is not only clinically alive but he/she is fully alive and can be brought to normal health and working. With this opinion, they keep on treating even brain-dead persons based on condition of their physical bodies. In all such cases, a day arrives when a sub-system of the body develops a contingency needing intervention of the brain. For not getting any support from the dead brain, the body meets its end of life. A brain injury is termed as 'concussion' in medical terminology. Therefore, a person with seriously injured brain has very rare chances of survival. Persons with partially injured brains may survive but with physical impairments or mental disorders. 

Mental, Psychological and Intellectual Disorders

Some disorders such as spasms, defective speech, Parkinson's disease, etc are caused by defective or broken communication links in the neuron network spread in the body - the mind of the person, resulting into communication weakness between the body, mind and the brain. Most of the spastics fall in this category. These disorders require medical treatment to strengthen the neuron network in the body.

A second type of disorders of the same class, such as phobias, excessive anger and irritation, depression and anxiety, inferiority and superiority complexes, etc is purely psychological wherein brain fails in understanding the situation in right perspective. This is dysfunction of thinking faculty of the brain and may be cured through psychological counseling by a psychiatrist. The practice of treatment strengthens neuron links within the brain for developing the right perspective. No medication is necessary in such cases but some brain tonics may prove beneficial in the treatment.    

Insanity in a person is considered a disease and is medically treated though it is rare and its low percentage of detection makes it rarer. It is a disorder of the brain wherein some part of the brain doesn't function properly. So, I put it in a class intellectual disorders which I find rampant in human societies. 

Many intellectual disorders are considered as part of culture of the people, hence neither recognized as disorders nor treated. Faith in divine miracles and incarnations, religious fundamentalism, spirituality, worshiping of pebbles and stones placed in so-called temples, respect to a person based on his/her dress or make-up, etc are intellectual disorders in people remaining untreated for thousands of years, hence becoming cultures of many societies. Such disorders have been hampering scientific developments and progress in human civilization.

Since body can survive even with a dead brain, it can survive with weak or defective brain too with display of all signs of life. But all such cases make the persons less human-beings, may be called sub-humans, than those with their brains fully functional. Unfortunately, the modern world has more of sub-humans than those with fully functional intellectual faculties, but their disorders remain undetected under covers of cultures and democratic majority of theirs. Thus, many cultures and democracies in the world have been preserving and promoting intellectual disorders in their subjects. 

Vaidic life recorded in Vaidic scriptures ensures full intellectual development of people through healthy foods. This was the case with Theo culture and race about 2,500 years back. That culture was decimated by enemies of humanity for establishing their psychological, political and social domination over common people under covers of religions. 

Why nobody Truly Knows Anybody Else

We work under presumptions of knowing other persons in our contacts, but individuality of each of us is too complex to be understood by anybody else. If mutual knowing of two persons were possible, there would remain no possibility of misunderstanding between them. Since we often notice misunderstandings and disputes among persons familiar to each other, we may safely infer that the two persons were not knowing each other. Not only that, even most of the persons fail in knowing themselves that is why they take wrong decisions about matters fully under their own control. Most of the sicknesses among humanity are results of this misunderstanding of the self.

Dimensions of an Individual

A person's existence gets expressive in three dimensions - physical, mental and intellectual through the three organs body, mind and brain, respectively. A living body is a passive organic system having many subsystems interwoven and supportive of each other functionally. It functions under partial control of the mind, and the body and the mind combination functions under overall control of the brain. Thus, the brain is the supreme commander of an individual.

From practical experiences, we know that even supreme commanders fail in exercising full control over their domains with the result that elements of domains become undisciplined and even revolt occasionally against their supreme commanders. Similar is the situation with the command line of the body, mind and brain.

Reason for Indiscipline

Like the practical life incidences, the command line fails for control of the supreme commander being indirect with a hierarchy of mediators in between the ultimate domain and the supreme commander. In case of an individual, the mind is the mediator between the body and the brain which plays its own tricks in between to gain more authority over the body. Tricks of the mind are termed as wisdom of the individual, which gets played often in conflict with the intellect of the person.

Wisdom and Intellect Conflict

Wisdom of an individual is applied with sole purpose of getting things done for the body in accordance of her wishes which may not be appropriate always for the negative human traits raising their heads through the body. All crimes by humans are committed for these negative traits with full support of the individual's mind and justified by the wisdom of the self. For this reason, each criminal tries to justify his/her committed crime. Wisdom doesn't have analytical power but is merely empowered to get the desired results by hook or crook.

On the contrary, the intellect, function of the brain, with its faculties of memorizing studied and experiential information, logical reasoning, and imaginative extrapolation of information through application of logic is capable of judging right from wrong, if properly applied to a problem. But for the complexity of body and mind functions, it is impossible for the intellect to keep watch on everything under its overall command. It relies on the wisdom standing in between with the instruction of referring any matter to it whenever needed. Another reason for the limitation of the intellect is its being mono-tasking, while a multitude of processes keep ongoing every moment in the body of an individual. So, relying on wisdom is a compulsion of the intellect.

The Societal Scenario

For the reason explained above, an individual can truly know another individual through application of one's intellect only. Since, the intellect remains burdened with a huge workload all the time, the wisdom is empowered to know the person which plays its tricks for own vested interests. In the process, the other person is not understood well but presumed to be understood. Since the matter is not referred to the brain by the mind under the presumption, the brain doesn't get involved in the matter leaving it to the mind.