Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Adaptation of the Species became controversial from the beginning. He came up with the idea after making a trip to the Galapagos Islands where he observed some of the weird animal life in that remote place. There were birds without wings and other oddities. That was way back in 1836. The Theory was introduced in his famous book on the subject and became a real hot topic after the famous Scopes or Monkey Trial in 1925.

The writer, Kurt Vonnegut, wrote a humorous book called Galapagos in which he described a tour boat on its way to the island when everyone else in the world died, but the folks on the boat survived. When they reached the island they started to adapt and evolve back to lower forms and their offspring, a million years into the future, had taken on many animal features and developed a much smaller brain because the big brain wasn’t needed anymore. Mark Twain, in a similar theory, said that man had descended from the monkey.

All these guys may have been right. We have been messing with Mother Nature in a big way and as a result we are going through some strange adaptations. We have overpopulated the planet and the human species has made some peculiar adaptations. People have a hard time getting along with each other and as a result we have wars to keep the population thinned. Another change that has occurred is the increasing role of the woman to be a breadwinner because of the need to afford all the junk we buy. The woman’s increasing role as a breadwinner and worker have taken her out of the home and business of child bearing. Her new role is a natural form of birth control. The career development path for women has also made child bearing occur at an older age, thus limiting the number of children in a family as well as producing a whole new set of diseases that have weakened the species.

Homosexuality is another form of population control that is a form of adaptation for our species. We are the only species of animal that practices the act of homosexuality. The other animals have predators that keep their population trimmed. Humans have no predators except for themselves. As a result, Mother Nature has taken care of the problem by increasing the number of homosexuals to control reproduction.

Darwin, Vonnegut and Twain all make sense. Maybe as we continue to descend from the ape to lower forms we will have predators that will help take care of our population problem. The government that has been our source of strength has now grown into a monster that threatens to consume us. So, we are adapting to control our population explosion through government intervention in our lives. Mother Nature is also helping with the earthquakes, tsunamis and tornados.

So, I think we are evolving and adapting to control our population growth. I differ from Darwin in my belief that we are descending rather than ascending from the ape.