Homeless Jack on Rapid Evolution and Speciation

by H. Millard

“MAN, people have it wrong about people who believe as I believe,” said Homeless Jack. “They call us supremacists or this or that and they say we think we’re perfect or the best or whatever. (ILLUSTRATION: Charles Darwin)

“In fact, we don’t think we’re supreme and we think we’re very imperfect. I’ll tell you what we are about. We’re for genuine freedom, man. We’re for being able to be who we are as we ourselves choose. We’re for intellectual honesty and truth. We’re for justice. We’re for letting people decide their own paths through life. We’re for letting people believe as they want.

“And, we also believe that we can will our own evolution so that we can move higher. We believe that we can become what God wants us to become, but that we’re presently only about eight percent of that.”

“Where did you get that eight percent figure?” I asked.

“Arman says that we’re supposed to live to around 1200 or so years, and since we now only live to about 100 years at best, that’s about eight percent,” said Jack. “And, Arman says that’s probably a reasonable way to look at things.

“Arman also says that we can evolve much faster than conventional wisdom says is possible. Examples are seen in some birds, and in some lizards where evolution took place in about fourteen years.

“I read this article recently about how scientists did an experiment where they put a species of lizard, that they got from one island that was full of the critters, on fourteen small desolate islands in the Caribbean where there were no lizards at all.

“The experiment started out to be about how extinction works, and the scientists wanted to see how fast the lizards would disappear from the different islands with their different conditions.

“Instead, the lizards started adapting and evolving to survive.

“When this happened, the scientists switched their experiment to study evolution and adaptation.

“Because it is well known in the scientific community that lizards that live on trees usually have longer legs than lizards that live on short shrubs, the scientists predicted that the lizards on each island would evolve depending on the type of vegetation found there.

“They were right. That’s exactly what happened. But, one of the surprising things about this was that the lizards evolved very fast. About fourteen years after the lizards were put on the islands, the scientists discovered that the lizards on the islands with tall trees had already developed longer legs and those on the islands with short shrubs had developed shorter legs.

“Fourteen crummy years, man. Not a million years. Not a hundred thousand years. Just a little over a decade, and evolution changed the friggin’ lizards, all from the same original lizard population, into different versions of the originals, as they adapted to survive in their new environments.

“In other words, it was the start of speciation via isolation and different conditions. If the lizards are left alone long enough — and who knows how long is long enough? — their changes will be fixed and they will eventually be unable to breed with the other populations from which they all sprang. Then, they’ll be considered to be of different species. That’s evolution. That’s how it works in the real world. If, however, the long legged and short legged lizards are mixed together, speciation will stop.

“See, man, that’s what Arman has been saying about our own evolution. We need to understand ourselves and how we adapt to different environments, both internal and external, to guide our evolution in the right direction.

“Look, Arman says that when we evolve in one bodily area–think, the short legs vs. the long legs of the lizards–there are actually many more changes that take place, that we may not see, that are “unintended.” These unintended things of evolution are sometimes the things that turn out to be the most important in the long run.

“For example, Arman says that humans didn’t develop big brains to think about all the things we think about and to contemplate our navels, man; we developed these higher thinking abilities as unintended results of our brains getting larger so we could outsmart stronger and faster animals that saw us as their meals. In other words, our brains developed so we could think basic survival strategies such as: ‘Okay, there’s a lion over there that wants to eat me. Maybe I can survive if I pick up this sharp stone and attach it to this long stick and throw it at the lion.’ Jumping from that to wondering about the stars overhead and why we’re here and all the rest, were just unintended aspects of the ability to survive by being smarter.

“Arman says we need to control our internal and external environments in order to evolve in the right way. That’s how we can bring in the unintended things that are needed to move higher up the evolutionary ladder.

“If you read Arman’s revelations and comments, you’ll see that he talks about us wearing the right clothes, eating the right foods, living in the right climates and more. That’s all about us naturally adapting in ways that move us up the ladder, man. How does Arman know the right way? That’s where revelation and belief come in, man. Arman knows because these things were revealed to him. We can chose to believe him or not. This is where science and religion meet.

“See, when Arman says that we should wear cotton next to our skin, there’s a reason. When he says that we should wear dark, plain clothes, there’s a reason. When he says that we should have the sacred symbols with us at all times, there’s a reason. When he says that we should isolate ourselves, there’s a reason. It’s all about taking charge of our destiny by willing our own evolution, man. It’s all about breaking the cycle of blending back into the undifferentiated conformist mass. It’s like a distillation process. It’s all about us fulfilling God’s commands for us. It’s about being different in the right ways and having those differences get fixed in our genes.

“Yeah, but many people may say that sounds as though Arman is heading toward the now largely discredited eugenics of the past,” I said.

“Well, they’d be wrong, man,” said Jack. “In fact, Arman has said that the old eugenics thinking actually leads to a lower birthrate because everyone gets too picky about their mates. What is really needed, says Arman, is a maximum birthrate among believers so they make as many of themselves as humanely possible.

“Arman says that we should breed to our maximum and not think overlong about our mates so long as we combine the two like halves and bring forth children in our image. He says we need to fill all possible niches in society with us–from ditch diggers to scientists–and that eventually, so long as we have the massive numbers, we will start moving up. Without the massive numbers, we’ll just head to extinction.

“Arman also teaches that moving higher is a little like method acting. You have to believe your role and you have to get into character and not break character. Then, your subconscious mind accepts what you are acting and believing and works to make this image a reality by causing your body to secrete hormones and other chemicals to cause you to become, as much as possible, that which your aspire to become.

“You see, man, some good method actors who portray living or once living people will get into the role by wearing the actual clothes right down to the underwear of those they’re portraying, and they’ll live where they live, eat what they eat, read what they read, and all the rest. This imitating the person they are portraying on the stage or film often helps them with those unintended things that Arman is talking about.

“Arman has long taught that we can and must will our own evolution, but that to do it we must control conditions outside and inside us and this has been revealed to him.

“In fact, versions of this rapid evolution occurs all the time in humans according to Arman but because we are not isolated from others, we blend back in all the time and this has stopped our evolution. You do know that humans seem stuck in their evolution, right?

“Because we are not isolated and because we can mate with others and because we can control our environment–for example, if it’s cold we put on coats or invent heat sources–our evolutionary changes don’t set up or get fixed even though we’re being born with them all the time. Then we lose them as we are folded back into the mass.

“Arman also says, as I told you before, man, that scientists don’t fully understand how we acquire various characteristics and features as we evolve, and that they rely too heavily on natural selection as an answer while not understanding that we actually can pick up some elements from many things in our environment. I mean, Arman says that we absorb things that help us adapt and survive both from other living things and also even from so-called inanimate objects. It’s like our cells are tiny sponges and some things get in and cause changes. Arman says it’s helpful to think about this by analogizing from the way we catch colds. When it’s cold season, not everyone will catch a cold, i.e. not everyone will absorb the cold virus — but some will.”

(© 2010 H. Millard)

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Ourselves Alone & Homeless Jack’s Religion messages of ennui and meaning in post-American America by H. Millard In Ourselves Alone and Homeless Jack’s Religion, H. Millard, the hard-to-pigeonhole author of The Outsider and Roaming the Wastelands, has put together some of his category-bending commentaries on post-American America. The commentaries deal with politics, philosophy, free speech, genocide, religion and other topics; all in Millard’s edgy style. They lead up to Homeless Jack’s Religion, in which Homeless Jack lays out revelations he found in a dumpster on skid row. Click here to buy. ISBN: 0-595-32646-3

ROAMING THE WASTELANDS – (ISBN: 0-595-22811-9) H. Millard’s latest sacred cow toppling book, is now available at Amazon.com by clicking on this link or by calling 1-877-823-9235. “A fun–and sobering–thing to read” – Alamance Independent

THE OUTSIDER – (ISBN: 0-595-19424-9) H. Millard’s underground classic story of alienation is available at Amazon.com by clicking on the this link or by calling 1-877-823-9235.