Finally I figure out how to get my message from my computer word processer to the board without a link.

Will, a force of evolution?

I’ve heard theories about accidental genetic mutation as a possible cause of evolution. In a previous post I mentioned an idea I’ve entertained myself with about how memories or successful responses towards environmental stresses may be somehow recorded and have a chance of being passed down to offspring or the offspring of offspring as instincts and impulses that help in their survival and the survival of their species. Species which developed this unconscious genetic ability would definitely gain an advantage of survival over competing species without this genetic ability. Scientists who research DNA have no idea what most of the coded DNA they find represents, so they have nicknamed it junk DNA. Junk DNA doesn’t seem to be responsible for anything important, but what if some of it is encoded information and knowledge? Somehow I don’t feel it is expedient for a more advanced and successful species survival not to have some system in place to store and pass down clever new tricks of survival in a form other than learned and taught behavior. In animals we observe this ability as instinctual knowledge. In ourselves we see a sense of this in what we observe as traits inherited from an ancestor who died before he could teach his traits or charms, yet never-the-less they are miraculously observable to a differing degree in one or more of his offspring or offspring’s offspring.

I feel there are likely in-numerable causes for evolution. One exciting idea I thought about after watching a nature episode about the birds of paradise and how many unexplainable forms of beauty the starling has mutated into on these isolated islands containing no predators was the idea that conscious will may also play a role in evolution. The birds there rapidly mutated not out of necessity but seemingly to some sort of a divine plan and conscious pleasure of the spectacular and beauty. The beaks of birds are an example. Say a certain seed eater learns a taste for flower necter but is frustrated by the clumsiness of his bill at attaining it. He wishes his bill was a little longer and narrower to better obtain it. This will of a new form and possible dreaming of having this new form and being successful where as in the waking real world there was only failure, may trigger a genetic response to mutate more closely to this new and more successful dream form. Before this bird’s dreams of genetic alteration has time to occur because of the slowness of this process, the lack of steady conscious and unconscious effort towards the goal, and or the nature of the individual strength of will this particular bird possess say this bird dies of old age and to the naked eye there is little to no discernable physical change. Now say this bird passes down genetically not only its desire for the new source of food but likewise the need for a new kind of bill to harvest it better to one or more of its offspring. Say one of these offspring also inherits the dream memory of the parent bird where it has a longer beak and is therefore more successful and thus wills its beak to grow longer and more narrower as it developes from hatchling to adult and say it somewhat succeeds at this to a limited extent. Say a brother and sister from this hatching that inheritated all these same desires and dreams from their parent or parents find these more developed features on each other more appealing during mating season so they wind up mating with each other rather than with birds of their own species with less desireable and shorter beaks. Say their hatchlings inherite all these same desires and take them a little further. Eventually a new species of bird could evolve from the exercise of conscious will and conscious selection rather than natural selection of the survival of the fittest. We people I believe have this ability and are doing the same thing in this day and age to a limited and variously successful extent as our values about ourselves are influenced by media.