Is the human brain an evolutionary dead end?

I often think about human beings' journey to the top of the evolutionary heap. How did we get to this point in natural history? Certainly the single largest factor in this rise to prominence has been the evolutionary path of the human brain. Sure, it's an elegant answer. In digging a little deeper, I have come to the conclusion that what makes humans so successful as a species is our ability to adapt. Give most species lemons and they'll die a horrible death. Give humans lemons and we'll figure out a way to profiteer off the manipulation of a pristine ecosystem and it's indigenous peoples to create a conglomerate of lemonade stands leveraging slave wages for illegal aliens to incrementally increase profit share for our stock holders and, what the heck, maybe give ourselves a few bonuses and raises along the way. Our brains are certainly what gives us this ability to adapt. It harnesses fire when we needed to cook our meat to free it of bacteria, it learned how to use animal skins for warmth when the weather turns cold, it learned how strength and safety can be gained through complex social matrices. Unfortunately, it also learned that much can be gained through the pain, suffering and manipulation of others.

To shift gears a bit, it can be said that the human brain is primarily responsible for the current state of political and socio-economic affairs in today's world.

Hmmmmm.

I don't think the current state of the human condition in today's world is a particularly good one. Even worse, I think the outlook for the future even poorer. If that's the case, then can it be argued that our current state of affairs is the result of a less than ideal evolutionary path of the human brain? Is there a yet undiscovered genetic mutation that has occurred somewhere along the way? I've spent some time thinking about just such a scenario and here's what I've come up with.

Human rationalization is an evolutionary dead end.

I believe that the human brain has gotten so good at rationalization that it's hardly a conscious act anymore. I believe that the human mind can find a pretty damned good reason to justify just about anything. I believe that human rationalization is the culprit for everything from greed, to murder, to religous fanaticism (which is just a combination of greed and murder). With the onset of human rationalization not only has the brain learned to cope with morally corrupt situations, it has learned to thrive in them. Personal conquest has become the human game of prey. Manipulation of the weak and ignorant is its weapon.

As I watch the global financial meltdown occur in front of my eyes does it not become blatantly obvious that executive compensation is a product of human rationalization?

How were CEO's able to accept gargantuan financial compensation packages in the face of massive workforces that hadn't gotten a whiff of a raise in years? How were they able to do this while they were driving their corporations and the thousands that slaved in their trenches into the proverbial shitter? Are these men psychopaths, no different from Hitler, Amin and Kim? Somehow I think not. These men and women were able to operate because rationalization told them and their crony boards that they were only getting what was fair in an open market. After all, their competitors were doing the same. Their job was a tough one, especially in such difficult economic times. All in all, the gratuitous compensation was all relative. In relation to what all the other crooks were doing, this really wasn't stealing. In other words . . .human rationalization.


The brain also uses rationalization to our detriment on a much smaller scale. Humans have this history of not being able to visualize the big picture or sense how an incremental change fits into the larger construct. The extra 10 seconds that they tacked onto that red light on my commute home. The extra 2 minutes it takes my computer to boot because everything has to be scanned because of rationalized human predation. The extra 10 minutes it takes me to get through my mail because now I have to fill out 2 pages of insurance forms to go to the doctor, or renew an insurance policy. All in all none of these individual things is a big deal. However, taken in-whole, maybe I have an hour less a day than I did 5 years ago. Chart this out over dozens of generations and we're already allocated well into negative time. No wonder we're all so tired. Most people don't even realize why. They just accept incremental change because their brain has rationalized it before it even became a wisp of a thought. Things like spam aren't right or wrong, they just ..... ARE......like eating and breathing my friends. Eat your heart out Orwell.

Rationalization makes all of these new-age inconveniences livable to most people. These changes are not so readily accepted into my world. Is my brain different than those that can rationalize fatwa as easily as my lungs can process oxygen? My hope is that the answer is yes, and my hope is that the evolutionary dead end that is human rationalization becomes extinct before it brings the entire planet along with it.

The human brain, one hell of an organ.