In the time it takes you to read this chapter, the DNA in millions of your cells will undergo chemical changes—in your skin, in your gut, everywhere. Usually these changes are immediately corrected by the body, but not always. When this process goes awry, it’s called a mutation. If mutations appear during the formation of germ cells—that is, in sperm or egg cells—they can be passed on to the next generation. The body has mechanisms to prevent this; as a result, fertilized germ cells with mutations that cause serious illnesses usually die. But smaller mutations often slip through the net, and a genetic change can thus, under certain circumstances, become hereditary.
The human genome consists of 3.3 billion base pairs. In 2003, when the Human Genome Project came to an end, it would have taken more than ten years to unravel the genetic code of a particular individual. Today our laboratory can process a trillion base pairs every day. The throughput of these machines has increased by a factor of 100 million over the past fifteen years: currently, one sequencer can decode an extraordinary 300 human genomes in a single day.
Natural Selection of Stupidity
How was our unique way of thinking allowed us to shape the world to our desires in incredible ways, but also to consistently make absolutely the worst possible choices despite it being very clear what bad ideas they are? In shor: How can we put a man on the moon and yet still send THAT text to our ex? It all boils down to the ways that our brains evolved.
The thing is that evolution, as a process, is not smart -but it is at least dumb in a very persistent way. All that matters to evolution is that you survive the thousand possible horrible deaths that lurk at every turn for just long enough to ensure that your genes make it through to the next generation. If you manage that, job done. If not, tough luck.
Once man-made, historical processes have become automatic, they are no less ruinous than the natural life process that drives our organism and which in its own terms, that is, biologically, leads from being to non-being, from birth to death. The historical sciences know only too well such cases of petrified and hopelessly declining civilizations where doom seems foreordained, like a biological necessity, and since such historical processes of stagnation can last and creep on for centuries, they even occupy by far the largest space in recorded history; the periods of being free have always been relatively short in the history of mankind.
