Anti-equality politics: evolution has a speed limit

       The news yesterday that Maine voted down same-sex marriage really disappointed me, but at least 47% of the voters there get that it’s unfair for people to pay the same taxes without getting the same rights as everyone else, and 47% is an OK start. No one has ever been able to me why people are so petty about gays getting married, but then no one has ever been able to explain to me why anyone gets married (beyond the legal BS), so once again humanity, to me, is Hardy Boys mystery with the last page torn out. *sigh*

Thank God for science (howzat for irony?), which has stepped quietly into the room, lit its pipe and and offered what could turn out to be a perfect explanation as to why we reach a certain point of decency in our advancement as humans and then we crap out land start treating people unfairly again. Evolution - get this - seems to have speed limits.

       Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have been studying the potential evolutionary trajectory of species and have a theoretical model that can help determine how quickly species evolve. “A major conclusion of the work is that for some organisms, possibly including humans, continued evolution will not translate into ever-increasing fitness.” Some species, it seems, get winded from going in the right direction and stall out.

       It's quite complicated stuff, but that is how I understood it. The take-away seems to be that you’d think beneficial mutations would continue in a species idenfinitely that’s not the case. “…in more realistic landscapes the rate of adaptive substitutions (mutations that improve an organism's fitness) eventually lose steam, resulting in sub-linear fitness growth. In some of these landscapes, the fitness eventually levels out and the organism ceases to adapt, even though mutations may continue to accrue.”

       Roughly translated, sounds like evolution is not a ladder straight up but a spiral staircase on which species eventually get pooped and stop. It doesn't say so, but hopefully just for a rest.

       This would explain A LOT. A LOT.  
It would explain, for one thing, how come we're not all Thundercats already and why we've been adapting for millions of years yet some of us still need glasses or don't get the 'Be nice,' credo. The human species just gets tired of improving and has to stop and rest, like a jogger who not only needs a breather but has been going around in a circle for the past half hour when she thought she was miles up the road. We start being inclusive, creative and helpful and all of a sudden we’ve gone too far and have to stop and be static in our growth, not going back but sure as hell not going forward.

This happens in individuals, too. I have outbursts where I evolve a lo - I’m industrious, ambitious and healthy, then something happens and I turn into Veruca Salt, stubborn bitch refusing to go with the flow. And since systems mirror systems it makes intuitive sense what that happens to individuals happens to cultures and subsequently to species. We have spiritual growth spurts. And then we need a rest.

When one is on a journey, as we are with evolution, it is understandable that sometimes we have to stop for a leg stretch. It's quite another to set up housekeeping at the rest stop. On our road to betterment twe may slow down occasionally but to borrow an expression from one famous New Englander, Annie Wilkes, written by another one, Stephen King, at some point its our duty to get back “in the cockadoodie car!”  

Thankfully, a lot of people are still on the road and moving towards the future, as evidenced by the win of Chapel Hill's first openly gay mayor, Mark Kleinschmidt. Also, in Washington State as of this writing, a referendum in support of equal legal rights for gay couples and families looks safe for the moment from the just-pretend-to-love-thy-neighbor crowd. So the FAIL that happened up north, that was just a rest stop. Don't worry, you minces of Maine, you Queens of New England and LGBT peeps everywhere. The road trip will continue - it's just that some of the crowd that suffers a certain amount of constipation is having trouble leaving the rest area.