It has been observed that a human baby displays many of the characteristics of an embryo in the womb. The infant is unable to slumber longer in the dark or he or she would not be able to depart. Their head would become bigger than the doorway. So, aspects of womb life are prolonged into infanthood. This process is neoteny in action. Earlier stages of ontogeny are prolonged into later stages over time.
We might consider where this process is headed.
The acceleration that we are in the midst of has most of us astonished by how fast things are changing. Little noticed is how we as a species are changing physically, dispositionally, integrally. Autism, an evolutionary condition, is blossoming across contemporary society. Social structure is radically adjusting to place woman in positions of authority, allowing them to choose their own mate, abort and compete with men. In just 100 years, we are taller, our brains are bigger (after a 25,000-year period of size decrease) and we as a species are becoming more gracile, fragile and vulnerable.
Infant features prolong into adulthood. Embryo features prolong into infanthood. With time, embryo features prolonged into infanthood themselves prolong into adulthood.
Features of early embryo ontogeny slowly work their way forward into the features of descendants over time. What would it look like if the moment of sperm/egg integration was itself neotenized and prolonged into later and later stages of ontogeny?
We are headed in a direction where speed accelerates with each passing decade.
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, with hormonal developmental processes of our ancestor species being reproduced in our personal ontogeny. As earlier and earlier stages of our ontogeny manifest later and later in the features of our descendants, we are at the same time traveling back in species time, carrying forward features of ancestor species long extinct.
In other words, in our phylogeny and ontology, we are slowly traveling back toward our creation.
We are traveling back in species time as earlier stages of ontogeny are carried forward or prolonged into the adults of our descendants.
We are traveling back in ontogenic time as aspects of our personal origins are carried forward into the adults of our descendants.
Somehow, our life-on-earth and individual origins are both closely tied at the moment of our creation, a moment slowly being approached and prolonged into descendant adulthoods. A process accelerating as we speak.
It’s as if evolution is compelled to make creation conscious. It’s as if the goal were to make the origin the end.
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Andrew Lehman on 11/17/09 in featured, Society | 3 Comments | Read More
Comments (3)
“It’s as if the goal were to make the origin the end.”
This is a grand mythic theme. See Mircea Eliade’s “The Myth of the Eternal Return.” What Eliade calls ‘sacred’ cultures experience time as cyclic. The goal of their rites and rituals is to reinstate the aboriginal conditions, any deviation from which represents decadence.
For a misapplication of neoteny (based on recapitulationism) read Aldous Huxley’s “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”. There, a life-extension experiment sends the scientist backward not ontogenetically toward infancy but phylogenetically toward apehood. An amusing tale.
If the origin presages the end, then maybe floatation in the womb gets echoed as weightlessness in the space capsule. Pop culture seems to favor neotenous extraterrestrials. Want to peer into the future?
Do an Image Search for “Putti”.
Indeed, “putti” displays many babies. Most with wings.
I’ve been playing lately with the idea that embryonic processes, epigenetic dynamics, when prolonged to appear in adults create adults deeply focused on environmental interplay and interpersonal interconnection, like what Sarah Hrdy writes about. Only, what we think of as music or art is really a reflection of what happens in the womb….
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