Back To The Future...

...from the BBC tonight:

"Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said. Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge. The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology. People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added. The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures."

Can't say I've ever checked what HG Wells had to say on the subject. Likeable fellow, but not desperately sound on humanity writ large has always been my view of the man.

Have even less idea of the bona fides of the above Oliver Curry cove and not, therefore, in any position to say whether he is or is not a priori talking nonsense. You could, though, imagine it couldn't you? Whether or not the actual mechanics of selection would finally effect a definitive line between two sub-species must be questionable, but the philosophical principle of the 'uppers' seeking to differentiate and distance themselves from the 'unders' sounds plausible. ('Little Britain' versus the rest? Don't we all instinctively assume we are all the latter and none of the former?)

But does not the very concept strike at the heart of the Golden Rule of evolutionary thinking - that the fittest alone survive and others to the wall of extinction they must go?

Why then should the 'unders' survive at all? Handy perhaps as gardeners in life or avant garde table-legs in death, but if truly trolls then evolutionary theory would have them die off surely, not survive because they might be of some use to others.

The assumption, of course, is that goodness will reside with the uppers alone, the unders mere bestial bad brutes. Take a squint through the columns of the newspapers and you might not dispute that assumption. But sometimes it takes a special kind of beauty to be truly ghastly and evil.

The 'unders' may forever be in search of nicking my wallet or gunning me down for the very fun of it; but perhaps only an 'upper' would want my very soul too. And are these not the greater enemy against whom our dear Lord warned us?

So who would be more pure than an angel yet more proud than a Lucifer?

Best not meddle in such things methinks. Social evolution may be heading that way, but not sure I want the biology of the thing to keep pace.