Adaptation and Evolution: Writers Fortnight Article

Adaptation and Evolution- Chetan Bhagat

To kick off our Writers Fortnight, our first speaker was an author named Chetan Bhagat. He is an extremely successful Indian columnist, author, and motivational speaker known all around India. Bhagat spoke to us about a range of topics, but one that really resonated with me was what he said about winning. Bhagat explained, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptive.” He also stated, “There are two types of winning, one where you are better than the rest, and the other when you change the game.” As a tennis player, I had never thought of winning as changing the game because, in my mind, it is just being better than the rest. As I thought more about the adaptive species, I realised how much we, as humans, change every single year and everything we adapt to.

Modern humans have been on earth for arguably, 200,000 years now and we have had to adjust to numerous situations and still do, unconsciously. For example, skin colour is a human adaptation to the environment and climate in certain regions. Lactose intolerance is a human adaptation because humans are not meant to drink milk, especially non-human milk, beyond infancy. Lastly, our body size and shape is based on genetics in addition to the human adaptation to the weather and the protection it needs. There are multiple more instances where humans have had to adapt to the changing environment, climate, and other species on earth.

If we are changing the game all the time, then aren’t we all winners? As a species, we have a habit of making ourselves feel less than we actually are and putting ourselves down. Coming back to Bhagat’s point though, if we change the game- we are winning. However, we always make ourselves seem smaller and less significant than we actually are because after all, humans are the most dominant species living on earth right now. This is solely because we are able to develop with our planet which is eternally changing. The fact of the matter is that even though we are adjusting so well, suddenly life has become a race for everyone.

We wake up every day and almost everything we accomplish, we end up pushing someone else down and take it as ‘collateral damage’. Little do we realise, instead of competing against each other, we should be doing the exact opposite and working in unity to make our earth a better place. As such a dominant race, we have so much control and are able to achieve so much more than the little we are happy with right now. If only success wasn’t the only thing that clouded up our minds, almost like a disease spreading and all we can think about is doing well.

1 in 8 people go to sleep hungry every single night, they are malnourished. 1 in 7 people don’t have an adequate house to go back to. Over 35% of the world’s population don’t have access to clean water and sanitation. There are over 60 million children who don’t have a school to attend every day. However, all we can think about is making more and more money. After working together in our early evolution days, there was a paradigm shift where there was no more loyalty, we seemed to think that we are able to accomplish everything we want, individually.

In conclusion, Chetan Bhagat’s small comment about adaptation opened up my mind to a number of things and really got me to push a little further. These were all things I had never considered before and as he talked, I couldn’t help but notice how humans have adapted immensely over the generations making us the most dominant species on earth. From there, I realised that even though we are slowly stopping our evolution, we are so happy with it because no one wants to work in unity to achieve more for mankind. This is not how it works in the animal kingdom, where every species unites in order to accomplish goals.