Technological Selection - A Fresh New Look At The Theory Of Evolution

Online, April 10, 2011 (Newswire.com) - It was a bright sunny day in the perpetually bright sunny Singapore when I sat in a rather comfortable couch of an al fresco Starbucks waiting for my interviewee to arrive. It was his choice, this specific location, an outdoor coffee shop with a movie theater on the top floor of the building. He was watching a movie, he explained over the phone, and I could come and join him for a "coffee and chocolate cake" afterward if I wished. I wished positively, and here I was.

The man had a cool name: Shafin de Zane (which means He Who Heals The Mind, as I found out later) and he was watching a cartoon called Rango (he told me when I called).

Shafin de Zane is a Hypnotherapist by training, a seasoned Internet marketer by profession and known around the world for his free life coaching course "Redefine Your Reality". He is the author of a book by the same name and creator of several popular self-help audio programs.

However, today I was here waiting to interview him on a topic that seems quite unusual for a self-help guru to muddy his hands on... the theory of evolution. In a recent video course that is publicly available for free, he proposed that a new force of evolution is necessary to be added to the existing theory that includes natural selection and mate selection.

Proposed in the late 1800's by Charles Darwin, the theory of evolution remains one of the most respected and widely accepted foundations of our modern science. The previous theory includes "natural selection" which is the process through which animals adapt to the environment around it and evolve, or die if they are too slow or too rigid. Natural selection happens in response to changing weather, presence of available food, predators, parasites etc.

The second part of the theory of evolution is "mate selection" which explains how we adapt and evolve trying to attract mates of our choice (or any mate at all, as in the case of many). Typically since the females of most species look for males with more fitness and other desirable qualities, some males get to mate a lot and some not at all. For this, a race begins to develop "mating ornaments" that signify a males potential fitness. Examples of these ornaments are the beautiful patterns on the wings of a butterfly or the huge antlers of certain deer species. Those who get to develop these ornaments effectively get to mate successfully, leave their genes behind, and their offspring are born with those adapted genes. Those who cannot, die lonely, making no contribution to the gene pool.

In short this is the theory of evolution, as we have it so far. This theory has been applied to all animals and humans and it remains one of the most successful and long standing theories of our scientific model... until recently... till Shafin de Zane came up with the third component of the model: technological selection.

As I sipped on my latte, Shafin (he insists that I refer to him by his first name) arrived right on time for our interview. He was a young man in his thirties, appeared much younger with his three quarters and t-shirt with the saying "My job is so secret, even I don't know what I'm doing". I tried to remind myself that this was also the man who has literally over a hundred thousand students around the world who rave about him constantly on the Internet.

"So tell me about technological selection" I asked after we spoke in depth about the hero in the cartoon he just watched.

"Its actually quite simple" said Shafin, "after we reached certain critical juncture in human evolution, we began to create different technologies and started using those technologies to alter the environments around us. Technological selection is the process through which a human being is weeded out of the gene pool through sheer inconvenience just because he or she cannot adapt or learn to use the new technology."

"Consider this..." Shafin continued as he waved his hand towards the buildings and cars passing by. "Merely 200 years ago none of this existed. No one knew what a car is or telephone is or how to use the elevators or fly a plane or anything like that. And know nearly everyone does... but not everyone.

"There are many around the planet right now who are not able to use a cell phone or communicate via Skype or understand how credit cards work and even how to read or write! It's not because they are lazy, or they don't have access to such technologies, but simply they lack the brain capacity to understand and use these innovations. How do you think they are doing?"

"Pretty badly I imagine." I answered like a schoolboy in awe of his favorite teacher. I could see why people loved this guy when he delivered lectures. He was passionate about his subject, animated in his gestures and did not take himself too seriously at all.

"That's exactly right. Now here is the crux of the matter... 200 years is nothing, absolutely nothing at all when it comes to evolving new brain capacities necessary through adaptation. But that's exactly what we are doing. We are constantly changing and adapting to amazing, unforeseen new technologies everyday and those who are not being able to adapt are slowly being weeded out of the gene pool.

"Imagine a young man, fresh out of college, in Singapore or New York who simply lacks one simple capacity: to be able to use computers. How do you think this man is going to fare in life? Imagine a boy born in India, who cannot read or write, just as many cannot, how do you think he will fare in his life? Yes, he may not die right away, but he will live an extremely poor quality life and don't forget he will also be subject to mate selection. Unless he is able to successfully find a healthy mate who will be willing to have children with him, he is as good as non existent from an evolutionary point of view."

"So you are saying not everyone has the brain capacity to learn to use all these technological innovations?" I asked.

"No they do not. Do you remember how many people went jobless in the 90s because they couldn't learn to operate the computer? These people tried. I myself tried to teach some of older folk back then. They simply can't handle it.

"Yet to understand how extreme this force is, try to imagine a man from the time of Jesus Christ, somehow brought to this present day world through a time machine. How do you think he will fare? Can he get a job? Can he get a medical insurance? Can he convince someone to marry him? As you can imagine, it will be extremely difficult for him to live in our world without help. Yet, he is a human being with identical anatomy as you or me simply from 2000 years back. What's important for you to understand is that 2000 years is no time at all for most animals to even change the color of their fur, let alone change their neural architecture.

"This is what I mean by technological selection: the force of evolution that we humans have imposed upon ourselves by constantly changing the environment around us by inventing and using newer and newer technologies. The world is weeding out of the gene pool all but the smartest, faster than ever before. And the reason is technological selection.

"Don't forget a tiger or a monkey can choose to go live alone gather his food and make a living all by his own if he cannot live in a social setting. A human cannot. The super social world of over 6.8 billion people today virtually forces everyone to depend on everyone else. And unless you can keep up with the ever changing technological environment, you will be very poor, lonely and completely unattractive to a potential mate."

"And how does this relate to the video course you have on the Internet The Psychology Of Attraction?"

"Actually it all comes back to mating, seduction and attraction. In a nutshell, the way it all happened was that human females a few million years ago, through a series of serendipitous events, began to choose males for mating who were smarter rather than just faster and stronger. This caused the whole species to begin a race of developing the biggest brain with the highest levels of adaptability, leadership, social intelligence and some other things I cannot go into right now without proper introduction.

"What I discovered is that we humans are hardwired to feel attracted to certain people who display certain behavior traits. And these behavior traits are exactly those smart traits I just mentioned along with some others."

"So you are saying this jump in evolution happened because we got ever smarter trying to attract mates for us?" I asked.

"That's exactly right. Except, that's how it started... in the beginning it was simply mate selection that drove this huge spurt of intelligence, but after a critical mass had been reached, so to speak, technological selection kicked in, and now it's a force by itself that is compounded by mate selection."

Readers who wish to learn more about this third force of evolution can visit www.psychologyofattraction.org It's a refreshing, fun, educational journey that is sure to make you rethink your understanding of life.

Shafin's new home study course 5 Essential Mindsets Of Magnetically Attractive Men is due to come out end of this month which encapsulates all his ideas on evolution and teaches men how to install those attractive traits within their personalities and become a magnetically attractive man.

I know I can't wait to get my hands on this program. It's been a while I've been on a date.