They call me Monkey
Several days ago Reski Sululing sent me an article about Evolution theory which you can read here written by folks in Zenius Education. Look, i’m no expert in Biology nor Evolution Theory and the last person you would want to listen talking about this subject is the one who begin his sentence with “ Look, i’m no expert in Biology nor Evolution Theory…” but bear with me for a moment.
The article did amazing job pointing out misinterpretations (yes it is Plural) that many great ladies and gents out there did in the past and probably still do until now. You can read the article first to get a holistic information about those misinterpretations. However, what i wanted to point out on this time is related to the Human-is-descendant-of-ape’s idea. The rejection of this idea is a complicated result of religion, Human’s pride, and mostly ignorance.
On the surface level, Following the logic that human has a higher position, place, status, intelligence (you name it) compare to animal is the root of all of this problem in my opinion. Right after that, Indonesian people have negative connotation toward monkey and all of its kind. They perceive ape monkey, gorilla, lemur, orangutan and etc is as manifestation of hideousness. When you mock your friend and call em monkey here in Indonesia, it is translated to you ugly piece of shit. Combination of these two things creates rejection to a notion that we are in the same family tree with these animals.
This rejection of this one notion leads to the rejection all notions that is Evolution Theory. I suspected that many of these people do not even read the origin of species by Charles Darwin (you can read for free here) which i have not read it myself but fear not because i have read this subject in the wikipedia page. you can check it here:
Darwin’s book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection.
from this one of course we need to know what is natural selection, and here you are:
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations.
Getting more complicated i can see here, what is a phenotype in which are the key mechanism of theses changes (evolution) that allows ape transform to human. So i click again on that link.
Phenotype (from Greek phainein, meaning ‘to show’, and typos, meaning ‘type’) is the term used in genetics for the composite observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism’s morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior. An organism’s phenotype results from two basic factors: the expression of an organism’s genetic code, or its genotype, and the influence of environmental factors.
Fine it is getting more complicated. So, as a great scholars of wikipedia which i have been working with since the days of my college years, let me simplify it for you.
Apparently, All creature changes overtime (a very very long period of time) based on two factors which are the gene that they have and inherited from their parents and because of the environmental factors. Survival of the fittest.
From this point, Evolution theory is not only success in explaining biology, it also making sense a lot of other subjects such as Linguistic, chemistry, sociology, genetic, and many others ( i hope i can cover this one in another Essay). However, APPARENTLY, WE DON’T NEED TO EFFING READ THE BOOK TO GET THIS INFORMATION. So, what stop people from getting this information must be foolishness and ignorance.
People choose to ignore subject that are hurting their pride, against their religion, things that they have no knowledge about, or something that are just felt uneasy for them to talk about. This ignorance goes against curiosity which is key to discoveries, invention, and improvement of life and technology.
At the end Maybe Indonesia should have another Galileo’s Case before we accept Evolution Theory. (If you don’t get the joke and do not curious enough to find out, maybe you are the problem too)
Source:
Wikipedia.
