Evolution and Direction
There is a tendency to assume that things are evolving from frail to perfect. In a sense it is, but it’s an evolution towards being perfectly adapted to an environmental niche. Every species that has not gone extinct is successful, from the simplest microbes to great squids. In fact, judging by the relative tenacity of bacterial species and their sheer number in comparison to man, you could say that this is not the Age of Man at all… it is, and has been, since the beginning, the Age of Bacteria.
Intelligence isn’t the only game in town. Consider species of archea that are capable of processing H2S instead of O2. In anoxic environments, they thrive in ways no human, no matter how brilliant, could ever last. Or deep sea creatures that can withstand the immense pressure at the bottom of the ocean-where we can’t even send a human being without killing them, let alone have them go down there and walk around. Or hyperthermophiles that can withstand the heat of a thermal vent. There are some species of bacteria that can thrive in hypercloric environments-try immersing yourself in clorox and see if you can compete with that.
Human beings are evolving, as every species evolves. But that doesn’t imply that we’re getting smarter. There isn’t even a clear definition of what intelligence is for that matter. Is a savant, brilliant at quantitative skills and mnemonics, as adept at complex social situations or music?
There’s an old picture drawing that’s plagues evolutionary biology ever since it was drawn. It depicts on the left a fish, then a small land reptile, etc, all the way to simians and an upright man on the right. That is not an accurate representation of evolution. We are not ‘the most evolved’ species, not by far, except that every species that survives is the most highly evolved.