i think what we have to grasp fully about evolution is that it a mindless, random, self-contradictory and self-devouring process taking place in a mindless etc environment. it has no actual end or goal. so, for example, what lets a species flourish gets more and more intense, until the giraffe just tips over. or until a microbe evolves that kills all the trees that giraffe-necks let them reach. the microbe flourishes, kills its hosts, and expires. the fantastic plumage gets everybody mating for completely inexplicable causes. then it proves to be the end as hunters can hardly miss. the species evolves in exquisite relation to its environment for hundreds of thousands of years; then the environment transforms itself entirely in a century and kills everybody. predators outrun prey until the prey goes extinct, extinguishing the predators. there's no place this is going and no stable point and no meaning, as we might say. and human consciousness, evolved over thousands of generations etc. is fatal. nature doesn't care, is extremely unstable, can't think, doesn't mean, and isn't headed anywhere. (when you think through environmentalism or, like, global warming, your thinking-through had better be compatible with these realities. you'd better not be thinking about the environment as a stable, coherent, balanced, or intentional system, better not be conceiving an ideal end-state, etc, all of which notions make no sense at all.)

see *that* is what darwin left us. and i am not rejecting it at all; it's the only idea in town. i'm trying to *face* it. life is no more stable, advanced, organized, or sensible than it was ten million years ago.