It seems I have had a fundamental misunderstanding of natural selection for the past few years, ever since adhering to the not-so-original idea that consciousness changes a species' form and not nature. It was when reading a passage in Siddhartha Mukherjee's book The Gene that the simplicity of natural selection finally came to me:
Somewhere in the vast flock [of finches], a variant was born with a grotesque beak capable of cracking seeds. As famine raged through the finch world, this gross-beaked variant survived by feeding on hard seeds. It reproduced, and a new species of finch began to appear. The freak became the norm. As new Malthusian limits were imposed- diseases, famines, parasites- new breeds gained a stronghold, and the population shifted again. Freaks became norms, and normals became extinct. Monster by monster, evolution advanced." [Darwin's observations- The Gene, p. 38].
Mr. Siddhartha, I want to thank you for "enlightening" me on the matter. I had thought that nature was selecting random beings, based on geography, no doubt, but at a completely arbitrary rate. The idea that selection doesn't imply fated beings to evolve a species, but the outliers better adapted for a changing environment, has opened my eyes to a less spiritual, more materialistic view on the matter. How I've arrogantly clung to beliefs without a full understanding is slightly embarrassing. That tends to happen among the self-taught subjects such as these.
I positively love the idea that freaks are the progressives of creation, while the normals are weeded out of existence. Knowing this would give the outliers in our society a lot more confidence in a world that seems to shun any radical departure from the norm. It proves that diversity is more important than racism or eugenics, that the more diverse we are, the more likely our species will survive and evolve into something else.
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