We Evolve, She Said... Do We?

An email came to me from a woman in India who said that contrary to the opinion expressed in many of my posts, she feels that human beings have value in the world because we are an evolving species.  But, are we?
If you look at us on the surface we are more advanced, yes. But truthfully I don't think we are an evolving species. at least not in the sense she meant. As I understood her she was saying that we evolve in the sense that we grow, get better, smarter, closer to God over time. Which is untrue.
If you look at humans in the past, lets say the Roman empire, compared to humans now. Have we evolved? Not really, if anything we've gotten worse. But possibly that comes as much from numbers as anything. There are millions more humans on the planet every day. Greater numbers mean greater hostility, greater impatience, greater anger, etc. Greed goes on, duplicity, theft, crookedness, murder, rape, fraud go on, slavery in one form or another goes on, (in this country it's slavery to debt, ie credit cards, mortgages, etc.), racism goes on, war and killing for profit by governments go on, and on and on, etc. etc. Go further back, to the Egyptians, to the Mesopotamians if you want.  I don't think we've evolved as a species at at all, as I said we're possibly, no probably, devolving.
Take racism for instance, it goes on under the surface but there. Contrary to what we seem to be taught, what we see on the screen, big or small, what we read and are told it's there. But, it's a big but, there's only one race of human beings. Different cultures, different physicality, different religions, beliefs, ideas, but only one race. Racism is a flawed concept, a non-evolved reaction to someone who's the same but seems different. Their eyes are slanted, or their skin is lighter or darker or different, their hair is in a pigtail, or long or short or shaved, they dress differently, they speak with an accent or in a different language, they eat strange weird food, or use fingers or sticks, they don't drink coffee or tea, or they do, their God has a different name, their beliefs are different, on and on and on. If they're not us or like us, they're wrong, or so many think.
Human society is still, even now, a tribal society. Most of us, whether we know, or admit it, or not, are still members of tribes that are largely our families, and we're exposed to other tribes in school, around town, at work, so over time we become members of larger tribes, but they're largely the same people as us and our families.
I dated a black girl briefly in my early twenties, we worked together  in Utica, her name was Beverly, and she was smart and pretty. My father said never bring a black girl home, and she wouldn't even go to lunch with me in the cafeteria, because she was afraid word would get back to her father.    What does that prove? Well not anything really, but it does give a strong indication that contrary to popular myth, everybody's racist to some degree. Beverly's father was just as racist as my own, yet if you'd asked him he'd probably have denied it to his dying breath. I'm sure he considered himself a victim, and whites the perpetrators. So she wasn't welcome in my tribe and I wasn't in hers, no matter what we wanted.
But, as I said we all belong to the human race, the same race. There's no real significant difference between any of us.
Religion is another excuse for fear and hatred. I read about the riots and killing between Muslim and Hindu after the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, he spent his life trying to unite people and make them realize there was little difference between them but died a failure thanks to the incomprehensible hatred of one religion for another. The final reality was that their perceived difference overwhelmed everything he believed and taught. But, this did not prove Gandhi wrong, he wasn't, what it did was prove that the majority of people are not evolved beyond upright apes. There are some, like the Mahatma who are more evolved, but not much more probably, and so few that they're invisible to the rest of us, and ignored when push comes to shove.  It's said that there's been more killing in the name of Jesus throughout history than any other. I imagine the killing in the name of Mohammad would run a close second, if not in first place. Hinduism and every other religion, with the exception of Buddhism, yes I know it's not actually a religion, has done their share of killing too. Including those victims the American Indians, or Native Americans to be PC, who led a culture of war and murder among themselves long before the "white man" ever got here. Nobody, except as I said the Buddhist, is innocent.
I'm told that I have a pessimistic outlook. But I think I simply see the world and all of us in it as we are irrelevant, and just making each other miserable. Now I could stop there and it would be right, but the truth is I really do believe we are completely irrelevant.
As I've said before, contrary to what we're taught and believe, this world is maya, illusion. We're all acting in a dream.  It sure seems like a long time here, but it may all take place in micro-seconds somewhere else. 
I remember when I was in the 5th grade, I sat in the first row. Mrs. Paine, or Payne, I'm not sure, would be droning along in front at the board. I would be in a different world, place, time, whatever. It all seemed completely normal and ordinary, and seemed days or weeks. Suddenly I'd start awake, look at Mrs Paine, and she'd still be talking or writing on the blackboard, completely unaware. I'd sneak a look at the clock, and perhaps just one or two minutes had passed.
It just shows that other worlds exist and we live in them too, maybe all at the same time, who knows. Are they better, worse, the same or different? Don't have a clue.

Lee Murray