Adaptability

I guess the survivability of all organisms on Earth is predominantly based on it's ability to adapt to the dynamic environment we dwell in today. English naturalist Charles Darwin's expeditions and discovery of the concepts of Natural Selection and Evolution only backs this point up. Whether we are referring to the survival of a single-celled amoeba right up to a complex human being, the rule applies - the ability to adapt defines it's dominance and presence in this world.

Compare a salmon and a human. If we were to transfer the salmon from it's natural freshwater habitat to a foreign saltwater environment, it will die. However, take a human out of his comfort zone, lets say from the urban landscape, and place him in a tropical rain forest, he will still survive. This is despite the fact the the temperature, humidity and almost all geological and environmental factors differ tremendously. That's why humans are of a highest status of the food chain, while the salmon remains preyed at. This is the wonder of adaptation. It's true that as humans continue to adapt and evolve today, many things start to come into our control. However, it is still unfair to say that humans control everything on Earth - many things are still way beyond our control. Take natural disasters, epidemics as examples. These are still issues that even the greatest living organism on Earth - humans, cannot control. 

Almost everyone that has lived through this decade has experienced Mother Nature's wrath - whether it's the horrendous Tsunami that hit the Indonesian province of Aceh in 2004, or the immense gales of Hurricane Katrina that swept through even the most developed country in the world, The United States of America, in 2005, these are events that strike so suddenly that humans cannot react to it on time. This resulted in astronomical casualty rates and property lost. The wonder of human being's is his ability to adapt and change depending on the environment. We learn. For instance, after the Tsunami strike in 2004, countries worldwide begin to action to prevent a similar disaster. These actions range from the installation of Tsunami warning systems and developing advanced tsunami tracking systems to educating the people about the effects of Tsunamis and evacuation plans.

Disasters or obstacles are not necessarily the product of Mother Nature. Some disasters are simply the product of man's careless utilisation of the environment. An example would be Global Warming due to increased greenhouse gas emission today. Humans adapt by building more cooling mechanisms, alternative fuel sources and whatnot. This way, humans continue to strive in the ever-changing environment. Other organisms may not be as lucky. The rapid rise in temperatures has left many other organisms extinct. A recent example would be extinction of Brushy-Tailed Ringtails that once covered the mountain forests of Queensland, Australia. This is how humans have survived over the years, despite experiencing the worst of Mother Nature.

Widespread disease is another example of how humans are more adaptable than other organisms. Diseases mutate rapidly in the world today, through various means, whether man-made or natural. Take the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that struck the world in 2003 as an example. When the games - predominantly chickens and ducks - were infected with it, they slowly died out. However, humans are determined to adapt and survive. As such, they research on vaccines and put in place quarantine measures to curb the spread of disease. This has led to the disease being controlled and yes, humans survive another obstacle in their quest for survival.

When discussing the issue of adaptability, we should not restrict ourselves to the narrow confines of human against animal/plant. As resources are spread out unevenly throughout the world, which is in addition to the fact that every country has a different set of environmental and geological characteristics, every country has to adapt in order to survive in this treacherous world where, humans not only have to compete with nature, but among themselves. Countries worldwide differ greatly in their standard of living, quality of life and challenges faced. Take Singapore as an example. Being located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, she's surrounded by resource rich countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and even further up North - China. So how can the people of Singapore strive to achieve development in such a hostile environment? This is a challenged faced by the Singaporean Government and it's indeed commendable how far we've come. Singapore's advantage lies in it's geographical location. It's located at the centre of major shipping and air routes and is blessed with no natural disasters - neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia block them for us. Hence, we capitalised on this to build up Singapore as a hub for manufacturing, human resource development and tourism - all of which are more or less independent on the availability of natural resources within the country. In fact, we turned the disadvantage to an advantage. We made use of neighbours' resources to drive our manufacturing sector. We buy resources from them, only to sell them more value-added products. From this, we can see that the ability of the people to think out of the box is key in adaptation and hence survivability.

In this world that we live in, Charles Darwin's concept of "the battle of the fittest" is observed at all levels of organisms. First, I discussed issues of humans against animals/plants, followed by humans against mother nature, their own man-made problems and diseases, and finally groups of humans classified as countries against each other. It's very disheartening, but a true hard fact of life, to see people competing against one another at an individual level. People compete with one another, even within a single entity called a country. Once again, adaptability plays a critical role if one is to succeed within society as we are classified. I will use education as an example. The concept of education is to benefit everyone by presenting them a plethora of knowledge, life skills, culture, ethics, etc to help them be a better person. However, in the pursuit for a better education, people tend to lose their purpose along the way. People start to classify education institutions into castes or hierarchies. They rank them by status and quality, very often to satisfy their selfish inner desires of class and status. As such, as more and more people go through this education system that is losing it's purpose, the result is simple - people begin to become more selfish and become more and more concerned only with their own survivability. This itself is also an example of adaptability. Hence, in order to survive in this world, at some point in life, everyone will be on their own - a sad but hard fact of life.

When I read up on Singapore's Economic Strategies, it feels as if adaptability is the way of life today. Sad. But it's heartening to see the successes of human adaptability, most recently seeing that Singapore is investigating the possibility of dwelling into nuclear energy to diversify our energy supply. Ask anyone about nuclear energy in Russia and you would probably get a hostile stare from them, followed by 101 reasons why nuclear energy is not the way to go. Russians are scarred by the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster, which was the leakage of radioactive product from a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Russia, leading to a massive nuclear explosion. It was classified as a level 7 disaster, and fortunately the only one to date. Although it's indeed scary to hover the thought of a nuclear explosion, one should not rule out this extremely efficient energy producing method. Instead, we should look at how to improve on it and make it even more feasible, even for a tiny island-state like Singapore. That's adaptability in every sense.

Humans' determination to adapt amazes with endless possibilities indeed.

Ok I think this post is really really long already, so I shouldn't continue ranting away. It's nice to voice down my thoughts on today's current affairs and how it's linked to the past. I've always loved the Arts - economics, geography, history and social science (but sadly not literature..). I'm always intrigued by cross-discipline examination of topics, especially on environmental issues. That's essentially general paper for you and that's why I really do enjoy general paper. Haha.

Speaking of adaptability, I think it leads to habits. I'm beginning to get used to waking up early, going to TJC, teaching, preparing tutorials, attending lectures, having lunch with my RT/intern khakis, nua-ing in staffroom, then going home. It's not so much for the pay, it's about having something to do. Now I find it especially boring to stay at home. =X

P.S. Most importantly, Happy 21st Birthday to Wan Yee and Wan Ting! =D