The Continual Degeneration of the Human Species

One theory that has always been of major interest to me from a philosophical standpoint is the ‘theory of continual degeneration.’

This theory posits that, rather than evolving or improving overtime, humanity is instead gradually declining in physical, intellectual, and spiritual capacities. It puts forward the idea that due to various internal and external factors, we are facing a slow but steady decline of humanity.

This theory spits in the face of evolution, which largely hypothesizes the exact opposite. Or at least evolution used to do so until they realized they were clearly wrong in many circumstances. Now, they’ve taken a more ambiguous route with calling much of it “random” and claiming it could be good or bad due to mutations. They’ll say whatever they have to in order to make their theory work.

But enough evolution trash talk. The competing theory of continual degeneration has stayed the course. This concept has been around a lot longer than evolution, and has been debated by the ancient historians, philosophers, biologists, anthropologists, and even Enlightenment thinkers.

In fact, one could argue that this is one of the earliest origin beliefs. 

It is obviously present in Christianity. The story of Adam and Eve portrays a flawless beginning, followed by a moral descent that led to a physical decline. 

If you actually take time to read the Bible, you’ll also notice continual degeneration as a trend throughout it. Just look at the length of life for a clear example. The oldest patriarchs lived 10 times the length that we live now. It gradually reduced over time.

Now, of course, in the modern day, you have people claiming we are living longer. But this is just a nice hand trick with the statistics, since babies are more likely to survive to reach adulthood, thereby increasing the average age of life across the generation. Still, if we compare it to biblical ages, we are obviously living far less. A minor jump here or there of +/- 15 years changes nothing.

In Christianity, we also see this theory with the apostasy of the church. The church was strongest when Jesus was here. Then, overtime, it slowly degenerated. The Bible even mentions in the very last times that a great apostasy would come to overtake the church. I personally believe that time is now, if you just look at the churches of the modern age. But regardless of when that is, it clearly is going to happen.

The church is not improving. It is getting far worse.

Continual degeneration.

The same degeneration belief is found in other religious thought. The Hindu’s four cycles gradually decline until utter abomination. Look up the four epochs or yugas if you are interested.

Even the ancient Greek and Romans used to believe in a “golden age of humanity”, where early humans lived in harmony with nature and each other. But, we are now more distant from this age. As time increases, they believed we will become further distant from that golden era.

This concept is present among many religious schools of thought. The only group that has ever opposed it is the modern Enlightenment evolutionist. The same group that changes their positions every five years or so. Not exactly a side I would wish to be on. 

But even some Enlightenment thinkers during the Age of the Enlightenment upheld these beliefs. Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau held a similar argument: he believed that the corrupting influence of civilization on humanity has degraded us from the natural state where we were healthier and more virtuous.

Some scientists, like Cesare Lombroso, took Darwin’s ideas of beneficial evolution and applied it to degeneration.

Max Nordau wrote in his book, Degeneration (1892), that modern society, particularly its culture, brought about degeneration. He strongly argued that things like the industrial revolution and culture were the driving force of continual degeneration.

I think all of these guys are right in their own way. But they did not piece together the full picture. When we look around, it is hard to deny that degeneration is occurring everywhere. We are nowhere as strong, virtuous, or intelligent as our ancestors. 

Hell, we even have random diseases, affecting us now that never used to exist. Look at modern things like allergies, autism, obesity, and other such degenerative conditions.

We are becoming weaker, more frail, and more just plain weird. Sure, we have sporadic times that offset these general trends. But if you look at the overall trend, it would be similar to the chart above. We keep dropping on average. Sadly, we are not getting better. We are getting worse.

But I take a more nuanced approach as to why this is happening. 

As a Christian, I believe in continual degeneration. I believe we are going to continue to get worse until Christ returns. But I think the methods are multifaceted. As God often likes to do. The root reason is the Fall, but the methods are many.

Here are just a few of the methods I think continual degeneration is occurring through:

• Genetic diseases and Epigenetics. The human society advances in medicine. This advance in medicine allows people with genetic diseases to live longer and reproduce, increasing the frequency of harmful genes in the population. This is a Catch-22. You don’t want people to die of preventable diseases. But by not letting them, you degrade the entire species’ genetic line. Any form of advancement has built-in degeneration into it for this reason.
  • For the Christian, this is clearly God-designed. The more we try to act like gods, the more we harm ourselves in the long-run. It’s a natural, built-in system of degeneration.
• Technology. Technology gives us the ability to learn deeper and to go further than without it. However, in large scale, it also creates a population of prosperity. Which reduces the drive and necessity for self improvement. One can just rely on technology to survive, instead of getting more intelligent or stronger to do so. It saps our attention span and draws us away from things that are important, reducing us to a worse state. This ties in with modern sedentary lifestyles. We just keep getting weaker because of getting better technology.
• Social-cultural factors. It is no surprise to any of my readers that culture is declining. But why is this? Well, Spengler, in his work “Decline of the West“, saw this through a civilizational lens. Similar to how the physical nature of humans grows, peaks, and then declines, he argued that civilization does too. I would just take this one step further and say so does humanity as a whole. God commanded that all things die. That will include this very age. It would only make sense if we as a whole follow the same path that our civilizations, our lives, and everything else we know does. It’s all a cycle of rise and decline since death was introduced in the garden.
  • The modernist is right when he says that “we will kill ourselves”. It is likely built into us to do so. If we survive long enough, we’ll destroy ourselves through these modifications we continue to play god with.
• The longer society goes on the more social isolation increases. We are reaching an end-stage, where there won’t be any social interaction at all. Everything will be through a computer. This is not a joke. It is not too far away. Ask a zoomer.
• Environmental decay. This is one area that I believe is the strongest evidence of continual degeneration. Look at our natural ecosystem: Ever since the industrial revolution, even our soil has been degenerating. It does not have the same level of nutrients or vitamins that it did even 100 years ago, much less 2000. The entire world has been covered in toxic substances, microplastics, and the like. Poor air quality is everywhere, and biodiversity is decreasing. You do not have to be an environmentalist nut job to realize that we are facing an endemic, continual degeneration of our environment. Yes, it is mostly our own fault, but is that not even further evidence of the continual degeneration of humanity? Humanity is at fault for this, yet we keep doing it. Instead of realizing the harmful impacts of each stage of development, we just design new things to try to “fix” the symptom.

We are at such a point that we now need tools like CRISPR to fix our own genome from the very problems we have caused. Hilariously (and ironically), we need CRISPR to fix autism that was likely caused by our vaccines and weird seed oils. We’ll need a lot of CRISPR to fix all the damages from the toxic substances and processed foods we ingest.

We even need other medical advancements like Ozempic to fix the obesity degeneration that was caused by prosperity and the sedentary lifestyles brought about due to technology. It’s all a loop.

Heck, more people are literate now than in history. But what do they use that literacy for? To better scroll through TikTok videos… IQ surely has not increased over time.

Each supposed “advancement” that humans can name is actually just a correction for a prior degeneration. With very few exceptions.

Humanity sure is a wild ride.

Whether you believe in the theory of continual degeneration or not, it does raise very thought-provoking questions. What is the future of humanity? How should we respond to various advancements when they do happen (like Artificial Intelligence)? And many more.

This theory gives us a unique way to look at the world around us. In my opinion, a biblical way. But also a way that most other modern people do not see the world. So it becomes a unique, treasured insight.

However you decide to look at the future and answer those hard philosophical questions, keep in mind this theory of continual degeneration. If nothing else, it should serve as a cautionary warning. Perhaps even a bellwether.