Our established knowledge about the evolutional process of life and species in nature is more a political statement than a biological reality.
Yes, Darwinian theory of evolution is just that, a theory. And it implicitly contains the ideological seed that justifies and promotes Capitalism: "The survival of the fittest" According to this theory, the universe is mechanic, and life generates and expands by random conditions. Only those who can adapt to the harshness of existence thrive. Any resemblance to the system?
Neoteny is an alternative theory of evolution which states that adaptation and evolution are among other things, a product of relationship and cooperation between different expressions of life. And that curiosity, creativity and relationship are fundamental biological programs which facilitate expansion and evolution at a biological level.
Species come and species go. Evolution is a driving force in between these cycles of existence. But how does it work, and what does Neoteny has to do with it?
Let's put it this way: the cycle of energy has 3 phases; creation, preservation and transformation. In the Vedic system, these are the 3 aspects of God: Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver, Shiva the destroyer. Species are born, established in the natural system under certain roles of functioning, and sometimes, as we are witnessing plentifully during our lifetimes, extinct.
Sometimes nature declines. But also, sometimes it "decides to evolve" by using the "creative" biological programs which create new aspects of existence. It does it in a quite curious way: it starts carrying aspects of the child, the larva, the infant, the puppy, into the adult of any given species. And through that mechanism it creates a new species. An axolotl, a mexican salamander is a good example. The adult of this species looks just like the larvae of another salamander species. The larvae became an adult without losing the infantile traits and thus generated a new form: the axolotl.
Evolutionary biologists developed this theory also looking at intelligent species closer to us, like lemurs and chimpanzee monkeys. They observed them through different generations, and they witnessed this phenomenon: some of the children when they entered the reproductive stage of life, instead of stopping their curiosity and playfulness, (biological programs designed by nature to allow us to discover the world and its functioning) would carry this creative traits into maturity, instead of becoming territorial and competitive adults like the vast majority. They became adults that kept on playing, asking questions and discovering. Also, males developed more cooperative characteristics than the common agressive and territorial males. And you know what happened?
They became more attractive for the opposite sex than the normal adults. Females chose creative-cooperative males over territorial-agresive ones. And the genes of this more playful individuals thrived among the others extending these characteristics into the species. After 4-5 generations, the whole population of neotenic individuals grew substantially and the political organization of the clan which was patriarchal, based on strength and domination, became matriarcal, based on more peaceful relationship and cooperation among peers....
....Wowy
This phenomenon is a biological program which facilitates evolution in the course of a species. It also happens in humans. And it can be caused or stopped by external factors. Playfulness, art, dancing, creativity, stimulate neotenic development. But economic crisis, conflicts, danger and defensiveness brings it down and stops it. When we are too busy surviving we stop evolving. When we don't stop playing and being curious, we keep on developing the potential of our species working hand in hand with the universe for our evolution.
There’s a lot more to say about Neoteny, you are invited to research it here: www.neoteny.org. The practice of the CAMINOCREATIVO stimulates this evolutionary potential inside all of us, catalyzing our neotenic processes as individuals and as a collective.