[Piers]

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Why have we evolved into our present state - I.e. self-awareness, state of our intellect, emotional beings - as opposed to for example, strictly intellectual beings with no emotion?

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Emotion is the main motive force for higher live on Earth. If we did not have emotions we would never do anything. We could not have evolved without emotion.

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Are we evolving on the right path? Or somewhere along the line did we take a wrong turn and now, because we are capable of surviving for who knows how long, we can’t get on the path that might have been a better one?

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What ever do you mean by ‘right path’. What do you man by ‘better path’. Who decides what a wrong turn is?

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If we took a wrong path, can we find evidence of one that could have been better for us?

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There you go again, being on the wrong path implies that there was a right path. What’s with this path thing? Evolution is blind. There is no right or wrong path, just what happens.

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If we took the wrong path and can’t get back on one that would have been better - would it be better for humans to become extinct, so that a more correct evolutionary path get going?

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Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Whose path? I see no bases for these concepts.

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If evolution is a river that we cannot divert, why is that? I am thinking more in terms of intellectually diverting evolution rather than through genetics, but not excluding genetics. If we can direct our own evolution, how can we?

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Divert?

Maybe we cannot ‘divert’ our evolution because we are inside the system. Positive feedback in the form of the subject species using technology and understanding to deliberately modify itself is just another stage in the evolutionary process. Real change would have to come from outside the system.

What level are we thinking on? Is there something you want to, or would have changed?