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Flame » in reply to A thought experiment from Peter Singer

Darwinism
TB — (archived)

My take on social Darwinism is the use of principles of natural selection to justify certain types of human behavior. "We are stronger/fitter/swifter, therefore we are entitled to survive."

As you point out, almost everyone pushing that idea is fixated on power and size as the sole criteria of "fitness." If that were true, I would have Triceratops in my ivy instead of rats. "Fitness" covers a huge range of characteristics, and often it is the meek that inherit the ecological niche.

I use the rain forest (or other natural ecologies) as an example of systems that are successful for their inhabitants as a whole although there is no centralized controlling authority and most life forms are out for Number One. The other end of the metaphor might be a farm with one or two productive crop species, with competitors like weeds and insects firmly suppressed. A natural ecology is not static, though. Depending on many things, the grassland of one century might be a forest in another. A controlled ecology is often static, and usually unstable. How many industrial farm crops could withstand a year of human neglect? Hell, most of them nowadays aren't even self-seeding. Modern wheat was bred over thousands of years to a form that can no longer seed naturally.

Of course cooperation is important, particularly for humans. It's the difference between living on an island like Robinson Crusoe or living in a decent civilization. The secret word is "voluntary."

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