SOCIAL DARWINISM IS NOT ALL EVIL

We are going to have to face a great challenge eventually; do we allow evolution to dictate our life or do we allow our intellect to take charge. If we allow our intellect to take charge, do we allow three billion or so years of evolution to guide us? Over the course of those years, we have evolved from inorganic to organic. Some believe it was impossible and cite staggering odds against that happening in support of some form of creationism. Nevertheless, it happened with all of its imperfections; we exist. Somehow, inorganic changed to organic, seemingly in violation of the rules of entropy. Rather then starting as a highly organized complex and then erode into chaos, somehow we learned how to use the suns energy to incorporated matter in a cyclic manner into what we are—the old trope, dust to dust. Of course, it wasn’t just us, it was the entire biota that evolved. We often seem to forget that the sun is the center of the universe and not us and use the thing about our humanization, our unique and sophisticated behavior, as the excuse for thing this way.

Part of the problem in thinking about these things is that it is difficult to ascribe human terms about mental activity to behavior of biota, which means we box ourselves in or create some sort of exclusivity to humans. Regardless, a plant rootlet is guilty of being greedy if it has the “ability” to extract nutrients from the soil better than a competing plant. A physical-chemical chemical reaction is guilty of being hungry if is lack the substrate needed so its action is restricted to less than maximum. When I write about innate traits, I mean physical and behavioral characteristics shared with other living systems to various degrees; scientists use the term is conserved. People who are concerned with biogenesis, that is the origin of life, often speak of the formation of DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, and sugars in those terms; their formation has common aspects with all biota and assumed that that commonality was there from the start; the initial step from inorganic to organic.

What all of this means is that all we are, all we thing about, and all we desire evolved. The conflict is that we have reached a point; in fact, we are well beyond the point where our thinking has eclipsed our evolutionary biology. For example, the expression “red in tooth and claw” is intended to succinctly summarize “survival of the fittest”, which originated with Spencer’s interpretation of Darwin. Actually, Richard Dawkins probably originated the exact express probably in his book, The Selfish Gene. As humans, “survival of the fittest” is too cruel to be acceptable. Some have given life a sacrosanct meaning in clear and direct violation of survival of the fittest. Life is more important than anything else is. We maintain the aged and mentally ill even when they cannot maintain themselves. Examine the attitude towards the death penalty, abortion, euthanasia, do not resuscitate, and include Dr. Kevorkian’s prosecution or Terri Schiavo’s death. Extend that kind of thinking when we move to deny the reproductive bottleneck of gay marriage and support the feminist movement, those who claim there is no difference between a man and a woman, which flies in the face of the obvious.   

Face the question; is evolution without error? Just because it evolved, is it perfect? No one accepts these ideas, yet we cannot accept the idea that we can kill someone who is trying to kill us but then we hear tirades on liberal TV about the death penalty, which some conservatives support as a way to protect society from killers. As a biologist, I believe it is time for us to accept social Darwinism, if you want to call it that, but accept it only after careful consideration of what we are doing in terms of survival of our species. After the horrors of Nazi Germany and the attempts of form an “Aryan Nation”, any reference to social Darwinism society treated as base evil. As a consequence, as a society we often sacrifice the quality of life of individuals and use that as an excuse. Of course, there are limits. We should shake off the constraints of man made religion, live the good life, and bow only to survival of the species. We should recognize innate human sex drive and should allow birth control in all forms, nor should we force women to carry and deliver a child we know is defective or sacrifice her own life for the sake of a blastocyst, embryo, fetus, or baby. There is absolutely no sense in maintaining life in a brain dead person. We cannot allow serial killers—mentally ill or not—to survive even in prison where they continue killing guards and other prisoners. We should recognize that evolution is not perfect, we are not physically or behaviorally perfect, and that some social Darwinism can be evil but not all is evil.  

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