Ultimately those who want Social Darwinism should have it. I would never consider withholding it from them. Perhaps, in a subtle way, they have selected themselves out, for all people, to embrace this particular theory, and the Darwin Award rightfully belongs to them, above all others.
If the best come to the top of society, then that is well and good. I'm not going to hang around to see if the particular defenders of Social Darwinism are going to make it. It doesn't matter to me. But I am not the issue here, since the giving or denying of my approval from the ideology of Social Darwinism is unlikely to make any difference to the actual outcome of any particular person's success in the world on the basis of Darwinistic principles. So let them struggle to survive, in whatever way they choose to.
Just don't expect to receive either my recognition or moral approval of any apparent success. After all, that would be to take things too much at face value -- which Nature doesn't do. Nature, raw in tooth and claw might well be giving certain people the illusion of success only to demolish them a little later. Nature withholds her final judgment from all stakes of "struggle for survival" until the last man or woman is left standing. Even then, she is probably just playing some sadistic joke -- for only one to be left standing means no perpetuation of the human race. And to fail to perpetuate one's genes is the quintessential definition of failure in Darwinistic terms. But such is life, viewed in its purely naturalistic sense. You're just not that important as a person, viewed in Darwinistic terms. Your demand for moral approval of your Darwinistic stance involves a logical contradiction which may or may not serve the species -- indeed, as humans we will never really know the final judgment as to whether we are deemed by Nature to be the most successful of all humans.
But go ahead, and struggle for your mere survival.
I, like Nature, will look the other way, and will withhold my moral judgment until the end.
If the best come to the top of society, then that is well and good. I'm not going to hang around to see if the particular defenders of Social Darwinism are going to make it. It doesn't matter to me. But I am not the issue here, since the giving or denying of my approval from the ideology of Social Darwinism is unlikely to make any difference to the actual outcome of any particular person's success in the world on the basis of Darwinistic principles. So let them struggle to survive, in whatever way they choose to.
Just don't expect to receive either my recognition or moral approval of any apparent success. After all, that would be to take things too much at face value -- which Nature doesn't do. Nature, raw in tooth and claw might well be giving certain people the illusion of success only to demolish them a little later. Nature withholds her final judgment from all stakes of "struggle for survival" until the last man or woman is left standing. Even then, she is probably just playing some sadistic joke -- for only one to be left standing means no perpetuation of the human race. And to fail to perpetuate one's genes is the quintessential definition of failure in Darwinistic terms. But such is life, viewed in its purely naturalistic sense. You're just not that important as a person, viewed in Darwinistic terms. Your demand for moral approval of your Darwinistic stance involves a logical contradiction which may or may not serve the species -- indeed, as humans we will never really know the final judgment as to whether we are deemed by Nature to be the most successful of all humans.
But go ahead, and struggle for your mere survival.
I, like Nature, will look the other way, and will withhold my moral judgment until the end.
3 comments:
Also, the "fittest" in Darwin does not mean the finest or best, just the one that best adapts / survives.
Good post - and good comments elsewhere on media in Zim!!!
Yes, and in recognition of what "fittest" means, I will now add:
"And be sure not to stick your neck out, coward, as it will be shot off."
Those who stay in the middle of the herd are generally safest -- hence, in terms of the model of attrition, the "fittest to survive" in Darwinian terms.
As you can see, in the above comment I made, it is sometimes a reflex of mine to apply some kind of moral category to the adherents of social darwinism. However, I do realise that this is always a mistake, and that anything I say has no relevance to them. One must accept that social darwinist phenomena is just a simulacrum of human life and experience, but with no real humanity to it.
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