Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 21:14:13 +0800
From: Joel Ng <jngkj-AT-mbox2.singnet.com.sg>
Subject: Re: baby food


Jonathan Kratter wrote:

> No, actually, the Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest says that
> those who are NOT fit will not survive... it does not say that WE should
> ELIMINATE those who we feel are unfit... there's a large difference there...

This boils down to a moral question.  Are we to help preserve those who cannot
survive, or not?  After all conservation of wildlife is in fact an ethical
issue.  Obviously, those animals that died out weren't fit to survive.  Then the
question naturally extends to the disabled, the elderly, the poor etc.  What you
end up with is social darwinism.  Despite your protests, one necessarily leads to
the other.  Even if you think you can make the moral distinction between your
version of "survival of the fittest", and social darwinism, most people won't.

> >The competitive nature of the "survival" you espouse establishes the most
> >basic hierarchy of all--that of deciding who lives, and who doesn't.
>
> I'm not establishing that hiearchy; nature established that hierarchy when
> life first started to evolve on this planet.  If you have a problem with
> this system, perhaps you should address it to nature.  Or do you think you
> have a better way?  If so, go for it, but remember that people have been
> thinking they have a better way than nature for 10,000 years now and all
> they've succeeded in doing is royally fucking our planet and ourselves over.

The problem with this line of argument is that according to theory of "survival
of the fittest", we humans must be at the top of the evolutionary heirarchy due
to our explosive proliferation, and at the same time, you're arguing that we
humans, the "fittest" among all species, are fucking things up.  So what will it
be?  After all, what we humans think is part of how nature has evolved us.  You
seem to believe that humans and nature are 2 separate entities.  We aren't,
however - we're a product of nature and evolution as well.

Further to this, capitalism, which is very much based on a struggle to be the
fittest (and especially in the short term), is very much responsible to this
"royally fucking our planet and ourselves" as you describe.  Small scale
societies as existed before the Industrial Revolution would have been unable to
do any substantial damage to the global environment in general.

The problem with a "survival of the fittest" theory is that it always supports
the ruling class in general, because they equate themselves to the "fittest"
which really occurs because the phrase is no more than a tautology.