In this episode we explore the meaning of the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’, and why it’s so problematic now
What does that phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’ actually mean? And what’s the connection to the deadly dysfunctions of possessionism and paediarchy that, as we’ve seen in previous posts here, now puts everyone’s life at risk?
The phrase itself was coined in 1852 by Herbert Spencer , in part as an alternative to Charles Darwin’s initial concept of ‘natural selection’. Yet whilst Spencer’s term can be genuinely useful in the context of evolutionary-biology, its usage and validity there depends on a very specific meaning of ‘fitness’, relating to the concept of a ‘fitness landscape’, of which we’ll see more later. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people, both then and now, who failed to understand that crucial constraint, and mangled that scientific term into a cluelessly-obscene apologia for the very worst of possessionism - with disastrous consequences for almost everyone in the world. Not A Good Idea…
One example amongst far too many: Social Darwinism - beloved alike by promoters of predatory-capitalism, state-communism and all other forms of colonial ‘control’ of others’ lives. Social-Darwinism adds a purported moral dimension to ‘survival of the fittest’: it asserts that survival, in the form of social dominance, proves not only that the survivor is ‘the fittest’, but also morally the best. Or, in colonial terms, the use of ‘guns, germs and steel’ to subjugate and enslave others other proves that the colonial powers are inherently superior in every way to those they’ve enslaved - indeed, are morally obligated to dominate those others. The end-point of that logic, of course, is the myth of ‘Might is Right’ - that violence against others is not only an entitlement, but a moral imperative.
But there’s a catch to that so-comforting myth (or comforting for the conquerors, anyway…): it’s using a mangled concept of ‘fittest’, a blurred mess of medical notions of ‘health and fitness’, religious notions of ‘moral fitness’, hyper-Spartan militarist notions of ‘fit to fight’, politicised notions of ‘fit to rule’, and violence-based notions of ‘fit to dominate’ - almost none of which have any connection to what ‘fitness’ actually means in Darwinian evolutionary-theory.
The classic illustration of what it actually means is the relative fitness of Darwin’s finches. This is a group of closely-related mid-sized birds that live on the Galápagos Islands, where Charles Darwin visited in 1835 during his round-the-world voyage on HMS Beagle. The key point here is that the various species each have different-shaped beaks:
In effect, each species is optimised for different food-sources: insects, small seeds, large seeds, fruit, buds, cacti flowers, cacti pulp, and more.
What happens next is that we map out these food-sources as parameters in a fitness landscape. There are various ways to lay this out - a graph, a three-dimensional grid looking like a mountain-range, and so on - but probably the simplest is a straightforward bar-chart. In that format, each food-source is a bar on the chart, and the height of each bar represents the availability of that food-source. The various species of Darwin’s finches are optimised for different combinations of food-sources, and the availability of that food-source determines their chances for survival, or at least their ability to breed - their ‘evolutionary fitness’, relative to the current overall mix of food-source availabilities. The bird-species that has the highest availability, the highest ‘fitness’ overall, in turn has the highest chance of survival - hence ‘survival of the fittest’.
(Yes, that’s an over-simplified explanation, of course, but still close enough for our purposes here.)
Note, though, that there’s nothing in there about morality, about violence, about wealth, about colonialism or politics or religion - those themes are just invented add-ons, without any connection to the science at all. But even if we imagine that they do, there’s a further catch. ‘Social Darwinism’ and its spin-offs assume that the world will stay stable: that once some group decide that they have ‘peak fitness’ relative to everyone else, then that status of ‘fittest’ will always stay that way.
But it doesn’t work that way. A fitness-landscape is just a map the current conditions - and if the conditions change, so will the relative ‘fitness’ for each of the players in that context. Darwin’s finches were each optimised for a specific food-source: when the weather changed in each successive year, the availabilities changed, and so did the relative fitness for each species of finch. One species might be ‘the fittest’ in one season, but probably a different species in the next. In most real-world contexts, the fitness-landscape is not static, but dynamic - often so much so that it’d be more accurate to describe it as a ‘fitness-seascape’:
In a fitness-seascape, peaks and troughs can swap places almost at random, sometimes very fast indeed. And when an entity that’s optimised for other conditions suddenly loses its relative fitness for the current context, it can find itself in very real trouble:
The same is true for ideologies and belief systems: if they’re based on hard-wired assumptions and demand specific conditions to always remain true, their actual real-world ‘fitness’ is pretty fragile. Take Hitler’s ‘Thousand Year Reich’, for example: it lasted little more than a decade. Likewise the British Empire: sure, it lasted for a couple of hundred years longer, perhaps, but when the conditions changed, it evaporated in almost no time at all. Some of the more obnoxious belief-systems do tend to hang around rather too long, like a bad smell, but ultimately they’re just as fragile as those other more obvious examples of so-called Social Darwinism.
Which brings us back to that deadly-addiction-cum-social-disease we’ve been describing as possessionism. It’s always presented by its exponents as being the only possible option: ‘There Is No Alternative’, as Margaret Thatcher so often used to assert. No alternative to hyper-capitalism, the predatory money-economy and all the rest. The only possible way that things can ever be: you know, ‘Survival Of The Fittest’ and all that.
Except it’s not a fitness-landscape, it’s a fitness-seascape - and the real fitness of that whole mess is vanishing fast.
Take a look at some of the real-world conditions on which the purported fitness of possessionism depends. Infinite growth? - not possible on a finite planet. Infinite resources? - not possible on a finite planet. Intellectual-property? - a laughable bad-joke. Ever-increasing prices for real-estate? - kind of problematic when the highest-priced property starts disappearing beneath the waves. Long-term risks can be safely ignored? - not any more. Whatever the cause, climate-change is real; resource-depletion is starting to hit real hard; there’s no new land left to expropriate, no new ‘natives’ or ‘savages’ left to colonise and control. The reality is that possessionism has already lost almost all of its real-world fitness - in fact lost most of it long ago. It’s so far gone now that its only option left to prop up its delusions of fitness would be to cannibalise itself into oblivion, taking everyone else with it - which, for any and all of us, would most definitely be Not A Good Idea…
What we’re facing now is a fitness-seascape, not a static fitness-landscape: wild changes now, huge changes, peaks and troughs of apparent fitness swapping places continually, often without warning. In the midst of all that turbulence, one of the few remaining certainties is that few of the false-certainties upon which possessionism depended are ever coming back: any chance for that to happen was squandered long ago.
So what is ‘the fittest’ now? Short-answer: we don’t know. Things are changing so fast now that we can’t know. When a context takes on the form of a fitness-seascape, the real ‘the fittest’ there is actually the ability to adapt, coupled with an ability to understand the drivers and constraints, and an ability to learn fast, make sense fast, act fast where need be. And small changes, always small changes, always linked together into the broader whole. That’s what leads us not just to surviving, but truly thriving, even within inexorable fast-changing times.
Another gem of an article, I had always thought the "Survival of the fittest" was related to a story I heard on a pride of lions, where adolescent males take on a dominant male in a succession conflict. The loser of this conflict is left to trail behind the pride, but when not invited to partake in a post kill feast soon loses energy and is picked off by other scavengers. The adolescent male is usually the winner in such a scenario and his superior genes are essential in ensuring a healthy brood of cubs to ensure the continuation of the pride. Seems quite a familiar story for modern business practices.
The standard interpretation of Darwin's "Survival of The fittest" which is also used here seems flawed. Darwin is right but the interpretation is shallow and typically biased. Survival of the fittest is not limited to the physical realm, intelligence, knowledge, understanding, and empathy are key. Survival is not about harming others. Collaboration is the highest productivity factor and the provider of the greatest force, solidarity. Most powerful tools for survival and thrivability.
"Possessionism" as used here seems more like over-possessionism as my food plate is mine. I can give it, share it, and eat it. Not only is it mine, but once I eat it, a good part of it becomes me. I possess it. It is mine because I acquired it and because I use it to better contribute to evolution, and that is key.
In a strictly causal universe where nothing is gained, nothing is lost and everything transforms and evolves, all that exists is fruit and tool of evolution. Hence, the meaning and purpose of existence (and life) is to contribute to evolution to the best of ones ability. So much so, that killing another being is morally acceptable if it serves the purpose of existence and contributes to evolution.
A simple example is eating where we can only feed on the living, reducing complex and evolved living structures to their full entropic energy dissipation. Yet it is quite acceptable and inevitable, as well as moral in proportion to how the eater effectively uses this energy to further and better contribute to evolution.
Possession is fine, it is the greed, the competitive greed, that is at issue, and mostly because, at this point, it does not contribute well to evolution.
Darwin was quite right, possibly more than even he realized.