An ugly creature is undergoing an ugly death—and I feel it trying to avoid the inevitable, trying to drag the rest of the world down with it. It’s loud out there. Deafening.
“Survival of the fittest” is what we’re told Charles Darwin said about evolution. But he didn’t say it. The phrase was coined by a guy named Herbert Spencer who read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species five years after it was published. Once again school teaches the words instead of the lesson. They taught me wrong, so I’m betting they taught you wrong as well. How do I know? It’s built right into our culture. I see it over and over again: people fighting to live. Watch any nature documentary: the narrator will at some point speak of only the strong surviving.
What Darwin was actually talking about was a creature who was best adapted for its immediate, local environment. Strength—in the knuckle‐dragging, meathead sense of the word—has nothing to do with it. There is no fight. But it makes for a useful excuse—in conjunction with human nature—when we’re rattling sabres and standing proud in the face of wars won and to be fought. With all due respect to those who have fought a war—war is nothing to be proud of. To me it’s the ultimate admission of failure, like smashing something broken instead of taking the time and effort to learn why it isn’t working.
Thus by survival of the fittest, the militant type of society becomes characterized by profound confidence in the governing power, joined with a loyalty causing submission to it in all matters whatever.
That’s Herbert Spencer again. Sound familiar?
The United States, and possibly England—although they are currently and drastically attempting to pull up after seeing just how fast the ground was rushing up to them—are going down. It won’t be any one specific event—the rest of us will just have better things to do than be intimidated and, somehow—paradoxically impressed by the self‐declared coolest kid in school trying to make everyone like them.
What I see is an environmental and emotional global climate where the classical ideologies of might is right embraced by the few are endangering the lives of everyone else. It’s unacceptable. It’s unfit for survival in the context of a planet inhabited by multiple cultures—human and animal. Our environment is telling us we need to be utilizing our resources more effectively and efficiently. Our environment is telling us we need to be kinder and more understanding to our fellow inhabitants.
And if you listen hard enough, over the wretched racket of an unfit beast in its death throws, our environment is telling us there is so much more to discover about what it means to be here. There is a grand adventure out there waiting for those who are fit.
I used to tell friends to stay strong. I was wrong. Stay fit. Always stay fit.