Survival of the unfit

by Daya Dissanayake

When we think of ‘evolution’, we think of Charles Darwin. Yet, I could not find the word ‘evolution’ in Charles Darwin's 1859 publication, On the Origin of Species. He only talks about ‘revolution’ in natural history. Darwin talked of the ‘survival of the fittest'. It could apply to all plants and animals except Homo sapiens. The term ‘survival of the fittest’ is reported to have been introduced by Herbert Spencer in 1864, and the ‘fittest’ referred to those that most suited to their environment.

If it had been ‘Natural Selection’ that had determined the growth and evolution of life on earth, perhaps the process had stopped for mankind at some point in deep history, because nature and natural forces would never have allowed Homo sapiens to evolve into this destructive inhuman creature to fight against nature at every step.

Among all animals, natural selection could be true, because they do not interfere with natural forces. However among human beings, most of the time, it has been the most cunning, most vicious and the most unscrupulous, who have survived and passed on their genes to the later generations, ever since man began to play the dominant role in human relationships.

Power

It is not just who survives, but who survives long enough to reproduce, and to protect the young till they can look after themselves, which really matters. The few who enjoyed power and wealth, also enjoyed the best available food which provided them all the nourishment for a long and healthy life. They enjoyed the best living conditions, protection from the elements and also from other human beings and predatory animals. They also had the power to mate with anyone they wished, and would have selected the most healthy and attractive females, to produce more children. It is the poor and the powerless, who lived on near starvation diets, exposed to elements and the threats from other humans and animals, who could not feed and bring up healthy children.

Those who had conquered their greed and envy, and who should have been the fittest to survive and pass on their genes may not have bothered to mate and produce children.

If there really had been a survival of the fittest, then by now all human beings should have been the fittest animals on earth, but when we look at who has been surviving and proliferating, someday soon, there will be no one left to survive. In the same way the proliferation of cancer cells destroys a man, the uncontrolled proliferation of ‘unfit’ mankind on Mother Earth started going viral, or cancerous a long time ago. Man is the cancer in the terminal stage on Mother Earth today.

Evolution

Man believes he has evolved from the stone age ‘primitive animal’ to the ‘highly advanced and sophisticated’ creature of the 21st century. Evolution does not always mean a positive change, and the changes in mankind was possible only because of greed. His envy of other men, their wealth and power or happiness would have been the second motive.

If not for greed man would not have tried to achieve all that he enjoyed as he evolved. If not for greed and envy man would have remained in the same position like the other humanoids around us. Competition may not have been always violent. There could have been cooperation and mutual aid between humans. Throughout pre-history during the first four million years of human evolution, non-violence and peace had been the norm among humans. Peace had not been the absence of war, as it came to be accepted as man became more ‘civilised'.

The first evidence of intrahuman killing had been found only during the last 30,000 years of human existence on Mother Earth. The large scale fighting amongst men, which came to be known as ‘war’, was a result of cultural evolution rather than biological evolution.

Environment

Conquest of self should have come before man's attempt to conquer his environment and conquer other men. The physician should have healed himself before trying to heal others.

A man who had conquered himself would never have even thought of conquering others or conquering nature,.

He would know how to live in harmony with other living beings and with nature. Man could have become a true part of Gaia, or Mother earth.

The Gaia hypothesis which was formulated by James Lovelock and developed by Lynn Margulis, proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings to form a self-regulating complex system, as a living entity.

Evolution of the human body had stopped a long time ago. Deterioration of the human race had probably begun long before evolution had stopped. Exactly how and when it began is not known.

Deterioration of the brain could have been a result of the evolution of artificial intelligence. Homo erectus had appeared 2 million years ago and Homo sapiens 1.7 million years later. By this time the brain had grown to be twice as large as that of Homo erectus. Since then the brain had seized to grow.

Man had never utilised his true brain power. There are arguments that man is using only 10 percent of his brain. Perhaps it is nature's way of controlling man's actions. Had man been able to use his total brain power he would have destroyed himself long ago.

When Lynn Margulis theorised that symbiosis, networking and cooperation had been central to biological evolution, more than the competitive conflict and survival of the fittest, was she only rephrasing what the Buddha had taught about coexistence 2500 years before her?

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