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Social Darwinism: Natural or Metaphorical?

I've always understood the main idea of Darwinism to be not that the strong survive, but those that are most adaptive to change survive. I agree with Lizzie in that you should bring something to the table, but if knowledge is outpaced by technology how useful are you? Should you still be provided for? My stance is that Darwinism is in no way relevant to human society because it was intended for description of biology and the evolution of organisms, not society. It's also wrong as far as our country goes because our tax money should be used to "insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity".
 
Mensch said:
If that is the case, why is it a major controversy if one thought to theoretically apply that to human social behavior?
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Because the racists that support this racist hypothesis, conveniently forget to take into account that their subjective evaluation of "human behavior" is part of their innate discriminatory psychological drives to prove that they are superior humans compared to the ones they deem and label as undesirables.

It's Psych 101.

Read a book, it does a mind good.
 
Mensch said:
A nest of honey bees is a lot like a flock of sheep. Neither of which are a great source of emulation for those seeking individualistic expression.
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Well humans are like neither. It's just if you?re trying to use natural selection to (which is essentially what you're talking about) to justify your political philosophy, you're in error since nature doesn't care about your individualistic expression.
 
Ben K. said:
Well humans are like neither. It's just if you?re trying to use natural selection to (which is essentially what you're talking about) to justify your political philosophy, you're in error since nature doesn't care about your individualistic expression.
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I'm glad we're not like honey bees or sheep. You brought up the example, which I can only assume you prefer to think of human success in those terms. I'm not really trying to justify anything, other than to say humans should have freedom to make their own choices and live by their own consequences. Nothing more.
 
Paralogic said:
Because the racists that support this racist hypothesis, conveniently forget to take into account that their subjective evaluation of "human behavior" is part of their innate discriminatory psychological drives to prove that they are superior humans compared to the ones they deem and label as undesirables.

It's Psych 101.

Read a book, it does a mind good.
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So, have you made that conclusion about me despite the absence of any minorities mentioned?
 
Mensch said:
For those who support the theory of evolution (or some derivative thereof) must believe that human beings experience the same natural selection process as other animals (and yes, mankind is an animal).

If that is the case, why is it a major controversy if one thought to theoretically apply that to human social behavior?
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I don't understand why evolution is still controversial. It's obvious that we evolved. I mean, ****, just go to a museum that has artifacts of ancient people, or just look at human biology and all the vestigial parts we contain. We evolved, it's undeniable, it happened. I don't know what else there is to say on the matter.

That said, we are continuing to evolve as we will always evolve until the day we go extinct. Our social structures are one of the greater things about us to have evolved, down to the very way we communicate and interact with each other. Right now we're communicating to each other on computers. Simple to us, but just 30 years ago, no ****ing way would that be possible. Go further back, hundreds of thousands of years ago, and we were communicating by growling, grunting, and smacking each other around like a bunch of animals. How the **** does that happen without evolution? Answer: It doesn't.
 
Mensch said:
So, have you made that conclusion about me despite the absence of any minorities mentioned?
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You think you are the first to express these kinds of blatantly racist opinions?

Read a book. It does a mind good.
 
Mensch said:
For those who support the theory of evolution (or some derivative thereof) must believe that human beings experience the same natural selection process as other animals (and yes, mankind is an animal).

If that is the case, why is it a major controversy if one thought to theoretically apply that to human social behavior?
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Because your statement is a prime example of failing to understand the words, "Natural Selection"
 
Mensch said:
I'm glad we're not like honey bees or sheep. You brought up the example, which I can only assume you prefer to think of human success in those terms. I'm not really trying to justify anything, other than to say humans should have freedom to make their own choices and live by their own consequences. Nothing more.
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Uh, so why mention evolution at all in the op?
 
Paralogic said:
You think you are the first to express these kinds of blatantly racist opinions?

Read a book. It does a mind good.
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I'll ask again, what exactly about my post was blatantly racist?
 
Somerville said:
Because your statement is a prime example of failing to understand the words, "Natural Selection"
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And you fail to read the title of the OP. I'm obviously using the term in a metaphorical sense, not a literal sense. "Survival of the fittest" can be metaphorically used to describe the process by which ambitious, responsible individuals succeed while those living in excess tend not to.
 
Ben K. said:
Uh, so why mention evolution at all in the op?
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Because I believe that, with individual freedom, human beings can either improve themselves or let themselves go depending on their own decisions. I think of it almost as a self-determined natural selection process.
 
Mensch said:
Because I believe that, with individual freedom, human beings can either improve themselves or let themselves go depending on their own decisions. I think of it almost as a self-determined natural selection process.
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Natural selections rests upon populations. Try again.
 
Mensch said:
As I said, the responsibility of the individual to support himself is a form of social Darwinism, in my opinion. Survival of the wisest...if you will.
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So you think that it is always the smartest that survive? How about the most ruthless and violent? That is REALLY our history after all. It has taken us 5000 years of civlization just to control it to the point where we only fight wars MOST of the time and not all the time. You would throw that all away. The instincts we evolved with are now our mortal enemy.
5000 years is a drop in the bucket for evolution, humans took 200,000 years to evolve from our apelike ancestors. That's 195,000 years of dog eat dog, kill or be killed existance.
 
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I suppose you could make that argument. Then again, if there are two job applicants and only one job, it is every man (or woman) for themselves. I see very little charity in the hunt for jobs. And jobs are a basic source of survival.
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Except society is not only 2 people hunting for jobs ...

Also that example is a specific example within a specific institutional frame work so you can't really base an argument on human nature ON that example.
 
iguanaman said:
So you think that it is always the smartest that survive? How about the most ruthless and violent? That is REALLY our history after all. It has taken us 5000 years of civlization just to control it to the point where we only fight wars MOST of the time and not all the time. You would throw that all away. The instincts we evolved with are now our mortal enemy.
5000 years is a drop in the bucket for evolution, humans took 200,000 years to evolve from our apelike ancestors. That's 195,000 years of dog eat dog, kill or be killed existance.
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Ruthless and violent does not appear to be the indicator of human success. By what metrics are you using to determine our "control" over war and ruthlessness? It's not like military technology (e.g. nuclear weapons) leads to a reduction in casualties and death. We have never been a truly dog eat dog society. Perhaps a pack eat pack society, but isolationism and non-cooperation leads to one's own demise.
 
RGacky3 said:
Except society is not only 2 people hunting for jobs ...
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You're right. It's more like dozens and dozens, if not hundreds.

Also that example is a specific example within a specific institutional frame work so you can't really base an argument on human nature ON that example.
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Would it help to look at a more general sense of limited resources versus unlimited population growth?
 
You're right. It's more like dozens and dozens, if not hundreds.
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Also "hunting for jobs" is unique to Capitalism where jobs (and thus a means of living) are controlled by a few Capitalists.

Would it help to look at a more general sense of limited resources versus unlimited population growth?
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Sure, and with that being the case private capitalist property and a for profit exponentially growing economy with upward consolidation and compounding negative externalities makes no sense.
 
Mensch said:
Again, the concept of irony and figure of speech is obviously lost on some. Reread the title.
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The basic concept of evolution through natural selection must escape you.
 
Mensch said:
Ruthless and violent does not appear to be the indicator of human success. By what metrics are you using to determine our "control" over war and ruthlessness? It's not like military technology (e.g. nuclear weapons) leads to a reduction in casualties and death. We have never been a truly dog eat dog society. Perhaps a pack eat pack society, but isolationism and non-cooperation leads to one's own demise.
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Yet our history is full of ruthlessness and violence. Clearly that goes against evolution in your mind since it is all about "intelligence". Our evolution was one of survival of the "fittest" and that does not always mean the smartest.
 
It's all fine and good until you realize the fit, high income, high education types have like 1 child for every 3 that the rest of the population has, and maybe what...1:5 for global? (Insert real numbers, I don't care to look them up).

Smart, educated, fit - these are not necessarily population fitness criteria. Just as non-religous may not be. Despite it being irrational, it may have better fitenss characterstics. Dying 5 years younger may have no impact or even a positive population impact, if reproductive age is significantly lower, etc. Just look at our welfare system, it's crashing under the weight of low birth rate ;)

Or to put another way, humans seem to do better as long as they have a critical mass of inventors/thinkers/visionaries. EVen if the population kills them for their blasphemy, a generation later they all adopt it and forget they ever murdered the inventor, and they carry on all the stronger. If you're at the top of the food chain, the "ideal human" spectrum, whatever, the bell curve ensures you will be lonely there...

We don't understand a fraction of the natural world. We feel so wise but we're more like a symbiotic life form riding on top of a relatively gigantic "human body", composed of trillions of individual living organisms that do things way beyond our understanding, without our consent, and have for millions of years. And how do we use that culmination of billions of years of evolution, of the almost infinite expansion of our universe? Masturbating. GOing to church. PLaying a computer game. The billions of cellular interactions and DNA being stranscribed and error checked, the immune system battling millions of foreign bodies day-in, day-out, and that's what we use it for? Texting gossip?

We're lucky nature isn't sentient. It would spank our ass for being so dumb! :)

(If nature were sentient it would likely be making the similar mistakes...of course I know this!)
 
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Mensch said:
That does not answer my question. What about my posts was racist? Have you already come to the conclusion that I'm racist?
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I don't care what you are.

The claim that social behavior adheres to the same evolutionary development as biological processes is a blatant racist claim that has been repeated over and over since the early 1800's and has been discredited and proven false countless times. Unfortunately, racists refuse to acknowledge reality.
 
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