Looking back thousands of years, humanity was a violent bunch. This was, unfortunately, necessary to preserve and sustain our lives. The scarcity of resources induced the organisms that were in need of them to compete, at times fiercely, for the privilege of access to them. We needed food to survive, and we needed to protect that food from others who also wanted or needed it, as well as the other resources that were under our control. Those that were unable to secure food or other necessities, quite simply, did not survive to leave their descendants among us. Therefore, those that did survive to pass on their genes would have had to acquire resources, which often necessitated violent confrontation between neighboring groups. If a group refused to employ violence, then they would either be killed directly by the pillaging group, starve over the course of weeks, or be forced to embark on a long journey to find browner pastures, very possibly dying before achieving that goal. Main point – scarcity of strong wants and needs pressures organisms to violence, especially when more than one organism desires and pursues them. This theme resonates throughout the animal kingdom. Where there is a scarcity of necessary resources, those in competition for them turn to violence in an effort to secure them.
The arrival of technology made it so that, eventually, the resources we needed to survive could and would become more abundant. This process slowly began to eliminate the need to fight other groups for the resources of survival. More productive crops, better tools, and the increase in knowledge that resulted created a relative abundance of the resources needed to ensure survival. So the Darwinian selection pressures began to subside, and the positive selection pressures began to take on a more influential role. Why? Because we now had options. When we’re not preoccupied with finding and securing food, we have more room to explore other things, to create technology, to pursue science, to learn and to discover. This is what’s called Positive selection, and it works by different means than Darwinian selection. It works by illuminating pathways that were unseen or unavailable before, rather than by cutting off and denying evolutionary pathways, which induces a furious, violent struggle over access to the few that remain.
Now back to scarcity. Remember how a scarcity of wants, needs and perceived needs induces violence from those who are in competition for them? Darwinian competition rather than positive selection? Now here’s where things get revelatory. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have engaged in Darwinian competition for one particularly scarce resource above all others: political power.
Look at America today: there is 1 president, 1 secretary of state, 1 governor per state, 2 senators, I could go on. There is an institutionalized scarcity of government office, which induces Darwinian style competition for each role. Each role; indeed, each office comes with power. The power to levy taxes, the power to create laws, the power to prop yourself up and elevate your status. Have you ever watched House of Cards? Spartacus? Game of Thrones? Do you think that the backstabbing, conniving, deceptive and, at times, deadly political mischief doesn’t happen in the real world of ‘professional’ politics? Think again! It’s created by the very institution of government authority – the fact that political office, and thereby political power, is extremely scarce. There are hordes upon hordes of politicians and aspiring politicians fiercely and ruthlessly competing for scarce political offices; for the power and elevated sociopolitical status that those offices bring.
Now, there are different kinds of government. Most all of us recognize that totalitarian dictatorships and authoritarian monarchies are harmful to the human condition. But did you know that republics and democracies are also harmful because of what I have just pointed out?
The political candidates in democracies and/or republics must have the support of the people in order to gain office, at least for the most part. This means that those engaged in fierce, Darwinian competition for political office have to find ways to compete for the affections of the people. There are many ways to do this, but I want to focus on how political candidates employ emotional rhetoric to sway the people away from other candidates. They divide us; they work tirelessly to convince us of how bad the other side is. They get us to HATE one another because the entire process is based around getting as many supporters and votes as possible, often by painting the other candidates and their supporters as hateful, stupid, or just downright evil!
Can you see it? Yes you can!
Right now in governments all across the world, politicians are dividing us against one another for their own political gain. This has been going on for hundreds and thousands of years. Politicians and government authorities want the people to love them and to hate their competitors, so they spin lies, spew hate and do anything they can to get us to hate the other side, and in the process, we grow to hate each other.
Can you imagine what the evolutionary consequences of this are? Can you see how these patterns – politicians dividing us against each other – have warped our minds? Not only by causing us to hate each other, but by causing us to believe the lies that are served us?
Is it any wonder that our minds are so feeble? That we’ve become unable to think for ourselves? That we constantly feel the need to be led and coddled? No longer are we connected with the planet and the people around us, but we instead focus on what we have been conditioned, often under penalty of death or imprisonment, to think, say and do by people who have no regard for us, but have only regard for their own power?
Oh I know, your guy is different. Your guy is genuine. Well I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if he is ‘different’ or if he isn’t. It doesn’t matter if the president is good or bad. Why not? Because it’s not the candidate; it’s the institutionalized Darwinism. It’s the fact that they must cut down, or belittle the other candidate in order to gain political office and social elevation. The problem isn’t with this guy or that guy; the problem lies with that fact that there is institutionalized Darwinian competition for political power.
So what’s the solution? The solution is to eliminate, as much as possible, institutionalized Darwinism, and to allow for the positive pressures – choice and betterment – to lift us out of the mire. How do we do this? By allowing ourselves options. I’m pro-choice… meaning that I believe in the value of choosing for ourselves how to enhance our own lives. Choices: the availability of options, options that allow me to choose which way I want to go, which path I wish to embark upon; my own journey. Darwinian selection exists where there is a bottlenecking of options; where organisms are hemmed in by the scarcity of available pathways to their wants and to their needs.
In order to truly begin to heal humanity and to truly begin to thrive as we are supposed to do, we must allow pluralist, open access to pursue our goals. As long as we have a system that inherently promotes Darwinism by pitting powerful people against each other, the rest of us will be left to tread the turbulent wake that they’re struggle for power creates.
thescientista4 