(This is Part 11 of a series. Go back to Part 10.)
During the 19th century, Darwinian evolutionary theory was misapplied to human society to create the destructive credo of Social Darwinism, which can be considered a subsection of the end-justifies-the-means paradigm.
Social Darwinism, which was promulgated not by Darwin but by Herbert Spencer, holds that the "survival of the fittest" which occurs in biological evolution also applies to human society, so that it is right, natural and proper for the strong to prosper at the expense of the weak.
This doctrine was used to support a number of practices which now seem morally indefensible. For example, it provided a justification for colonialism, saying that since the natives were intrinsically weaker—after all, they had been conquered—that therefore it was right and proper for their conquerors to seize their land and resources.
Another example is the rise of cut-throat capitalism in the 19th century. Social Darwinism held that forcing workers to work long hours at backbreaking tasks for pennies a day was morally defensible since it was simply the strong profiting at the expense of the weak, something which is
a commonplace in nature.
Indeed, this doctrine was even extended to hold that it was morally indefensible to help the poor and disabled because they were less well-adapted to their environment and thus, by nature's creed, less deserving of sustenance and even life itself. This argument was used, for instance, to oppose such measures as welfare, the minimum wage and universal education.
But the apotheosis of Social Darwinism came with Adolf Hitler and the Second World War of 1939-1945. Hitler used an offshoot of Social Darwinist thinking to hold that "the master race"—exemplified by Germany, of course—was intrinsically superior to other races and therefore justified in eliminating them.
This argument was used by Hitler and his cohorts in the Nazi hierarchy to justify the Holocaust—the cold-blooded enslavement and murder of millions of Jews, Gypsies and others during that time.
"By their fruits ye shall know them", said Jesus. Taken to its logical conclusion, the fruits of Social Darwinism were the inhuman subjugation and/or murder of hundreds of millions of people. But why? Beyond the horrific fruits it produces, is there also a fundamental flaw at the heart of Social Darwinism?
Indeed there is. The fatal error of Social Darwinism is its misunderstanding of how evolution actually operates. In 1902 Kropotkin proposed a modification of Darwin's theory called the theory of mutual aid, in which he argued that organisms in nature both compete and cooperate.
Subsequent research has borne Kropotkin out and shown that evolution proceeds—both in nature and in human culture—by a complex mixture of both competition and cooperation. In a crude way, we can notice the obvious cooperation amongst such organisms as ants and bees and birds, but the phenomenon of cooperation in nature goes much deeper than that.
More recently, Robert Trivers in his theory of reciprocal altruism has demonstrated that there is a biological basis for reciprocal cooperation among organisms in nature, up to and including such human qualities as friendship and altruism. Moreover, recent advances in game theory have shown that cooperation, in many cases, is indeed a stable and optimal strategy for many populations to adopt.
But beyond these considerations, there is something more fundamental going on: The assumptions at the core of Social Darwinism rest ultimately upon the paradigm that the-end-justifies-the-means, a point of view that, again and again in history, has produced havoc and destruction wherever it has been applied.
Let's instead, in our actions and in our hearts, be mindful of the real principle involved:
The means we use to achieve our end
Is the true end we achieve.
(This is the end of Part 11. Go to Part 12.)
—jim sloman, 12.13.05
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