Paul Gutierrez
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

I think your analysis is flimsy and flawed as it fails to take into account our evolutionary success based upon being social animals. Your analogy with sharks is a poor one as a shark survives based upon what it can eat and who it mates with, and they’re primarily solitary animals whereas our social relationships greatly impact our survival.

From a biological perspective, survival of the fittest can’t be reduced to who lives the longest or how many children you have. Changes in environment can also radically influence what characteristics will result in being the fittest as well. Cultural evolution occurs at a significantly more rapid rate than biological evolution.

If Lord of the Flies illustrates anything, it represents the rapid unraveling of cultural evolution in lieu of biological evolution under the conditions of scarcity on the island. In general, America has been prosperous even though the distribution of this prosperity has been strongly influenced by the cultural evolution of the country.

If we think in terms of social evolution, many other nations over time have evolved cultures where people were defined as more or less worthy of survival whether it was on the basis of religious beliefs, political beliefs, nobility, caste systems, gender, tribal affiliation, etc. . . .

The evolution of American social survival of the fittest may be unique in many aspects. Your analysis fails to address the significant role of native Americans, African Americans, and immigrants in the evolution of American culture. This American diversity can not be adequately characterized by survival of the fittest anymore than it can for any other nation.

American social evolution still reflects our common human heritage of evaluating each other within the context of who is more worthy than others with a concomitant redistribution of resources to reflect those social value systems. If those who are deemed to have a more privileged status are defined as super predators, it obfuscates the role of social norms which arise from how relationships are defined within a culture. These relationships directly effect survival of the fittest in terms of both social and biological evolution. As far as the social acceptance, belief, and practice of Social Darwinism itself — clearly Nazi Germany exemplified this belief system.

Paul Gutierrez

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Trying to listen and respond with aspirations for an improved quality of life if not in the short term, at least in the long run.