Violence, Darwin, Eugenics and Judgement: Seeing Through the Problem with Stages

From the moment that humans chose to breed from their strongest plough horses, or to hold back some seeds for next year from their most productive plants, we have interfered with nature. There is evidence that Siberian hunter-gatherers practiced this 9000 years ago. Huskies and retrievers exist as breeds because of unnatural selection. Eugenics goes back a long way.

Darwin never said “survival of the fittest”. Darwin’s theory was about the survival to breeding age of those who were most adapted to their environment. Nature is adaptive. The evolution of cacti represents the way that nature diversifies and over time brought forth species that are more adapted to dry conditions.

The Violence of Nature

Some humans chose to describe nature as “red in tooth and claw” and to extend the principles of plant or horse-breeding to the management of human existence. They made judgements about what is and what they believe ought to be. They made decisions about who should be educated and what they should be educated for and about who should be a slave, a wage-slave or a factory-owner. They saw nature as competitive and to perpetuate their power by labelling themselves as the fittest, thus entitled to subjugate others. They were the lions and tigers, the apex predators. That was their judgement. Seemingly, this goes back a long way. Skeletons thousands of years old are found with bashed-in skulls.