Jack the Potato said:
Social Darwinism, for those who don't know, is the application of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" idea to everyday life. It's not a common label today because its ideas basically spawned countless atrocious and bigoted movements, including Nazism, but I see its principles applied EVERYWHERE, and every time I do, I can only ask "why?"
First off, there's the fact that "survival of the fittest" applies to entire species, NOT individuals. If one species of mouse is more able to hide from owls, that species is more likely to live and thrive than the others. That's it. That's the entire principle.
Yet people use survival of the fittest quite often as an excuse to be an asshole. They use it to justify taking advantage of those less fortunate ("I worked hard to be rich, obviously the poor haven't worked as hard as I did or they'd be rich too! Survival of the fittest!"), to justify doing downright dirty things to "win" ("I could have told Steve they bumped up the due date of the project so he wouldn't get fired, but now I'm getting his office! Survival of the fittest!") or just to be a bully ("Hey, if this nerd spent less time on his computer and more time at the gym, I wouldn't be able to shove him in his locker every day! Survival of the fittest!"). And of course, whenever someone says that, people often find it difficult to come up with a good counterpoint.
These people couldn't be more wrong if their feet grew out of their head! Going back to my species example, if one species of owl is much more adapt at cooperating with each other to catch delicious mice, that species is more likely to live and thrive than the others.
Cooperation. Teamwork. Kindness. Peace. These things will allow a species a much greater chance at surviving than any brutal, dirty, or cowardly method. Don't get me wrong either, humans are actually VERY good at these things, at least inside their own social groups. I just can't stand it when assholes pervert the most basic idea in nature and act like being nice makes you a "freak of nature." The only freaks of nature here are people who don't understand that we'll always achieve more working together than any individual, no matter how "fit," could.
So to those on this site who may find themselves, even only occasionally, thinking that survival of the fittest is an appropriate line of thought when dealing with things in your life, I humbly ask you to take a step back and reevaluate that.
Social Darwinism is a fine principle, the problem is the way how it's applied. The problem is when someone looks at a principle that is supposed to apply to large groups of people, and try and apply it on an individual level. Such as your example of a rich person using it as a justification to exploit a poor or less fortunate person. Especially seeing as the rich person himself is dependant on a social structure that prevents the strong from preying directly on the week to maintain his fortune and things like currency, or else that big dumb lug would just beat him upside the head and take everything, and we've live in a comparitive wasteland. Your smart guys will almost always be dominated by the dumb but strong without society keeping everything together so we can achieve more.
THAT said the bottom line is that some societies and social systems are simply better than others. What's more the arguement that we should preserve something "just because it's people" is also inherntly flawed, especially when it's causing problems for you. Social Darwinism is in part about replacing emotion with logic.
To put into into perspective, a society that has become a static theocracy that is trying to kill or convert everyone else for religious reasons, and contributes very little to the world socially even if it might have done so at one time, is not nessicarly something that people should preserve when it holds back both the people in that society, and represents a detriment to the rest of the world. When people hear me talking about breaking cultures and such, this is ultimatly what it comes down to, rather than any racism, or even hatred in any traditional sense. In the end I believe that in many cases the deaths of billions will benefit everyone, including the surviving people from that region, when viewed in the long term.
To some extent I feel that argueing against social darwinism tends to be MORE racist and bigoted. Cultural preservation oftentimes being an excuse to keep people wallowing in ignorance, "protecting the way of life" of some backwards or primitive people ultimatly means those people will remain backwards and primitive and not grow to join a greater society.
Of course I'm also self reflective in all of this, I myself have mentioned that the next step is a global unity, even if it ultimatly comes down to a "join or die" mentality once the spread of ideas has peaked. This means the dissolution of all nations including the US.
I also believe my own people in the USA are themselves set to be victims of social darwinism because on a lot of levels we're too advanced to exist in the current global climate. They very fact that people will make impassioned arguements against things like social darwinism, or even acting in the direct national interest when it comes to putting our interests ahead of someone else, while turning the other cheek when the same thing is done to us, makes us unworthy to survive and we're already seeing things eroding in the USA as this mentality deadlocks the US and prevents it from taking the actions needed to remain on top.
To a large extent one of the problems with the USA is our own ignorance and decadence. People in the US have become convinced that if they ignore problems, and just let other people do whatever they want, they can themselves be left alone and live their own lives peacefully. A lot of arguements for not intervening, ultimatly coming down to people not wanting to do anything. A war means having to go out and risk your life or those of your loved ones, social liberalism is easy because it's the path of least resistance because dealing with various minority groups ultimatly comes down to everyone having to get up and actually do something, it's easier to let the streets decay and be afraid to let your kids
go outside by actually going after all the wierdos. Very few people who support this kind of idealogy actually do it because they believe it's right, so much as it's easy and claiming it's right allows them to justify inaction. In the USA for example it's generally been argued that the right wing is about doing things, where the left wing is about doing nothing when you get down to it and how it influances the average person.
The point here being that in it's current form the USA is itself a victim of social darwinism, and you see it in our recent decay, and it's hard to say it's undeserved because the USA has rendered itself more or less incapable of saving itself or competing internationally.
I can understand why social darwinism isn't popular from a certain point of view, but in the end societies need to change and evolve like others, and they also have to remain competitive within their enviroment. Simple evlution does not always mean that evolution is a viable one, and there have been species that have rendered themselves extinct by evolving the wrong way (and the same can happen socially).
