Survival of the Fittingest

George Santayana is credited with saying, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Lest we all get energized to go out and study history now, I would like to point out that the "facts" of history tend to get written by the winners... not always... but quite often. Ask a Turk if the Armenians were "massacred" and he will respond that the rebel insurgents were defeated by the brave and honorable soldiers of Turkey who themselves suffered greatly from the deadly attacks by those scurrilous Armenians. Of course, in this case, there were enough of the "defeated"... survivors... to make their historical case against the "victors".

But when whole cultures disappear over time, the lessons of their histories may no longer be available or relevant for us to learn... although they may be interesting to some as the study of ruins and relics. Some cultures thrived and became dominant for so long that they affect us today, long after their demise. China's great empires dominate eastern Asian culture. India's culture dominates the Asian subcontinent as it has done for 5,000 years. The Greeks, Romans and Ottomans had their turns in the Mediterranian and Middle East. Eventually all of them influenced the Western European rise to great power and are now being influenced and dramatically changed by that new Western culture. Hong Kong may have the food of China, but it has the culture of the West... with a Chinese twist. Most of the world has adopted the Western scientific/business model while maintaining traditions of their earlier cultures.

The point is that history doesn't have absolute lessons for us. It has a litany of surprises which can inform, entertain and astound us, but doesn't necessarily prepare us for the future. What was strength may become weakness. America's industrial wealth and high standard of living may be the undoing of American industry as the nations with access to our technology and information create their own industrial machines using far cheaper labor and manufacturing costs. Just as it was easier for the Romans to conscript the Goths (a lot of them available and they worked for practically nothing) into the Roman army than use Roman citizens, it is easier for American companies to outsource research, development, manufacturing and support to "less developed countries" such as China and India. Soon, China and India will insource American management and do everything themselves.

I guess America could have learned something from the Romans and Goths.

Let's go back to the idea of survival.

Charles Darwin wrote of the "survival of the fittest" in his Origin of Species. But given the variety of species and the incredible life forms that have become extinct, one might argue that it is not fitness as much as fit that assists survival. As environments changed over time due to movements of tectonic plates and overall climate change, species rose and fell with seeming randomness. There was, of course, the dynamic of predator/prey. Some species of predator became so specialized that they became extinct when their specific prey was wiped out. But others survived because they were able to fit into a variety of environmental and ecological niches. The most spectacular success of survival of the fittingest is homo sapiens.

Modern man separated from other apes somewhere between 100,000 to 1,000,000+ years ago (depending on interpretation of fossil records). Regardless of the timeframe, these modern or near-modern humans had several distinct advantages over other species: hands with opposable thumbs (grasping paws of other animals are not quite as adaptable to using tools) and forward-facing eyes (a common trait of tree-dwelling animals) in combination with vocal chords and a tongue capable of producing a complex array of sounds (language) plus a large brain to allow more complex integration of information. Rather than reacting to their environment or being programmed into a static model of environment forming (such as ants or termites), homo sapiens were able to shape or control their environment in countless variations.

Mankind moved beyond survival of the fittest and survival of the fittingest to survival by mastery.

Certainly, modern humans face challenges from extreme environments such as the arctic/antarctic, Sahara and tropic Africa, and the Amazon basin... but even in the harshest of environments, man has learned or is learning to shape the environment to his own needs. Man still has organic competitors, but he is no longer bound to stuggle against them with muscle or simple tools. Modern technology is eliminating one threat after another to mankind's existence... except one: himself.

It is interesting that the territorial imperative we covered earlier is primarily within a species. Animals fight within their species for territorial rights to resources that will allow them to survive and reproduce. In a few cases such as dogs and humans, dogs will become part of the human pack and become territorial against "outsider" humans. But for the most part, one species will ignore another within its territory.

Now that mankind generally has been relieved of the constraints imposed by predators and environment, survival is threatened mostly from within; mankind is mankind's greatest threat to survival.

The rules of survival have changed and mankind is trying to adapt to the change. The question is can mankind overcome the most basic survival instinct, inbred over millions of years by countless species to survive, by using the same advantages that provided increasing mastery over the earth?

I have tried to set the stage for further discourse by covering two basics: what is truth (or what is true or real) and issues of survival. My conclusions, to this point, are: truth is elusive and subject to revision; the rules of survival have changed for man.

Looking forward: right and wrong and more.