Adapting to crisis

Manote Tripathi

The Nation

 In October, 1838, a 29-year-old naturalist was back home in London after a five-year voyage spent inquiring into how some variations in a species tended to be preserved while others were destroyed. He happened to be reading ("for amusement", he later admitted) TR Malthus's "Essay on Population" when something clicked into place - a theory of his own.

 Charles Darwin's law of natural selection, a synonym for "survival of the fittest", has become one of the world's most enduring phrases, and with this month's celebration of his bicentenary, it's clear that the great man's theory still rings true.

 Two centuries on, Darwinism as an explanation of how biological life develops has mutated into a sociological theory. These days, social Darwinism is a hot topic at British and American universities in politics, history and international-relations courses.

 It's not obvious at first glance how a basic understanding of Darwinism might be helpful in overcoming the political and social problems of our times. But at the very least, Darwin can assure us that there's nothing scientifically inexplicable about the ills out there, and that we need to tackle them in a scientific manner.

 A quick historical flashback is all that's needed to appreciate how many of the political, economic and social ideas around today owe much of their foundations to Darwin's scientific law.

  It is 19th-century Britain, and progress is gathering steam. After centuries of struggle between agriculture and industry, religion and science, finally Darwin is convincing us that it is scientific to be both conservative and liberal, competitive and laissez faire -- to retain old successful habits but also reach out for new and better adaptations to our environment.

 The Victorians had the habit of associating man with nature in their attempts to explain their civilised society. And Darwin's universal law -- the "survival of the fittest" (a term actually coined by his under-appreciated contemporary Herbert Spencer) -- fitted into their drive for progress.

 Darwinism, the theory of the evolution of all animal and plant species through natural selection, became a popular doctrine because it explained man's place in nature without recourse to a supernatural Creator. Man, along with every other species, evolved by natural selection of favourable, heritable variants. Darwin himself took immense pleasure in the idea that man and other animals were "netted together".

 "Each new variety or species, when formed, will generally take the place of, and thus exterminate, its less well-fitted parent. This I believe to be the origin of the classification and affinities of organic beings at all times," Darwin wrote in "Descent of Man".

 Many at the time thought that this single universal law governing all animate phenomena displaced religion and left the way open for man to get on with advancing his own existence and survival.

 Once applied to human society, Darwinism took the political world by storm. Social Darwinism was a term not widely used in Europe and America until after 1880 and then almost invariably employed as a theory of the elimination of weak societies, or people, by strong ones - a serious misreading of Darwin's idea. 

 Darwinists believe that individuals are part of a "social organism" that adapts itself to the environment through improvement, moral change, progress and competitive struggle for existence.

 Viewed this way, a let-it-be attitude to human progress emerges as the favourable system as it is an open competition. Conservatism, unlike 19th-century ideas for revolution, comes across as most suitable because it protects long-established institutions that have been tested and survived through centuries of natural selection, just like human-biological characteristics.

 This means that the social order cannot be changed at will -- change has to happen organically and gradually. Edmund Burke, defending inherited British institutions as the product of natural selection, pointed to what happened in France after the revolution of 1789: change that occurs, not slowly and peacefully, but through violent means, leads to misery.

 Darwin witnessed a great deal of it through his life: "There seems to me too much misery in the world," he wrote in one of his letters.

 Much of the modern world's misery, too, can be attributed to the failure to respect the process of natural selection, or to adapt to the changing environment. Were Darwin still alive today, he would no doubt shake his head at the unfolding of modern realities: the sins of lawmakers and trade protectionists who either bend the rules or shut off the flow of free spirit for their own gain; the huge gap between rich and poor; the undereducated who fail to appreciate basic virtues of moral restraint, discipline, patience and self-improvement; the rich who wallow in luxury without caring about the impact on their surroundings, agricultural workers driven off their land as a result of an uncompetitive regime - these would be nothing new to Darwin.

 The naturalist condemned slavery in his own time as a despicable exploitation. The implication for our own time is that whether we are hi-so citizens of Bangkok or "slumdogs" in Mumbai, humans come from the same stock. Look down on a child selling flower garlands at the roadside, and all you are doing is looking in a mirror.

 As a fan of the pessimistic Malthus, Darwin would probably have agreed that poverty can never be eradicated. Malthus's premise is populations grow exponentially, food sources arithmetically, meaning demand for food will always outstrip supply. The result is what Malthus termed the "struggle for existence". 

  In these times of economic uncertainty, perhaps Thais can turn for support to Spencer's social extension of Darwin's theories. "The beneficent working of the survival of the fittest", or "the beneficent private war" in which each of us needs to strive to "climb on the shoulders of another, and remain there through the law of the survival of the fittest", is an instruction to evolve and adapt to external conditions through our existing survival traits.  Advancing our moral qualities as the basis of development and progress for our society can never be downplayed.

 We need to be Darwinist ourselves to appreciate that one of the basic rules of life is struggle. The successful struggle for existence brings new challenges as we progress to higher and higher states of existence. But that's something rewarding, and reason to continue. Otherwise, we "sink into indolence", as Darwin stated in "Descent of Man".

 That's why we can't afford to be complacent in these rapidly evolving, volatile times.