Social Darwinism

200 years since Darwin was born; a lot of dissertations pro and against his revolutionary theory, some people said: “ I’m not the evolving descendant of a monkey”, some people said, “everything works because evolution, and there is no god”, and that we are all atheists, The thing is some of us just go one god further” (Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins said this, and explained that all of us do not believe in gods like Shiva, Ala, Dionysius or any other, but only some people go “one god further” )

http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/eh4.shtml, this place describes social Darwinism as follows: “Social Darwinism is a belief, popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere, which states that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit should be allowed to die. The theory was chiefly expounded by Herbert Spencer, whose ethical philosophies always held an elitist view and received a boost from the application of Darwinian ideas such as adaptation and natural selection.”



Jürgen Neffe said in an article published by the Jerusalem Post that this particular way of thinking seems to prevent that someone like Obama (bi racial and working class) reaches the most powerful political seat in the world. But he did it!, and the question is We really are evolving in our society in politics as we evolve biologically?

Here I go back to one article by Sigmund Freud: “Das unbehagen in der Kultur” who said basically that we tend to think the society has advanced and we are more civilized because we are technologically advanced, but that is a mistake.

The fact that now we have more science at our service does not mean we are becoming more civilized. Why?; Because we use that science for the same and basic principles of being uncivilized (destroy other countries, kill people, you name it).

During the past years a major improvements have taken place in our lives, the food, medical care, quality of life, but in the next 100 years it will be a skyrocketing increase of many technologies that will improve our lives and us in a greater way.

Chips inserted inside us that allow our brain speak a lot of languages without studying it; Genomic therapy and drugs that will cure diseases that right now we can, and The possibility to design your own babies disease free among other things (would it be possible to change the color of his eyes?, his contexture?, what would be catalogued as a disease and what not?

It sees like Brave new world from Aldous Huxley – Isn’t it?, now we have the ability to create and improve our world as a part of the new social Darwinism, and maybe some people would feel that with our current technology that allow us modify genetically our food to produce more and avoid the Malthusian crash (the food increase in arithmetic proportions meanwhile the people increase in geometric proportions).

Now we control the evolution right?, now we have become our very own gods?, there is a phrase very famous of a former Colombian politician: “The power for what?”, we have the power to increase the production of food, but still there are hundreds of thousands starving to death in Africa!, and if we can design our babies, ok it is going to be something great and the strong prevails, the one with money (it starts to sound like this movie Gattaca also right?), but who is strong?, George Walker Bush was a “strong” individual, would you see something positive that someone like he can design his babies and you can’t because it´s too expensive?, life is unfair and we are just like the Neanderthal, just that now we have blackberry’s? You tell me!.