Faustine wrote: > > [...] Darwinian justice. > > >>I don't know much about Darwin (nothing), but I am interested why there's > >>Darwinian justice. > >Oh, it's just a kind of poetic shorthand. The way I see it, the American idea >of justice as conceived by the Founding Fathers and made plain in the >Constitution and Bill of Rights is "ideal justice". The way things should be. >What we should all aspire to. > >On the other hand, real justice-- Darwinian justice--is what actually >happens in spite of everyone's best efforts and best intentions. Natural >selection, human nature, survival of the fittest, our legacy as descendants >of apes in a natural world. In sum, just the way it is... > > >"This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive; >That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive. >Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, >This is the Will of the Yukon,-- Lo, how she makes it plain!" > > >Darwinian justice is the reason why no man-made law will ever be able to >protect the lazy, stupid and ignorant from themselves; why math can only be >countered by better math. You don't have to like it or approve of >it, but you ignore it at your own peril. Adapt or die, as the saying goes... > >You might want to read the works of the philosopher Schopenhauer: Darwin >himself was heavily influenced by him, if I'm remembering correctly. >Fascinating stuff. > >~Faustine. > > > >*** > >He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from >oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that >will reach to himself. > >- --Thomas Paine
Question for Faustine: Is what is, right? Or is it man-made and can be changed by men? Faustine may want to rethink this. Social Darwinism does not square with the Thomas Paine quote. Just one example of debunking Social Darwinism is at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/social.html "A number of critics see the use of selection theory in other than biological contexts as forcing malign political and moral commitments. A prime example of this is sociobiology, which is supposed to result in such things as eugenics, racism, and the death of the welfare state. Sociobiology, and the more recent evolutionary psychology movement, seeks to explain human behaviour in terms of the adaptations of human evolution. Gould especially has been vitriolic in his attacks on sociobiological explanations. It is thought by some to result in a completely selfish ethic known as rational egoism. "Another such view is "Social Darwinism", which holds that social policy should allow the weak and unfit to fail and die, and that this is not only good policy but morally right. The only real connection between Darwinism and Social Darwinism is the name. . . . "The claims made by Social Darwinists and their heirs suffer from the ethical fallacy known as 'the naturalistic fallacy' . . . This is the inference from what may be the case to the conclusion that it is therefore right. However, while it is certainly true that, for example, some families are prone to suffer diabetes, as mine is, there is no licence to conclude that they should not be treated, any more than the fact that a child has a broken arm from a bicycle accident implies that the child should have a broken arm. David Hume long ago showed that 'is' does not imply 'ought'. "In fact, diverse political and religious opinions characterise social musings based upon evolutionary biology. For example, the 19th century Russian anarchist aristocrat Pyotr Kropotkin wrote a book called Mutual Aid [1902, cf Gould 1992] in which he argued that evolution results more in cooperation than it does in harsh competition. His views are echoed in recent use of games theory to show that, in some cases at least, cooperation is a stable strategy for certain populations to adopt [Axelrod 1984]."
