The fittest never survives
The fittest 'anything' is not meant for survival in an ecosystem that is filled with interaction with others
It rained quite heavily last night and the gym had a few mosquitoes. As I was exercising I was also required to fend off mosquito attacks. I killed three of them. One remained. It was not interested in flying toward me at all. So I let it be. Quite likely the most unfit of the lot survived.
Eugenics suggests that genetically superior humans be bred instead of inferior ones. They would be the fittest and the best.
Herbert Spencer coined the phrase “Survival of the fittest” after reading Darwin and created this whole line of thinking. I suppose there is a lot that this leaves out. The fittest in the animal kingdom also tend to be the most aggressive. But if that was the case, evolution would have ensured that the world was overrun by some of the most aggressive creatures, it would be a bloodbath.
There is balance in nature. A tiger does not end up hunting all of the deers in the grasslands. They could engage in wanton acts of killing if they are really aggressive but they don’t. They do not kill unless they need to eat or they feel threatened. And so goes for every other animal in the world except for humans.
Nature does not endorse the survival of the fittest. The most perfect example of this comes from the intermingling of humans and Neanderthals. Neanderthals were structurally larger and had larger brains. From the standpoint of fitness, they would have been the fittest. But they were also far more aggressive. For very long, scientists assumed that Neanderthals had smaller brains and got outsmarted by humans.
Modern theory suggests that the disappearance of the Neanderthals was through sexual selection. Women did not prefer the Neanderthals because they were far more aggressive. This includes the female kind of Neanderthals as well.
That is how nature balances against the ‘fittest’. Everything in nature is about finding balance, it is not about reaching the pinnacle.
No virus that kills its host can survive, because the survival of the virus depends on the host being alive. Over the past 3 years, we have seen this first hand with Covid. Wave after wave continues to arrive, but the fatality has declined considerably. Each mutation ensured the survival of the virus, through the survival of the host.
The faulty assumption made by Darwin has been extrapolated to give us Capitalism. ‘Win at all cost, take everything that you can’ attitude of capitalism has brought us to the brink of apocalypse. Fittest is that corporation which can exploit the MOST resources, that can grow the MOST and growth comes with consumption.
As George Carlin put it, “The planet isn’t dying, we are! The planet has been here for billions of years and will continue to be here for billions more; we won’t.” We are viruses walking the planet and as we begin to claim the host (Earth), the host will destroy us.
How many monopolies have been around for 100 years? How many dictators have died a natural death?
Ironically, the ‘fittest’ will almost never survive.