What should you do now? — Purple Pond
Every progress in evolution is dearly paid for; miscarried attempts, merciless struggle everywhere. The more detailed our knowledge of nature becomes, the more we see, together with the element of generosity and progression which radiates from being, the law of degradation, the powers of destruction and death, the implacable voracity which are also inherent in the world of matter. And when it comes to man, surrounded and invaded as he is by a host of warping forces, psychology and anthropology are but an account of the fact that, while being essentially superior to all of them, he is the most unfortunate of animals. So it is that when its vision of the world is enlightened by science, the intellect which religious faith perfects realises still better that nature, however good in its own order, does not suffice, and that if the deepest hopes of mankind are not destined to turn to mockery, it is because a God-given energy better than nature is at work in us. — Jacques Maritain
Our human traits are a product of natural selection, made for surviving and reproducing. If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? How similar are you to that worker ant who loses the queen? What should you do now? — Purple Pond
If course, in a literal doomsday scenario, things might be different. — Echarmion
While many humans are fit enough to continue the life cycle of finding a partner and producing healthy offspring, many don't make it. — Purple Pond
Our human traits are a product of natural selection, made for surviving and reproducing. If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? How similar are you to that worker ant who loses the queen? What should you do now? — Purple Pond
It's survival of the fit, not the fittest. — Artemis
What should you do now? — Purple Pond
It's survival of the fit, not the fittest. Often misquoted. — Artemis
... humans have outgrown evolutionary constraints - our environment no longer determines the health of the human gene pool - and this is, in part or in whole, due to our moral sense. To anyone who is moral the weak/unfit need protection and care [ ... ]
The other way to understand this is that morality is part of evolution and somehow a population of unfit genes is beneficial on some level for survival. I mean if diversity is essential to survival then having sick/unfit members may be necessary. — TheMadFool
Nature is cruel and inefficient, only a select few survive while many don't make it. Survival fittest applies to all organisms, including humans. While many humans are fit enough to continue the life cycle of finding a partner and producing healthy offspring, many don't make it. — Purple Pond
If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? [ ... ] What should you do now? — Purple Pond
What should it do now? — Purple Pond
Survival of the fittest" was not Darwin; it's Herbert Spenser's laissez-faire, proto-eugenic, coinage. — 180 Proof
Darwin responded positively to Alfred Russel Wallace's suggestion of using Spencer's new phrase "survival of the fittest" as an alternative to "natural selection", and adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication published in 1868.[1][2] In On the Origin of Species, he introduced the phrase in the fifth edition published in 1869,[3][4] intending it to mean "better designed for an immediate, local environment".[5][6] — Wikipedia
Our human traits are a product of natural selection, made for surviving and reproducing. If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? How similar are you to that worker ant who loses the queen? What should you do now? — Purple Pond
Our human traits are a product of natural selection, made for surviving and reproducing. If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? How similar are you to that worker ant who loses the queen? What should you do now? — Purple Pond
your post seems to suggest that reproducing is the meaning of life? You imply without it, what is the point. Many humans CHOOSE not to have children. Evolutionarily (is that a word, haha), those people (me) are unfit. But so what? — ZhouBoTong
Most of the work the average person does has nothing to do with their survival. With this being the case, it doesn't make sense to talk about survival of the fittest/fit, or whatever. — Anthony
'Evolution' applies to groups, not individuals - genes, species & ecologies (Darwin), not organisms & persons (Spenser) - the latter merely expressing traits adapted to proliferating the former. — 180 Proof
As a hypothetical imperative, I suppose, if one's goal is to "survive very long and/or reproduce", then one should work, or collaborate with others, to bricole (or engineer) tools which help facilitate that goal. This is irrelevant, however, to "fitness" or the lack of it with respective to the adaptive pressures of natural selection. (vide Dennett, Dawkins, Gould, et al). — 180 Proof
'Fitness' is a species-level designation in evolutionary theory, and not an individual one (or species-in-an-ecological-niche if one is being strict). If you're asking about the 'fitness' of individuals, one is no longer talking about evolutionary theory, but something else. Per that theory, if the species is not fit, it is extinct, or on its way to extinction. That's it. — StreetlightX
Most of the work the average person does has nothing to do with their survival. With this being the case, it doesn't make sense to talk about survival of the fittest/fit, or whatever. Some hayseed living close to the land, self-reliant, will out survive the infants consummately dependent on each other through the market/boob lactating its milk/money. — Anthony
How would such a view be described? How a collective could have a view or be viewed is a mystery to me. The kind of conversation one can have tete a tete compared to the kind he can have with everyone or more than one person at a time may be revealing. Then it may be discovered whether it is possible to have a meaningful conversation with more than one person at a time. How does the individual relate to this supposed collective? Is it by following standards of some sort? When "everyone" follows the same standards, everyone has the same unexamined areas of life, a problem which indexes illusion, and social decay.From the view of collective society, it does. — Bitter Crank
Yet what is the collective without the individual?...an impossibility/nothing. What is the individual without the collective?...possible/something (depending on the degree of mental and physical autonomy reached by the person). Can the human collective know anything? Or can something only be known by each separate individual.Individual bees and birds aren't in the race to survive; it's their species that survive or not. Same with humans--which is not to say that individual humans are at all indifferent to their personal situations. We are quite concerned about it. But individually, we, birds, and bees will all die. Collectively, we endure -- or not. — Bitter Crank
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