Amerika

Charles Darwin wrote his groundbreaking work in the late nineteenth century and early in the following century, it had already become politically controversial. The idea of evolution offended people, both on a religious and secular basis, and so hysterical historical events like the Scopes Monkey Trial came to pass.

Even through the present day, many oppose the idea of Darwinism. To them, it either denies our divine origin as the deliberate act of God, or refutes the idea of human uniqueness upon which the liberal philosophy of secular humanism is constructed. Darwinism lives on through the latter in anti-racism.

If people have been disturbed by Darwinism since its inception, and if most people act by “rationalizing” their opposition to something — finding some argument to use against it, rather than becoming against it because of an innate conflict — then it is likely the same condition continues today. With “blank slate” ideologies, we see a counter-Darwin narrative being launched.

Under the blank slate idea, all people are the same and simply await the right mental programming — education, propaganda, law, rules, regulations — to make them act in self-interest toward what is right. True blank-slaters believe there are no biological differences between social classes, sexes, races and regional groups. In other words, there is no evolution going on right now, and it never could have existed, since we are all equal as if… created by a benevolent God in that state.

Of course our “scientific” society denies the existence of a benevolent God, but we are content with substitutes that do not involve an orderly force to the universe which might judge us as insufficient for our impulsive, venal and incontinent actions. For this reason, the idea of equality takes on a religious dimension.

But as others point out, Darwin remains with us, as a challenge to our sense of being “in control” through his assertion of human and racial inequality:

In 1859, Charles Darwin published his revolutionary book, The Origin of Species. Actually, the full title of the work is The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: or, The Preservation Of Favored Races In The Struggle For Life. In this book, the author contended that higher levels of biological existence are attained as the strong eliminate the weak in the struggle for survival.

Subsequently, Darwin produced yet another work, The Descent of Man (1871), in which he wrote even more explicitly:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigourous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man (Darwin 1872, 130; emphasis added).

Something about Darwin offends us in our very soul. It says that we are not the creators of ourselves, but that we are effects of causes in the past. This affirms our impotence, degrades our egos, and makes us feel as if a Natural Selection Event (NSE) could be lurking right around the corner at any minute… and no prey creature wants to feel that.

Anti-racism came from this anti-Darwinistic movement. If it is heresy to assault the idea that all people are equal, doing so in such a highly visible way as to deny racial equality is the ultimate apostasy. The good people say we are all the same; the bad people say not only that we are different, but that we should aspire to be more than what we are, based on the best among us and the logical extension of where they are. The real blasphemy is saying that people need to adapt to reality and improve themselves, and that this happens over multiple lifetimes, which makes the individual feel impotent and mortal.

The fanatical anti-racism of the West can be understood this way. By categorizing Creationism as anti-Darwinism, by inversion we can imply that only Creationism is anti-Darwinism, which allows other forms of anti-Darwinism to go unrecognized for what they are. Racism addresses a primal fear: if there are differences among the races, then there must be among classes, and individuals, which means we are not equal, which means that our egos in not responsible for who we are. Thus we are not in Control, which means we exist at the whim of the universe or God …not a very flattering concept.

Anti-Racism is another form of anti-Darwinism similar to the Creationism on exhibit at the Scopes Monkey Trial. The same human impulse lies behind it: a desire for the individual to be the Creator of himself, and for that reason, to be omniscient and omnipotent among the events of life. This implies that the individual wields the power here, and not the world, so the individual does not need to adapt to the world, but in fact the converse: the world must adapt to the individual.

At the core of every human dysfunction, we find the same thing: a monkey preening over its fine fur, and at the same time, puffing itself up to scare away its enemies both real and imagined. A self-important organism, in other words, which is vested in denying reality. Except that with humans, the consequences of this are vast and negative, where for monkeys it is just a few more moments of contentment before the strike of the snake or wildcat.

Tags: anti-darwinism, anti-racism, egoism, idiocracy, narcissism, racism, solipsism