After initial angst, would society benefit if the weak were not supported?

[Cyclone 10]

There are a lot of assumptions being made about what survival of the fittest means, despite me explaining it on page one.

 

It doesn't mean fastest, richest, strongest or smartest.

 

It means best adapted to the situation and thus best able to procreate.

 

For example, the dinosaurs were faster and stronger than mammals, but they died off when conditions didn't favour being fast, strong or big.

Bumblebee's have been observed to evolve in a way that reduces their brain size (and intelligence), because having a larger brain burns scarce calories.

 

Fittest cannot be translated into some specific set of attributes and these declared the best for all possible scenarios.

[Mecky 10]

"Divide and conquer" the motto and policy of this government

[Chris_Sleeps 10]

Darwin's "Origin of the Species" did not concern itself with wealth, but with bigger stronger members of any species who would survive to breed due to their strength.

This is animal biology essentially, and is still a misunderstanding. What about those animals that were too big to survive? Being large and having more muscle means that an animal needs a lot of fuel, which isn't always available. It's not a dichotomy of "strong" vs "weak".

 

To go back though;

National health care keeps the weak alive

Why not apply that rule to all medical science?

and the welfare state positively encourages the weak to reproduce.

If they're reproducing then they aren't weak.

[Ms Macbeth 70]

"Divide and conquer" the motto and policy of this government

 

And that differs from the previous administration how?

 

I for one am glad that the advances in medical science have helped people to live better lives. I suspect my father had similar health problems to my husband, however my dad dropped dead at 59, but due to fantastic (free) surgery and meds, my husband is 67, and fairly fit and well.

 

But we should all be concerned about the lives some children are born into today. Even with all the advances in medicine, and free contraception, there are children who are born drug dependent, with foetal alcohol syndrome, or to 'mothers' living desperately chaotic lives, who neglect and fail to nourish their children.

 

I don't know if a harder line taken by social workers will make much difference, but if it helps even a few children escape horrific childhoods then I'm for money being spent on more family intervention, especially after reading this government report: http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/pdf/2183663.pdf

[I1L2T3 10]

There are a lot of assumptions being made about what survival of the fittest means, despite me explaining it on page one.

 

It doesn't mean fastest, richest, strongest or smartest.

 

It means best adapted to the situation and thus best able to procreate.

 

For example, the dinosaurs were faster and stronger than mammals, but they died off when conditions didn't favour being fast, strong or big.

Bumblebee's have been observed to evolve in a way that reduces their brain size (and intelligence), because having a larger brain burns scarce calories.

 

Fittest cannot be translated into some specific set of attributes and these declared the best for all possible scenarios.

 

I think that is the point in a nutshell Cyclone. Looking at it in context of society today is like taking the smallest of pointless snapshots. Society in ten years might be very different - say if we were in a war the youngest and fittest adults would be highly valued, i.e. many of the people that are 'least valued' today but even looking at it in that way is just taking the smallest snapshot of time. Both snapshots by themselves are pointless in terms of the evolutionary process.

[handypandy 14]

I first met my lifelong friend in the infant school when we were six years old, we are now in our early sixties. He was brought up by his severely disabled mother who relied totally on benefits. Suffice to say, they were very poor. The 'relief' as it was nicknamed then, was nothing like it is today. At school, he was always in the top two in all subjects. He went on to become an engineer and paid more in tax than I even earned. His daughter is a microbiologist.

 

I am sure there are a million stories like this. The OP's concept does not hold, in any shape or form.

[mikem8634 10]

I first met my lifelong friend in the infant school when we were six years old, we are now in our early sixties. He was brought up by his severely disabled mother who relied totally on benefits. Suffice to say, they were very poor. The 'relief' as it was nicknamed then, was nothing like it is today. At school, he was always in the top two in all subjects. He went on to become an engineer and paid more in tax than I even earned. His daughter is a microbiologist.

 

I am sure there are a million stories like this. The OP's concept does not hold, in any shape or form.

 

Says it all - thankyou

[iron sky 10]

National health care keeps the weak alive, and the welfare state positively encourages the weak to reproduce. In today's society, the weak more than the strong are helped to survive and procreate.

 

Are we destroying ourselves as a species by reversing evolution?

 

Heil Conrod. Do you goose step around Sheffield city center peaching your far right crap then? What would your hero think of this neo Nazi thinking? Do you buy a poppy for our war dead who frought in the First World War and Second World War? You are one hell of sick man.

[Mister M 1,605]

Would the OP feel any 'initial angst' if the weak and vulnerable went to the wall, or would he be delighted?

[iron sky 10]

Would the OP feel any 'initial angst' if the weak and vulnerable went to the wall, or would he be delighted?

 

He would love it mate.

[mikem8634 10]

Peter Kropotkin argued in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution that Darwin did not define the fittest as the strongest, or most clever, but recognized that the fittest could be those who cooperated with each other. In many animal societies, struggle is replaced by cooperation.

It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was not fully aware of the generality of the factor which he first invoked for explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of individual variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term [evolution] which he was introducing into science would lose its philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only—that of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny." [Quoting Origin of Species, chap. iii, p. 62 of first edition.]

While he himself was chiefly using the term in its narrow sense for his own special purpose, he warned his followers against committing the error (which he seems once to have committed himself) of overrating its narrow meaning. In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. "Those communities," he wrote, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring" (2nd edit., p. 163). The term, which originated from the narrow Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus lost its narrowness in the mind of one who knew Nature.[37]

 

It seems as though the OP himself may be on what he refers to as the weak side of the equation in strictly Darwinian terms.

[mikem8634 10]

It appears that Darwin had a vague idea, and he referred to it as natural selection. Herbert Spencer, not quite accurately, introduced the term 'survival of the fittest' after reading Darwin's ideas. It's not a huge leap of inference to assume non-survival of the weakest - after all, natural selection favours those of a species that are most successful at surviving, procreating and providing for their young against the challenges of life.

 

If we take away the challenges of life and the difficulties that must be overcome to live and provide for the next generation, we take away natural selection - the natural removal of weak genes from the pool. We invite deterioration of our species over a potentially short timescale (in evolutionary terms).

 

Perhaps the world's best known popularizer of evolution, Richard Dawkins, made this point exceedingly well in a 2005 interview published in Die Presse. He said, "No self-respecting person would want to live in a society that operates according to Darwinian laws. I am a passionate Darwinist, when it involves explaining the development of life. However, I am a passionate anti-Darwinist when it involves the kind of society in which we want to live. A Darwinian state would be a Fascist state."