Agreed DMB I only asked to check if that was the context he was using the "Social Darwinism" tag. No brainer that it is seriously misguided stuff, leading to all manner of evils.
The problem that gives us, though, is the danger of that label and no-brainer argument making (intellectually valid) evolutionary arguments appears taboo in any social context. Sometimes, as you have chastised me before, a little intellectual rigor and clarity is important ;-) Thanks Ian On 5/16/07, david buchanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This comes from the "Collective intelligence (Granger)" thread. > > On 16 May Ian asked Arlo: > Could you elaborate on the kind of "Social Darwinists" you seem to have it > in for. Personally, I'm pretty confortable with neo-Darwinian evolutionary > explanations of processes throughout the MoQ levels. > > Arlo replied: > My contention is not with evolutionary processes. I think these underscore > the MOQ, and are not only unavoidable but Good. ...Social Darwinism, at its > simplest, says that who lives and who dies should be decided by social > power. In days of yore, social darwinism favored the aristocracy. Who lived > and who died was determined by social birthright, family status, etc. Kings > received medical attention, peasants were left in the streets to die. ...The > underlying belief was that survival should be hinged to certain social > patterns. Those with these patterns were deemed "more valuable", those > without were seen as "expendable". Today we retain that mindset, and have > latched onto "wealth", replacing the idea of an aristocracy with a > capistocracy. The idea that "who lives and who dies" should be decided by > "who has money" underlies the modern discourse on healthcare. The "poor" are > lazy and stupid and if they die off then it is of no loss at all. > > dmb chimes in: > A while back I read some of Richard Hofstadter's 1944 classic "Social > Darwinism in American Thought" and I can tell you that Arlo is not > exaggerating. Social Darwinism has been used to justify all kinds of > cruelty. Slavery, poverty, colonialism, racism, sexism and it even informed > the Nazi's race theories and their genocidal project against non-Aryans. > > This attitude was not invented as a response to Darwin's theory of natural > selection so much as that theory reflected the world Darwin lived in > already. He was basically projecting 19th century Victorian social values > onto nature and so it effectively gave scientific sanction to already > existing tendencies. > > The only good Indian is a dead Indian, the White man's burden, etc. That's > social darwinism too. > > "In this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike > and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations > which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities." Theodore Roosevelt > > Hofstadter opens chapter nine, titled "Racism and Imperialism", with that > quote from Teddy but he opens chapter ten, the conclusion, with a quote from > William James. The emphasis is William's... > > "The entire modern deification of survival PER SE, survival returning to > itself, survival naked and abstract, with the denial of any substantive > excellence in WHAT survives, except the capacity for more survival still, is > surely the strangest intellecual stopping-place ever proposed by one man to > another." > > Pirsig echoes James with his emptiness-mocking phrase, "survival of the > survivors". > > What's my point? One should NOT be comfortable with social darwinism. It's > intellectually bogus and morally it's even worse. A person would have to be > oblivious or black-hearted to go along with that shit. > > Thanks, > dmb > > _________________________________________________________________ > Like the way Microsoft Office Outlook works? You'll love Windows Live > Hotmail. > http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_mini_outlook_0507 > > > moq_discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
