The idea that the theory of natural selection was an appropriate basis for understanding and governing human societies originated with the English libertarian philosopher Herbert Spencer, the man who originated the phrase “survival of the fittest.” He argued that natural selection would eventually produce a perfect society, but only if it had free reign to operate so that the unfit could be eliminated. To that end he opposed public education, compulsory smallpox vaccination, free libraries, workplace safety laws, and even charitable support for the “undeserving poor.”
Such views, later labeled “Social Darwinism,” were eagerly adopted by defenders of unfettered capitalism. John D. Rockefeller famously told a Sunday school class in New York City:
"The growth of large business is merely a survival of the fittest… The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God."
Engels was scathing in his rejection of attempts to apply biological laws to human society. In a letter to the Russian socialist Pyotr Lavrov in 1875, he pointed out that the “bourgeois Darwinians”—referring to a political current in Germany that claimed to be applying Darwin’s views—first claimed that the political concept “survival of the fittest” applied to nature, and then reversed the process:
"All that the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence boils down to is an extrapolation from society to animate nature of Hobbes’ theory of the bellum omnium contra omnes [war of all against all] and of the bourgeois-economic theory of competition together with the Malthusian theory of population. Having accomplished this feat … these people proceed to re-extrapolate the same theories from organic nature to history, and then claim to have proved their validity as eternal laws of human society. The puerility of this procedure is self-evident, and there is no need to waste words on it."
These political Darwinians, Engels concluded, can be described “firstly as bad economists and secondly as bad naturalists and philosophers.”
MPM dating problems? lol
promethean75 wrote:MPM dating problems? lol
yeah i'm fairly disappointed with the dating app. most of these chicks are too normal man. the first red flag is the selfie-with-my-dog routine i see in nine out of ten pages. then there's always the 'travel' in the 'things i want to do' section. no shit. everybody wants to travel. that goes without saying. you're supposed to say something that uniquely defines you... not give the same answer everybody else gives. and there's another very strange trend i'm noticing too. in the 'how to win me over' section, i've seen 'buy me tacos' at least four times. is there something i should know about tacos?
now the few responses i have gotten were from ladies who are clearly above my class, so i hesitate to faciliate any conversation with them. and all the other hotties who's pics i've 'liked' will probably never find me due to the infinitely long line of prior likes from all the other benign, well-adjusted dorks they have to wade through to get to me. the app is badly designed in that respect; you can only view each like individually and in chronological order, so if you've got forty likes when you open the app, you're like 'woah this is too much work'. now if they had a single page on which they could see all the images/vids of the guys who liked them at once, they'd be like 'omg who's that hot guy singing 'mr.roboto' in the car', and ignore all the other idiots.
what i need is a dating app for the criminally insane, man. they've got one for redneck christians, but what about nihilists? where are the marla singers and the harley quinns of the world?
Return to Non-Philosophical Chat
Users browsing this forum: No registered users