The Origins of the Modern Oligarchs... erm... Species. Totally Meant to Say 'Species'.

So I've been reading 'The Day the Universe Changed' to Jenn when it's time to take her make-up off at night. We manage about 3 or 5 pages a night. And last night, we came to a chilling bit. The book (and companion TV Series) is about discoveries that change the way we perceive the world around us, and changes our points of view. What drove us toward or away from different memes in our collective consciousness and the like. And last night, we hit the bit where James Burke was discussing the fallout of Darwin's 'Origin of the Species'. And how it led, through fuckups like Hegel and Haekel in Germany to the rise of the Nazi party.

And to give you a chill, that was NOT the most fucked up bit.

Over in America, it didn't so much give rise to Nazis, but to 'Social Darwinists'. Now, I would seem to have been using the term Social Darwinism wrongly. I always considered it to be how stupid people tend to select themselves out for extinction. You know... like the sort of thing you used to see when The Darwin Awards were a thing.  And I'm kind of fine with that. The less stupid people in the world, the better, says I. Take the warning labels off the coffee lids and chainsaws and we'll all be a few car lengths further in traffic to work tomorrow, says I. But according to those that coined the term in the first place, this really isn't the case at all. And it's certainly not what the people who coined the term meant.

Not that this kind of thing is happening today...  oh heavens no.  Except it is.

In accordance with Darwin, these early robber barons like Carnegie and Rockefeller, as well as their Nazi supporting descendants, like the Drumpfs and the Kochs cleaved to the idea of life as a struggle for resources, and that intelligence wasn't so much a survival trait. Aggression and power were seen as the things necessary to 'improve the species', and were the qualities ideally suited for accquiring as many resources as possible to continue one's line toward a more perfect human race. That it was cruel in the extreme to help the poor, disaffected, and weak as you were only removing the impetus for them to struggle and grow as individuals. That people ought to be subservient to the strong, and be pleased to work themselves to death as long as it improved the community on the whole. That those too weak to survive in adversity ought to select themselves out for extinction and die for the betterment of the whole. That positive change for the human race can only come out of violent struggle.

Sound familiar?

Do you want to know more?  Read the book.

As I read to Jenn last night, we both kept looking at one another. Stunned. Had we found the lodestone around which our current oligarchy of cruel old white men have planted their tree of truth? They actually subscribe to this self-serving cruelty. You hear it every time they talk about creating a nation of takers, even as they take the food and medicine out of the mouths of the hungry and sick. They put guns in the hands of people full of hatreds and selfish ignorance. Arming the strong, victimizing the weak, taking all the resources for themselves... And then they pat themselves on one another's wrinkly backs for doing God's work and laughing that the 'intellectuals' are too fractured to do anything but discuss how bad things are getting.

These fossils grew up on this. They were fed and raised on it while they were little fascist larvae by people who bought into this Social Darwinist crap in the first half of the 20th century. Our present oligarchs are the direct descendants of robber barons that bought into this Aryan and Social Darwinist bullshit. Never mind they'd have been Anarchist Buddhists or whatever creed they could use to justify their greed and ambition. I have to imagine that the christian fundamentalists they pander to nowadays would be horrified to find out that their Rand-ian darlings' philosophies are based (however wrongly) in Darwinian science. That's us Americans for you. Like the man said, "We take what we want... and leave the rest. JUST LIKE YOUR SALAD BAR."

My own view is that we have surpassed Darwinian biological imperatives with our sciences. The violent struggle is no longer necessary when resources of power and production can be had from the very wind and sunlight. The energy from those resources turned into the production of necessaries from more efficient raw materials and reclaimed waste, the collection of which we can automate with machines. We can literally craft and guide our species' evolution toward something greater with deliberate intent. And we can do it with science and compassion for all as our tools. No one gets left behind. ... Okay... not even the stupid people.

The greedy, hoarding philosophy of 'I got mine, so fuck you.' is UN-necessary in the 21st century with the powers our minds can bring to bear on the problems of our continued existence. If we could but unchain ourselves from the failed philosophies of the robber barons and the Aryans, brought forward into our time by the corporate oligarchs who prey on the weak. Wrapping themselves in whatever flag or dogma they can find to help the uneducated swallow their poison pill.

And it's about to come to a breaking point. That bit where very real and noticable numbers of people are going to start dying to support the greed of a mere 400 or so people while the rest of the world burns. Will we finally reject how they're using our differences to divide us? It's not going to come by means of some enforced epiphany. We're not going to make them see sense. In their flawed social darwinist view, they fully believe that they SEE sense. They're convinced of the rightness of their claim to the keys to the kingdom. Your health. Your life. Your children.

So... maybe there is ONE use for violent struggle. To show them the mercy of the guillotine so savagely that generations throughout the following centuries will remember that their meme was an evolutionary cul-de-sac for the entire human race. That we will take to heart the compassion for one another that the whole needs to survive the ruinous cancer of our 'social elites'. And should they continue to grow at our expense? Then we take to heart that other maxim.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Thus always to tyrants.

Anyway, have a look at the episode of the companion TV show that goes with the chapter I was reading to Jenn last night. He manages to cover some of the points made in his book rather well.