Darwin vs. Social Darwinism

A recent critique of Darwin is the use of social Darwinism and its negative effects on society. The basic argument is an application of the theory of natural selection to social, political, and economic issues. Social Darwinism follows the mantra of "survival of the fittest" including human issues. Social Darwinism has been used ever since to justify crimes like the holocaust, colonization, and Eugenics. Charles Darwin has in essence been used as the scapegoat for crimes against humanity. The first problem with this argument is that Charles Darwin did not come up the phrase “survival of the fittest”. This was Herbert Spencer doing some 30 years after the Origin of the Species was written. Furthermore, Darwin intentionally stayed away from writing and or extrapolating his theories to mankind. Darwin was strongly against slavery and "ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species" (Darwin, 1874). He also spoke about the mistreatment of Natives. Those who believe in Social Darwinism are twisting the words of Darwin's theory in order to support their own personal beliefs and views. There exists a large element of choice in representation of a concept. It is guided by political and ethical values. The decision of what information to include or leave out and the language used is all dependent on one's agenda. Social Darwinism completely goes against the principals of Darwin because they believe in the human race being higher or better that everything else on earth. Thus, they attack Darwin's theory and identify it as absurd. Darwin believed that we were all equal and there was no higher” or “lower” animal on earth. The belief in social Darwinism is a direct contradiction to Darwin theory because it takes nature out of the picture and instead forced us to “evolve” into the society that is deemed “fit” by a selected few in power.

Darwin was not a Social Darwinist

This week we had a special lecture by Dr. Bruce Alexander professor emeritus of psychology at SFU. I found this to be one of the most intriguing lectures I’ve had in a long time. As a Darwinist Dr. Alexander explained some of the views of Darwin in more detail in response to many of the critiques of Darwin that we’ve seen to date in our class. First of all I was surprised to hear that Darwin had written many books on Psychology. Apparently he was also a Geologist. Dr. Alexander went on to break down some of the common misconceptions about Darwin. One of his most important points was that Darwin was not a Social Darwinist in today’s use of the word.

Many of today’s groups use examples of Darwin mainly from the Origin of Species to advocate many of their own agendas involving survival of the fittest etc. Dr. Alexander explains that you have to read Darwin’s other works to fully understand his views relating to humans. In the origin he barely refers to human's saving his thoughts for his later books. In the Decent of Man and his other works Darwin gives many examples of how you should not use his theories about other species and extrapolate them to humans. He explains this is because we as humans have morals that we have evolved through out time. He gives examples of how humans may risk or give their lives for others, a trait that is inherently human. For this reason you can not put all things on earth under the same umbrella. There are exceptions to the rule. In conclusion I was really impressed in the way that Dr. Alexander treated to subject and disproved a lot of the modern day Social Darwinists extremist views by giving examples from Darwin himself.