It’s funny how you can see the concept of evolution all around you.
During lunch break at work today, I overheard the news on the radio; a few teenage girls had died in a gas explosion. They were trying to get high off natural gas. IN A COUNTRY WHERE YOU CAN SCORE DRUGS ON EVERY PLAYGROUND.
That’s natural selection at work right there. We should be happy they don’t get to pass on their genes.
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premature death is never justified
Comment by jud — April 5, 2008 @ 5:51 pm
Oh, I didn’t know I said anything about justification. Justification implies they “got what they deserved” - and I didn’t say anything to that effect. I just said it was nature at work.
That’s all.
Comment by Administrator — April 5, 2008 @ 6:26 pm
How can something that’s self-inflicted by either justified or un-justified?
Comment by Irony is thy name — April 5, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
Uhm, no, that’s not natural selection, that’s the product of a messed up society.
Comment by Kroc Camen — April 5, 2008 @ 8:01 pm
If you can’t survive in any society, messed up or not, that’s still natural selection.
Comment by Eugenia — April 5, 2008 @ 10:23 pm
I’m not sure their friends and family see it such a positive light. It was stupid, but everybody does stupid things once in a while.
Comment by nobody — April 6, 2008 @ 2:37 am
You’re a sick cruel person Thom, you should be banned from living.
How can you justify your actions?
I mean, I have no religion.. but how can you joke about their deaths like that? What the *** is wrong with you?
Somebody ban this person from the Internet, or better yet.. lock him up, and throw away the key.
Comment by Thor — April 6, 2008 @ 6:58 am
And taking away some-one’s right of free speech, or worse saying he should be banned from the living because you find humor to cruel is justifiable?
Comment by Righard — April 6, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
I mend his humor , sorry
Comment by Righard — April 6, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
I guess you were not 100% serious here, but anyway:
I think you are mixing natural biological selection with the concept of social and cultural evolution - and that has always been a very dangerous route. No wonder if people may get offended even when somebody was just joking about such things.
The girls who died in the example, were not necessarily any less intelligent, in biological sense, than others. I would rather guess that the girls were not just getting any kicks from ordinary drugs and wanted to try something completely new, like many drug users do. So, it is only part of the general drug culture, people often want to try new drugs and new experiences. Some experiments may lead to deaths. The reasons for wanting to use drugs are not biological either. So it is a matter of drug culture, and of society in general, not of biology or natural selection.
Besides, it may get quite difficult for teenagers to rebel against authorities when and if almost everything is already allowed in a society…
—
As to social and cultural evolution, the history of Social Darwinism is really dark. In the late 19th and early 20th century there were lots of science those days, all around the western world, that tried to use the concept of biological evolution in almost all other sciences too, including medicine, history, anthropology, politics etc.
It was a fashionable thing in science those days. Not just in Nazi Germany later, but really, all around the western world. Nazis built their own racial politics and philosophy only on the same heritage that already existed before them, also in England, The USA, France etc.
Political powers tried to find excuses for their greedy politics in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, racists tried to find excuses for their racism and antisemitism, the rich tried to find excuses for robbing the poor etc. It all seemed to make sense: some weaker people and human races were just destined to be weaker because of their poorer genes. In that age of greedy western colonialism and imperialism it is not difficult to guess which human race was supposed to be the leaders in both biological and cultural evolution.
In medicine there was eugenics, people who were thought to be lower class physically, intellectually or otherwise were sterilized etc.
Even Charles Darwin himself was blinded by the possibilities of the theory of evolution, and in his other major work, The Descent of Man, he openly claimed, for example, that some human races were more highly developed than others. But he didn’t know that the so called human races all have pretty much the same genes and the whole concept of human race (now considered old-fashioned) is more a cultural than a biological one.
Just because animals or plants may adapt to changing environment, and change into other species gradually, doesn’t yet mean that evolution would be the Holy Grail of science that explains also cultural and social things like deaths from drugs or the general culture and problems related to drugs.
Comment by irbis — April 6, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
Humor, it’s a dying concept.
Comment by Soulbender — April 8, 2008 @ 6:14 am
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