Survival Of The Fittest
I have been reading some old school thinkers who express subversive ideas that are completely against the mainstream narrative. I am talking about philosophers such as Herbert Spencer and Friedrich Nietzsche who emphasize the importance of the strongest in society. Obviously everybody has the same rights, but people vary greatly in their ability to do everything.
I have been thinking about this frequently lately, including this article. A lot of people who aren't religious claim to believe in evolution, but they completely the deny the biological truths that exist for every animal. I think Jordan Peterson may have brought these ideas back into the mainstream with his ideas about dominance hierarchies and lobsters.
Does anyone else ever boil things down to basic biology to understand the way society works, and why some people are successful and some people are failures? At the basic level does it simply come down to survival of the fittest and how well each individual adapts to the environment?
I think about this. I like Jordan Peterson's thoughts. He speaks the truth no one really likes to talk about. It has made him popular with people who like to live in reality.
One thought he has focused discussions on is the idea that the military has significant incentive to sift through human capital efficiently in order to create a hierarchy that is effective (AKA find the smart people, as fast as possible, to lead where winning means life or death). He goes on to say the military uses their tests (ASVAB, etc.) to sift and they do not accept anyone with an IQ below 80. The idea is that 1 in 10 people cannot function to the point of adding value, they take resources/are a net loss from a military perspective. The parallel is that 1 in 10 people are a net loss on an economic perspective.
When making observations, it seems the above is a fair conclusion, especially when you include the cognitive destruction of drug abuse.
The bigger question is, so what? Are we going to be eugenicists? The people who add economic value on the extreme end are able to produce more than the people on the bottom could ever really take. Think about members of your family/extended family that could be on the lower end of the spectrum, when I think about them, many could truly add more value to the world than many of the smarter people I have met, they do not have great cognitive skills, but they can love deeply and care for others in profound and meaningful ways. The economic productivity of a society is only a small portion of what it means to be a society.
Jordan Peterson is a really compassionate person, he talks about these issues, not to promote eugenics, but to see the world as it is in order to create a dialogue for how we can provide for those who cannot provide for themselves.
What you're talking about is called Social Darwinism and has been pretty thoroughly rejected by everyone except the neo-Nazi alt right community. It had a great vogue about 100 years ago.
Survival of the fittest was originally applied on a much broader scale than just the micro-environments that constitute specific human societies. This kind of argument is wrong, in it's context. The basic premise (some people are more competent than others at certain tasks) is obviously self-evident. Trying to attach it to the science of biology is what brings it into the realm of pseudoscience. You cannot "evolve" yourself or pioneer a new way of making yourself more likely to be "naturally selected". These things happen on a species-wide basis over multiple generations, not because you read an online blog and decided to start working out.
Moreover, Jordan Peterson continually betrays his obvious motivation; to challenge conventional wisdom with fancy sounding arguments in the hopes of boosting readership. It would be pretty simple to go through the article you posted and dissect the numerous assumptions and false equivalencies he's employing, and what you're left with is basically just hot air.
Long story short, if you're not a biologist, don't pretend you can "boil things down to basic biology". What you mean is that you'll interpret the scientific theory and the facts to support your pre-conceived conclusion, just as Mr. Peterson does
I think the OP is just asking a 2 part question:
Are you saying Social Darwinism postulates the same two questions with the same answer (yes) and that science has proven that the answer to those two questions is "no"?
There are lots of great books by real leaders in the field of psychology, sociology, and neuroscience that will give you a more accurate view (though not perfect) of human behavior. Before you get into that, though, I highly recommend that you take some time to review statistics, along with a refresher on the basis for scientific and rational thought (read the wiki on Kant).
Hmm then I don't understand the point of the post? Obviously there are smart and dumb people, and equally obviously being smart is an advantage over being dumb. Why bother even asking the question?
This whole question of "biological truths" is what brings it from a meaningless post into the realm of pseudo-science. That "strongest in society" deserve to be on top and drive public discourse is the kind of argument that finds a lot of traction on these boards, because folks in finance want to believe that salary and wealth are correlated to intelligence and importance, because they possess them, and want to be reassured that their status is a result of their innate superiority, and not luck or a confluence of essentially random factors out of their control.
There is a huge danger in "boiling things down to basic biology to understand the way society works," because (and I feel safe in making this assumption) the OP is not a biologist, has little understand of biology, and never will. In other words, they are hiding an unsubstantiated view they believe in behind the idea of "science", in the hopes that no one will have a greater understanding to penetrate all the ways in which that belief is wrong. It's the same way that "intellectuals" like Ben Shapiro like to use a lot of essentially random Latin words and phrases to lend a veneer of respectability to an otherwise unsupported argument.
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