C-Fonz

Everyday hundreds of species struggle for food, water and other necessities. They are governed by evolution and therefore survive by being the strongest. But, as a species do we lack a sense of this fundamental evolutionary aspect?

Does anyone believe that by strengthening the weak, educating the stupid, and helping the helpless so we can all get to a common goal is truly needed?

Or is it better to live in a society run completely by the naturally selected (the strongest, smartest), to evolve and become better as every other animal around us does?

Discuss

yoman3

Well a lot of things aren't run by the smartest. So....

jokaonfire

i seriously think they put the problems on their selves ( this may sound rude but... many people decide to chose "paths" that they no are not very good for themselves but they take it anyway). i do not believe we should strengthen the weak or educate the stupid. we all learned from somebody in the first place, why didn't they? Why do we have to take our time to help out these people. Also if we even want to help them would they even want to learn? If they wanted to learn in the first place they would have. (I am not targeting people that are born into a lacking species such as a child in a poor place in Africa, it is not their fault). Mainly what i am stressing is many people growing up in North America who have the option to learn but decide not to. P.S this is the longest and most 'hardcore" thing i have ever posted. I even proof read

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Let it take you

goodgirl

"Does anyone believe that by strengthening the weak, educating the stupid, and helping the helpless so we can all get to a common goal is truly needed?"

Much of our strength as a species lies in our community. Different people performing different jobs to provide for our community as a whole is part of what makes us strong.

Should we give up a sense of compassion and giving spirit so that in a couple of thousand years we can develop claws and a thick fur coat? Should we turn away people that need our help now and risk being the helpless ones ourselves down the road?

We are certainly not the only species that has developed a sense of community as a tool for survival. Our ability to however heal a broken leg, or cure a deadly disease have caused our need to weed out the weak and helpless to be far less necessary to our survival than it would be for an animal in the wild.


jokaonfire:

"I am not targeting people that are born into a lacking species such as a child in a poor place in Africa, it is not their fault."

Perhaps part of your problem lies in the fact that you think people born in different areas are a different species. Then again....if you wanted to know what is wrong in what you said you would have learned it. Can I then assume that your ignorance is intentional?

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"No one is free when others are oppressed."

/love Marijuana

I have thought about this and similar things long and hard before, and I have come to a this conclusion for me.

There is a mix of the survival of the fittest and "helping hands" so to speak. But in the end, it will always come down to the survival of the fittest. If two "helping hands" people are in a perilous situation, and by being a better animal/human than the other means surviving, they will attempt to be more fit than the other.

It is just the way the world works. If harming another, or not helping another means you surviving or progressing, a lot of people will choose to progress or survive. It's in your mind to want to survive.

In my head I link it to the religious fighting in the middle east. So many people I know and thousands of others around the world rally for causes there. "Oh its so bad that so and so is doing this to so and so, it isn't right." Well, they have been fighting for as long as anyone can remember. Each side thinks they're right, and one just so happens to be more "fit" than the other. And that's the way it goes. (Oh, and by the way...right before the last sentence I went to smoke a FAT bowl in the vape..30 or so minutes later..whoa..totally lost my train of thought)

Yana Usdi

I'll start with the term in general before we apply it to us as humans. There's one thing that most people seem to miss even as they repeat the statement that suggests it. The statement isn't "survival of the strongest", it's "survival of the fittest". They are not the same thing. In some circumstances for some species being strong as individuals may be a great bonus, in other circumstances and for other species individual strength isn't what makes them strong but being socially apt and efficient is. Compare a blue whale to army ants on the march for an example. When the dinosaurs roamed they were fittest, then the meteor hit and the smaller mammals and such which could burrow and hide were suddenly fitter and they were the ones who survived. In an ice age a white coat is camouflage and a bonus to survival, in the jungle it's a flag telling your predators that it's dinner time. There isn't a single "strongest" formula for us or any other species to follow, it's a simple matter of being best adapted for the environment and circumstances you find yourself in then and there. Sometimes that means best able to hide, or survive cold, or help others, rather than meaning strength as we normally see it.

As far as applying it to us, there's good evidence that we cared for our sick and injured even as we still lived in caves, bad injuries that would have been death if you were on your own such as broken legs were given time to heal and that had to have come from the care of others. It didn't stop us from getting from there to here, and it's not going to stop us from getting from here to wherever we go next. We survived by being socially apt, by working as groups and by bringing the sick and injured along as we climbed, not by being selfish as individuals or as a society. Our most charitable time as humans has been in the last couple of centuries and that also happens to be our time of greatest advancement. Look at Steven Hawking for example. Poor physical condition but what a great mind, and in some days and ages we would have lost him simply because we didn't have the technology to allow him to communicate or the health care system to keep him alive. Our value isn't in our individual strength, it's in what we can build and do as a group, and it always has been.

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"Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day." -Dan Moon

Always be kind to animals, Morning, noon and night: For animals have feelings too, And furthermore, they bite. - John Gardner

IntelligenceQuotient

Is educating the ignorant or helping the sick actually worth it? Shouldn't we just let natural selection take care of it?

That is possible the most ignorant statement I have ever heard. Why educate a baby? It's just small stupid, and defenseless... it's not fit for this world, so why should we help it?

Mans natural ability for survival is, like with most species, based on cooperation of a communtiy. It benefits not only the student, but the teacher to provide new information to an otherwise ignorant subject. The teacher may lose time, but society as a whole gains one more unit of intelligent thought. (I use the terms teacher and student general, not in an absolute sense)

Imagine if each of our cells thought like that. Oh the liver cells are acting up. "well" say the antibodies, "the ,liver cells are obviously unfit for survival. We should just let them die." Each human being is a cell on the larger organism we call Earth. Our destiny is cooperation not competion.

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"Germany lost the second world war, Fascism won" -- George Carlin

noobsaibot

i think an organized society sort of takes the power away from the survival of the fittest theory. okay when talking about survival of the fittest i like referring back to the days when people lived off the land and you had to be physically strong to survive. if you were rail thin and living in america during a winter back before it was colonized by europeans chances are you weren't going to make it through the winter. or if you weren't in shape enough to be out all day in the hot sun and ready to catch a wild animal to eat or save then you weren't surviving long now. currency is a way to survival in today's age. on a dramatic scale if you hit the lottery and win 50 million dollars worth of green paper you can be overweight, unhealthy, and stupid but still survive longer than an average person that can be in tip top shape but not be rich. that fat dumb person can stay in their luxurious house all the time, order food, never have to witness the weather, and not have continual stress about what they will eat day to day, or what may stop them from surviving, because its set up now where a person doesn't have to live off the land to ensure survival. america is one of the most obese countries, but like the most powerful. without society you wouldn't see a bunch of sickly fat people in hoverounds a lot because those people would be considered weak and easy targets to things like animals, diseases, and weather catasrophe's.

for the advancement of humankind its better to live in a society because you are in a system in elements of survival(food, water, shelter) are made readily available and you don't neccesarily need the brains to be able to live off the land and fend for yourself so that means all types of people(weak, strong) have good chances of survival. but if something dramatic happened in which all the power in the world got shut off, all records of how things work, and there were no stores to buy water and food from, you'd see that survival of the fittest theory back in full effect because people wouldn't know how to adept.

sorry if this post is long. btw its also just my opinion. take it how you want it.

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Lilpotmaster

i believe that you must work to get something. we shouldn't just hand people money...

Buzzby

Actually, the survivors are those best integrated with their environment, including all of the other plants and animals. Sixty-five million years ago, dinosaurs died out. Rat-like mammals survived. Dinosaurs were much stronger. Why did mammals survive when the much stronger dinosaurs could not? Because the mammals were better equipped to survive in a changed environment.

No species has a "sense" of evolution. Evolution is something that happens due to changed environmental situations.

Truly needed to accomplish what goal? Enlightened people who realize that we're all in the same boat strive to have compassion for all of their fellow creatures instead of selfishly trying to help only themselves. History has been the movement from the powerful being a law unto themselves to one in which everyone has a say. I see that as positive growth.

That's the position of Adolf Hitler and Ayn Rand. The problem is that you can't translate a biological reality (evolution) into a social program any more than you can get gravity to elect a President. Those who come out on the short end of the stick rebel unless they're enslaved.

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