Survival of the fittest??

Question

if this is true, why are there so many fat slobs, and welfare recipients??

Answer 1

That's past.Now,it's survival plus more for those who don't want to work for their own self.That explains the ever increasing number of fatsos and welfare suckers.

Answer 2

"fittest" means those who leave the most offspring. I work around pregnant women in America, and the stereotypically "fittest" woman is an obese, undereducated minority with high blood pressure or diabetes whose dream in life is to have several children to keep her company and make her feel wanted and special.

Answer 3

Our genetic predispositions have little bearing on  choices made by ourselves and other people regarding our situation, such as over-eating and financial status. I would also venture to say that we live in a society where more people have a chance to improve their survival chances due to modern medicine.

Answer 4

You are thinking about "evolution" on the individual level. With humans our evolution has become more cultural then purely biological, and in our complex cultural systems it becomes necessary to create protection for everyone that is represented within your "families" greater gene pool. In this complex cultural system of democracy, human rights and civil rights become increasingly important in an "evolutionary" sense because in a representative government where majority dictates the general rules... Well, the majority does not always compromise "the fittest" and therefore if the most successful individuals want to maintain their position in this society and not cause a revolution, then they have to concede some civil features to the greater majority. Of course the majority wants to guarantee the reproductive success of their kinship lines, so if human and civil rights can try and implement "minimum" standards of living such that everyone who buys into the cultural system can maintain some reproductive success, then, evolutionarily speaking, the majority rule has done their job admirably and our cultural evolution is a success. That said, legislation for human and civil rights should be more apparent in democratic countries and, as it turns out, this is indeed the case.

On a greater scale remember that when dealing with cultures, evolution is now competing at a level which far exceeds the individual and is now working at the national level or even the ideological level. "Survival of the fittest" is now put to the task, for instance, in conflicts between political structures like Communism versus Democracy or Socialism versus Capitalism. If "democracy" wants to be the fittest model then it not only has to provide a leadership structure and economic success, but has to do so in a just and civil manner that will encourage pride in its citizens and a standard of living that promotes an overall success of the political system. As was seen with the fall of the USSR, this brand of communism was not providing economic nor social stability to the majority of their citizens and the USSR model of communism, consequently disintegrated. Chinese, Korean and Cuban communism are all now very different then the model created in the USSR. The Chinese, for instance, have implemented capitalistic bubbles within their greater structure and incorporated Hong Kong as one such bubble which acts outside of the "rule" of communism and allows business and economic profits to take place with individuals profiting from their success. This is an example of the political structure evolving to suit the competitive environment. Still, the communist system does not provide the same human and civil liberties as some other countries, but to tell you the truth neither does America's system which tends to promote economics and lower taxes. In a cultural sense it becomes a much more complex equation and while the US and China dominate in economic arenas to maintain the supremacies of their political/social systems, the UN annually ranks "The Best" Countries to live in based on economic standing (GDP), education standards, level of education attained, per capita income, living expenses, population density, etc, etc, etc. Consistently the top three Countries, in no particular order because they trade places frequently, are Norway, Canada and Sweden. America and China are not even close to these three in this rating system. That is not to say that the US and China are not competitive in terms of "survival of the fittest" when it comes to political systems, just that human and civil rights are not the be all and end all when it comes to the cultural evolution of political structures as is seen by the continued success of the American system, which does not emphasize human or civil rights as much as others.

Anyways, there are many levels to this question, but the "individual" level is not the primary force when we are talking about our human cultural evolution, which includes the evolution of our human rights and our civil rights within this system. It is this cultural system which now dictates who is "fit" enough to reproduce, and it is very leniant!

Some may argue that I am removing evolution from the "biological" realm, but in fact I am not.  The way people express themselves in these cultural/political arenas is dictated by their genes and such studies are known as "human evolutionary ecology".

Answer 5

Survival of the fittest is not the concept developed by Darwin. That is Spencer's concept and though a subtle difference form Darwin's (natural selection) it makes a lot of difference in the result. Natural selection is random. It does not apply to the "best" characters.

Answer 6

Survival of the fittest actually means those who leave many children and, especially grand children. You are evolutionarily uninformed.

Answer 7

Survival of the fittest works in the wild but our society has created too many easy outs for people who would be considered the weak.

You mention overweight people and those on public assistance.  I believe that these people survive because our society...restaurants, grocery stores, modern medicine, government, etc. allow them to thrive by taking advantage of services that don't require them to be "the fittest".  

If our modern conveniences, such as drive-up restaurants and welfare, were taken away we would see that those who relied on these services would struggle to survive unless they chose to become self-reliant.  Those things that we've come to view as part of our day to day lifestyle have made us weak because we can get by just fine without being fit.  If these comforts were taken away, we would see that the concept of survival of the fittest really does hold truth, just as it does with wild animals in an undisturbed environment.