Neo Social Darwinism
As the quotes in my recent post suggest, when intellectuals came to believe that life, and most everything we value. was structured by a competitive struggle for existence, many then tried to apply this theory to their personal and collective choices. They wondered how to best participate in and promote this struggle, as individuals or groups. Analyses like this are often called “social Darwinism”.
They of course considered policies common at the time, like colonization, welfare, insane asylums, and race laws, and also some less common ones, like forced sterilization. But many who favored redistribution, business regulation, peace, and race mixing tended to see Darwinian arguments as in practice opposing their views, and so tried to resist them. So they tried (A) denying evolution in general, and also (B) arguing that their favored policies were in fact winning moves in the struggle for existence.
However, such opponents found more success by (C) claiming humans are an exception where evolution isn’t relevant, (D) denying evolution’s relevance to moral policy due to a “naturalistic fallacy”, (E) declaring the use of evolution to analyze policy as “pseudoscience”, and (F) blaming evolutionary analysis for causing Nazi’s war, racism, and genocide.
But as those quotes show, (F) is just not true, though many found it plausible. Re (E), this way to analyze policy seems no less scientific than most others. And re (D), that is no more a criticism of this than of any other concrete claims about where lies moral value.
Now admittedly, (C) was based on good intuitions, as we have since decided that humans do evolve quite differently from other animals, due to culture. But now that we understand culture, we can analyze how to best participate in and promote cultural struggles. Also, the claim that morals are independent of evolution makes much less sense now that we see each culture’s morals as arising via its cultural evolution.
As so many people have said so many things in this space, let me not try to agree or disagree with them, but just offer a nearby claim I think is especially defensible:
Neo Social Darwinism: For most X that you want to promote long after you die, you will need to promote things Y now that can either themselves last into that future, or directly or indirectly promote other things Z that so last, with Y or Z tending to promote X later. And as natural selection is our main account of which things change and tend to promote what how, including why you now try to promote X, it can advise you on how to promote your X.
That is, you will mostly need to guess the directions that future evolution will go, and find moves now to tilt this process more toward evolving stuff that will later more promote X. In general, your inclination to promote X now suggests that the people most likely to promote X in the future will be people like you. So promoting the evolution of more like you is a common way to promote future X.
Yes, you could insist that you care little for the distant future, but only want to promote stuff now. But think of how you might advise a drug addict who just sought pleasure now, at the cost of plausibly dying in a few months.
Yes, you can also promote future things by trying to live very long yourself, by making very long lived artifacts, or arranging long term contracts. But these processes now have relatively limited influence on long timescales. Yes, you might make making long-lived orgs, movements, religions, or standards, but these are all standard moves in cultural evolution, not alternatives to that process.
Yes, technically this only uses natural selection has a means, without constraining the ultimate ends X one might seek. But for most X, evolutionary considerations will so greatly infuse your strategies to achieve X that they will seem nearly as important as X. As we humans are just not very good at distinguishing which of our very important goals are powerful general means versus ultimate ends, for those who use Neo Social Darwinism, evolving well will seem a lot like an ultimate end.
Yes, as I showed in my last post, few care much about the future after they are gone, especially re things that won’t much influence their kids or grandkids. So one may plausibly suspect those who justify current actions in terms of an evolutionary analysis of how to achieve distant future ends of using that as an excuse for actions they want for other reasons. But this critique also applies to any other framework for justifying acts today in terms of distant future outcomes.
But what about war, racism, and genocide, aren’t they both evil and recommended by an evolutionary analysis, which is why many (mistakenly) thought Nazi crimes resulted from Nazis embracing social Darwinism? Well, no, those aren’t obviously recommended. Such hostile acts risk retaliation and censure, their targets might make better allies than opponents, and it can make sense as a cultural strategy to stay committed to your culture’s moral principles even when you see opportunities for gains by betraying them.
Just as the use of decision theory or supply and demand does not commit one in general to any particular policy recommendations, the use of natural selection to analyze policy also does not commit one to any particular choices. As usual, one must study the details. So while I can say that Neo Social Darwinism doesn’t obviously recommend war, racism, and genocide, I can’t guarantee that it will never recommend such things. You may point out that your moral principles do so guarantee, but I may doubt you will always obey them, and can point out that continued cultural evolution may long outlive your principles.
And that is my proposal for a Neo Social Darwinism, an especially defensible version of what has long been a reasonable and unreasonably maligned stance, that it is sensible to study how to best participate in and promote the Darwinian struggle for existence. (A poll of my Twitter/X followers finds only 10% favoring policy that resists Darwinian outcomes.)
Added 4p: From comments I am reminded of another way to dismiss this sort of analysis: the claim that it is impossible to usefully predict the future. If so, then one must ignore long term effects and focus instead on near term outcomes. Of course I’ve spent a career trying to argue against such claims. I offer Age of Em as evidence.
You write that “the claim that morals are independent of evolution makes much less sense now that we see each culture’s morals as arising via its cultural evolution.” This seems to confuse (a) the process by which a moral theory (together with a view about how best to implement it in practice) is arrived at, and (b) the theory itself (and associated doctrine about implementation). A moral realist will say that moral theory itself is just as independent of evolution as is physics, though both are learned by an evolutionary cultural process.
Of course, any particular culture may mistake the truth about morality, or about physics. Fortunately for us, our culture has at least *approached very near* the truth in both domains.
The response to unknown existential threats is diversity. It is a mistake to assume that improvements to humanity in response the existing environment and culture are enacting a Darwinistic program. Evolutionary jumps take place when large populations do not adapt to changed conditions. The species that survives have sufficient diversity that the one of the many phenotypes not only survives, but thrives in the change. Vegetable gardening and mining are essential skills for a social collapse. Human organizing and peace making are important skills for technological advance. One must not choose between the two. Diversity dictates that both be maintained.