A colleague at work once happened to touch the topic of "Survival of the fittest". He said the same principles apply in the work place too. According to him it was not for the meek to inherit the earth. The earth belonged to the fittest.
I begged to differ.
What about the Quit India movement, I asked him. Were not the whites who ruled India at that time much more fitter than the natives who had nothing with them except for a weapon called "Satyagraha" devised by a man who was much ridiculed by the rulers at that time? The whites had fire power, they had money power, they were definitely on top of the survival pyramid than most civilizations. What could explain their downfall and subsequent expulsion from the Indian sub-continent?
To this, my friend did not have a ready answer. And I felt I had made a point.
Let us look at Darwin's principle of "Survival of the fittest" in another light.
Man is now the fittest living creature to inhabit the earth.
But what had he done to consolidate his position.
Right, he had made life easy for himself with his countless inventions and discoveries. He has made most of nature to his advantage.
But at what cost?
Factories spewing smoke into the virgin air, water bodies polluted with filth which would take ages to clean, non bio-degradable plastic dumped with the least caution all over the place, as remote as the top of the Himalayas!
True there are a lot of organizations who have woken upto this fact and are actively working to prevent such a disaster from happening. But what are governments doing? Most developed countries give a damn for the Kyoto protocol which is responsible for keeping in check climate change. The US in fact has not even ratified the treaty.
Is this how man is consolidating his position as the fittest on planet earth; as his own destructor?
5 months ago