Evolution, Spun

The Way I See It #224

Darwinism’s impact on traditional social values has not been as benign as its advocates would like us to believe. Despite the efforts of its modern defenders to distance themselves from its baleful social consequences, Darwinism’s connection with eugenics, abortion and racism is a matter of historical record. And the record is not pretty.

-- Dr. Jonathan Wells
Biologist and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

It's interesting how someone can make a true statement, yet have it, in common thought, be connected to a false idea.

Note that Doctor Wells did not say "Evolution" or even "Darwinian Theory" - he said "Darwinism." Evolution is a simple scientific theory that seeks to explain genetic variation between animals through a process of natural selection, where environmental factors favor those organisms that are the best adapted to thrive in any given environment. This is the concept known to us as "Survival of the Fittest," and is merely an explanation - it makes no judgments. Darwinism (as in Social Darwinism, for instance) is the idea that "Survival of the Fittest" means that the "Fit" have a greater natural and/or moral RIGHT to survive than some supposed "Unfit," and are thus justified in exercising that right at the direct expense of said "Unfit," or otherwise exploiting them. This concept does not appear once in the entire text of "On the Origin of Species." While people look to Darwin for support of both Eugenics (and other selective breeding programs) and Social Darwinism, Darwin himself supported neither of these concepts.

This underscores the importance of familiarity with those items that are have deep cultural and social meanings. Until I actually read, cover to cover, "On the Origin of Species," I didn't understand the difference either. While people such as Francis Galton and Thomas Malthus bear more direct responsibility for what we now term "Darwinism" in the social and economic spheres, common practice is to lay the blame at the feet of Darwin's evolutionary theory, even though the two are not equivalent.

"It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. [...] Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence." H. L. Mencken.

Similarly, even if it could be argued that the ills and evils brought about by "eugenics, abortion and racism" were directly attributable to Evolutionary theory, this would not make said theory any more or less accurate than we can determine scientifically. The happenstance that something might be, or be connected to, something loathsome does not make it inherently false.

Keep on Truckin'

I was sitting at a traffic light, just outside of the parking lot of the local Costco. A semi tractor-trailer rig was attempting to make the right turn into the driveway. It's something of a steep bend, the driveway isn't quite at a 90 degree angle to the curving cross street. The truck had already bowed out to the left somewhat, so that it would have the required clearance to make the turn. Expecting that it would be let into the parking lot, traffic quickly lined up behind it. Coming up the drive from the parking lot was a big blue four-door sport utility vehicle. From my vantage point, the second car behind the big rig, I could see that the driver was your stereotypical, middle-aged, suburban woman. She pulled all the way up to the stop line before the intersection, in the left-hand turn lane. This placed her pretty much exactly dead center of the mouth of the driveway. With her up that far, the truck could no longer make the turn, but unless the truck pulled into the driveway, the woman and her SUV were going to be unable to make the left turn. Two cars were on the driveway behind her. The first person stopped far back from the blue sport ute, about three car lengths. The second driver left some distance between themselves and the first person. Clearly, they were expecting that the woman in the SUV was going to back up a bit while their light was red, so the truck could get in. But she didn't. She just sat there. The truck was blocking both lanes of traffic were I was, and drivers started to honk their horns. After all, the woman had plenty of room to back up - the two drivers in the cars behind her had seen to that. She didn't budge. She threw up her hands in frustration, the classic: "What do you want ME to do?" gesture. "Back up, Lady!" was probably the universal answer. The big rig wasn't going ANYWHERE. There were too many cars behind it for it to reverse far enough to clear the lane, so the woman in the SUV could make a smooth left. In the meantime, other cars had pulled onto the driveway behind SUV. All of the drivers were careful to leave plenty of space for the her to back up enough to let the truck in. I think that some of the drivers there honked at her, to let her know that she had the room to roll back. She didn't. She just sat there, until her light turned green again. Then she wound up pulling over all the way to the right to squeeze around the truck (since everyone had left the lane next to her open), and making her left turn from the right hand lane, and a couple of cars followed her. Then the truck pulled into the parking lot driveway, and traffic started moving again.

Watching this all with a certain level of fascination, I realized that I was looking at the embodiment of why any number of people who don't drive sport utility vehicles have such a passionate dislike for both the vehicles and their drivers. Tractor-trailer trucks are huge, and they don't negotiate sharp corners well, especially when there are traffic signals, telephone poles, mailboxes, et cetera within a few feet of the curb. To clear these (and the curbs themselves), they have to make wide turns, and I've done my share of backing up, to make the tricky task of taking those corners easier. Everybody does it. It's common road courtesy. But this woman in the blue sport ute didn't budge. Forty or fifty cars, and the big rig, were held up by her standing her ground. Either because she didn't realize that she had the room to back up, or because she felt that she had the right of way, or some other reason that I can't begin to guess at. But I could see in some disgusted faces of other drivers a very simple attribution. They felt they'd been told: "Don't you see that I'm in a big car? I'm too important to be inconvenienced by this. YOU move."

The feeling, among people who don't drive them, that SUVs in urban and suburban areas are the preferred mode of transportation for self-important and self-absorbed prigs, people who need to buttress their tattered egos with massive, gas guzzling vehicles, is somewhat rooted in a disagreement over priorities, and often falls squarely into the "It's a sin to not be like me," mode of thinking that it's often very easy to fall prey to. But this anonymous woman in her massive vehicle played the role, intentionally or not, to the hilt. And provided a kernel of reality that (sometimes with the help of a LOT of distortion) so many stereotypes are predicated on.

Buy Some Carbon, Mister?

As I mentioned in the previous posting, Slate and Treehugger.com are running a series of articles called "The Green Challenge." One of the things that I've noticed is a tendency to say: "When all else fails (or has been done), you can always buy Carbon Offsets!"

I've always wondered what good carbon offsets really did. Outside of the simply "pay your guilt away" model, something like modern day indulgences, they make little economic sense. The idea is that the companies that take your money use it to fund other companies that are developing cleaner technologies.

Why not just invest in the companies that are developing the technology up-front? Okay, so maybe they aren't making any money now - but if they make some in the future, you'll be positioned. And if they never earn a dime - so what? You're not making any return on your investment with carbon offsets - which, the last that I looked, paid neither interest nor dividends. If you're going to throw money up into the sky, doesn't it make sense to at least stand underneath it?

I try not to be a knee-jerk, dyed-in-the-wool capitalist. After all, the free market isn't a solution to everything. But it seems that in this case, it's a pretty sensible idea. And I think that divorcing the idea of "Green" technology from some sort of charity funding scheme could lend the idea some needed credibility.

What Becomes of the Cows?

Slate, it seems, has joined the ranks of the environmentalists. To this end, they're running a series called "The Green Challenge," with help from some bunch called Treehugger.com, who seem to get off on buying carbon offsets. Episode 3 in the Green Challenge: "Green Diet."

I've never been a fan of activism, in large part because activists tend to view the world in terms of getting people to act, rather than giving them actionable information. Okay, I'll accept that as a omnivore, I have a larger "Carbon Footprint" than the average herbivore. But do I really CAUSE "a ton and a half more carbon dioxide emissions for food production than the average vegetarian?" (And over what time frame is this being measured? A lifetime? If I only live to be 60, that comes out to 150 pounds a year. Is that a lot?)

The answer to that is "Yes," only, it seems, if you assume that none of the animals I eat would exist if they weren't destined to be food. My becoming a vegetarian won't make a ton and a half of CO2 go (ahem) up in smoke, unless every animal that I would have eaten magically disappears from existence. I will admit that I OWN a larger share of the United States' carbon emissions than the vegetarian crowd. But if I and a few thousand of my closest friends decided to give up meat tomorrow, it would still take some time for that "ton and a half" of carbon savings to materialize. And as long as people wear leather, it might never be completely realized. And if I'm the only one to make the change, all that I've done is shift the carbon footprint from me to someone else.

But let's say that a large number of people did make the switch. Where would the now-unemployed animals go? This is important because with large-scale shifts in the American diet, how long would it take for the food production sector to catch up? If 5% of omnivores went herbivore this year (or if everyone cut back by 5%), what would the overall reduction in the carbon footprint be, and how long would it take for you to really see it? Certainly, it wouldn't be overnight. And would it require killing off large segments of former farm animals to prevent them from living and breeding? How would we dispose of them? Who would pay for it? And what would happen to the farmers and ranchers? Do we care?

I don't know. But before I give up the occasional fillet mignon, I'd like to find out.

THAT Was Fast

The backstory - July 2005. Two men enter a barn near Enumclaw, Washington. Man A has anal sex with a horse, while Man B videotapes it. Man A dies from a ruptured colon. Washington is scandalized and the legislature works quickly to remove the state from the short list of states in which bestiality was not illegal.

Fast forward. The movie "Zoo," which is part documentary and part narrative drama, tells the story, and also delves into the zoophile community. It was first released earlier this year, and is coming to Seattle in the next fortnight. Unsurprisingly, a local newspaper does a story about the movie. There's a Soundoff attached to the story, with the tired question "What do you think?" (This is the default question, when no better one can be thought up, I guess.) There are seven comments in the reader forum, and then, at the bottom: "Commenting on this article has been disabled." The comments that are still there are fairly tame, and the timestamps only span a little more than two hours. If you read the paper first thing on Tuesday, you were already too late to post anything.

Suddenly, I'm dying to see just how south the discussion went, before the P-I pulled the plug, locked the doors, and sanitized the area.