Fit to Rule: Darwin's Revolution
- Episode aired May 7, 1985
The introduction of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution undermines the concept of divine creation while providing a rationale for both capitalism and communism.The introduction of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution undermines the concept of divine creation while providing a rationale for both capitalism and communism.The introduction of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution undermines the concept of divine creation while providing a rationale for both capitalism and communism.
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Self - Host: Of course, Darwin was bound to go down well here in the States, where another academic preached his gospel of evolution, free enterprise style this time. Name of Sumner, a professor at Yale. He took Darwin and made it socially meaningful for the upwardly mobile. That is to say, the struggle for survival was part of the great American tradition that brought all comforts to those who worked for them. The struggle weeded out the weak, the unfit, and the stupid. Unless you gave them unfair help with dangerous nonsense like government aid, or welfare, or education. In which case they'd breed more like them, and drag the country down. In a heartwarming little pamphlet published in 1883, Sumner asked the question "What do the social classes owe each other?", and came up with the reassuring answer: nothing. For Sumner, Darwin gave proof that what America should be all about was liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest. In other words, the meek should inherit what's left. For Sumner, the best equipped to win the struggle was the great American businessman. As long as his survival wasn't endangered by evils like taxes, regulations, factory acts, that stuff. Absolute freedom of action was what made America great. And now, that was a scientific fact. Well, in a country founded on the principle of individualism, out here in the west where a man walked tall, might was right, life was rugged, where you could be anything you wanted to be if you had the guts to fight for it, in that sort of country Darwin's theory made no more than good horse sense. All you had to do was stay on the horse.
Darwin was responsible for the overthrow of the strictly Biblical view of the universe. Or, rather, he began a controversy that persists to the present day. I mention "intelligent design" in passing.
More than that, he generated a set of simplified beliefs -- "the survival of the fittest", "nature red in tooth and claw" -- that was interpreted by various nations in accordance with the beliefs of their leaders. It led to Aryan supremacy in Hitler's Germany (and World War II), rampant and individualistic materialism in the US, and to Lenin and communism in the USSR. In all cases, the fittest were to survive -- and the fittest were defined by the most powerful: Goebbels, Stalin, John D. Rockefeller. And, "What does one social class owe to the others?", asks Burke. "Absolutely nothing." Well, today, Hitler and communism are toast, but Social Darwinism seems to be undergoing a Great Reawakening in America. Ayn Rand has divided society into a few "creators" and many more "leeches." We're beginning to get a glimpse of how the fittest are going to treat the less fit -- meaning the less rich.
But that's my own gloss on our current political and economic circumstances. Burke's series appeared almost thirty years ago and the material is presented dispassionately but with a lot of irony too.
It's a good illustration of the difference between his earlier series, "Discovery," and "The Day the Universe Changed." This episode has practically nothing to do with the technology that dominated the first series. This one is all about ideas, beginning with the certitude of Linnaeus and ending with the contrast between the mistaken application of Darwin's biological ideas to the realm of political culture. There's not a gear in the whole forty minutes. It's all about ideas.
It includes some stunning shots of the castle of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, a huge fairy-tale kind of palace perched on a mountain top. I'd love to own it and live there. What great parties I could throw. I'd see to it that the less fit were well provided for, with jobs as butlers, footmen (what's a footman?), valets, and masseuses. A place for everyone and everyone in his place. A return to the orderliness of Linnaeus's garden.
- rmax304823
- Oct 22, 2012