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Religious Capitalism's Embrace of Social Darwinism
This utter inconsistency between ideology and operational policy is a general characteristic of Roman religious fundamentalism in that it has traditionally preached "Christianity" and practiced imperialism, colonialism and now capitalism. America's religious capitalism has no use for scientific knowledge and its philosophical ramifications but yet it has become utterly dependent upon scientific technology to fuel the production of commodities and capital in nourishing corporate dominion. In other words, religious capitalism is all body and no mind in the interest of greed-driven survival.
Most people associate the phrase "survival of the fittest" with Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution, but Darwin did not coin the phrase nor did he use it. The phrase was coined by Herbert Spencer, one of the contributors to the definition of "Social Darwinism." Spencer (1820-1903) was contemplating evolutionary change and concepts of progress before Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1857. Even so, his ideas received unjustifiable support from Darwinian evolutionary theory in the general application of ideas like "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" to social thought.
Social Darwinism represents an effort to derive sociopolitical theory from the tenets of Darwinian evolutionary theory. This is precisely where social Darwinism falls apart because it is based upon unjustifiable extrapolations from the biological level of organization to the cultural level of organization. It is to imply, again, that being human is being all body and no mind.
Social Darwinism incorrectly places the emphasis on individual conflict that produces a "loser" and a "winner," i.e., a survivor. "Fitness" in this macho view involves being bigger and better equipped, more ruthless and aggressive than one's competitors, even preemptive in action. Extrapolated to the cultural level of organization, this notion of "fitness" becomes synonymous with the notion that money and might make right.
Moreover, social Darwinism is based on unjustifiable extrapolations from the individual to the collective (populational) levels of organization. There never was an Adam because individuals do not evolve, populations evolve. The point of background mutational pressure is to enhance genomic diversity and creative potential in populations such that survival is ensured in the face of environmental change.
Individuals do not experience biological evolution (time frames are far too long), they merely carry genomic information from generation to generation and are, themselves, the material manifestation of that evolving information. In other words, we do not control biological evolution, it has controlled itself over the eons. Neither does biological evolution control us and life at the cultural level. Learning a bit of self-comprehension is what cultural evolution is all about.
Biological Evolution
At the biological level of organization, it is actually survival, not of the most aggressive, but of the most "biologically" fit, a fitness providing an organism with survival advantage in the face of a challenging world. Biological fitness may signify an aggressive advantage, but it far more typically signifies a passive advantage.
"Fitness," in other words, is not necessarily seen in the "winner" of conflict but more typically in the "loser." Most survival advantage is provided by nonaggressive behaviors, e.g., alertness, speed, agility and endurance in active retreat, camouflage, mimicry, etc. In other words, there is simply no legitimate basis for deriving political philosophy from a half-baked assessment of Darwinian evolutionary theory and what it takes to "survive." Social Darwinism is social nonsense.
Cultural Evolution
Moreover, at the cultural level of organization, it is not "survival of the fittest" that characterizes evolution, but ultimately "survival of the honest and truthful." Every school child knows the name of Galileo and every school child lives and breathes without complaint in Galileo's heliocentric world. Not a one of them knows the name of the Pope who threatened Galileo with torture and exiled him from Roman society. "Fittest" and "most honest and truthful" are synonymous.
In return for his clarifications of how the world works, Galileo achieved the only form of immortality available to mortals on this earth, i.e., to be remembered kindly, forever, for contributions to human comprehension and control, contributions to human spirituality. On the other hand, as a result of the dishonesty inherent in dualistic Roman theology, Roman Popes are, sadly enough, a dime a dozen for their contributions to "tyranny over the mind of man" and their lack of contribution to the human progress we now know to be inherent in the honoring of human values and nascent Christian human rights.
Religious Darwinism
In spite of the Bush administration's claims to be thinking the will and doing the work of the Old Testament Roman God, the approaches of the neoconservative cult behind Bush are the embodiment of "social Darwinism," i.e., survival of the fittest - in terms of doing whatever it takes, e.g., hypocrisy, secrecy, lies, distortions, self-righteousness and unprovoked belligerence in order to gain and remain in control of every aspect of "the American Way."
Natural philosophy has always claimed correctly that a unification of religion and science is impossible. There can be no synthesis of creationism and evolutionary theory that could hope to make sense because creationism is supernatural nonsense by definition. The brave new world of Bush's religious capitalism is built on a synthesis of the old and the new that cannot be fathomed or followed, manifest with an ideological basis in supernatural religion and an operational basis in the bad science of social Darwinism.
Religious capitalism has evolved into a self-righteous, imperial capitalism with global intentions and a specific agenda, best described as "Disaster Capitalism" (Naomi Klein, The Nation, May 2, 2005). It "uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe [natural and self-made] to engage in radical social and economic engineering." Disaster capitalism is characterized by saying one thing (liberating Iraq) and doing another (destroying Iraq). It always has a hidden agenda beneath its displays of "compassion." In the words of the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, the massive human tragedy of the Indonesian tsunami was "a wonderful opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us".
Cultural Fitness
It is not that religious capitalism has knowingly and overtly adopted post-Darwinian political theory and the approaches of social Darwinism, i.e., preemption, occupation and privatization. It is more that social Darwinism, as a bogus political philosophy, just happens to describe what western religion has been up to all along when in control, i.e., employing the values of Old Testament Roman religion to justify making might into right in support of imperialism, colonialism and capitalism.
Given that cultural fitness is best defined and measured in terms of human values and ideological honesty, the Bush administration has blindly led the blind down the path to cultural unfitness and failure, to a place where there is no light. Most people learn as children that it is best not to lie and manipulate others to one's own benefit. This is a level of comprehension quite beyond the cult of religious capitalism. Its failure to reach even this kindergarten level of human comprehension will ultimately and inevitably prove self-terminating.
As an alternative: "Remember, then, that scientific thought is the guide of action, that the truth at which it arrives is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself." William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879)
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