Joe Costello on natural selection and democracy
"Our present culture has little understanding of and even less appreciation
for history. History is given no value."
Yasha Levine
Dec 26
On the very same day I sent out my letter about the grim, consumerist
nature of left-prog politics and its useless focus on DC, my friend Joe
Costello sent me his own letter riffing on the very same topic but from a
wiser and more historical perspective. Anything Joe writes is worth reading
- especially his work on the politics of technology. Check it out. I think
you'll agree.
-Yasha Levine
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Natural Selection & Democracy
Joe Costello . December 24, 2020
"There is grandeur in this view of life."
Charles Darwin, 1859
The wonderful evolutionary paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould told a story of
a late 19th century English Lady's response to being told of Darwin's
insights on natural selection. "Well, let's hope it's not true," the woman
remarked. "And if it is, it doesn't become generally known." Gould then
quipped that instead of being laughed at, the woman should be known as a
prophet. Darwin's idea is indeed true, and it has not become generally known
or understood, even by biologists. Amusingly, today one can say the same
about democracy. It's not really understood, most especially by America's
political class. Not coincidentally, natural selection makes a compelling
metaphorical, if not, forgive me Professor Gould, literal case for
democracy.
It was no accident Darwin titled his revolutionary book "The Origin of the
Species by Natural Selection," and not, "The Origin of the Species by the
Will of the Individual." The process of natural selection is Darwin's great
revolutionary insight. An insight so revolutionary Darwin himself didn't
fully understand its implications, though he understood plenty. Darwin was
influenced by Adam Smith's ideas in "The Wealth of Nations," particularly
the idea of order materializing from countless individuals acting in their
own interest. However, this idea came to be misunderstood and misused, most
ridiculously and infamously in the relatively recent promotion of the prime
choreographer of evolution's great dance being the "selfish gene." Over
time, Darwin's and Smith's ideas passed down hobbled in many ways by the
reactionary notion of the individual preeminent. Focus was placed on the
individual's actions, particularly their reproductive capabilities, with
little attention upon the greater environment or economy in which they live
and by which they are shaped, that is, on the processes of natural
selection.
In the animal kingdom, each individual is born, matures, and lives in a
complex environment before having any opportunity to reproduce. Innumerable
forces of the greater environment constantly act on every individual. If an
individual is not "fit" in their ability to gain water, food, and stability,
they never get the chance to reproduce. Or if the environment in which their
ancestry was selected rapidly changes, say the lake dries up, there will be
no more fish, no matter how prodigiously reproductive any individual. The
process of natural selection works across generations. The entire
environment shapes and selects the organisms that evolve and succeed.
Results are not understood by looking at individuals, but only by perceiving
a species as a whole. The same can be said about Smith's idea of individuals
shaping the economy. It has come down simply as the individual triumphant,
with few notions of the shaping influence of the greater economic
environment. The actions of vast centralized economic power are
euphemistically attributed to "the market."
Smith's and Darwin's ideas were passed down warped in defense of various
power structures. "Wait! Joe are you saying politics impact science?" Oh,
Bubba.
Shaped and reshaped over the past two centuries, these ideas were used to
justify the power of evolving political economy, most importantly change
effected by revolutionary technologies derived from the burning of oil and
coal. Particularly, these mutated ideas justified the role of a new,
overwhelmingly powerful cultural entities, the industrial corporation. Over
generations, the concentrated political, economic, and cultural power of the
corporation increasingly skewed "selection" processes in their favor.
Numerous changes instigated by corporate power were attributed to the
"survival of the fittest" or "the invisible hand of the market."
In the United States, we little acknowledged the quite visible and active
hand of the automobile companies and their government partners selecting the
automobile as the dominant means of transportation, creating an environment
so dominated by the car it became difficult to survive without one. What was
good for General Motors became synonymous with what was good for the larger
economy. Power became wielded by the few, over the many, at a historical
level. Today, consolidated government in DC and their symbiotic partners,
global corporations armed with new technologies, shape the greater political
economy in which we all swim - nothing democratic about it.
Finally, natural selection is not well appreciated or accurately understood
because it is a historical process. Our present culture has little
understanding of and even less appreciation for history. History is given no
value. Gould incessantly pointed out the only way to understand evolution,
that is natural history, is to understand it as a contingent process. One
thing happens, and only happens, because a series of events directly
preceded it. In any given evolutionary chain, if any event or process had
not occurred, everything following it would have taken a different course.
If no comet hit off Mexico 65 million years ago, mammals today would still
be scurrying around trying to avoid the feet of dinosaurs. Unlikely would
have been the evolution of Homo Sapiens and our ability to vastly alter and
destruct the planetary environment that created us, though given much of its
dubious value, deconstruct might be the better descriptive fit.
History is the shaping matter of all politics. Everything existing today was
dependent on a series of contingent events happening in the past. Any change
in past events would have set in motion a different world than we know
today. Two thousand years ago, if there had been no Roman republic or
Athenian democracy, there would never have been an United States. While, the
evolution of democracy in America developed along contradictory paths.
Eventual universal civil rights of every individual evolved simultaneously
with power being stripped from local systems and centralized in DC and
mega-corporations. Individual democratic enfranchisement evolved into a
larger disenfranchised democratic political environment.
Reviving and reforming democracy in America, a seemingly unlikely prospect,
would necessitate devolving contemporary centralized power and distributing
it, fostering the creation of innumerable new participatory associations -
economic, political, and cultural. Extensively networked together, a new
distributed selection environment can be created, one more resembling the
natural order that created us. Instead of a few massive centralized entities
decreeing order from above, countless small associations combine and
recombine, democratically selecting diverse and complex order. This
democratic cultural environment provides new and extensive meaning for every
citizen. By nature, we are not homogeneous, programmed, hyper-consumptive
automatons, but diverse, unique constituents and participants, who gain
definition, meaning, and value through our endless interactions. In the
words of the great, antebellum, 19th century, American bard of democracy, "I
contain multitudes."
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You can reach Joe Costello at joecostello@xxxxxxxxx.
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