Even professors in higher education teach this wrong. It's dangerous, backwards and just plain incorrect.
I need to get this off my chest. Often natural selection is presented on an individual level. We are presented with two offspring. One has lots of babies, the other has none." Which is the fittest? We are told "Well obviously it's the one who passed on its genes!"
Some errors are made here. One error made is forgetting that all species share most of their genes. Meaning that it's the nearly the entire species genealogy being passed on, not simply the individuals.
Another error is assuming those who do not have offspring are not fit for the survival of the species. In social species, these individuals without offspring may have traits that allow them to care for the offspring of other members of their species. "It takes a village to raise a child" after all. The childless members of the species may have more time to search for food and build shelter, etc. They ensure the fitness of the species by increasing the survival rate of the species as a whole.
The majority of bees and ants, for example, cannot have children, and this is integral for the species survival.
Finally, genes are not the only thing that are passed between the individuals of a species. Again, the tool using methods of a childless member of a chimp troop may be passed on to the entire troop through observation, and carried on through generations. Orcas teach each other survival techniques that pass on throughout the whole pod.
Anyway, I believe the way we teach about the natural world is poisoned by this old fashioned fascist idea of "families not society" and as our community structures are stripped away and people find themselves too poor and overworked to have kids, the social aspect of our survival becomes clearer than ever.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution should be required reading
Survival of the fittest is also seemingly an invitation for people to project toxic masculinity based ideals onto animals, immediately imagined to be survival of the strongest, fastest, and meanest. Meanwhile actual adaptations are like... absorbs more calories from the most common kind of nut on this island, slightly lazier during the season when food is scarcest, or slightly sexier to other sparrows.
My sister dated a guy who believed this. He once said to me, "If evolution is real why isn't every animal as big as a T-Rex?".
In fairness to him, he grew up in a cult where education was done by whoever felt like doing it that day.
I remember reading one about femboy Orangutans and Octopus. They're males of such low T that the Alpha doesn't perceive them as competition. He lets all the ladies hang around in in his domain, and that's where the femboys slip in.
They're boning behind the scenes without the Alpha noticing, to extent that sometimes the alpha tries to fuck one and is then like wait... this is a dude.
(they're called sneaker males apparently)
People conflate averages with individual determinism all the time. Thinking that “survival of the fittest” applies in each individual case, automatically and always, is as wrong as the gambler fallacy that losing a bet increases the odds of winning on the next try.
All the analysis in Das Kapital is on the basis of “blindly operating averages.” Yet insipid gotchas persist, among supply-side geniuses, about selling a single diamond in a desert — as if that contradicts the law of value
Marx: writes a complex analysis of capitalism based on real world figures and historical examples
Apologists of capitalism: "yeah but what about this contrived scenario involving like a cow or something?"
People conflate averages with individual determinism all the time.
The way I've seen it put (by a Fire Emblem Let's Player of all people) is "Averages mean nothing when you're living in an instance."
Do you have a link or name of the episode? I'd like to listen to it
https://srslywrong.com/podcast/260-survival-of-the-fittest/
Same goes for people who yell "iTs NaTuRal sElEcTiOn" for things that aren't natural selection or that darwin awards shite
Also the unit of selection is the gene, not the individual. And no gene survives alone.
nuke every city and medium sized town in north america and europe in the name of natural selection
Anyway, I believe the way we teach about the natural world is poisoned by this old fashioned fascist idea of "families not society" and as our community structures are stripped away and people find themselves too poor and overworked to have kids, the social aspect of our survival becomes clearer than ever.
This reminded me of what Franco "Bifo" Berardi wrote on how Social Darwinism/"survival-of-the-fittest" fits into capitalism in his book "Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide". I never finished the book because it was super dark, but in the first half he explained how mass murderers are the heroes (i.e., the most pure and unfiltered expression) of capitalism's survival of the fittest mentality, defined by their fascistic violence against and in-line with existing social hierarchies and the survival of the fittest logic. ... This is the antithesis to community and mutual aid
Besides that, I agree 1000% that appealing to evolution and biological determinism to defend social organization under capital is a completely goofy thing to do, because most modern social sciences only really kicked into gear after the neoliberal shift of the late 20th century. Not only do they have this recency, they also have this dual role where they are observing and describing (mostly Western) societies, while at the same time reinforcing dominant narratives about social organization and restricting alternative models.
