Survival of the Wisest

Charles Darwin, the famous evolutionist, suggested that his theoretic concept, popularized as “the survival of the fittest”, was the most successful natural survival strategy for a species.

By “fittest”, Darwin implied that the strongest, healthiest, most intelligent and creative individuals of a species would be the ones to survive, breed and continue to exist for the requisite immense number of generations necessary for biological evolution to take place. Chance and good luck seemed also to play major roles in what Darwin suggested was nature’s method of evolution.

However, “The fittest”, in this classic sense, may not be enough now to ensure the continued survival of Homo sapiens as a species.

Lambert, etc., claims in the book “The Field Guide to Early Man” that for mankind, “extinction seems likelier than further evolution. Soaring human population depends on increasing food and energy production—and both of these processes encourage overexploitation of the planet’s resources. Overuse of soil brings erosion; fossil fuel depletion threatens energy supplies—which may worsen with climatic change. Overcrowded, underfed, under fueled, Homo sapiens might fizzle out in famine, war and pestilence. Homo sapiens is a dead end—without a future, as they presently exist. They must themselves control future evolution.” (My italics)

If Homo sapiens does not take charge of its own evolution immediately it may not survive as a species, and perhaps chance may now play a lesser role in our consciously directed evolutionary drama, though, as always, “good luck”, (sometimes called: “the Will of God”) will continue to be a major factor, and, of course, we must also create the planetary environment that favors our species’ survival.

Perhaps the survival of Homo sapiens will now depend on what may be called: “the survival of the wisest” rather than Darwin’s “fittest”, and this may depend more on conscious choices of survival strategies than the blind operations of biological selection.

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