Doublethink

Take caesareans for example (in case you don’t know, caesareans are when babies are cut out of their mum’s tum, and are performed on women for whom natural birth is dangerous either for the baby or for herself).
    Women whose bodies are not ideally suited to birth are more likely now, because of caesareans, to pass on their narrow pelvises and other problems to their kids. In the past, if your baby or you had problems, either you or the baby, or both, would die.

But now there are many things doctors can do to help both survive. Over time this means more caesareans, more people surviving whose bodies are not ideally suited to birth, and the gradual evolution of the human body into something that cannot easily give birth.

If we really believe in evolution and survival of the fittest, why do we help disabled people? Why do we give to IHC? Why do we help blind people cross the road? I know it’s a horrible question to ask, but the whole concept, you must admit, is quite strange.
    Taking the evolutionary concept to its logical conclusion would mean a sterilisation program, if not an extermination program. Not physically strong? Sterilised. Low IQ? Sterilised. Disabled? Sterilised. Starting to sound like Nazi Germany to you?
    If we really believed in evolution, would we want firefighters and ambulances? Probably not. If you’re trying to survive at any cost, as the survival of the fittest process would dictate, why would you want to dish out your hard earned cash (through taxes) to save other people who were too stupid or unlucky to save themselves?
    Another thing: why make people wear helmets? If they weren’t quite bright enough to wear one or make their kids wear one, maybe they shouldn’t be contributing to the gene pool. I’m using euphemisms here. You might have to read between the lines.
    Crime and bullying would be encouraged. If you’re stronger, or smarter, and can take other peoples’ possessions, that’s better for you and your kids. Teach your kids to be the bullies. They can take other people’s lunch money and use it to improve their own chances of survival.
    News angles and headlines would be completely different. Instead of the compassionate “UNICEF offers help to victims of Hurricane Katrina” perhaps we would have more evolutionary headlines, like “Hurricane improves gene pool”.
    But how does a natural disaster improve the gene pool? Weren’t the victims just unlucky?
    Well maybe they should have put some thought into where they were living: it might have been better to pick somewhere not so prone to flooding and/or hurricanes. Secondly, those who were physically stronger and could swim would definitely have had an advantage. Thirdly, those who could recognise the warning signs and get themselves out of danger would have had a much better chance of surviving. So natural disasters can ‘improve’ the gene pool.
    Would we buy fair trade coffee, or sponsor a kid in Africa, if we believed in evolution? No way! If they can’t fight for their own rights and survival, then it would be better for the human species if they didn’t survive. They are weaker, and so aren’t worthy of the resources and space they are taking up.
    And what would be wrong with racism? We’d be researching the weaknesses and strengths of each race, and interbreeding accordingly, in order to get the strongest offspring. Those races found to be ‘weaker’ would be avoided.
    There’d be no more of the “I love her for her personality” crap. You’d breed with those who are good human specimens, that’d be all that mattered.
    Homosexuals would be regarded as extremely strange, because they don’t generally pass on their genes. What’s the point of existence if you don’t pass on your genes?
    We wouldn’t try to save children abused by their own families. If a family abuses their children, that would mean they were discontinuing their own family line, and thus solving their own problem.

A friend of mine, who is a chef and who also likes to mug people, got especially enthusiastic about this idea. We’ll call him Patrick E. Or no, maybe P. Easterby.
    He says, “In fact, while the child abusers were beating their offspring, we could sneak up behind them and kill them. Then it’s twice the success, and we could steal their fry-pans.”
    On another note: we wouldn’t be leaving pregnancy so late in life. It decreases survival chances for offspring, and also means you can’t pass your genes on to as many descendants. We’d be starting the pregnancy business as soon as our bodies were mature enough (go teenage pregnancy!), and continuing until we either had the maximum number we could support, or got too old to have any more.
    The men would be going crazy, running round impregnating as many women as they could. Need to pass on my genes, need to pass on my genes! Birth control pills? No way. Need to pass on my genes!
    On the bright side, if we really believed in evolution, we’d probably spend more time and money on our kids. Helping them to survive, giving them the best possible chances of growing up and having kids themselves.

Please read the disclaimer: I don’t want all the things written above to happen.

I’m as weak a human specimen as anyone. I mean, if it weren’t for the public health system, I would have died several times by now.
    And, I believe that every human being has intrinsic value and worth. So don’t come beat me up!
    A herpetologist friend of mine (herpetology is the study of reptiles and amphibians) brought these implications to my attention. This is what we talk about on the bus some mornings. I’m sure the other people on the bus who can hear think we are lovely people.
     Actually, I think they are a bit disturbed.
    Because the implications of the theory are disturbing.  Did any of the ideas above make you feel sick? I know I felt sick just typing the words into my laptop. I’m going to see this article in debate and be tempted to write hate-mail letters to the editor about how crap I am for writing this.
    Why do you feel sick? (Maybe you don’t. Maybe you are okay with the ideas, like my herpetologist friend, or my mugger friend in his darker moments. Maybe it’s time I made some new friends). But assuming at least some of the ideas above made you uncomfortable... why is this so?
    Could it be a suggestion of some sort of ‘conscience’? That’s not very evolutionary, or scientific. Consciences can’t be tested and proven by science.
    But is the anger and discomfort you feel when someone suggests killing people who are not very smart, enough to convince you that you might actually have one (a conscience, I mean)?
    If it’s not enough to convince you, answer me this: why would the process have made us, over time, so caring? Surely if the natural selection process were taking place, it would have made us, as a species, completely uncaring and completely selfish?
    Admittedly there are a huge number of examples of human selfishness. But there are also a lot of acts of kindness in our world.
    How strange that evolution could allow humans over time to adopt a moral code, even though it rarely provides any advantage for those who act according to it.

Have you ever heard of “doublethink”? George Orwell came up with the term in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. It refers to the act of holding two contradictory beliefs at the
same time.
    This is what we have been taught to do. On the one hand, we’re taught evolution is
true. On the other hand, we’re taught to be caring, compassionate, tolerant and kind.
They don’t match.
    No wonder people act ‘selfishly’. They’re just trying to survive!
    Selfish acts are an outward sign of a life lived according to the evolutionary theory. Should we criticise selfishness, while also teaching that evolution is true?
    No wonder people get confused. Our society enforces doublethink.
    Although traditionally people blame religion for all the bad stuff that happens, like wars for example, the implications of evolution as a belief system are not much better. They might even be much worse.
    Lived out in a life, the evolutionary theory scares me. Does it scare you? Or does it strike you as true: as a belief system we should strive to live by?
    I just wanted to raise some questions. All hate mail can be directed to dear debate.

Editor’s note: I couldn’t let this go without giving my two cents. As I understand it, there is a big difference in believing in evolution and thinking it (for want of a better phrase) is a good thing and is a rule we must live by. I also believe in the scientific theory of gravity, but I have been flying. To me, evolution is something that happens naturally; it is what gave me life, but what I do with that life is something completely different.