Survival of the Fittest - Fittest at What?

 There's a bit in Khalil Gibran's book The Prophet that I like to think about sometimes -

You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.”

The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.

They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.

I think about how a tree gives, how it grows fruit and lets them fall where they may. Whether that fruit grows into another tree depends entirely on where it falls, and (as the quote above says) it doesn't think about whether recipients are deserving.

That has applications in a number of ways. Sometimes I think about it with regards to this blog, since it's freely open for anyone to stumble across. (Perhaps I could try to create a substack or patreon, and if I had enough followers to make a living solely by writing I might be tempted to do so... but I also kind of like the idea of just writing freely, and letting the posts fall where they may. Well, okay... the idea of getting paid to write is nice, it's just that it would also change how I write as I'd be tempted to try to write in ways that appeal to others. But I digress.)

I think about it too, with regards to how the military raises it's leaders. After all, they generally try to train everyone to be a leader, as you never know which are going to rise up through the ranks.

But to get back to this idea that a tree lets its seeds fall where they may, and it's the environment that determines what grows.

What survives, and is fit.

Or perhaps a better example is the peppered moth, which had mostly been white but as air pollution became more common quickly evolved to dark.

White moths had been more fit, until suddenly dark ones were more suited to the environment. And so we have 'survival of the fittest', except what is 'fit' changed as the environment changed.

That seems pretty true, to be honest. First, when you think about swords and spears and other weapons - some are more suited to certain environments than others. It depends on whether you're fighting in an enclosed space or not, on whether the combatants are wearing armor. On any number of factors.

Even the combatants themselves - perhaps on one day, one has a cold and isn't able to fight at their full capacity. Or they're still recovering from an injury. Or one is better at fighting in the rain, or the cold.

It can even change with age - someone young and inexperienced can lose, but win as that changes. Or someone at their peak can weaken as they grow older.

Which means there isn't ever really a way to win, once and for all. In fact, trying to be the 'fittest' is a bit of a loser's game. You may win for a time, but eventually you will fall.

It makes me think 'survival of the fittest' is really a shallow and superficial claim. It doesn't hold up to any real thought at all...

But then it's never about logic, is it? It's more of an emotional argument. It's the type of thinking that can make you feel special, privileged. After all, if it's survival of the fittest and you're the fittest, then you don't have to care about the other person. You won, they lost, they can suck it.

Perhaps if you point this out, instead of trying to be king of the hill, proponents would claim that there's some sort of level of acceptable 'fitness' for which your survival is earned... and anyone under that level somehow doesn't deserve to survive.

That has all sorts of problems too. Like who decides what's acceptable? The Nazis murdered Jews - but they also murdered or sterilized mentally handicapped people. Yet those who know and love a mentally handicapped person know just how wrong that is. How much  you can learn from someone with Down's syndrome. Or how someone like my uncle (who I've never been clear whether there's a genetic issue or whether it was because of some problems at birth, has been mentally handicapped all his life) who seems to brighten everyone's day.  

All in all, it seems a stupid and foolish thing to try to decide people's worth by some concept of 'fitness'...

Not sure where I'm going with this, other than it's a stupid idea that has led to all sorts of terrible things and I wish it was challenged more directly. Sure, eugenics and Nazis have a bad rep - but damn, some people sure are trying to make it palatable again. And the ones disgusted by it don't seem to be making good arguments about why it's a terrible idea.

The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound

I have realized that sometimes what I value most in a story is the way it makes me think.

Like with LitRPG - I do enjoy a good progression story, where a character grows stronger and more powerful... but there are also some disturbing elements to such stories, since even if the character uses their power well it still means that might makes right. 

And yet, reading such stories and noticing my reactions makes me think about them, and polish my counterarguments. (This is probably part of why freedom of speech is so valued, though I get the concern about giving a platform to nazis and other terrible ideas. It's just... those ideas are honestly so terrible it should be pretty easy to refute them. Like how I discussed before the stupidity behind racism. And don't get me started on 'survival of the fittest'. I do sometimes think it'd be nice to write a litRPG story deliberately addressing those elements, but let's be honest here. I'm not interested enough to write that in my spare time. Maybe if I was independently wealthy and didn't have to work for a living I'd consider it. Maybe when I retire. But it's not like people are throwing money at me to think about and write about whatever I want.)

That's not directly related to my current read. It's just that despite some issues with the writing (after the books that have been published to Kindle Unlimited, there are quite a few chapters on Royal Road... but a) I think the author might be using some sort of voice transcriber? There are far too many homonyms and b) I think the author sometimes forgets previous plot points) I do find the story fascinating.

Partly for the character growth - Randidly Ghosthound is extremely anti-social, and has a lot of challenges learning to handle the expectations that come with his power - and partly because of the way it continually subverts my expectations.

For example, quite a few beloved characters start off with a rather negative first impression. Descriptions that would normally foreshadow some future problem (like the 'greasy' guy who was one of the earliest people to join their village, to the blustering kid who jumped at the chance to found the village when Randidly realized he didn't want to deal with people and gave away the loot he'd gained to do so) generally don't. The kid turned out to do pretty well, even if Randidly did put him through some pretty harsh 'training', and the greasy guy was okay - up until *spoiler* his girlfriend got killed quite a while later, and even then he wasn't so much a bad guy as a badly grieving guy.

It's also interesting how initially Randidly seemed very concerned with finding his two closest friends. Except the closer he gets to finding them, the more it becomes obvious there were a lot of issues there, and maybe he isn't actually all that willing to face that. And face them.

That's all fascinating in and of itself, to me at least, but the reason I got the urge to write this was because I realized just how few really good mentor type characters he had. His parents were pretty awful, his 'friends' were kind of not really good friends, he didn't really have a good role model on how to lead (except for the support of one of the most interesting side characters, a woman who helped manage the village they founded... and has quite a lot of imagery associated with spiders. Luckily she seems to use her calculating nature for the better).

In some ways it's a bit depressing? It's kind of a dark world, in that almost every character is troubled in some way. Though it's not overly dark, and some of that just comes across as realistic. To me at least. Many of the characters are not all that logical, but they're generally trying their best.

Yet for some reason it reminds me of a troubled young soldier from my platoon. Back, when I was a young wet-behind-the-ears butterbar lieutenant. He said something once, about how we (referring to my boyfriend and I at the time) showed him that good people really do exist.

You would think that's a compliment? But it doesn't really feel like one. Or rather, the impression it gives of what his life was like is definitely NOT a compliment, as is the impression that how we were was something rare and unusual. 

I mean, I never really thought I was especially or unusually good. I don't feel like the vast majority of people I work with are any worse than I am. But maybe, for whatever reason, some people don't really encounter people like that.

I think that's why Randidly Ghosthound reminded me of him. Because he just doesn't seem to encounter people who are... I don't know the right term here. It's not even so much about being 'good', as just people with emotional intelligence? Ones who know how to navigate those social intricacies Randidly struggles with so much, and do so in a positive manner?

Something like that. God, the number of times he makes things worse for himself just because he doesn't want to talk. It's kind of interesting to have someone who, on the outside at least, does a good job of looking like a stoic and powerful guy, and on the inside you realize he's really just a hot mess. (But he gets better. Sometimes he has to, for plot reasons.)

It's also interesting to see him grow enough to realize that his 'friends' really kind of aren't. Not that he hates them or sees them as enemies, but even when they do meet up again they don't really recover their old friendship. I don't think I would want that in a lot of stories, since I do tend to enjoy the whole bonds of brotherhood (and sisterhood) and found family-type plots, but it's an interesting change, and the way I feel about it is educational.