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.