The urgent need for evolutionary theory in public consciousness

An imagined conversation in which the importance of Darwin's insight is put forward.

Darwin advocate: Darwin is important. His theories allow an understanding of human nature.

Questioner: Darwin's theories have been used to offer an awful view of human nature.

DA: These are distortions. Nazi eugenics (saying that Darwin's ideas of natural selection applied to racial groups too, which could be said to be better or worse than each other) depend on nonsense and need to be confronted and challenged. In any case, the danger of such theories seems remote now. I admit this last point may not necessarily be the case.

Q: But Darwin offers an often bleak view of people. Idealists will find it uncomfortable.

DA: At the very least, idealists ought to recognise Darwinian insights. From this starting point, they can perhaps look at how best to optimise human behaviour. Without understanding Darwin's insights, they are likely to do more harm than good in their moral prescriptions.

Q: This seems a little abstract. What are these insights?

DA: Darwin argues that human behaviour is determined by the need to reproduce and the need to survive. One might argue that this second is merely a part of the first, so reproduction is the key. From this insight, evolutionary theorists are, for example, investigating interesting avenues, such as the prevalence of crime among young, poor men. Given that it is most difficult for people in this category to reproduce as they are at the bottom of the competitive heap, research into this area might lead to some useful insights in tackling crime.

Q: If that is the case, then why is this such an ignored perspective on public policy.

DA: I would argue that it is mainly due to the influence of sociology and anthropology, which are in turn reactions to the eugenics of the Nazis.

Q: How so?

DA: Sociology and anthropology have moved away from descriptions of human nature and sought to categorise humans as discrete communities, describing them minutely and specifically. It seems to me that this perspective, which is not without its uses, has come to dominate academic thinking. This is because Western intellectuals, fearful of the perversion of Darwin's theory of human nature by the Nazis in particular, sought to turn the debate away from human nature in general and towards a discussion of different cultures.

Q: I'm not sure why this matters. Isn't it worth understanding cultural difference?

DA: Yes, it certainly is. But what is lacking is a balanced discussion that accounts for human similarities as well as differences. Our intellectual climate at the moment prizes diversity almost entirely, to the exclusion of the ties that bind.

Q: In practice, what are the effects of this imbalance?

DA: One important area of difficulty is the vexed problem of poor governance in developing countries. Corrupt, autocratic regimes such as those of Zimbabwe and North Korea are able to exploit the intellectual climate of difference by saying that outsiders who criticise their regimes are showing intolerance to a different culture and are cultural imperialists. The beneficiaries of this current arrangement are the corrupt and brutal dictators who exploit the intellectual climate, not the people who suffer under their rule.

Q: How would more attention to evolutionary theory improve this situation?

DA: Evolutionary theory is an attempt to define human nature in general. If this were the basis of our discussion rather than discrete cultures, it would be easier to evaluate which sorts of political arrangements best allowed humans to flourish. This would remove the intellectual veneer that in part sustains corrupt authoritarian regimes.

Q: If Darwinism provided an intellectual veneer, as you put it, for the Nazis, then why would we replace the current veneer with one that proved so effective for other dictators?

DA: The problem was that in the first half of the nineteenth century, racist theories of human nature were still accepted. Genetic research in particular has shown how insignificant a feature race is in human nature. A white man has more in common genetically with a black man than with a white woman, for instance. Also, evolutionary theory has explained why racism happens and thus shows us how it is irrational in our present state. Racism happens because humans have evolved to detect minute differences in appearance and voice as a means of determining fellow tribespeople and rival tribes. This was important in a world in which human tribes competed for scarce resources, but hardly makes sense in a world of mass-produced food and global trade. Much of evolutionary theory works in that way, showing how aspects of human nature have evolved and allowing us to consider whether these are vestigial elements of the species that are redundant or still serve some purpose. We badly need to return to investigating human nature, as it is only by understanding humans fundamentally that we will be able to improve humanity's lot across the globe.