Survival of the Fittest? The Rocks Win the Contest

Come Let Us Reason Together
One of my favorite reasoners is Alfred North Whitehead, a Brit yes [everyone knows I'm a notorious Brit despiser, for personal Amurikan reasons only, of course] but a Brit who did most of his best thinking at Cambridge, but not Cambridge, England, but Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Harvard, brought there in the late twenties, I think, though that's not important, by a prominent Boston biz-man.

Whitehead gave a lecture at Princeton back before the Great Depression on "The Function of Reason," published under that title by the Princeton University Press in 1929--Jesus Christ, that's 77 years ago. Thought is very slow at getting around in this country; and this thought I think is fascinating, though a superstitious and arrogant human animal will kick me into the pricks for repeating it it is so anti-human.

Whitehead began the lecture with what he called a "neat little verbal phrase," a definition of the function of Reason, quote: "The function of Reason is to promote the art of life." Wow! That's a beautiful little verbal phrase to me, but then I'm part wolf and I'm rabid to boot so take my howling with a grain of salt. From here, as though a bully, Whitehead takes on the evolutionist's neat little verbal phrase, "the survival of the fittest." I'll quote the professor again, "The fallacy [of that neat little verbal phrase] does not consist in believing that in the struggle for existence the fittest to survive eliminate the less fit," which is how the human animal defines it. Whitehead slugs on, "The fallacy is the belief that fitness for survival is identical with the best exemplification of the Art of Life." But here's the clincher--this is the one that made me stand up on my hindlegs and gawk at the rest of this proposition: "In fact life itself is comparatively deficient in survival value." Hot damn, that's juicy stuff, but it goes on, "The art of persistence is to be dead." Damn, Al, it sure damn is. I never thought of it that way. The "survival of the fittest"? So the hell what? To survive is to die anyway, whether you're fit or not. I've known many an impaired imbecile to outlive the fittest of the fit. I'll bet you any amount, the oldest human animal alive today is anything but fit. Survival in a human animal sense goes way beyond physical fitness, which is what most Yahoos, numbskulls, and even learned idiots identify with that neat little verbal phrase. Whitehead: "Only inorganic things persist for great lengths of time." Like a rock. I don't care how fit a human animal is, he ain't gonna outlive a rock. Their average age is around eight hundred million years. Let's see ya outlive that. A stupid tree gets to live a thousand years, that is unless it finds itself unlucky enough to be living on a Georgia Pacific or Weyerhauser plantation and while it's still a mere baby, marked with a white stripe by a lumberman, then, hell, "TIMBER!" you ain't gettin' no thousand years in this man's world, dear sweet little baby tree.

Whitehead carries his thoughts on: "The problem set by the doctrine of evolution is to explain how complex organisms with such deficient survival power ever evolved. They certainly did not appear because they were better at that game than the rocks around them."

Isn't that beautiful thinking?

It's all coming from Alfred North Whitehead, The Function of Reason, Beacon Press, Boston, fifth printing, 1967.

My head is spinning like a warped top after that indulgence. I need to get out under that old Bilboa moon and do a little ululating a la Lotte Lenya. My reasoning is beginning to compete with a couple of rocks who are mocking me with their memories of a million or so years ago.

Whitehead is going on to explain that there are two ways of "surveying this range of species" (which means "mankind throughout all the vertebrates, and the insects, and the barely organized animals which seem like societies of cells, and throughout the varieties of vegetable life, and down to the minutest microscopic forms of life"). 1) "Abstracts from time," which means seeing these various species as being examples of "various levels of life." 2) "Emphasizes time" by genetically relating each of the species "one to the other." Al's making us think now for sure. It gets better. The second way, Whitehead says, "embraces the doctrine of evolution" and explains extinction ("the vanishing of species and of sporadically variant individuals") as being due to a conflict with the environment. Whitehead calls this approach "one of the great generalizations of science." He goes on to blast it by saying that "...enthusiasts have so strained its interpetation as to make it explain nothing, by reason of the fact that it explains everything." Whoo, my head is really spinning now, but like an owl's head spins, because it is so full of wisdom. When you stop and think about what Whitehead is saying, you soon see what he means: "If a mere fact of dying out be sufficient proof of maladjustment to the environment, the explanation is reduced to a tautology." Ah, words, aren't they wonderful, especially in the brain of a reasoner? Like mathematics, words, too, must add up to a double-checked summation, a factual summation. Just the facts, m'am.

Al is still thinking. Here's the monkey wrench he's throwing into the survival of the fittest works: "...there is another factor in evolution which is not in the least explained by the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. Why has the trend of evolution been upwards?"

I'm gonna leave you sittin' to think on that question. That's a good one. You won't hear it asked on "Jeopardy." "Why has the trend of evolution been upwards?" Or has it? Is Al going to take us up so high we'll meet God? Tune in next time when we'll hear Al say, "The fact that organic species have been produced from inorganic distributions of matter, and the fact that in the lapse of time organic species of higher and higher types have evolved are not in the least explained by any doctrine of adaptation to the environment, or of struggle."

Darwin, you asshole, why didn't you explain that you didn't mean to infer that life was a struggle that could only be survived by the fittest of a species. That's not what you said at all; and old Alfred North Whitehead is gonna give you some help. Aren't you excited?
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And Now Some Dysfunctions of Reason
I heard today it said that Georgie Porgie, our "president," has added his thinking, what's it called, where Georgie Porgie signs a bill but then adds his own thinking on it, which says if he wants to not recognize it as a bill he has executive privilege to ignore it?--anyway, he's added his silly bullshit thinking to 750 bills during his sentence in office. What f-ing nerve. That little spoiled brat oilman's son--oh, I forgot, his old pappy was vice president, too; oh hell, I forgot, he was also head of the CIA; and, shit, he was vice president during the Contra bullshit, his asshole lying that kept Nicaragua from voting the way its people wanted it to go, with the commie Sandanistas--and old pappy was vice president when they had that secret meeting in some backwater town in Arkansas where the CIA was flying cocaine in--cocaine for guns and amunition, the Contra way, and old silly hillybilly Bill Clinton was present at it, but you never heard more about it after it was swept under the Oval Office carpet while Raygun Reagan was asleep at the wheel during his acting as an Alheimer's patient. "How'm I doin', mommy? And can I have a jelly bean?" Oh, shit, I forgot, Georgie Porgie's old pappy was also president. Damn. Wasn't Pappy Bush the president we called a Wimp? And oh, I forgot, that when Pappy was vice president Unka Dick, Rummy, the late sleazebag Caspar Weinburger ("You're doin' a heck of a job, Caspar"), and the sleazebag or all sleazebags, John Poindexter, were there, too). Oh shit, and I forgot, Pappy told Saddam to go ahead and attack Kuwait (it formerly belonged to Iraq), the great little democracy in the desert where everyone's a millionaire, even those babies in the incubators old Pappy's spin doctors alleged Saddam was pitching out naked into the Kuwait gutters, the same as in Midland, Texas, old Pappy's stompin' grounds, which at one time boasted of having more millionaires per capita than any other city in the bejesus world, including Kuwait. But wait, I forgot, old Pappy told Saddam to go on an attack Kuwait, "You have my wimpy permission, Saa-damn," and then turned on him and started the Gulf War, the war Pappy declared "mission accomplished" before he had a chance to destroy Baghdad and eliminate Saddam. Wait a minute, I forgot, wasn't it Pappy who also hoodwinked his pal Noriega in Panama, remember the picture of Pappy on the couch with Noriega like they were bosom buddies--bosom cocaine-dealing buddies? and sent our freedom fighters down to Panama City where he bombed the hell out of a part of the city thinking he'd kill Noriega and instead ended up ending the lives and dreams of 400+ innocent Panamanians? And whoa, wait a minute, wasn't Pappy one of the founders with his Saudi Arabian buddy of the Carlyle Group? And didn't Pappy have something to do with the Bradley what'cha ma-call it used by the troops in Iraq? And Unka Dick and Halliburton. I know the Halliburtons. I grew up, remember, in oil country. I remember the Halliburton trucks--they used to bring oil supplies right out to the wells when West Texas and Oklahoma were oil booming like crazy. The Halliburtons were from Oklahoma. There was also a company called Schlumberger (pronounced "Slumber jay") that had big maroon trucks that were f-ing beautiful with a lot of chrome and stuff, just like the Halliburton trucks. Wonder what happened to Schlumberger? Brown and Root--Texas, Louisiana, involved in offshore oil, just like Pappy. What? You didn't know Pappy made his piddling riches, I've heard, in offshore oil. Zapata Offshore? And Pappy should apologize to the Mexican people by using such a respected revolutionary name as Zapata for his crooked oil company. "Crooked?" you say. And how dare I call Pappy a crook. Believe me, I know, if you're a rich oil man or oil company, you are crooked as a snake at night, as the old blues songs used to say, "She's straight as an arrow during the daytime, but crooked as a snake at night." [By the bye, Old Pappy Bush, I forgot, was Ambassador to China--aha, no wonder Mr. Hu got the royal-carpet treatment at the White House--suiting up Tricky Dick Nixon's Swiss Guard for a little shennanigans on the White House (our house, by the way) lawn. Remember when Pappy threw up on the Chinese leader in those long ago forgotten days?

And still, 34 to 40 percent of Amurikans still love Pappy's young son and still believe he's taking us down the straight and narrow, like Jesus. Well, hell, God does talk to him. "Georgie Porgie?" "Yes, who's that? Who's in my Oval Office; is that you, Hu?" "It's me, the Christian God Jehovah, or you can call me Elohim." "God, you mean the real God?" "Yes, you stupid little prick, the only God." "I thought that was Allah; at least that's what Chalabi told me I was hearing." "Fuck Allah, I'm your God and I'm telling you straight, man, you gotta wipe out those towelheads so my precious chosen little Israel can be protected." "Protected my ass, God; the Jews have nucleer weapons of mass destruction, so I ain't worried about those Jew bastards." "Oh ye of little fate." "Damn, God, you mean I control Armegeddon?" "That's right, my son, now you're catchin' on. How the hell is my boy coming back if you don't set up Armegeddon first? Use them nucleer weapons you got on those pagan Eye-rain-y-ans. Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age." "Oh, hell, God, now just a minute, Pickles don't let me get stoned anymore." And so, our "president" retires to bed where Pickles is reading the latest thriller, Dick and Jane Meet the Pitbull Spot. "Oh, Georgie Porgie, you gotta read this; it's gooood." "Honey pie, my little Pickles, you know I can't read."

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
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