[The Darwin Project]: In
the Descent of Man Charles Darwin wrote only twice of
"survival of the fittest" -- but 95 times about love! 92 times
about moral sensitivity. And 200 times about brain and mind.
Suppression over 100 years of the
real Darwin has led to the social, political, economic,
scientific, educational, moral and spiritual mess we are in today.
The site features the book The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution,
an anthology of chapters by David Loye, Ervin Laszlo, Rianne Eisler and
others, which sees Darwin in a very different perspective than how he's
come to be seen, and used, by modern/capitalist/technology+growth
focused society.
...consider the implications for
both theory and society of the fact that in Descent only nine
times does Darwin write of competition, but nearly three times as
often -- that is 24 times -- of mutuality or mutual aid, which was the
root concept of that time for what today we call
cooperation. Or of the fact he writes of
sympathy 61 times. And then this, most astounding and
perhaps of the greatest long range importance. For in
line with the rediscovery of the theory of the now immensely
popular Charles S. Peirce -- in which Pierce (1992) identifies
evolutionary love as one of the three prime principles for
evolution -- in Descent Darwin similarly writes of love 95
times!...
Darwin in fact not only lashes out at the idea of blind
chance. 'The understanding,' he writes with rare vehemence,
'revolts at such a conclusion.' He also goes still further
in asserting that our evolution is moral directional. Most
specifically he tells us: 'Looking to future generations we may
expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger...and virtue will
be triumphant.'
Is this nothing more than the delusions of late Victorian
optimism? Elsewhere he again insists 'the
social and moral qualities' will 'tend slowly to advance and
diffuse throughout the world.' And still
again -- inescapably directional in regard to the billions of years of
the evolution of life on this planet, and the millions of years
of the direct evolutionary line leading to our own species -- there
is this. It is the 'fact of our having thus risen, instead
of having been aboriginally placed in perfection here,' Darwin
tells us, 'that gives us hope for a still higher destiny in the
distant future.'
8:40:07 AM 
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