Love
& Evolution
Love
& Evolution
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Love & Evolution A Culture of Love is needed because evolutionary science gives evidence that it is the most successful or 'fittest' survival strategy. 'Survival of the fittest' can mean any heritable trait that enables survival of species, whether camouflage or fecundity or intelligence or caring. Indeed, traits like co-operation, sharing and compassion have been at the basis of the most dramatic steps in the history of all life. (See Michael Le Page, New Scientist, posted 16 April 2008, accessed 3 November 2016). 'Survival of the fittest' as a violent competitive process is a corruption of Darwinism. Industrialists like Andrew Carnegie believed that it justified an economy of vicious competition and inequality. This has given rise to a corporate, capitalist dominated world, which is actually threatening our survival and that of many species. Wealth sharing and co-operation are more consistent with Darwinism. (See Eric Michael Johnson, posted 3 May 2013, accessed 3 November 2016; also check out the ideas of Peter Kropotkin and his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution) In The Descent of Man, Darwin only wrote twice about 'survival of the fittest', but wrote 95 times about the evolutionary drive of Love in all species (David Loye in Darwin in Love; also see Darwin's Lost Theory). Scientifically, this may not tell us how to behave - but evolutionarily and morally, it surely does! Success is actually about 'survival of the most loving'. But we are living in that corporate capitalist economy with its cruel inequality and unsustainable lifestyle...  Further Quotes All began in love, all seeks to return in love. Love is the law, the teacher of wisdom, and the great revealer of mysteries. (Starhawk) Plants are so incredibly cooperative with one another because cooperation is the most efficient way to grant the survival of species. Not understanding the strength of the community is one of [humanity’s] main errors. There was a very clever evolutionary biologist at the beginning of the last century, Peter Kropotkin, who said that when there are fewer resources, and the environment is changing, then cooperation is vastly more efficient [than competition]. This is an important teaching for us today, because we are entering a period of reduction of resources and the environment is changing because of global warming. (Stefano Mancuso, botanist, advocate of plant intelligence, interviewed in The Guardian, posted 15 April 2023, accessed 16 April 2023) It shouldn’t surprise us that members of the same culture that gave us capitalism as the dominant economic model — based as it is on the insane notion that selfish individuals all attempting to maximally exploit each other will somehow create stable and healthy human communities (never mind that it never has and functionally cannot) — would give us variants of the selfish gene theory as the dominant biological model — based as it is on the equally insane notion that selfish individuals all attempting to maximally exploit each other will somehow create stable and healthy natural communities (never mind that it never has and functionally cannot). Both are justifications for what the dominant culture does: steal from everyone else. (Derrick Jensen, The Myth of Human Supremacy) Those advocating human exceptionalism should note that evolution was largely the outcome of interspecies cooperation. Humans evolved with the help of other species (George Tsakraklides, Bluesky, posted and accessed 14 March 2025)  Resources
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