The Evolution Of The Theory Of Evolution
During the mid 1800s Charles Darwin upended both the scientific and religious worlds by releasing his seminal theory on biological evolution. Darwinism states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. Since then Darwinism has been a foundational part of our world; science and elsewhere. However social behavior, specifically altruism, has posed a bit of problem for Darwin and his universal theory.
It was altruistic ants that posed a particular problem for Charles Darwin. Natural selection is often described as ‘survival of the fittest’, where fitness is defined by how successful an individual is at reproducing. If one individual has a trait that gives them a fitness advantage, they will tend to have more offspring than the others. This reproductive advantage is then likely to be passed on to their offspring — and then spread through the population. A fundamental tenet of this is that individuals are competing for the resources they need to reproduce.
But as Darwin observed, ants and other social insects are not in competition. They are cooperative, so much so that worker ants are sterile and have literally zero reproductive fitness. They ought to be extinct, yet there they are in every generation sacrificing their own reproductive ambitions to serve the fertile queen and her drones. Through this observation, Darwin suggested that competition between groups of ants — queen, drones and workers together — might be driving natural selection in this case. What was good for the nest would then outweigh what was good for any individual ant.
Rhizomes
If we view our community as an evolutionary unit, then we must address the components that can either contribute to its sustainability or to its demise. A community is really nothing more than the accumulation of individuals and the interactions between these individuals. Every member of your community is unique and adds to its fabric. Everyone has something to offer and everyone should be heard — no matter their age, social standing or any other demographic characteristic. If they are not included in the conversation; they still will be heard — but it may not be in a socially accepted way (e.g. crime, disruptive protests, etc.). Prejudice, bigotry or even indifference hurts not only them, but us as part of the overall community. All of our actions, or lack there of — have collective consequences.
Our definition of infrastructure needs to evolve if we are to truly take advantage of the power of ‘the people’. The constraints of hierarchy and our “hand everything over” to political representation needs to be subjugated in order for us move ahead. Enter the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher; and Félix Guattari, a French psychiatrist and social activist. These two envisioned an organizational and societal model based on the opportunity-based structure of plant rhizomes, the root-like structures that flourishes ubiquitously under our back yards. Rhizomes look for opportunities to spout and present themselves to the world when and where the conditions are right (e.g. water, light, nutrients).
In my interpretation of Deleuze and Guattari’s model, we replace our existing malaise-ridden civic hierarchy with a network of what we already depend on anyway for the backbone of our communities; our locally-rooted small businesses and NGOs and their informal civic leadership presence. I call this backbone, Front Porches. It’s here situations for civic improvement are identified and executed, empowering residents with unique and relevant abilities to rise to the surface and take the lead, much like a rhizome would when the environmental conditions are right. This Situational Leadership is the basis of the decentralized network that represents the evolution of civic organization. Combine this with a public version of a distributed autonomous organization (DAO) and we have the fodder for a very interesting deep dive, full of dynamic possibilities.
Breaking Free Of The Pendulum
It’s easy to just bash our present political economic situation and run the other way, ready to embrace the polar opposite. We saw this with the election of Donald Trump. Anything was better than Hillary Clinton and the establishment. And after we saw what we elected in Trump, we reverted back and elected the emblem of establishment, Joe Biden. We see it in economics with the push back against neo-liberalism … for good reason (bit still). But does the answer lie on the other end of the pendulum with minimum basic income and protectionism in the name of ‘American made’? Does it lie with free college education for everyone, even though it’s becoming more apparent traditional college may not be the best alternative for many? What do we do about those young people who choose not to go to college; just exclude them from the having a piece of the pie for not conforming to an ideal forged decades ago that may no longer be relevant?
We need to be brave and think differently, not just vacillate between Smith and Hobbes — or Marx. Not that those and other icons of the past don’t have positive offerings to contribute — but they don’t live today. Society changes, as do the economic conditions and requirements that molds it. And with that, so must our ways of looking at the best way to patch together a workable societal strategy for all. We need to grab from the past, morph together solutions … and try them out. We need to be agile and create feedback loops. We need to be fluid. Not all will work; but some parts of some of them will. Then we take those and combine them together with new ideas — all specific to our individual locales and often brought to the forefront by our newly embraced outliers. We must constantly evolve. Jeff Bezos from Amazon calls this Day 1. Everything is always in beta — always in search of improvement. Always evolving. Never focusing on maintaining the status quo.
It’s not enough to expect others to generate the change we need. We can’t expect to sit back and reap the benefits from it after-the-fact. We all need to think differently … and usher in these evolutionary changes ourselves. We must look at our civic responsibility as being more than a periodic trip to the voting booth only to perpetuate yet another ineffective version of status quo’s hierarchy.
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