Nature is often unfair to the weak. Scientists who study animal behavior have noted that predators ruthlessly take advantage of weakness in their prey, pouncing on the aged, the feeble and the young. It’s an element of the theory of evolution that Charles Darwin laid out in 1859, which came to be described as “survival of the fittest.”
A lot of people figure that notion applies to humans, too — that only the toughest of the species thrive, and that it’s actually good for society if some less able people can’t quite make it. In the decades after Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” the idea gained ground; it was labeled social Darwinism. Yes, the advocates of social Darwinism said, we may well pity those who don’t have the emotional or physical strength to win advantage for themselves – or people who were disadvantaged at birth – but humankind, no less than other species, they argued, advances by culling. By that reasoning, we’re not so different from the victims of the mountain lions in the Colorado Rockies or raptors in the Hudson Valley. (1:00)
In fact, though, Darwin didn’t come up with the phrase “survival of the fittest,” and he didn’t buy the notion that his theories would apply in that way to humans. In fact, he argued that our species advanced because of kindness, not mercilessness. Here’s what Darwin wrote: “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.” And scientific research over the past century and a half has pretty much confirmed that: human evolution depended less on raw strength and cunning than upon community. Humans made progress by caring for each other.
And so we could now. But there remains a strong current of social Darwinism in America, and it’s a piece of the chaos that has overtaken the House of Representatives this year. That is, the so-called fiscal conservatism that Republicans in Congress talk so much about – and the right-wing thinking that brought down Kevin McCarthy – is aimed at programs that help Americans who aren’t as strong as others to simply survive. (2:00)
About one in four Americans get their healthcare through Medicaid, which was created to help people who are poor or who have disabilities. Another 42 million of us — that’s almost 13 percent of the nation’s population — draw stipends to pay for food through SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which used to be called food stamps.
Both of those programs would have been cut if we hadn’t twice this year averted a government shutdown – and they’re still imperiled, because government spending authority was only extended until around Thanksgiving. Congressional Republicans want to cut aid, and they often argue that we’re sending lots of money to millions of people who could hold a job but refuse to work. That notion has been a staple of conservative politics for a half-century now. But it’s not true.
Food stamps already carry a work requirement for able-bodied recipients. But many people who receive Medicaid and SNAP benefits confront extraordinary challenges in trying to hold a job – a lack of skills, or a police record, or limited access to transportation. Or maybe there’s nobody else at home to take care of young children or frail adults. Myriad factors may make some people all but unemployable. But are we really comfortable with concluding that people who can’t hold a job should go hungry, or lose healthcare?
In fact, no research supports the idea that kicking people out of aid programs makes them better able to help themselves – but there are recent studies suggesting that the longer families receive stable and predictable support, the better they do, and the better the next generations does, as well.
That’s a practical assessment from the realm of social science, but the moral imperative is clear from a religious standpoint, too. Both Judaism and Christianity embrace a clear declaration from Psalm 82. It says, “Defend the poor and the orphan; deal justly with the poor and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” And the third pillar of Islam is zakah, which requires Muslims who earn enough to give a percentage of their income to help the poor and needy.
All of this suggests that we ought to demand that our political leaders pay more attention to who we aspire to be as caring humans. Perhaps, in fact, our current strife arises in our alienation from that wholesome notion. Charles Darwin posited that compassion was what he called “the almost ever-present instinct” among humans. If the selfishness of the right-wing approach to federal spending is actually contrary to human nature, surely it can’t stand.
Compassion may be, in the end, what elevates us above the predators of the wild, enabling us to advance our civilization toward realizing its higher goals. Just now, though, there’s reason to worry that political ambition is a stronger force in America than our compassionate instinct.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.