Dog people create a distortion of reality
Anti-vaxxers are a strange bunch. They drive around in pick-up trucks waving flags for “freedom” while tooting their own horns. They deny Covid exists, while demanding the right to die from it if necessary. Now is a good time to figure out where this bizarre behavior comes from, and why. If you do your homework, you will find it has something to do turtles.
The island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos Islands is a strange place to discover the reason why those on the rabid right of the political spectrum these days think and behave the strange way they do. I was interviewing a young tortoise at the time of my visit, probably no more than a hundred years old. This specimen of Chelonoidis Porteri was not holding up his end of the bargain. I tried to explain to him (or her, I didn’t peek) about “survival of the fittest” and how that shameful doctrine is taking over the planet, but when frightened or scared a tortoise will pull their head and front legs into their shell, and hiss, as he (or she) did.
Charles Darwin made several momentous discoveries on his trip to the Galapagos. In his 1859 groundbreaking masterpiece On the Origin of Species he explained his findings. “It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the most adaptable to change.” This discovery is considered as the foundation for modern biology, or science as opposed to faith if you prefer. Sad to say his critics at that time, and many others since, missed the mark in their understanding of his discoveries. In fact — to use that phrase deliberately — many have it completely backwards.
In a review of Darwin’s work, his contemporary of that era Herbert Spencer used the now famous phrase “survival of the fittest,” a summation that caught on quickly. Darwin’s first observation in the Galapagos was finches on the islands using twigs as tools. Finches don’t use tools! They had somehow adapted to their environment. He was astonished to see iguanas, generally known for basking in the sun and not much else, diving into the ocean to find food. They had also adapted to their environment. Finches and iguanas are not cerebral creatures. They changed because they had to, in order to survive.
My guide, famed ornithologist Raphael Pesantes, explained the lay of the land. It takes six generations, he said, for the “fear gene” to develop in an animal. The Galapagos were so far off the beaten track that human beings never discovered the islands and therefore the creatures there had no fear of mankind. He and I could walk right up to a blue-footed booby and say “how’s it going, eh?” Same with all the other creatures, from the albatrosses to the sea lions, except for the tortoises on Santa Cruz. This was because American whalers who arrived before Darwin’s time started keeping the long lived creatures on board to use as fresh food in times of need.
Survival of the fittest has evolved to mean many things these days, which has morphed into an entirely new sad and sorry philosophy of “dog eat dog,“ often expressed by its most forceful adherents as “might makes right.” This totally contradicts Darwin’s teaching that the strongest don’t always survive. Rather, adaptation to change is the secret to survival, but the dog-eat-dog people don’t seem to understand that. Worse yet, “might makes right” has now evolved into their current practice of “whatever you can get away with and not get caught.” as long as you obtain power in the process.
Darwin’s findings in the 1850s about the origin of species contradicted the prevailing western religious doctrine at that time, which held that the world was created in seven days and only a few thousand years ago. Darwin’s statement that “man is descended from a hairy tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits,” caused an uproar, especially among those that held that God was an elderly Caucasian male with a trimmed beard who lived in the clouds.
Other Darwin quotes (you can look them up) will also infuriate the dog-eat-dog people. “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” If you mentioned the word “collaboration” to Dick Cheney you might get a smack in the head. In the current reactionary age of Donald Trump and Canada’s own right wing hound dog Pierre Poiliviere, another Darwin quote explains a great deal: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Or perhaps, finally, in a world of fake news and distorted reality we should pay attention to Darwin’s omniscient observation: “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long.” Enough said.