The
following is not so much a complete post for this month, but more of a note to
myself, something I might want to add at some point to the last chapter of my
recent book, A Short but Full Book on
Darwin’s Racism:
The
problem with western culture is that it accomplished some great things and
rather than remain content with that, it turned all this greatness into
arrogance, thus destroying its own great gifts. This also describes Darwin, a
gifted man who blew up his gifts into arrogant assertions. The previous
evolutionists (and his contemporaries Wallace and Gerland) were just as gifted
as he, but their effort was to keep the gifts small and far from arrogant
assertions of power. They were seeking smallness, not greatness, because they
believed in the whole which kept everything in perspective for them. From the
point of view of the whole, everything is small. That’s why the first
evolutionists have been neglected and unfavorably compared to Darwin. They did
not promote power. The western ability to manipulate nature went to our heads.
We forgot how to live with anybody who would not conform to our domination. Our
domination is a gift from heaven, we said, and we still expect everybody to buy
that. We still cannot make up our minds whether evolution is designed and
progressive, or an endless meandering, but it does not matter, we say, because
anyway you look at it, we come out on top and that’s what is important. We
believe in a top and a bottom, and make out one to be more important than the
other, while the first thinkers who saw the possibility and probability of
evolution believed in the bottom just as much as in the top. We still cannot
forgive them for that.
©
2017 Leon Zitzer
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