Recently I have been digging deeper into Darwinism, inspired by reading Dawkins. Now I have always found Darwinism to be the only plausible explaination for the evolution of species but there is one thing that annoys me and it has nothing to do with Mr Darwin.
What annoys me is the need of people to take a theory which is successful in one field and attempt to apply it in places where it does not fit and really does not belong. What I am talking about is the whole question of attempting to use Darwinism to explain the reason for “non-efficient” behaviour from the point of view of species development and survival.
So for example we attempt to mangle poor Darwin’s theories to suit our needs to explain anything from excessive consumption to death defying bravery to building cathedrals. Struggling to explain that people do any of these things by trying to claim that the group or society is helped or made more likely to survive can only be seen as the product of an over productive imagination.
While in Uppsala last week I met (all too briefly) Mikael Nilsson one of the activists behind the site and organisation Stoppa fra lagen nu. The organisation is one of a few activist sites attempting to organise resistance against the unpopular new Swedish surveillance law. Activists such as Mikael spend time and energy attempting gather opinion and to repeal the law.
From a Darwinistic point of view the behaviour of an activist charging windmills is totally without reason. But it is ample proof of the fact that attempting to apply a theory to solve a problem for which it was not intended just leads us down dead ends and futile exercises in trying to put a square peg in a round hole.