Social Darwinism

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Social Darwinism is a term that is loosely related to evolutionary principles and describes how individuals compete with one another in society over scarce resources. It’s a somewhat problematic philosophy in that its explanation and use is largely inconsistent among its proponents.

It ultimately seems like a term that is mainly used to promote and justify competitive practices that lead to systemic societal injustices like poverty, war, unnecessary unequal distribution of resources, racism, starvation, exploitation…etc. It is also often used to justify individual ideologies like eugenics or political policies that go against the rest of the world, like refusing to take part in climate change initiatives. A lot of our worlds problems are created by the perpetuation of the idea of social Darwinism.

When looking around at society and when critiquing and analysing societal behavior, it is quite easy to see that individuals and nations alike often compete with one another in a variety of ways and in a variety of circumstances.
We compete for resources and the adoption of specific ideologies and numerous other ways.

But is competition really beneficial in today’s society? Is it beneficial for groups and nations to compete with one another?

Unfortunately I do not have a definitive answer for that question. However, the following article will look at an experiment that may give us something to think about in terms of whether it is better for individuals and groups to compete with one another or if it would be better to cooperate.

The Skittle Experiment

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Three participants sit at a table. In the middle of them is a bowl containing 60 skittles.

A researcher walks into the room and informs the participants that she will double the amount of skittles in the bowl after every 10 seconds. She also informs the participants that their goal is to obtain as many skittles as they can and that the experiment will begin at the sound of a buzzer.

After a few moments later a buzzer sounds.

So what happens?

(Pause for suspense and dramatic effect)

Outcome

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Typically the experiment ends in less than 3 seconds. Each individual competes to obtain the most skittles. Everyone eagerly reaches into the bowl and grabs as many skittles as they can until no more skittle remain in the bowl.
10 seconds pass and the researcher does not put any skittles into the bowl (i.e. 0 x 2 = 0).

Each participant ends up with a different number of skittles with some individuals faring better than others. For instance, one participant may end up with more skittles than the others. In their mind, they may even believe that they “won” the competition.

Alternative Solution based on Cooperation

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If the participants had of cooperated with each other and each took 10 skittles from the bowl then they could in theory each obtain an infinite amount of skittles.

If each participant took 10 skittles for a total of 30 skittles between them, then every 10 seconds the researcher would have doubled the amount of skittles in the bowl, replenishing the amount back to 60 (i.e. 30 x 2 = 60).

The cycle of participants each taking 10 skittles and the researcher putting 30 skittles back into the bowl, could in theory continue infinity (or at least until the researcher ran out of skittles).

In the first scenario the participants compete with one another and some individuals do better than others relatively speaking. (i.e. Maybe one participant ends up with 20 skittles whereas the others end up with 6 and 4 skittles respectively).

However, in the second scenario the participants cooperate with one another and work together and each end up with same amount of skittle in the end. Though none of the participants do better than the others, all of the participants do better overall.

In the second scenario there is no ”winner” or ”loser” but each participant receives more than they would have if they had competed.

Conclusion

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There is always going to be competition in our society and in some scenarios it might make more sense to compete with others then to cooperate. However, I think that this experiment points out that competition is not always beneficial to the individual and individuals tend to do better when they cooperate with one another. In cooperative situations there are no winners and losers relative to one another, but all parties do better overall.

I personally believe that if humans relinquished the idea of social Darwinism’s and collectively adopted a cooperative mindset, then all humans across the planet would likely do better overall. In such a scenario we wouldn’t see massive inequality where some individuals starve or live in scarcity while others have more than they know what to do with. If humans cooperated to distribute resources then there would be no need to go to war and fight for those resources. If humans cooperated to solve real world problems like climate change, fresh water scarcity, air/ocean pollution…etc then they could eliminate those problems rather than accelerating them.

Right now we are seeing global nations accelerating major world problems that will likely ultimately lead to the destruction of the planet, just so that they can be in a slightly better relative to others. However, this is such short term thinking and it fails to realize the lesson from the skittle experiment that suggests that everyone does better overall when people cooperate with one another.

When a person adopts a long term perspective to life on the planet, it is easy to see that our current practices of competition really don’t make any sense. Individuals and nations alike should be working together in order to solve the world’s problems.

In such a scenario, one group or nation would not do better than any others relatively speaking, but all groups and nations would do better overall.

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P.S. this was not an advertisement for skittles. I F**king hate skittles. In fact, I hate skittles as much as Trumps son hates helping people who aren't white and rich.

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Thanks for Reading

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