Survival vs. Moral

I made an experiment lately about the meanings of moral and survival, since the topic seems on a route of losing ground for the worse and I used ‘true experimental design’ with the most obvious field-experiment, namely social media.

This experiment turned out to bring much more results than I expected to have, since my theory was tested not only by the meaning but also by the reaction to it as a special added moral-test layer.

So, the experiment started with a comment I made on the famous Darwin quote (‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”) and my claim was ‘What Darwin never understood/innerstood is, there are much more important things than simple survival. Being fully HUMAN is one of them, even if it costs your life.’

That simple claim created a heated conversations which generated more than 100 comments and it provided a deep mirror of the status of our society in the measurement of moral, in the shadow of ongoing wa1rs, gen’ocides and the desperate authority trials to establish total1itarian power-control.

The first little bit shocking result was how many people jumped to the occasion to drop an ass1ault by acting as a kind of superior intelligence, which turned out quickly that it was not the case. It was what Darwin would say ‘quickest to respond’ without a necessary depth of understanding the matter in hand.

I made my own reflection and examined myself and my emotions too, and I had to add, that after several insults, I was sorry to observe the change in my tone of voice as well, which was corrected later but yes, conclusion had to be made: Violence spreads violence and the extra effort has to be made to keep the dragons at bay.

I had to conclude that our survival instinct on reacting to the assumed threat are insults and violence. The lauder the fitter, the quicker the better.

On the other hand, it also somehow enforced my point that there have to be something deeper, a ‘human element’. The element, which is able to

keep emotions at bay,

be able to measure up the available responses

be able to create unique ones

and add the essence of care and unity, which most of the cases the skills, what requires to work against the survival instinct.

My hypothesis is, that in case the ‘care and unity’ is missing from the elements, it would not matter how powerful and clever or quick is our adaptation to change, the loss of moral will eventually lead to catastrophe.

My point of view is that survival factors for human is a bit different than for other species, since with our evolved cognitive abilities, and consciousness, a special kind of responsibility is added, which is that we have to take care of our environment if we already tamed it. The missing element is caring (if I do not want to say the word Love). But that thought necessary requires to merge biological point of view with sociology and widening the scales into interactions, and it brings the word ‘interconnectedness’ into the mix.

The other layer of this experiment was given by the conversations, which I reached after cutting myself through the low-level assaults. Most of the time the conversation ended at the simple repetition of Darwin results, and hardly dared to question forward, that is definitely a failure on Darwin scales, since they could not manage to adapt to change either.

But there were some unique comments here and there providing surprising, unexpected insight, and an inspiration to think towards.

I received feedback that ‘altruism’ was eventually mentioned among the factors of social instincts in Darwin’s studies. In that point I had to add that the beginning of my claim ‘what Darwin never understood/innerstood’ was actually not quite right. He did understand/innerstand. Just the famous quote did not provide efficient highlight to it.

I consider that missing part with a great concern especially in our current status, where the quickly developing AI is disqualifying our soft values by concentrating only on the powerful or physical ones, turning us into some kind of robots.

Following the recent development of our political affair, we have the opportunity to eyewitness how AI is used to target highly danced population in order to magnify the level of casualties in Palestine and the quick development of the automatization and transhumanism have a trend to reduce and reject the quality of ‘vulnerability’ which still is the key factor to understand the true essence of humanity.

My conclusion is: Responsiveness is not enough for survival, if we are concerned about improvement of Humanity on the scale of evolution. It is in the method of response, the choice we made, where the answer lies.

More preciously, it is the ability to stop the urge to respond, remain calm, and turn against our own survival instincts in order to save and bring forth something uniquely human, which others would let to die in the altar of gaining power.

Special thanks to Josephine Edge for providing the platform for the experiment, as she has one of a kind page with so many inspirations and heartwarming quotes.

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