Mis-using Darwin

One of the most common and frustrating misquotations in our culture today relates to Darwin: that the versions of organisms which exist today do so because they are the best versions. That is not at all what Darwin wrote.

Organisms face particular pressures and threats at particular moments in time, and the organisms that survive in the face of those particular pressures and threats are those which are least vulnerable to those particular pressures and threats. That does not mean that the organisms which survive are those which are most robust against every possible potential pressure and threat; that is, survival does not imply general superiority.

It simply means a particular genetic cocktail happened to survive better in the face of the particular pressures and threats that actually materialized. In fact, even the order of pressures matters: had nature thrown the same threats and pressures in a different order, we would see a very different menagerie of organisms on the planet today.

It is entirely possible that we are not the smartest or strongest or most broadly robust version of the human species that could have existed at this point in time.