Regular readers know that I’ve recently written about No. 4,
including listing one candidate most wouldn’t put there. I’ve regularly written
about Pop Ev Psych and its largely unscientific, occasionally pseudoscientific
claims; I’ve been wary of it even when less liberal than I am now, so this is
not driven by political issues.
I am that liberal, though … left-liberal of a sort for
America, at least. So, in various ways, I’ve definitely written about No. 2,
capitalism?
No. 1, competitiveness, somewhat ties all the others
together.
Evolution by natural selection does involve a degree of
competitiveness, to be sure. However, that competitiveness is usually against
members of other species, more than members of one’s own species. To the degree
there is intraspecific competition, it’s often sexual selection that’s the
driver. That said, at the same time, group selection can be a driver for
collaboration with other members of the same species.
So, that’s biology. Pop Ev Psych is sociology, primarily in
what it says about its adherents. Ditto for social Darwinism (the fourth modern
variety of social Darwinism, New Atheism, has many libertarian adherents, and
yes, adherents is the right word). Capitalism is obviously a matter of
economics.
Philosophy? Trying to extrapolate from the biological basis
of and need for competitiveness to the other three gets us to Davie Hume’s
famous is-ought distinction. (It’s worth noting that, in my opinion, many
people who claim that Hume’s comments on this are misconstrued, misinterpreted,
wrongly implied, etc., have personal reasons for stating this; see ox, whose
and goring.)
Just because we have to fight to escape a lion (or per the
old joke, run faster than a companion also seeking to escape it) doesn’t mean
that Wall Street plutocracy, Pop Ev Psych “just so” stories and the beliefs
behind them, or the social Darwinism of either New Atheism or old-time religion
has to be that way.
Because it doesn’t.
And, this is part of why the American education system is
problematic, and not just K-12 education.
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