Survival of the fittest, or luckiest?

The term ‘survival of the fittest’ was, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, not coined by Darwin but has been used, or rather misused, too often by people in positions of economic or political ascendancy to justify their dominance over others. Nevertheless, amongst all living things life has advanced and evolved through the natural selection of the slightly better adapted individual, provided that individual lives long enough to produce offspring. 

That proviso leads us to what I want to discuss in this essay; and that is the part played by fortune, or if we put a more personal slant on it – luck, or bad luck.  From the start this factor has always been there, and perhaps not sufficiently recognized.

In the very beginning it would have been all a case of luck – luck that the right chemicals bumped into each other at just the right moment and under the right conditions, perhaps even involving a strike by lightning. It’s a mystery as to how the first replicating molecule of nucleic acid got formed about 3.8 billion years ago. And then, because of being in a rich enough chemical environment, was able to replicate itself and  keep replicating. And we and all the multitudinous life on this planet are the result! How many times did this process start only to be snuffed out by something, and the whole thing having to start again, or not? On this planet it did of course succeed. Now the conditions don’t exist here anymore for it to begin again. On how many other planets, with all the right conditions at some point in their history, was the opportunity missed, leaving a planet out in the cosmos looking like Earth but lifeless, because of bad luck? There could be millions.

As life evolved on this planet, the natural selection of the better-adapted has been the driving force. But luck or happenstance has also played a part. The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould used to love to point out that but for the huge asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula about 65 million years ago we humans wouldn’t exist. For about a hundred million years the planet had been dominated by dinosaurs. We can’t say they weren’t fit if they survived for so long. They must have been well-adapted to the conditions at that time. It is believed that the impact of the asteroid, that but for a second or two of timing would have missed, caused massive fires and such dust and smoke that most sunlight was blocked for years. These huge largely cold-blooded creatures couldn’t get enough food to eat and starved and froze to death. Meanwhile, our ancestors – small rat-like furry mammals that had been trying to keep out of the way of the dinosaurs  - survived. Many would have died also, but the fittest survived. So that then the splendid array of mammals that now roam our planet today evolved, including us.

Now, like the dinosaurs before us, we humans rule the roost. How much are fitness and luck factors in our survival ?  There is no doubt that the fitness factor that has us ruling the world to the tune of 7 billion is our cleverness that enabled us to harness fire, develop agriculture and build the modern civilization that we have.  Again, however, I want to point to the luck factor for various individuals and groups. Rather than ‘luck’ a more appropriate word would be ‘fortune’ or ‘circumstance’.  As the Phil Ochs song, made famous by Joan Baez, goes – “There but for fortune go you, or I.”

The quip that our ancestors didn’t need to run faster than lions to survive but only faster than the other guy, is true but is not the whole story. Supposing that instead of chasing the two men the lion was lying in wait to pounce. Then it would have been a matter not of fleet of foot or any particular fitness, but luck as to who of the two guys were on the side of the path where the lion lay in wait. 

Allow me to give a very personal example of luck as regards my own existence.   Before he died, my father told me that he and my mother decided one day that it was time to start a family. So they did what was necessary, and the next morning when they turned on the radio they discovered that Britain had gone to war with Germany. It was September 3^rd, 1939. They immediately stopped trying and hoped that my mother would not become pregnant because of the future they feared. I was born nine months later just as the bombing of Britain started in earnest. The three of us survived the war, and after it was over my parents tried for a second child, but my mother had a miscarriage and then later died. The point I’m trying to make is that if my parents had delayed making love just one more night – I wouldn’t exist, nor any other product of my parents.

That’s my self-centered story of fortune. But meanwhile that horrific Nazi juggernaut rolled across Europe and tens of millions of people were not as fortunate as me and my parents. Most horrific of all, close to 90% of Europe’s Jews were rounded up and murdered in the biggest single crime in human history. Lack of fitness was not the issue, rather the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or with the wrong family name.

Albert Einstein got out to America just before the war. We will never know about other gifted people, Jewish or otherwise, whose special genetically based aptitudes were snuffed out, perhaps delaying the discovery of some medical cure or important technology. Terrible misfortune befell those people, and humanity will never know the full extent of our loss because of their loss.    

In wild nature the better adapted – the fitter – are more likely to survive to adulthood and produce offspring, and in that manner plants and animals evolve. In modern human society, good fortune or misfortune becomes the much greater factor. If you are born into a well-off family in a developed nation today, your chances of surviving to adulthood, where if you wish you can produce offspring, are very high. Your chances are nowhere near as good if you happen to be born in Central America, several parts of Africa, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.; or even if you happen to be born black in America. 

Enough of millionaires boasting about survival of the fittest, meaning themselves. At this Holiday Season, all of us who find ourselves in fortunate circumstances should show our gratitude by reaching out to others less fortunate. Happy Holidays !