Evolution of the Identity

Where Darwin was wrong, he was pretty dang wrong.

This guy just screams “God, it’s good to be alive!”

When I published "How Fuzzy is Sex?" earlier this week, it hadn't occurred to me I was opening a three-part series. This is the second part, which focuses on what I perceive as misrepresentation of evolution. The final part will link the two and demonstrate the need to focus attention on gender as opposed to sex as the driving force behind individual expression as well as humanity's progress as a whole.

The misrepresentation of evolution today - whether by popular media or formal education - dates back to Charles Darwin's original 1859 treatise "On the Origin of Species." In his book, Darwin coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest" to explain not only variation among beaks in finches in the Galápagos Islands, but the overall strength of a species, including justifying misogynistic human behavioral patterns. Darwin's focus on survival and strength has fueled a further misrepresentation that evolution is purely physical, with no effect from social, cultural, or philosophical patterns.

With politics the way it is today, we cannot afford to misunderstand why we exist and how we may improve. By continuing to feed a "fratboy" approach to human progress at the expense of developing individual identity, we set the stage for our demise amid self-congratulatory high-fives. We may not witness the conclusion of the species, as it were, but certainly the dimming of Western culture.