by Naresh Jotwani

We often hear the phrase survival of the fittest, when it is used with reference to evolving natural eco-systems. However, for two reasons, this usage can mislead. One reason is that survival may be wrongly taken to mean the survival of an individual, whereas its correct meaning is the survival of a species. The second reason is that the central, crucial criterion of fitness is left unspecified in that phrase.

If these two potential errors are avoided, the phrase survival of the fittest can be understood clearly, and it then throws light on our relationship with nature. This is what we shall attempt to do in this short essay.

To avoid the first error, we must focus our attention on the species rather than an individual member of a species. In terms of human societies, this means that attention must be paid to the overall health of communities – and not merely, for example, to the financial health of a few zillionaires.

The second potential error requires more effort to understand and avoid. We need a natural definition of fitness – one which is consistent with the natural processes of birth, nurture, growth, decay and death. Indeed, since these processes capture the true and essential meaning of life, we need a criterion of fitness which is consistent with all of life.

To understand this point, let us think about how life first got going on this wonderful planet of ours.

If the earliest single-celled organisms had not been extremely fit in a biological sense, the advent of life on this planet would have been short-lived. Even today – some four billion years after their emergence on earth – single-celled organisms are doing very well. In their ability to adapt and to reproduce, these organisms are truly unmatched.

As proof of that statement, we may consider the emergence of varieties of drug-resistant bacteria in hospitals around the world. In a Petri dish, bacteria go through a cell division cycle in about half an hour. Every such cycle is an opportunity to adapt. Homo sapiens are left far, far behind!

The fitness that these micro-organisms have demonstrated for so long – and continue to do so today – is nothing but the ability to make economic use of available resources of sustenance. When amoeba are placed in a Petri dish containing a sugar solution of varying concentration, the amoeba move towards regions of higher sugar concentration. That organism finds it easier to survive and grow where the sugar concentration is higher; reproduction follows as a natural consequence. That is an example of economic use of available resources of sustenance.

In general, smaller and therefore less specialized species are economically fitter than larger and more specialized species; termites are economically fitter than buffaloes, for example. A similar argument applies also to species of algae, plants, fish, insects … and so on. Plants are economically fitter than animals because they make direct use of sunlight and water. Plant seeds are much more durable than animal eggs, and one plant produces far more seed than a single animal produces offspring.

Thus the criterion of economic fitness is seen to hold true in nature, and it has held true for four billion years. Indeed, Homo sapiens emerged only because their evolutionary ancestors were economically fit in that sense.

Ostensibly, the criterion of biological fitness has driven the process. But biological fitness is also economic fitness, in the sense of efficient use of life-sustaining resources. Any lack of economic efficiency is punished, either directly by forces of nature, or indirectly by competing species – or even competing individuals of the same species.

The natural evolutionary process as outlined here prevailed on earth for billions of years – until about a hundred thousand years ago and the emergence of Homo sapiens.

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Today the dominant species on the planet is ours, Homo sapiens. The actions of this species are having a major impact on our biosphere, and our harmony with nature has been disturbed – at our own peril.

The entire ecology of planet earth has become affected to a large degree by the economic activity of Homo sapiens. But the natural criterion of biological fitness continues to apply to lower organisms which live under the radar of human economic activity. These lower organisms continue to adapt naturally to human-moderated eco-systems. Being less specialized, they are biologically fitter than humans. Indeed, throughout the period of evolution, it has probably never been the case that the dominant large species have also been biologically the fittest ones. When dinosaurs went extinct, the far smaller and more adaptable species of plants and animals survived.

With that perspective, let us take a look at the so-called ‘modern civilization’.

By adopting fashionable but heavily protected lifestyles, Homo sapiens have created conditions which diminish their own biological fitness. However, as noted, biological fitness must also be economic fitness. If a person spends, for example, five million dollars a year to live in a luxurious and protected environment, then from the point of view of biological fitness that is an enormous waste of resources.

From this perspective, recent economic theories are seen to be the pathetic works of limited human intellect failing to understand living economics – the economics of Mother Nature. We may say that a few millennia of greed and ego – usually disguised in terms of race, religion and civilization – is going against the grain of four billion years of natural economics, or living economics, which has worked so successfully.

One imagines arrogant Victorian era gentlemen, puffed up with easy loot from colonies. In their supreme arrogance, they announced their ideal of ‘conquest over nature’. A couple of hundred years later, it appears that the conquest will be illusory and short-lived – as long as the far deadlier and demonic forces of ego, greed and lust remain unconquered.

The economics of death, powered by ego, greed and lust, is implacably pitted against the economics of living nature. It is not very difficult to foresee the outcome. Given that enormous amounts of greed and pride have been driving the economics of death, we can foresee that all that misdirected energy must erupt and exhaust itself before a semblance of sanity is restored.

On planet earth, humans are totally unmatched in their propensity for going mad through ego, greed and lust. But the choice to live in harmony with nature is now forced upon us. No amount of scholastic bombast, from so-called top universities or self-styled experts, can alter this reality.

People do not get this point because they are themselves captivated by the glamorous lives of the rich and famous. In truth, from the point of view of living economics, such lives are hugely wasteful. On assumes that the captivation of the multitude is rooted in their own longing for glamour, wealth, fame … et cetera. But such lives and such longing do create both inner disharmony and disharmony with nature.

Suppose X claims proudly that his ‘net worth’ is a zillion dollars, while Y admits with lowered face that his ‘net worth’ is only ten thousand dollars. Imagine that X and Y are walking through a forest, rich in flora and fauna, with Y dutifully playing the fawning lackey to X.

Does any living being in the forest give a hoot about their so-called ‘net worth’, or about the difference in social and business standing between X and Y? These concepts of ‘net worth’, social standing, business standing … blah blah blah … have been invented by mankind to clothe its own ugly disharmony.

If harmony is the true goal, then harmony must be the only yardstick. Dollars, whether a zillion or a thousand, do not have role in such important matters.

In his essay (here) Jayram Daya wrote about an individual’s harmony of mind, body and spirit. We call this the inner harmony of an individual. At this point, one may stick one’s neck out and assert that harmony with nature – or outer harmony – is not possible without attaining inner harmony. Conversely, attaining harmony with nature enhances one’s inner harmony.

A clear conclusion seems to emerge, that disharmony is the root cause of all the turmoil and environmental degradation that we see on this beautiful planet.