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Survival of the Fittest-& Social Darwinism

9/25/2020 3:40:03 PM

  All Aboard

 Though the super wealthy may not be biologically the fittest, they certainly know how to  survive

and have fun without rubbing elbows with 4,800 fellow travelers on a modern cruise ship.

Survival of the Fittest and Social Darwinism

  Trying times make me think of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the ways people warp his writings to justify political, social, and economic agendas. Biologists who look at Coronavirus before effective treatment or preventive options, find the fittest depends on two phases of a patient’s immune response. The first occurs when the virus first attacks the body and immune cells gather at the site of the infection to destroy it. The second phase begins when regulatory cells suppress the inflammation to allow the infected tissues to heal. A deficiency in the first phase causes uncontrolled growth in the infection. A defect in the second phase can trigger massive inflammation, like pneumonia, that damages tissue and can cause death. Thankfully, the majority of people recover from coronavirus infections. 

  Biologically, the fittest are those with a normal phase 1 response that clears the infection and keeps it from spreading in the lungs and a strong phase 2 response that prevents excessive inflammation. But survival in the United States does not depend entirely on the biology that allows the best adapted plants and animals to reproduce and transfer their genes to the next generation. Darwin’s theory of natural selection was developed to explain diversity and why different species of plants and animals evolve. He did not take into account social issues like wealth, healthcare or education. 

  When examining Covid-19 to see why people survive, we have to consider factors besides Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Access to health care, being educated enough to understand epidemiologists and cautious enough to wear masks are survival mechanisms based, in part, on political leanings, economics and education. Having enough money not to not worry about rent or food during a pandemic is a luxury for wealthy people, but also those receiving social security, medicare and medicaid. There are many nuances as to why individual people survive pandemics, and we have to be careful not to twist the theory of evolution for political benefit as was done in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

  Social Darwinism, advocated by Herbert Spencer and others, promoted a belief that powerful people are innately better. It was used to justify imperialism, racism, eugenics and social inequality by saying that the fit inherit qualities like industriousness and the ability to accrue wealth, while the unfit are innately lazy and stupid. Spencer preached that people could genetically pass on learned qualities like frugality and morality on to their children. Unfortunately, I see vestiges of Spencer's thinking in our country today. 

  Social Darwinism forms a basis for unrestrained capitalism, calling for businesses to operate without government oversight. It opposes laws that help workers, the poor, and those who are infirm, believing they are unfit and that their extinction should not be delayed. Social Darwinists believe that individual competition for property and social status are justified tools for eliminating those who are weak and whom they judge to be immoral. 

  In the mid-1900s, some went so far as to support Eugenics. Adulf Hitler, a most notorious example, was inspired by California’s forced sterilizations of the “feeble-minded.” His call for a German master race was based on believing he could develop a pure gene pool. Hitler’s cries were similar to those of white supremacists who walk our nation’s streets spouting that white people are superior to those of other races and therefor should dominate them. White supremacy was at the heart of the defense of slavery and justified segregation. 

  According to Simon Clark of the Center for American Progress, Steven Miller, an ideologically extreme Trump advisor, began working for him before the 2016 presidential election. He promotes “the ‘great replacement' theory, fears of white genocide through immigration, race science, and eugenics; he also linked immigrants with crime, glorified the Confederacy, and promoted the genocidal book, The Camp of the Saints, as a roadmap for U.S. policy.”

  Unfortunately, the numbers of supremacists are growing. This week, in Portland, The Proud Boys, a hate group identified by the Southern Poverty Law center, was turned down due to Coronavirus concerns when they requested a permit for 10,000 people to assemble. The mayor’s order was ignored.

  Added to the way supremacists think are the evangelical believers who anoint wealthy and powerful individuals, though immoral or criminal, as chosen by God. By selling their soul to power they are rewarded with attacks on reproductive rights and freedoms for LBGTQ+ people, and the appointment of scores of conservative judges. Kept in line through promises of salvation in the coming Armageddon, they little imagine the master race they are setting up to survive on earth without them.

  The two groups stoke a dangerous situation that belittles ninety percent of humanity. Despite the fact that our country fought for independence against the divine right of kings and we fought world wars against Social Darwinism, many people bend to the rich and powerful who step on their backs.  

  Most people who support the extreme right movement are not concerned that minority populations have a disproportionate number of coronavirus victims. They find ways to avoid paying taxes so they won’t have to underwrite healthcare, childcare or a living wages for all. They are not interested in feeding the poor, caring for the homeless or those who escaped life with addiction. They pass laws to drill for oil in wildlife areas and eliminate EPA regulations. 

  Because of global warming, millions of people in the United States will be forced to migrate over the next fifty years. They will lose their jobs, starve, experience a decline in the quality of the environment and become ill while top one percent of the nation will remain secure in gated, air purified communities. The super wealthy will travel in private jets and enjoy vacations on luxury yachts where they don’t have to rub elbows with 4,800 middle class passengers packed onto cruise ships. They may not be biologically the fittest, but they certainly know how to survive. 

Travel By Yacht

Mar-A-Lago

  Home in Portland, Oregon

References:

  Editors (2018) Social Darwinism. History.Com. retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/social-darwinism

Nagarkatti,P & naugarkatti, M. (2020) What does ‘survival of the fittest’ mean in the coronavirus pandemic? Look to the immune system. University of South Carolina. retrieved from https://www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2020/05 coronavirus_immune_system.php#.X2l2Dy9h2S4

Lustgarten, A. (2020) How Climate Migration with reshape America. New York Times magazine, retrieved from CLIMATE. 

Unparalleled privilege: Why white evangelicals see Trump as their savior. The Guardian, retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/11/donald-trump-evangelical-christians-cyrus-king

Clark, S. (2020) How White Supremacy Returned to Mainstream Politics. Center for American Progress. retrieved from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2020/07/01/482414/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/

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Dedication

9/23/2020 2:26:40 PM

Birch Trees

Summer of Protests

9/12/2020 12:48:08 PM

When the pandemic began, I wrote letters to two African American children I befriended who call me Grandma. Over the summer I spent Thursday afternoons with them engaged in science and art projects. I taught them how to be cheer leaders and to play soccer. Great fun, though the protests hung over their heads and they were afraid their parents would be harmed. Following is a letter I wrote to explain the history of Black Americans in the United States. 

#17

Dear Hanan and Mirna,

Over the summer you watched a very scary uprising that started when George Flyod was killed by police. People marched in the streets shouting, “Black Lives Matter.” This was not the first time protests occurred in this country. I’ll tell you what happened years ago.

Life Rolls with Hope

Can you guess what this picture is about? The man on the right side walks under a rainstorm of tears. He holds an umbrella to protect his wife from getting rained on by sad and mean things that make them cry. The little girl behind the dog is happy as she walks in the sun. She carries yellow flowers bringing hope for a better future. That is what protests are about. People coming together in marches to ask the country to be kind and fair to everyone.

  When I was in elementary school, I learned that men and women who were captured in West Africa were sold as slaves to work on cotton plantations and in their owner's homes. It was a sad part of history, for there were a lot of people sold into slavery, though not everyone thought it was a good thing to do. Differences in what people thought about slavery brought about a Civil War. That is a war where people in the same country fight with each other. In this case, states in the North fought against eight slave states in the South that wanted to break away from the United States to become a new country called the The Confederate States of America. Millions of people died or were injured by the fighting and the South was left in ruins. 

  Everyone knows that the North won, the country stayed united, and the constitution was changed to free the slaves and make them citizens. The Civil War ended in 1865, over one hundred years ago, before I was born. But prejudice and privilege do not die easily, so problems remained. 

  Most people in the South didn't like the new laws. They stayed angry at the North. Though they lost the war they let the Confederate flag continue to fly over their buildings. They didn't want freed slaves voting, competing for jobs, living next door, or going to go to school with their kids. They made laws that sent Black and white children to different schools. They used different bathrooms, drank from different water fountains, and shopped in separate stores. Southerners made it difficult for freed slaves to vote. Many fled the South and went to cities in the North where they thought life would be better.

  Seventy years ago, we called people who came from Africa "colored people" or "Negros" not Black, Brown, African American or People of color. There was one colored girl in my elementary school class who lived in a segregated (that means separated) part of the city not far from my house. I lived in an all white neighborhood where busses arrived in the morning full of colored women coming to work for white families. They took care of their children, cooked and cleaned their houses. 

  Our family's maid was a woman name Ruth who worked for my parents until she was very old. Ruth became a good friend of my mother's, though they never went out together and Ruth was always considered a servant. The men mostly worked in factories, the post office, and did odd handyman jobs. Ruth's husband sometimes cut our lawn and painted the house.

  My mother didn't let me to play with colored children. I was friends with a girl who lived a few blocks away and sometimes went to her house to play with our dolls. But, when my mother found out, I was stopped from going there. Though I was only eight, I became angry at her and hurt for I knew what she did was not right. My father never said a bad word against the colored people he treated in his medical office. When white people left the neighborhood and only colored people moved in, he stayed, unlike other white doctors who moved away.

  By the time I was in my twenties, a man named Martin Luther King organized peaceful protests against "Jim Crow Laws" that started after slavery was abolished. Jim Crow wasn't a real man. He was invented by a white actor, a minstrel who painted his face black and pretended he was a dum, clumsy slave who jumped and sang to his master's commands. His jokes made fun of colored people and the name Jim Crow stuck in people's mind. They started using it when they talked about laws that were unfair to colored people. Northerners and a few southerners did not like the way they were being treated.

  Changes occurred in 1955 when the Supreme Court told states to integrate their schools. More than half the people in the North thought it was the right thing to do, but only 13 percent in the South, which isn't many, agreed. Southerners did everything they could to keep schools segregated. Courageous colored students in the South who registered at white schools and universities were met by mobs. It took a lot more protesting to bring about change. 

  The states were told to get rid of segregated schools when the Supreme Court passed a ruling in 1968. To hurry the process along, the court told the states to bus children from one neighborhood to another to mix the races. By 1988, forty-five percent of African American students in the United States were going to a majority-white school.

  A friend told me that when he was bussed in fifth grade a white third grade girl swiped her hand over his face to see if his color rubbed off. He pushed her away, causing the girl's older brother to start a fight that ended in both boys being suspended. That was not a good first day at a new school. My friend and his buddies thought the white boys they met in school were strange.

  While schools were being desegregated, people also protested to rid the country of Jim Crow Laws. In 1968, over 250,000 activists marched on Washington to ask for civil rights legislation. The nation tuned in to hear Martin Luther King's speak of a dream for a better America. Though the marches he led were peaceful, there were also riots and shootings like the ones we saw on the news this summer. Some of those people simply wanted to break into stores to steal things. It took courageous people willing to speak out and go to jail for what was right to make a change. Rosa Parks wouldn't give up her bus seat to a white man and was arrested. She started a bus boycott that went on for a year. Four college students in North Carolina sat at a white only Woolworth lunch counter waiting to be served, and seven Black and six white Freedom Riders went on a tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. 

  Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who lead the Nation of Islam and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, were killed in the fight for freedom. White and Black people fought side by side for change. My friends went south on Freedom Rides to protest unfair laws. I didn't go because I had a new baby. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was finally passed it said that people couldn't be turned away from jobs because of race, color, sex, religion or country of origin.

  I remember being given a reading test the first time I signed up to vote, but the Civil Rights Voting Act of 1965 put an end to reading requirements. Three years later the Fair Housing Act became a law giving everyone an equal right to housing. The way we spoke about colored people changed. Instead of saying colored and Negro, we started saying Black, African American and People of color.

  Not everyone liked the change. Ruth, the woman who helped raise me, grabbed me one day to make me look at her arm. "Is that black?" she demanded. "I'm not black. My skin is brown. I'm colored. You're white." Boy was she angry. She didn't like being called African American or Black any more than I want to be called English, Lithuanian American or White. She was American through and through.

  See, my grandchildren, good things happen when a lot of people speak up. When people sit back and are silent it is possible to go backwards. Now that busing is not required, children are again being sent to neighborhood schools that are not equally good. Since colleges no longer push to diversify, students of different races don't get to meet and know each other. Public schools are more segregated now than they were in 1988. And though many white people didn't realize how badly people of color were treated by the police until George Floyd's death was caught on camera, they finally woke up.

  You girls should feel proud at witnessing streets filled with people standing side by side to protest Black lives matter. I wanted to take you to a march so you could see how many people care about making things right. I didn't because of the Coronavirus pandemic, thinking it better not to be in a crowd. But try to remember these times. You will benefit because the protests will make the country more inclusive. 

  Police departments are already changing the way they interact with people. They are getting trained in how not to be racist and how to help people who are mentally ill. Organizations and clubs are changing policies so they will have a more diverse membership. Businesses are looking at how they hire and making plans to employ more people of color. Good things will come as a result of the ugly things you are watching on television, and one day you will tell your grandchildren about them.

  Many African Americans came to the United States after slavery was abolished. Your parents are from ancient people who had Ethiopian and Somalia ancestors who were never slaves. They lived in families that cared for their children but had to leave when it was hard to earn enough money to live and because there was tribal fighting in Somalia.

  Though you were born here after slavery, because of the color of your skin, you are lumped together with descendants of slaves. Unfortunately, they grew up with problems that are different from yours. Their great grandparents were often misused and separated from each other and they watched their children being sold into slavery. They don't know what country their ancestors came from and they were told that because they were captured, became slaves , and didn't go to school, that they weren't smart. That is very mean and also not true.

  Prejudice is wrong, so don't pay attention to people who bully and say bad things because of the color of your skin. Hold your head high and be proud of who you are and where you come from. Think about where you are heading. It is up to you to become what you want to be. Your future will depend on how much you study or train, how willing you are to work hard for what you want, and if you are a kind, good person. You can be president. You can fly to outer space, be a doctor here on earth, or become a world famous chef. You can marry whoever you want and live wherever you can afford to live. You have the right to be you and to be loved for who you are-the best girls in the world

Much love,

Grandma

References:

Teaching Tolerance editors (2004) Teaching Tolerance. Brown vs. Board of Education Time Line of School Integration in the U.S. . retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2004/brown-v-board-timeline-of-school-integration-in-the-us

History. com editors (2020) Civil rights Movement time Line. History. retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement/civil-rights-movement-timeline

History .com editors (2020)Civil War. History. retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/american-civil-war-history 

Art is always for sale. Life roles with hope is 20" by 16"/ acrylic on canvas/ $325. For information contact me at [email protected]

Propelled through a Pandemic

9/5/2020 11:02:04 PM

 PERSONAL SPACE

Though it is not what we wished for, we were propelled through a pandemic that provided us with the gift of time. It is a gift that puts us alone with our thoughts, letting us contemplate about our past and the world around us. Are yours comforting, frightening, insightful? Since most days pass less frantically, we have the time to get to know ourselves better. Are you pleased with what you've discovered about yourself? Are you satisfied with your life. Do you look forward to seeing what the future will bring and how you will adapt to it?

  Saying hello to yourself can be an enlightening if somewhat conflicting experience. It means coming face to face with the many things that define you? There will be parts you are happy to acknowledge and celebrate and hidden parts you wish would stay buried. As you dig deeper to find the essence of your being, it's human to ask if you like what you find. Once you accept what who you are, you can lay plans to bring about the tomorrow you crave.

In June, as the weather warmed,  people looked forward to summer with hopes that strands of virus would fly away like kites do in the wind. We were surprised when we realized that Coronavirus had thoughts of its own. Though most of my friends managed just fine, they were tired of communicating through ZOOM and ached to hug  family and friends. Everyone I knew wanted the pandemic to end.

 But it didn't. So, we had to adjust and get into a rhythm that would last for many more months. Some occupied themselves by gardening, writing or painting. More energetic neighbors repaired roofs, painted walls, cleaned drains, and fixed broken windows. Those who were sports minded took long runs, bicycle rides, and hikes through the woods. People slowed down, relaxed, finding beauty in nature and peacefulness in silence.

In the midst of adjusting, a loud blast started a fire burning in our hearts. We felt the injustice of a country that treats people unfairly. We saw images of hungry citizens standing for hours in food lines and passed homeless tents that seemed to doubled in numbers. The sights were ones we had  relegated to the Great Depression. Gun shots, lies, divisiveness, and news clips of police brutality kept us awake at night. As we watched buildings looted and set aflame the future no longer seemed beautiful and hopeful. We saw downtown streets shuttered and abandoned while citizens cried out to be heard. I felt bleak and drained. You told me you felt sad and miserable. Those raised to think the world was getting better cried tears in empathy and distress. 

But, though I was disturbed, I experimented with a new style of painting, finished writing my third book and am engaged in science and art projects with two immigrant children who call me grandma. Despite wearing masks, I enjoy having neighbors visit me on my front porch and am pleased that I've gotten to know them better. Solitary walks in the forest give me time to think and decide what I am going to do and write about tomorrow. There is so much I want to accomplish.

  The seeds of change being planted throughout the nation bode well for the future. Discussions and legislation is moving forward to reform community policing. There is heightened recognition that additional resources are needed provide social and health services for the mentally ill and physically addicted. Organizations and clubs started making changes to increase racial diversity among members. Several people stopped their cars at dusk to offer assistance to an African-American friend of mine whose bicycle tire was flat. Before they would have given him wide berth.

  Social media sites have acknowledged the damage that happens when lies and falsehoods are spread for political gain and are doing something about it. High schools are teaching students to fact check and question what they read in texts and on twitter, instagram, and Facebook. With so many lies it is hard to know what to believe. They tell their students that it is up to them to delve into what they read and find the truth. They have the time.

  No longer silent, people  spoke out when the postal service was undermined by those who want to privatize the post office and create distrust in the results of next election. Health professionals learned to spread their reach by communicating to patients online. And, electric cars are being purchased in record numbers despite oil companies getting access to drill in the Arctic. Oil is on the way out. Young people are participating in politics and are active in the environmental movement. Though last week, the EPA reduced air pollution requirements to make it easier for coal plants to operate, I don't think people will let it slide through without a fight. Coal is on the way out.

  Yes, we will get through this pandemic and one day it will recede to the back of our minds like a dream, but not without change. New jobs will be created for those who  continue to work from home. With fewer cars on the road I imagine road rage and pollution will decrease. 

  People learn to adapt to change or perish. It is not alway easy, but eventually they start to look beyond today and reimagine their future. As you get know yourself better and consider what you want next in life, use the blank canvas the pandemic provides to create opportunity and have a sunny thoughts.  Sequestered, with no one to tell you what to think or do, there is much to decide.

YOU DECIDE