[Marxism] Re: the clitoris-orgasm t thread

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A friend of mine, now deceased (oops, wasn't "fit" enough) once
described natural selection as "not the survival of the fittest but the
survival of the survivalest," that is, the survival of that which
survives.  I've always thought that was an insight.  (He was a close
student of biology but not a pro.)

Mutation that is useful affects survival, but survival can also be more
or less accidental as well. Mutations come on genes that carry other
characteristics that are not only irrelevant but even negative from a
survival point of view. But negative mutations can survive simply
because, well, it just so happens that they survive.  Natural selection
is not biological justice.

"The survival of the fittest" is at best a tendency, not a teleological
guarantee that everything tends toward more and more effective
adaptation at all times.

I'm not a pro either, but I find the tortured attempts to prove that
human beings are basically mechanisms geared toward flawless "survival"
-- the production, among the survivors (also known, by an irrelevant
analogy, as the most prosperous) of ever more perfect young through the
matings of perfect male accumulators and the babes who are born to seek
them out.


This is of course a totally nonprofessional opinion (even less so than
that of my late friend).


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