Globalization and the Triumph of Darwin and Nietzsche

When Charles Darwin put forward his idea of the evolution of species through natural selection, many conservatives latched on the claim that humans evolved from apes and swore that Darwin was a liar because he contradicted the Bible. However, what is actually going on is that our world, especially in the time of globalization, is living by one of the important insights of Darwin, namely, that the strong survive while the weak perish. This idea is also known as the survival of the fittest. It is this insight that led Nietzsche to argue that morality is basically the will of the strong and that life is about strength rather than weakness. All pleas to the contrary notwithstanding, the structure of the modern world shouts that Darwin and Nietzsche have won because the world is actually structured according to their insights. In fact, the West has taken Darwin and Nietzsche far more seriously than Jesus Christ even though it is claimed that Christianity is important to contemporary Western civilization. Many of those who preach Christianity are actually the ones who live by the insight of Darwin and Nietzsche as they hoard much of the world's resources while the weak of the earth die of want. Whenever it is suggested that the world is not supposed to be structured in ways that make the rich richer and the poor poorer it is often those who believe that they are following Christ who take the side of Darwin and Nietzsche by shouting about socialism and suggesting, falsely, that wealth is a reward for hard work. Thus, today, both individual nations and the world as a whole are structured in a lopsided way where the strong, as Darwin and Nietzsche argued, are the ones who are flourishing while the weak perish. This is especially evident in the place of Africa in the modern world. While many in the West talk about Jesus, Jesus is actually losing the argument in the way people live. As one of my colleagues insightfully points out, we should listen to what people say but we should pay more careful attention to how they live because it is how they live, not what they say, that tells us what they believe. The hoarding of the world's wealth in the West to the detriment of the poor, especially the poor of Africa, is a telling sign of the triumph of Darwin and Nietzsche.