According to the idea of Social Darwinism who would the Lion be? And the giraffes? What happens to the 'unfit?' Can a giraffe ever hope to beat the lion? What do the trees think?
When Science meets History: Consider this case of 'survival of the fittest' in the Florida Everglades. Talk about your hostile takeovers!
As William Graham Sumner, the father of social Darwinism in America, put it in the 1880s: "Civilization has a simple choice." It's either "liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest" or "not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members."
Social Darwinism offered a moral justification for the wild inequities and social cruelties of the late nineteenth century. It allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim the fortune he accumulated through his giant Standard Oil Trust was "merely a survival of the fittest... the working out of a law of nature and of God."
What would it be like to be eaten by a boa constrictor?
Do Boa Constrictor's feel guilty for who they eat?
Should the rich 'eat' the poor?
What was Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal?
The social Darwinism of that era also undermined all efforts to build a more broadly based prosperity and rescue our democracy from the tight grip of a very few at the top. It was used by the privileged and powerful to convince everyone else that government shouldn't do much of anything.
Do the rich have a responsibility to help the poor?
What does wealth inequality sound like?
Why does it matter? Why should the 'lion's' care about the 'trees?'
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