Who is ‘fit’ to survive?

Sometimes, in the dark of the night, the radio is my companion — Emily is busy sleeping, although a later discussion triggered this column.

The CBC, in its latest attempt to keep me awake, scheduled the replay of “Ideas” for 4 a.m. Recently I heard the fragment of an interview with several scientists. They were asked what they considered to be the most important discovery in scientific history. All the ones that I heard answered, “Darwin’s; the survival of the fittest.”

Darwin’s simple sentence affirms evolution and the method through which is takes place. In the long course of the history of our universe from a tiny ball of energy to what it now is, evolution has been the name of the game. The energy compressed into that tiny ball burst forth and formed ever more complex ways of being, coming together and interacting. Elements were formed, stars were formed, galaxies came into being, including our solar system and planet Earth.

Evolution is not a neatly ordered progression from one stage to the next. Usually the old must die before the new is born. The old, dying, star becomes a super nova, bursting forth and spreading its energy into the vastness of space. But then it reforms into a new constellation, and the universe carries on, enlarged and refined.

When life appears — a magic moment in a universe ever pushing on — evolution takes on a whole new dimension. A fundamental feature of life is its ability to reproduce itself. But the next generation of any particular species is not exactly like the old. There will be mutations. Something new is added. The new form may be helpful to survival, or it may not. If it is helpful it survives, if it is not, it dies. It is the slightly new form that best adapts to its environment that survives and flourishes. It is the fittest that carries on.

When we get into the human realm, the big question that confronts us is, “what is the fittest for our time and situation?” With all the complexities of our psychic and social lives, this is not easy to answer. For eons humans formed into tribes in order to survive. When they became more numerous, and food was harder to find, competition became the route to survival. The group with the most numbers and the best weapons survived.

The great challenge facing humanity now is to adapt to our changing environment. Our attitude must shift from misusing and abusing the Earth to living as one with it. This requires a major leap in mature consciousness, but along with some setbacks, we are making progress. Who knows whether it will be enough.

Great change is also happening in our social environment. We have moved from a fragmented world to one world. Science and technology have brought us into the global village. With instant communication and easy travel we can no longer live in isolation from the various cultures of the world.

Again, this is a major shift in our attitude and approach. As the cultures of the world meet and mix an enormous amount of understanding, compassion, and acceptance is required. That, however, is what is necessary in our present environment. Those who can make the leap are the ones that will make the future possible.

We must start with the everyday relationships of our lives. In our homes, our communities, our work places, our nations, do we gossip, play power games, scapegoat and do things that separate us from one another? The fittest will be those who “do justice, love compassion, and walk humbly.” They will have the maturity to accept one another, work out differences in an open way, and do those things that build up community, and ultimately one world.

Religion, like everything else, evolves. As we move into the reality of one world we discover that no one religion has the only truth. Religions now frequently borrow rituals and truths from one another. We are also aware of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s comment that “we are moving toward a time of no religion at all.” We need, and are evolving, a story or fundamental truth that can draw in both the secular and religious people.

We have all come from the earth and are bound together in our common humanity.

You belong to the earth. You belong to the family of humanity. To know this and live this will make us fit to survive.