PARASITIC GOAL

David Starkey’s excellent analogy is perhaps more fitting than he imagines

— if you define woke thinking as a short-cut to a goal (“Woke: the oldest profession”, Dec/Jan).

As a biologist, I observe such short-cuts operating throughout the natural world. Typically, the attempt by one organism to out-compete another involves a variety of ingenious short-cuts which actually boost the efficiency and survivability of both. This is called adaptation. Over evolutionary time, short-cuts have given rise to the unique adaptability that is the core of human free-will and inventiveness.

But some species have indulged in more radical short-cuts, leading eventually to the loss of independence once possessed by their free-living ancestors. Instead of maintaining energy autonomy, they have become adept at “taxing” the metabolic work of another life-form. They have become parasitical — living in, or on, a free-living organism.

The new breed of utopian know-all, with their woke short-cuts to moral superiority, like their antecedents throughout history, are ever and always dependent on those who do the real thinking — and the real work. C. M. Wheeler McNulty

Oxhey, Herts.