Philosopher Will Durant fundamentally wrong on Human Nature

This quoted below of philosopher Will Durant is ghastly wrong , social Darwinism. Worse than anything Darwin said

. However, See Antoinette Blackwell’s world historic critique of Darwin’s error ( which was lesser than Durant’s). Cooperation and balance , not intra-species competition and savage rivalry as in war between members of the same species Homo sapiens, were the reason human population grew so compared to other animal population, that is were more fit in the Darwinian sense of fit. The Darwinian test of fitness is population growth or shrinking toward extinction.

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/our-mother-nature-antoinette-blackwell.html

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/09/survival-of-nice-and-fertile.html

“ Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life— peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation is real, and increases with social development, but mostly because it is a tool and form of competition; we co-operate in our group— our family, community, club, church, party, “race,” or nation— in order to strengthen our group in its competition with other groups. Competing groups have the qualities of competing individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, partisanship, pride. Our states, being ourselves multiplied, are what we are; they write our natures in bolder type, and do our good and evil on an elephantine scale. We are acquisitive, greedy, and pugnacious because our blood remembers millenniums through which our forebears had to chase and fight and kill in order to survive, and had to eat to their gastric capacity for fear they should not soon capture another feast. War is a nation’s way of eating. It promotes co-operation because it is the ultimate form of competition. Until our states become members of a large and effectively protective group they will continue to act like individuals and families in the hunting stage.

History |

Reading Time: 4 minutes Will and Ariel Durant: The Three Lessons of Biological History [quote]Human history is a fragment of biological history. If we are to learn enduring lessons it is best to go back in time.[/quote] Our view of the world is fairly shallow. We look backward but rarely to a time before we were born let alone the 5,000 years of recorded human history. Organic systems, on the other hand, are about 3.5 billions years in age and offer an even more statistically relevant dataset. So, if we are to look for lessons, the organic systems bucket seems like fertile ground. Lessons of Biological History Will and Ariel Durant, writing in the amazing Lessons of History, say “all of the achievements of man fall humbly into the history of polymorphous life.” They continue:

[A]ll our economic competition, our strife for mates, our hunger and love and grief and war, are akin to the seeking, mating, striving, and suffering that hide under these fallen trees or leaves, or in the waters, or on the boughs. Therefore the laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history. We are subject to the processes and trials of evolution, to the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest to survive.

If we escape these trials it’s because our group, which meets the tests of survival itself, protects us. The Durants offer three biological lessons of history. 1. Life is Competition Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life— peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation is real, and increases with social development, but mostly because it is a tool and form of competition; we co-operate in our group— our family, community, club, church, party, “race,” or nation— in order to strengthen our group in its competition with other groups. Competing groups have the qualities of competing individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, partisanship, pride. Our states, being ourselves multiplied, are what we are; they write our natures in bolder type, and do our good and evil on an elephantine scale. We are acquisitive, greedy, and pugnacious because our blood remembers millenniums through which our forebears had to chase and fight and kill in order to survive, and had to eat to their gastric capacity for fear they should not soon capture another feast. War is a nation’s way of eating. It promotes co-operation because it is the ultimate form of competition. Until our states become members of a large and effectively protective group they will continue to act like individuals and families in the hunting stage.

2. Life is Selection In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail. In the struggle for existence some individuals are better equipped than others to meet the tests of survival. … Nature loves difference as the necessary material of selection and evolution; identical twins differ in a hundred ways, and no two peas are alike.

Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization. Hereditary inequalities breed social and artificial inequalities; every invention or discovery is made or seized by the exceptional individual, and make