The Month of The “Hungriness” Monkey Ghost – A Cautionary Tale in Misguided Social Darwinism

Lately, have you noticed everyone from the NTUC auntie to ministers seems to be advancing the idea we need to work twice as hard and smart if we want to remain on the top of the heap?

What’s really behind the logic that accounts for the gilded cage of the hamster wheel? How sustainable is this idea whole of ceaseless competition? At what point do our hearts and sinew give out in this frenetic race? What really accounts for it’s underpinning as a school of thought?

The cost of ceaseless competition is prohibitively high. Kids don’t play as much as they should. Instead they’re busy impersonating the glorious life of the battery chicken shuttling back and forth the regimen of perpetual tuition – relationships suffer, couples no longer spend quality time together anymore; worst they don’t even make love as much as struggle to met impossible deadlines.

If you really want to know what accounts for this disturbing trend of ceaseless competition. Look no further, it has everything to do with what I call the resurgent wave of Darwinism  aka law of the jungle, namely the law that accounts for the survival of the fittess.

In a nub the logic goes something like this in tadpole language;

“What doesn’t kill you, will eventually make you stronger.”

Policy makers are the worst culprits for peddling the snake oil of social Darwinism, they regularly tell us welfare or not culling scholars from a wide stock or stemming the influx of FT’s is in the long run bad, it’s no good. They say. And what’s so bad about it? In the long run, the lack of competition turns our backbone into jelly; instead of inuring us with added resilience, lack of competition would stymie progress; worst it breeds a dependence mentality and eventually our resolve melts away like camphor.

Granted all this talk about survival of the fittest seems innocuous enough. Besides who can possibly deny free and unfettered competition has always been a reliable producer of goodies. One doesn’t need to look very far for vindication to bear this out, just look at SPH and ask yourself why is it so like that? I can say no more. Even where I regularly chow, there happens to be 3 chicken rice vendors in a row and every time, one of them up’s the ante by offering something for free, the others follows suits – prognosis: I and probably you the consumer benefit directly from this competitive arms race.

But where social Darwinism becomes insidious and even dangerous is when policy makers begin to speak along anecdotal lines by extending the ambit of Darwinism beyond what it actually is viz-a-viz a rudimentary theory that attempts to provide explanations of natural phenomena as methodological principles based on the process of natural selection.

Here what may or may not work or what is or is not ideal is regularly oversimplified to account for the deeper workings of social phenomenon. Worst, it brackets further discussion into the cogent and salient.

Take one common misconception; the reason: why the Jews are maybe a trillion times smarter than our scholars? Because since time in memorial everyone from Pharoah to Adolf has been trying to do them in; so through the generations they have evolved a super duper hardy, adept and savvy helix to beat the odds – OK, next time, you turn the knob in the shower we are going to rig it so that yellow poison gas spews out instead of water. And just to leave no doubts, we are going to put you on the Auswitzh Birkenau diet of insects, twigs and mud cakes. And just to be triple sure; we’re even going to check you into Abu Ghraib prison where they will use your body as lego blocks to construct pyramids. After 30 days we’re going to give you an IQ test to see whether there’s any marked improvement in peak performance. How’s that?

Still a fundamentalist social Darwinist? What did you say? I beg your pardon?

The one that really takes the cake in the Darwanian claptrap has to be this – we need to create the conditions of resource scarcity where people actually feel the hunger to want to succeed; that way they will summon up their last reserves of will power and achieve the impossible – OK, if the bird flu pandemic hits Singapore and you happen to be rolled into the ICU in Tan Tock Seng – no Tamiflu for you. How’s that?

Instead we’ve arranged for a Nigerian foreign talent who also happens to moonlight as a voodoo witch door, you know the type that even Africans shoo away when they get their hands on real medicine.

Then all of us are going to put you in a big shimmering pot with some diced carrots and beat drums, dance, go Woooh Wah bad billabong la ya ba da ba do mumbo jamba. We even throw in a few magic Reiki crystals for color and flavoring to help summon up your indomitable spirit as you happily melt away. How’s dat?

Still a social Darwinist? Still want to name and shame me? Your mother you!

My point is simply this. What really disturbs me of late is how Darwinian models of natural selection have managed to leach into the narrative of politics, economics, sociology and education today. Its encroaching influence is so imperceptible these days; most of us don’t even register it’s rising at steady increments to permeate every feature of life from education to when we can get our CPF money.

Neither are the people who usually spout such unmitigated diatribe coy about it either. Whenever they extol no end the endless benefits of Darwinian self –flagellation. Fine if you abide by it. Unfortunately, it’s false to all human experience to find growth in unceasing dog bite dog pressure cooker gladitorial lifestyle. The dull truth is that’s a sort of pain one that’s even elevated to the level of psychological warfare – pain at the end of the day is just tautological.

The only thing suffering teaches us is that we are capable of suffering.

Besides Darwinism is hardly a complete disquisition. Here I am reminded like eugenics, it belongs to a dubious Mengelian stable hardly pedigree building blocks for any self respecting professional to even justify building a card house let alone premise a whole policy, guideline or idea on .

Granted no one denies mother nature is indeed a very clever architect. But she is by no means infallible (I am reminded of this every time I look at the mirror). In fact nature is rife with jerry-rigging that regularly shows it to be clumsy, inelegant and at times darn right deserving of the rubber Dodo Bird Award– for one our molars aren’t even designed to last beyond 40 years of age; even our fragile bodies cant seem to survive in any habitat without the need for clothes; our memories regularly fail us; and why after millennia of social evolution is our language still so vague and ambiguous? Don’t believe me, just cast your memory back to the last time a woman ripped your clothes off and do recall, she’s exclaiming, “No, no, no..” How do you explain that? Huh, huh – coming to think of it we don’t even have any control what happens below our beltline. It’s disconcerting when you know it just has a mind of its own. Nope far from being a beautiful machine. It’s remarkable that we humans can still be entrusted to land billion dollar space shuttles and manage intercontinental ballistic missiles and we haven’t yet gone the way of the dinosaurs.

One reason why Darwinian logic is so often bandied around these days like snake oil for revivifying the scholar system to inuring the ranks of the indolent with a ramrod work ethic is it simply a very effective way to stymie the counter narrative. For one it’s able to demystify very complex problems into monkey cue cards to account for the workings of phenomena.

That there are certainly lazy bums who do not want to seek employment even if it stares them straight in the face is given, that the welfare system may even be abused by this scalywag minority remains a palpable truth when one looks to Europe, but to deny wholesale in one Darwinian sweep that it’s no good – is to deny all anecdotal evidence it remains one the most reliable means to alleviate endemic poverty and to even redress social equalities to allow millions to lead fruitful and meaningful lives.

My main gripe is this. Darwinian theory is NOT a rational theory to flesh out historical, cultural, socialogical and political scenery anymore than Snow White and Seven dwarfs can be used for macro-economic planning; it’s at best finger painting and at worst a dereliction of duty on the part of professionals who simply don’t see the need to gain a deeper understanding with subject matter – they’re a best dangerous amatuers. 

What’s urgently required here is a sense of scale that puts everything in the right perspective, one which even suggest Darwinian thoughtware should never be a substitute for the anecdotal approach that can withstand the rigor of critical review.

Sure it can provide a historical vignette how chopsticks from China manage to find their way to Japan, but it cannot flesh out the detailed disquisition on why the belief systems of these two cultures are so diametrically apart – one needs to look at Ethnography for deeper answers.

It can certainly provide a jocular account of why the Jewish Menorah (candlestick) has nine-branches and not four or five, but it cannot account for how over 7 million Jews managed to settle on one of the most inhospitable slivers of land in the Mediterranean; the Jewish Diaspora can only be understood through the optic of middle east history.

Pressed harder it can even probably account for why the cloistered Sisters of Perpetual Hesitation (SPH) gingerly cut up their banana’s into small pieces before passing them with bated breathe into their mouth with a whispering hush. Stretched slightly further, it may even be able to explain why women of a certain free spirited ilk prefer gobble it down with two hands.

But it cannot explain why some people peel the skin, throw away the flesh only to use the inner skin to lubricate their bicycle chain like I do – only the director of the IMH and Dr Lee Wee Ling can explain that.

There lies the broken dreams of Darwinian theory as a reliable means of beaconing out the murk, it’s useless, no good, tak boleh pakai as our Northern cousins would say when they consider it good to boot.

And to see it been bandied around these days with impunity like some new mantra by people who are supposed to be cleverer is such a shame – if only they could really see for themselves how tragically shambolic they look and how utterly ridiculous they come across, it’s worth a least a few banana’s for the laughs – but I am not laughing. Today is a very sad day for me. As I realize for the very first time, I’ve never ever join them. You see the realization finally hit me like a diamond bullet, there’s nothing new that they can teach me that I can’t already learn from monkeys.

[This article was once written by Darkness, Harphoon, Scholarboy and Astroboy / posted in APICS and the reconstructed version, “It’s time to stop feeding the Monkeys” in the Intelligent Singaporean /  “Sun Wukong, the Secret Recipe of The Singaporean ‘Success’ Story” – posted in Bagua.com Hong Kong /

FILB ARTICLE COMMENTARY by Y2K:

Yes, I admit. I changed the title of this article to give it a zing. Recently, Philip Yeo was quoted as having said,

Make sure that our young people are hungry. If our young people are not hungry enough, bring in hungrier ones from overseas. Make them feel hungry, increase the hungr index.(Straits Times)

This article once written by the BP captures much of pathos with pursuing such a philosohy.

Though not specifically mentioned in this article, the premise of the authors contends rather forcefully: evolutionary theory based planning is based on a dead end logic and it should not be pursued mindlesssly– the crux derives in part from the red queen hubris which is widely known by game theory aficionados who often model it out to study the debilitating effects of ceaseless competition between players.

It’s well know that Darkness even developed many math theorems which not only debunked many myths of Competitive Darwinism i.e the law of the survival of the fittest, but even advances a less mechanistic approach.

Not only are many of the Darwinian based assumption questioned with lashings of barbed repartee’s. The authors even underscores a very serious kernel; Darwinism as a theory is no substitute for sound policy planning and reasoning. It should never be used indiscriminately without regard to deeper lines of enquiry.

 

 

 

This observation was explained in detailed in the IS version of this article, “It’s time to stop feeding the monkeys.” – but for some reason, in this version it was omitted.

The “red queen” is a phrase derived from Alice Through the Looking Glass. Where she keeps running: and yet she still cries out `Faster! Faster!’ Unknown to her, no matter how fast she runs, she can never out run what she’s running from ;as the game she is playing is really called ‘catch up.’

The metaphor is stark as it describes neatly one of the most serious flaws of evolutionary theory. It’s basically a mindless arms race where at the end of the day; there can be no winners – that’s because true to metaphor of the red queen phenomenon everything in nature eventually leads to extinction.

And the end of the road for continuous improvement will never lead to a perfect being as much as it guarantees an inexorable end.

In this article once written, the authors seem to be posing an almost philosophical question obliquely to the reader; if Darwinism leads ultimately to a dead end, then why are we even mimicking it? Isn’t it an imperfect philosophy? 

In the shadows they seem to be asking, shouldn’t other priorities such as happiness, quality time and even the right for children to play more be the real metrics of progress? – in one particular segment of the article, a comparative between a laissez-faire social system and the merits of the welfare state is discussed. Here the reader is led into the rabbits hole very much like the story Alice in Wonderland; we are asked indirectly; what’s the actual cost of pursuing pressure cooker pragmatism; no where else in the article does one find the Darwinism equated to pragmatism to such an extent, where the authors even beg the question; are we perhaps subconsciously pursuing a dogmatic as opposed to a reasoned approach?

In one section, the authors even suggest, Darwinism is a school of thought that operates just below the radar of our consciousness. They go on to say, “it’s reach is imperceptible hardly even noticeable.” Again this compels us all to ask whether; most of us have been mentally conditioned to accept this ”golden assumption,” without question the wisdom of perpetual and ceaseless competition? – where is all this taking us? Where is it leading too? Is it worth it to mind, spirit and well being to pursue such a strategy?

Using the central theme of the red queen as a crowbar, the authors seem almost to be prying indiscriminately some of our traditional iconology. We usually associate with the tried and tested ways of achieving organizational and personal success – the doctrine of ceaseless competition.

By juxtaposing the different social and political scenes along what they see as an “encroaching” and even “pervasive” logic i.e evolutionary competitive theory – in doing so they question the deeper meaning of not only how policies are typically profiled, but also how they are justified, mythologized and often legitimize in the name of the greater glory of survival of the fitness – Y2K

This article has been proudly reconstituted by the FILB (Free Internet Library Board based in Primus Aldentes Prime) Please note the BP has currently stopped all publications due to the Writer’s Guild Boycott – The Brotherhood Press 2008