Genetics, Darwinism and Mental Health
It’s funny how when using evolutionary terminology our circumstances dictate our usage, when people are justifying their higher salary in a competitive world they invoke ‘survival of the fittest’ as their economic justification. Two asides here, the first a question, are those who claim we live in a meritocracy just those who think their higher salary makes them better than those on lower salaries? If you merit your high salary then we must assume others do not. The second a note on the term ‘survival of the fittest’, in ‘Origin of the Species’ Darwin credits the invention of the term to his friend Herbert Spencer. This can be seen as a generous nod to his friend but can it also be seen as an attempt to distance himself from a term that is not quite right? Returning to the term’s use as justification for a self-belief in one’s superiority, we can see here it’s use as providence. I am right to be here, evolution justifies it, it has been determined in the fight to reproduce our genes.
However, when it used by the families of sufferers of people with mental health problems it becomes its opposite, an excuse, as in when one may be excused. An excuse in the form of an abdication of responsibility. My son/ daughter, sister/ brother is this way as an accident of genetics. If only for a twist of fate he/ she would be other than he/ she is. Genetics, Darwinism is here used not in the sense that every new organism is a mutation, no ideal types, or if there is it is in the lack, but simple accident and failure to adapt to a world not of their making. The passive side of evolution. Here the mutations are not improvements that make one superior, but ones that exclude us from a world to which the mutation is the Other.
In either sense we need not take responsibility, either for exploiting others nor for making someone ill.
How can we say that either use is not ideological, other than with that same denial.
