Aristotle, it seems, got it right. Politics may have played a key role in human evolution as the classic primate pattern of male dominance hierarchies shifted to a pattern of consensual leadership for common goals and collective action.
Category Evolution
In the 21st century our ethical systems must, at one and the same time, weed out the dandelions and fight the aphids, and snails, and voles while simultaneously planting, fertilizing, watering, pruning, and harvesting the plants upon which we have come to depend for our very sustenance
We are, in fact, an evolutionary paradox. We are both intensely cooperative and intensely competitive and destructive.
Evolutionary biology views the underlying purpose of a human society to provide for the basic needs of its members, and of the society as a whole. It provides an alternative set of account books for assessing the performance of an economy, including especially the outcomes for the collective survival enterprise.
We are at a tipping point as a species, but it is a crisis of our own making and, fortunately, we also have options for how to deal with it. If we follow the proven pathway of innovation, cooperation and producing new synergies, there is every reason to hope that we can make the necessary changes and create a sustainable global society for the long term.
Memes don’t really exist as a discreet causal agency in evolution, and saying they do won’t make it so.
The capitalist, free market doctrine is utopian. Markets are “embedded” in human societies, and the basic needs of a society and its members cannot in the long run be subordinated to market efficiency. Holistic Darwinism adds an evolutionary/biological critique to this empirical reality.
Holistic Darwinism is not an oxymoron. It’s a candidate name for a major paradigm shift that has been going on in evolutionary biology (and related fields) during the past several years.