Savitri Era Learning Forum: Certain misunderstandings can arise when one employs evolution as a principle to justify the graduated ranking of human beings

Re: 100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: The Illusion of Human Progress and the Ideal of Human Unity (part 5 of 6) Tony Clifton Tue 07 Apr 2009 08:13 AM PDT

The point the article attempts to make is that evolution as an ideology became a justification for racism in England (and Europe) particularly through the writings of Herbert Spencer. And this belief applied not only to her Asian colonies but especially to Ireland where editorial cartoons of the late 19th century often depicted the Irish as simian creatures who had not yet fully evolved to the level cultured Englishman

Biology is often employed as ideology and Europeans have been the worst offenders here. One of latest version of it is of the selfish gene that couched the socio-political agendas of Thatcher and Reagan leading them to dismiss society as irrelevant because everything can be traced back to individual responsibility and the individual can be traced back to his/her genes. One of the consequences of such thinking was the massive deregulatation of markets that was premised on the assumption that unconstrained self-interest was most natural system to advance the world''s economy. Unfortunately the assumption that these self-interest would be enlightened enough to contain within them their own balancing mechanisms resulted in the current world financial crisis. The final sections explores this relationship of biology to culture with Sri Aurobindo's view of science and culture

This is one reason this series of articles were attempted, as an attempt to clarify certain misunderstandings that can arise when one employs evolution as a principle to justify the graduated ranking of human beings, be it by social levels or levels of consciousness. (While I find the complexity of Sri Aurobindo's writing handles the matter well, I have not found the same intellectual sophistication necessarily extends to some of his followers)

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April 08, 2009

Certain misunderstandings can arise when one employs evolution as a principle to justify the graduated ranking of human beings

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