Why is social darwinism so popular with edgelords and wannabe intellectuals...

all of human history

>pic
whoa...

Iron Age

>it all went to shit around the dawn of the 20th century
That seems right.

I wonder how much of this is from the fact that taxation has shifted from duties to income.

>I'm not paying for my daughter being a harlot, see how you feed that bastard spawn by yourself
>Son, you're gonna work harder or I'm disowning you
>Sorry Mr. Beggar, I know you're hungry but so are my children
Basically the entirety of history user.

>it all went to shit
So I shouldn't be grateful that my father and I are no longer doomed to the coal-mining lifestyle of my forefathers, subject to the whims of coal barons and ultimately destined to die in obscurity?

>anyway here is my tax to the sick weak king

>their own

Individualist spotted

>Individualist

>Oh wait he was actually deposed, it's his super shrewd cousin now

Everyone wants to be the big scary fascist/commie/imperialist/theocrat until they're the one with their head to the wall begging for mercy as a soldier barks at them to dig their own grave in the mud

>people ITT thinking that there were no social services through history because the government did not prescribe them through law
They were just organised around the Churches or peasant communes.

There was usually *some* kind of social service, but it was never sufficient for more than pure survival. Think of the poverty houses or orphanages of the 19th century - sure you'll survive there for longer than on the street, but you're massively more likely to die from illness, violence, the odd famine, what have you. You're certainly not raising families of welfare children in those.

t. armchair eugenicist

Apparently not, because miserable times make strong men

>miserable times make strong men
t. millennial philosopher

I was mocking the idiots who say that.

libcom.org/forums/thought/kropotkin-was-no-crackpot

Stephan Jay gould's article "Kropotkin was no crackpot" is a really good debunking of social darwinism as the ONLY way to intepret evolution. ignore the website it's hosted on, it's a great read.

Kek I guess I'm satisfied with remaining a weak man then. Grandad could barely move due to Parkinson's in the latter portion of his life and died from accidentally setting fire to a tree stand he was hunting from. I certainly appreciate his struggle and sacrifice though I also do not envy his lifestyle.

fuck wrong link

marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm

this is the full article. This has nothing to do with marxism, the site are just hositng it cause it's related to Petyr.

>social darwinism

The competences of specific individuals and groups for achieving their own ends don't necessarily translate into utility for general society. So there is common interest for society to organize solely along each person's ability to achieve their own goals. That isn't to say that this doesn't already happen to some extent, but we tend to coerce people into being productive and solidary, and look down on social parasites (NEETs). Naturally, helping people achieve their own ends is what motivates people to help others in return.

Social darwinism is also self-defeating: why would the people that make it to the top be interested in maintaining a system that wouldn't provide advantages to their group regardless of actual competence?

poor people weren't obese
the scale of welfare now is not the same as then

> Kropotkin therefore created a dichotomy within the general notion of struggle – two forms with opposite import: (1) organism against organism of the same species for limited resources, leading to competition; and (2) organism against environment, leading to cooperation.

>No naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for life carried on through organic nature is the greatest generalization of our century. Life is struggle; and in that struggle the fittest survive. But the answers to the questions “by which arms is the struggle chiefly carried on!” and “who are the fittest in the struggle!” will widely differ according to the importance given to the two different aspects of the struggle: the direct one, for food and safety among separate individuals, and the struggle which Darwin described as “metaphorical” – the struggle, very often collective, against adverse circumstances.

>Darwin acknowledged that both forms existed, but his loyalty to Malthus and his vision of nature chock-full of species led him to emphasize the competitive aspect. Darwin’s less sophisticated votaries then exalted the competitive view to near exclusivity, and heaped a social and moral meaning upon it as well.

>Why is a brainlet meme so popular with wannabe intellectuals?

It's a mystery.

why not groups of organisms against groups of organisms, or against environment? Kin groups and whatnot.

its so scary
>hehe in nature strong kill weak. So in society strong should kill weak too hehe

It is. Your just personally surrounded by atheists so you think the whole world is like that.

>the government did not prescribe them through law
>They were just organised around the Churches or peasant communes
In the dark ages.
Before that the Romans had the Cura Annonae enshrined in law.
Your just showing how shitty theological rule is.

>it was never sufficient for more than pure survival.
I mean, the entire point of * Darwinism is that some people don't fucking survive it. If survival is guaranteed, it's a meaningless buzzword.

Survival of the fittest =/= survival of the strongest

t. 20 some year old in college

>people ignore free bread and circuses for citizens of Rome or the fact that many Islamic caliphates were welfare states
?

>how can we
>we

Are you ok watching people have cancer opinions?

the term social darwinism was invented by its critics, so its obviously a loaded term. the reason I look at it favorably is because everything is darwinian. its a basic principle: things exist that are able to continue to exist. this and all its consequences are unavoidable to anyone serious.

Because they don't understand the actual implications of what they're saying: the consequence of people behaving in the way most conductive to their interest and to a working society is cooperation and support, because by and large the difference in 'quality' between men is utterly dwarfed by the efficiency gains of cooperation, meaning the best men is gonna get rekt by a swarm of mediocres easily. At that point, the game of social darwinism becomes creating the best most efficient society (which is certainly not one where 90% of the population is marginalized), basically invalidating the kind of behaviour so called social darwinists would like to see.

>the reason I look at it favorably is because everything is darwinian
Funnily enough, while that's pretty much true, the basic tenets of social darwinism in its most common form (Spencer's basically) aren't darwinist at all. Spencer himself wasn't called a social darwinist until decades after his death, and he was a convinced lamarckian (tho he liked Darwin's ideas as well).

Give me 1 reason why eugenics is not a good idea.

The people promoting it are deeply racist and just want to avoid coloured people having children

Read Sir Arthur Keith. He sadly has been forgotten but he posited the same.

>1 reason
There's no objective definition of good genes.
You're now aware that a good deal of genetic illnesses propagated due to being a strong protection against external illnesses, like sickle cell anemia and malaria. We don't know anywhere close to near enough about our genes and how they interact to start playing around with them outside of labs, nevermind start to plan government policies.
There's also the fact that you're authorizing the government to kill people preventively, with all the social unpleasantness that comes from that.

Ironically I'd be okay with sterilizing niggers, but I'd recoil from doing it in the name of eugenics.

my country is a very big mob of atheists then

source?

cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2016/51/helft-nederlanders-is-kerkelijk-of-religieus

>prescriptive ideology based on the appeal to nature fallacy
>ignores cooperation in nature like mutualism, eusociality, kin selection, or symbiosis
>generally treats fitness as solely meaning wealth or intelligence
>"""true"""

bureaucratic self-limitation is not a model worth emulating
neither is /pol/'s
there just may be a third option

>Any and all social darwinism is the strawman purposely designed to make it look bad
The more correct statement would be that some social darwinistic ideas and notions as to how the world works are closer to truth than the ruling orthodoxy of the post-WW2 western world, but that doesn't really fit into a quippy one liner now does it.

My grandfather's father and much of the rest of the family were coal miners, and things were pretty miserable for them. People who romanticize or rationalize shitty things in the past are retarded.

>all of human history
He said: "was being enforced".

Would the cops break your door if you make money without providing society with something?

>three green text points naming the actual fallacy social Darwinism relies on and instances in nature where its memeing does not apply
>snappy one liner
Okay faggot. Sorry for not posting a wall of text instead.
Also, I don't believe there is a "post ww2 orthodoxy" in the west. American culture is different from English culture, which is different from Greek or Swedish culture. All of these countries have different attitudes to problem solving and what constitutes a problem. In fact, we're living an an extremely heterodox time right now. This is also assuming that you bitching about "post ww2 orthodoxy" was in good faith and not just a codeword for some Jewish conspiracy bullshit.

That was the post you replied to.
As for your post, you're criticizing a strawman social darwinism that was probably not ever propagated by anyone but a few 19th century capitalists.
>we're living an an extremely heterodox time
Go around the western world and explain how we should implement eugenic policies or something like that. The only difference you will encounter will be the language you will be called a nazi in.

What if I'm a social darwinist, but I accept that by my own beliefs I'm at the bottom of the ladder and a disgrace? Am I still an edgelord?

Depends on what you mean by social darwinism.
"We should let the poors suffer because they're weak" is edgy regardless of whether you're poor or not.

He's probably more about "I wish the poor were never born so they don't have to suffer like I do".
In that case, yes it's edgelord-tier, but more of the well meaning kind. Also, being probably depressed and/or autistic and/or dimwitted, you're kinda excused for that.

I guess I'm not actually a true social darwinist. I agree with the general theory that certain people (and peoples) are inherently inferior to others and the reality of "survival of the fittest" when it comes to human interaction and society, but I disagree with the idea that this should become the basis for how society works. I'm not against welfare or charity, for example.

Then you're actually a social darwinist in the literal sense of the words, even if you're not a social darwinist in its most common (aka spencerian) acception.

because I want to live

no, you're depressed

that chart triggers me to no end

indeed comrade

genes cannot be considered universally good or universally bad; there are myriad circumstances and niches that can lead to the thriving or decline of certain genes and their phenotypes, and these can change over time, meaning that selective breeding/sterilization/editing can be the downfall for future generations if a gene is selected for that turns out to be deleterious in an unforeseen disaster or circumstance.

similarly, whether a gene is "good" or "bad", with relation to fitness, has only to do with its propagation into the next generation, at least in darwinist terms. this means that any declaration of whether a gene is good or bad that falls outside the biologically accepted definition of fitness contains an ideological implication, which can be subjective depending on the people, organizations, or governments deciding on those definitions, and that is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set in any governing body when it comes to a thriving society.

Yes. Happened to a coworkers dad. Minted his own gold coins and used them as currency till the fed shut it down and jailed him. Got a lot of businesses on board, guess they don't mind precious metals used as currency.

I think he meant earning money, not literally producing currency

the inflated sense of authority should start a little bit on humanities, go way the fuck upward when you hit lib arts, and then cap with the downie kid.