Social Darwinism: A Hegemonic Garb to Evolution

Keith Fernandes

TYBA

"We are living in a simulation"; an angst filled response to the now mundane question, "Something just does not feel right, but what?" asked by billions everyday across the world. But what exactly leads so many of us towards a journey that seems to have no end, and is it then just human folly that will lead to ultimate destruction of humanity as we know of it today? To understand this in clear detail, it then becomes important for one to be able to identify and critique the construction of definitions and ideologies especially if one has to take into account, who gets to formulate, modify and hierarchize these distinct labels, the complex medley of power and hegemony and finally, the seemingly functional roles that they eventually play in the ultimate narrative; the story of humankind in much greater detail.

Throughout history, humans have managed to heavily incorporate dialectics in classifying everything around them, from simple to highly complex structures, by boxing each selective function into binary categories. This dialectic approach; a concept being looked at by two opposing ideologies while trying to find a common ground or meaning, is constructed, both by hegemonic groups of power as well as the rest of society. As Peter Berger mentions that phenomenologically, over a period of time, the reality that manifests from this approach then becomes sociologically constructed; bodies of knowledge, or in Parsonian understanding, individual structures possessing knowledge that is influenced, both by themselves and others around them, in symbolic interactionism, create a shared sense of reality that goes on to potentially become social facts. It is highly essential then for one to take into consideration who has had the ability to distribute entire streams of knowledge to the masses. This continuous influence and transmission of many factors articulate both minor and major characteristics that go on to box themselves as whole definitions and markers of identity for entire cultures and their people. As no two individuals, even under similar circumstances can be considered identically the same in every aspect, there is a creation of what DuBois coins as double consciousness; an individual finds themself constantly battling between a dual identity, constructed for and by themself in society based on their positionality as well as a plethora of various factors; the latter in itself pointing out to the flaw of applying a concept like that of double consciousness to formulate a binary, dialectic understanding of human identity on a larger scale; a simplified approach to understand complex structures like human beings.

Looking into Patricia Hill Collins' study of intersectionality; finding the linkages between the different social layers that each individual is made up of, provides them with their own unique identities as well as complements the fluid nature of human structures as well as their roles in large, diverse societies. One could now take into account the multi-faceted globule that goes on to classify itself as an omniscient, global society; the Earth. It is this society that gets broken down into tiny clusters of minor societies, each differentiated on the grounds of displaying their own unique, authentic cultures that go on to define them and the people they comprise accordingly. These clusters are connected to each other by a series of networks, ranging from macro levels of entire nations to micro levels, that of the individual level. Even though we believe and acknowledge this fluidity, the idea of arranging this spectrum in a linear, unilateral direction with polar concepts at each end of the spectrum becomes equivalent to boxing up a free-spirited diversity. The irony of deconstructing even the most complex, multilayered structure in existence then is seeing it through the lens of a binary and linearity. In order to apply a practical solution to this dilemma, I choose to bring in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, as it is otherwise known, talks about how an individual's language and their culture shapes how they see the world around them, very similar to Berger's social construction of reality. If an individual then acquires the skill of learning, understanding and applying their knowledge of numerous languages together, their worldview would be strikingly different from that of someone with knowledge of only one language and culture.

A similar representation can be seen in Goethe's Weltliteratur; studying world literature as a whole structure while also identifying the uniqueness of individuality through various cultural voices within it. This also accounts for the myriad of possibilities an individual could encounter with this approach. I personally believe though that the hypothesis could be applied to a much larger scale, where assimilating cultural markers beyond just language and structuring them in a certain pattern, where singular cultures at micro levels could then help fill in the gaps of understanding human evolution as a whole at a macro level by being able to weave the greater story at hand; the story of all humans. That being said, one would also have to reconstruct and modify Spencerism, a school of thought that introduced the concept of Social Darwinism and Evolution; in classic early sociology fashion of remodeling theories and concepts from pure and natural sciences into social sciences, here Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The issue with Spencerism lies in seeing social evolution as a linear spectrum, causing social evolution to appear as going from so called 'primitive' to 'civilized'. The problem with these labels is that people in hegemonic power, then European colonists believed that using the model of Spencerism, they automatically became Weberian models of a yardstick that defined civilized people while putting the rest of the world, for their cultural beliefs and differences under the labels of primitive and barbaric. Following their masters, several cultures then started to create hierarchies within themselves, to further instigate the formation of more labels and stereotypes from an ethnocentric; or holier than thou lens and justified the use of eugenics, imperialism and capitalism amongst several other features of human atrocities. 

For eons, such restrictive and regressive models of knowledge and their roles in identity formulation have defined social realities for entire groups of people along with their stories, their histories and their cultures. Individuals have and continue to pedestalize themselves on these arbitrary markers that they account for as ostentatious and sacred. Seen in the process of reification, here individuals disassociating from the fact that they create and influence society to believing that society influences and makes them behave a certain way, in dialectic fashion further instigates this unequal development of society and eventually, social reality. This could also be one of the many reasons why most individuals feel so disconnected and distant from connecting to reality/ies perceived or made to appear as their only options of universal truth/s minus an opportunity to see otherwise. By also restricting the control and flow of knowledge and incorporating the influence of power dynamics and hegemony; groups asserting dominance over the general masses under the pretense of overall fulfillment for all, individuals at the receiving end have and continue to face the treacheries of an unequally biased and strategically fragmented society. Even if individuals happen/ed to be well aware of this form of diabolic control over them, their positionality and understanding of society and overall, the world around them pervades/d all final outcomes possible.  Their lived day realities have and continue to remain numbed down and thus, unaccounted for in retrospect.

When you look into early Sociology and some of its prominent grand theories, one can now acknowledge that these theories are sometimes flawed in their own ways of understanding change and development in a distinct, linear fashion. This is because human beings are a unique variable; their fluidity makes it hard to define them and so, the tools required in studying them also need to adapt, change, and restructure themselves in accordance with the changing times keeping in mind their fluid structure. Boxing concepts and structures would then only create a further disconnect with reality; a concept that we considered otherwise as stable. Even if one had to uphold this linear pattern of social evolution to define a historical journey of the human life story, one cannot deny the existence of distinct cultures that exist even today, cultures that would be called primitive or barbaric existing alongside cultures that would be considered civilized or modernized, creating anomalies then in the understanding of an entire structure like that of evolution. It is here where I would like to introduce the concept of a circular evolution; looking at evolution happening in a circular motion where a clear perception of where one can truly mark a start or a finish at distinct points is not fixed. This helps in allowing one to acknowledge that this consistent yet also fluid movement allows a plethora of newer possibilities; that each course takes a turn back through the same route it took before while also qualifying as a new turn in itself, thus allowing one to understand why several factors in linear scale of evolution still exist as they merge and fragment in today's day and time. At the same time, they could also present a gamut of newer, enlightening possibilities that would otherwise have been shrouded from the public eye.

With a circular pattern of evolution, one could also understand social evolution historically happening together at the same time, rather than creating an ethnocentric hierarchy that would deem one culture or society better or more advanced than the other in a historical context. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, having now merged social facts from different cultures and societies in a circular fluidity, that link together as puzzle pieces, on the other hand will help in being able to see cultural differences on the same scale more easily and systematically, providing a more holistic world view on how one sees social evolution; a manner in which it must truly be seen in. By bridging these cultural gaps together, one could also be able to disprove then, the biased narratives of the 'Other'; an ethnocentric concept where a singular culture or group of people perceive everyone else as better or worse than them, based on their cultural, social, geo-political and economic settings amongst many others seen as markers of hegemonically constructed succession or progression. But most importantly, an alternative pattern of understanding a concept, here evolution questions the authenticity of existing knowledge systems in themselves; it poses as a blow towards rigid, long standing streams of knowledge that is fed into our individual systems, backed by power and authority in a manner that someone straying away from the perceived normal becomes a form of deviant or anomie and restricts the growth of alternative processes of knowledge and eventually, the uniqueness of humanity into a homogenous mesh.

"We are heading to a better and brighter future"; a promise made to each one of us as we continue to aimlessly wallow in the hands of the giants that wield power; for some, their enlightening saviors, for many others, their cunning oppressors. But at the end of the day, we are each being controlled by the narratives of another, and in turn, hierarchically control others. By being more aware and open to the idea of change and fluidness, of rigid boxing being replaced by a more flexible model that adapts and opens up to newer voices and perspectives, by creating systematic functions that works towards a collective accumulation of whole societies, with all their similarities and differences, we can do our very least for the growth and sustenance of the human race; acknowledge and analyze our flawed humanness. Or in the quest of underpinning and exterminating the Other, we will eventually be the very reason we become extinct, and unheard of.

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