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..::”Survival of the Fittest Has Evolved:
Try Survival of the Kindest

We’ve often heard that if you want to succeed in life, you need to subscribe to the idea of “survival of the fittest.” Success, we are commonly told, has to be grabbed; it has to be taken or someone else will get it.

Most of Charles Darwin’s work, espe­cially “The Descent of Man,” does not support the idea of what most call Darwinism. Darwin’s research shows that “survival of the kindest” is more correct for explaining which species climb the evolutionary ladder efficiently and effectively.

According to biologists from Darwin to E. O. Wilson, cooperation has been more important than competition in humanity’s evolutionary success.

Compassion is the reason for both the human race’s survival and its ability to continue to thrive as a species.

Charles Darwin not only did not coin the phrase “survival of the fittest” (the phrase was invented by Herbert Spencer), but he argued against it.

In “On the Origin of Species,” he wrote: “it hardly seems probable that the number of men gifted with such virtues [as bravery and sympathy] … could be increased through natural selection, that is, by the survival of the fittest.”

Darwin was very clear about the weakness of the survival-of-the-fittest argument and the strength of his “sympathy hypothesis” when he wrote: “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.” What Darwin called “sympathy,” in the words of Paul Ekman, “today would be termed empathy, altruism, or compassion.”

Darwin goes so far in his compassion argument as to tie the success of human evolution (and even “lower animals”) to the evolution of compassion. He writes that as the human race evolved from “small tribes” into large civilizations, concern about the well-being of others extended to include not just strangers but “all sentient beings.”

He even calls compassion “the almost ever-present instinct” when a fellow human witnesses the suffering of another. In other words, Darwin believed that compassion was a natural instinct that we all share.

The bumper-sticker way of teaching and labeling Darwin’s ideas as exclusively focused on the “survival of the fittest” is not only misleading; it completely misses his idea that humanity’s success hinges on its level of compassion or sympathy.

Since Darwin’s fieldwork and writings, researchers from various fields have supported his perspective.

Biologist and theorist Edward Wilson, who is known for his studies of ants and bees that have yielded insights into human existence, has shown that our evolution from tribal into a global society increasingly favors compassionate and cooperative over callous and competitive approaches to human interaction.

Wilson calls our “selfish activity” in interpersonal relations “the Paleolithic curse” that “hampers” success at all levels where groups of humans interact.

Although selfishness may have been an advantage during the Paleolithic Era (stone age), when Homo sapiens lived more independently of each other,

Wilson contends that it is “innately dysfunctional” in our highly interconnected societies and world.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/better/relationships/survival-fittest-has-evolved-try-survival-kindest-n730196