Light On Dark Water

Darwin Award Candidates

Perhaps you've heard of the Darwin Awards. I think the idea began as only a joke of unknown origin: a Darwin Award was proposed for people who brought about their own deaths in strikingly stupid ways, thus, according to evolutionary doctrine, improving the human race by removing their stupid genes (I mean, the genes that made them stupid) from the pool. The classic example is given in the old adage about sawing off the limb you're sitting on.

I thought of that idea this morning on the way to work. It was foggy, and on the Mobile Bay bridge people were tailgating at 75-to-85 miles per hour (120-135 km/hour). This is a really, really stupid thing to do, because you can find yourself very abruptly unable to see more than 30ft/10m ahead, and totally unable to avoid crashing into the car in front of you if, somewhere up ahead, traffic begins to slow or stop.  Back in 1992 there was a pileup involving over 100 cars in just such a situation: one car hit a guardrail or something, and then a chain reaction followed, with one car after another piling into the others. Amazingly, only one person was killed.

Anyway, I thought of the Darwin Awards, as I cruised along at 70 in the right lane with a safe hundred feet between me and the next car, and people passed me in the left lane doing 80 with only ten feet or so between them.

It occurred to me that death-by-stupidity is only Darwinian if the deceased had no children. Once you've had a child, or children, it doesn't matter what happens to you–your genes have been passed on, though of course the more children the better, from the evolutionary point of view.

And then it hit me that a lot of the people who laugh at Darwin Award winners are probably qualified for it themselves, by virtue of their decision to have no children, or perhaps to have only one, when others are having three or five or ten. Worldwide, it's the most educated and sophisticated people–those who invented and are amused by the Darwin Awards–who are having the fewest children. I keep reading that the native populations of some countries in Europe are already in an irreversible population decline because of a deliberately chosen low birth rate. 

Of course I'm a Christian, and I don't believe that Darwinistic criteria should be a guide to human behavior, or a measure of achievement, or that evolution explains everything. But those who do think that way tend to be the same educated and sophisticated people who deliberately choose to have few or no children (as opposed to being prevented or hindered by circumstances). So you have to wonder just how smart they are,  according to their own evolutionary views. 

 

Maclin Horton

23 responses to “Darwin Award Candidates”

  1. Paul

    Darwinians who choose not to have children – must say something about their self-image.

    Reply
  2. Mac

    It strikes me more as positive to a fault.

    Reply
  3. Daniel Nichols

    Did you see that movie a couple years ago based on the premise that liberal intellectuals would devolve themselves right out of existence, while dumb white (and black) trash would by reproduction take over? I forget the name of it; it was by the guy who did Beavis and Butthead, so it was rude and crude, but pretty funny, and a great premise…

    Reply
  4. Mac

    No, I didn’t see it but I know what you’re talking about. I think it’s called Idiotocracy, a Mike Judge creation. I didn’t think the premise sounded all that funny, although I like a whole lot of what he’s done since B&B (which I didn’t like). Office Space is a classic, and I’ve recently started watching King of the Hill from the beginning on dvd (both also by Mike Judge). So I guess that adds up to I should give Idiotocracy a try.
    And one has to ask oneself where’s the flaw in the logic of that scenario. I mean, if you take intelligence in the relatively narrow but straightforward sense, something like that is actually happening. I’ve been sort of expecting a revival of eugenics for a long time.

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  5. Janet

    Well, speaking of eugenics, I think the results of the first wave of eugenicists is a great example of the law of unintended consequences. Their attempt to promote birth control for those they wanted to get rid of has had a boomerang effect.
    So here’s a question. Where are the people who are both well-educated and prolific?
    AMDG

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  6. Mac

    Yeah, it worked out exactly the opposite of what they wanted. You can see how, from their point of view, coercion starts to look like a good option.
    Where indeed? 🙂

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  7. Janet

    And speaking of the Darwin Awards, I have a friend whose father died (she was 2 at the time) when he went down to the basement to check a gas leak and struck a match. She told me that she always figured that his last thought was, “Boy,that was really dumb.”
    AMDG

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  8. Mac

    I shouldn’t be laughing at that, but I am. I guess she figured she might as well. The thought might have been as simple as “oh s**t”.

    Reply
  9. Janet

    Well, I have always thought that it might be nice to die in some amusing way. Your family might not enjoy the humor right away (although I think that mine would), but eventually they would and you might become a legend in your family.
    AMDG

    Reply
  10. Mac

    Yeah, that might be…nice?…but one wouldn’t want it to be too embarrassing.
    There’s a memorable last word in some movie I saw in a hotel once while I was travelling and just watching whatever looked interesting. I have no idea what the name of it was, but I’ve always wanted to see it again, because it was pretty good. Donald Sutherland played this creepy and deservedly down-on-his-luck private eye who was trying to extort money from someone, and when he was finally cornered and shot he just whined “Why is it always me?” I hope I’ll do better than that.

    Reply
  11. Louise

    I do not consider my beloved mother to be stupid, but she did run herself over once!

    Reply
  12. Mac

    That’s a story that needs telling.
    For some reason putting “over” at the end rather than in the middle of that phrase always strikes me as funny. Like when the evil software developer (if that’s not redundant) in Jurassic Park tells the dinosaur “When I come back I’ll run you over.” Which of course is not what happens. I would normally say “run over it” rather than “run it over.”

    Reply
  13. Janet Cupo

    I think you kind of did over that explanation.
    AMDG

    Reply
  14. Mac

    It amused me. Did it make you feel run over, or overrun?

    Reply
  15. Ryan C

    I bring up a related issue in my science fiction class when we talk about the figure of the “celibate scientist” who is all over the literature of the 19th century, and even afterwards. It’s possible to read Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein” as a satire on this figure (it’s also a satire of aristocratic inbreeding). At one point in the book, Shelley makes it a point to contrast the narrator, Walton, running on a scientific suicide mission, with his fecund sister at home. Doctor Moreau is another example of this trope. Usually in these works, the scientist’s attempt at being a “father” through nonbiological means ends in disaster. I would say the upshot of this for today’s world is the way we’re replacing the family (and other relationships) with technology and the pleasure it can afford the solitary, sterile individual.

    Reply
  16. Ryan C

    Eugenics and class snobbery of whatever kind (economic, intellectual, etc…) is usually punished in these works too, as a modern form of aristocratic inbreeding. Which I think has a connection to what you’re talking about too…although I try not to think too much about such things.

    Reply
  17. Ryan C

    But then again, on the other side you have linguistic or meme descendants, spiritual fecundity, and the like…Of course, Western society seems to be failing here too in terms of passing on its literary, music, artistic, religious, etc…traditions.

    Reply
  18. Mac

    In my unfinished sci-fi novel I had married couples who “have sex” (hate that term) side by side but separately, in his-and-her porno-stimulation pods.
    More later, gotta go..

    Reply
  19. Ryan C

    A diagnosis of our culture’s encouragement of sexual fantasy I think (which leads to alienation of lovers who can’t live up to these fantasies).

    Reply
  20. Louise

    Mum’s story: when I was 13 and Mum was then about the age I am now – 41, she drove the car up to the very top of our steep drive. It was a very cold morning and she had left the car running with its wheels just into the gutter/kerb, while she hopped out to check the mailbox, but the cold morning meant the engine was pretty jerky, so the car vibrated enough to come unstuck from its position (normally safe enough) and so it rolled slowly down the drive and pinned Mum to the fence. :/ Mum didn’t have time to move away, b/c she was quite close to the car just checking the mail. She had nowhere to move in that short time, even though the car was not moving very fast.
    Her leg was quite badly injured, but she lived to tell the tale.

    Reply
  21. Louise

    your sci-fi married sex scene is probably only a few years away from becoming a reality, Maclin. Who was that model/actor who recently admitted he did not like sex with women any more but only liked porn?

    Reply
  22. Mac

    David Duchovny (Mulder in The X-Files). Or at least I read that he was having therapy for a pornography addiction that had really missed up his marriage (to a beautiful actress).
    That’s a wild story about your mother’s accident. It’s wonderful that she survived it.

    Reply
  23. Mac

    ” Western society seems to be failing here too…”
    Yes, and it’s gone from the sort of benign ignorance of 40 years or so ago to an active campaign of suppression, because so much of the tradition is politically incorrect: what’s taught is often poisoned with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” approach. We put the tradition on trial in the court of modern political fashion. I can get quite angry about this…

    Reply

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