The Trilobite Koan

Let's clear up a pernicious gaffe.

The fundamental tenet of Darwinian theory is not that the strongest survive.

That's been arrogant-prick propaganda from day one.

Rather, the fundamental tenet of Darwin's hypothesis is that the fittest survive.

Among humans, fitness boils down to one thing: living in a group that prioritises coöperation. Members of that group not possessing this instinct weaken the unit's ability to meet survival challenges; something our species only does collectively.

If obsolete members gain too much influence, whether through numbers or other means, and so draw below parity the group's ability to overcome environmental obstacles, your band collapses, leaving you to fend for yourself. In our species, that usually means dying without (further) offspring.

If, on the other hand, you're lucky and/or sufficiently evolved, you might earn membership in a new group. Thus the trend among human cultures has been to privilege coöperating individuals over those who compete. (In-house, at any rate.)

Spooling forward, we find humanity overall becoming less churlish by comparison with ancestor species; more drawn to novel others whose very difference suggests obtainable value, and less given to reflexive fear and attack.

(Note that these generalisations, like all evolutionary principles, apply only to the species as a whole. They don't apply to individuals – or, in the case of humans, individual cultures – and take no account of the infinite temporary tidal patterns within the gene pool.)

When the bulk of our community becomes unable to apply the essential human survival tool of sociability in amounts sufficient to clear the next hurdle, our species will lie down with the trilobite and never been seen again.

In view of this scientific fact, I propose a question:

In what ways must our Zen practice – each one – change to meet this existential imperative?



(Photo courtesy of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Wikimedia Commons, and a generous photographer.)

WW: Morse code radio

(My thirty-year-old OHR high-frequency CW [Morse code] transceiver, set up at the home of friends. My friends are biologists, and their fossil-sorting table was convenient on several levels.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Ask a Dinosaur

Insight from a sangha-mate on Mastodon (appropriately enough):

One of the most important ideas to sit with – amid the convulsion of climate change – is that Earth was not made for us.

That idea flies against many religions, but also appears in secular settings, with even activists thinking of Earth as a sort of organic machine, a spaceship, a system that’s carefully balanced in absolute ways.

Those metaphors have power, but they’re ultimately unhelpful. Our place here is precarious because we don’t 'belong' in any cosmic sense.

We’re just here.

(Photo of a well-worn dinosaur path in Colorado courtesy of James St. John and Wikimedia Commons.)

Founding Theory of Zen

If you chew anything long enough, you can swallow it and poop it back out.

(Photo of Oligocene coprolites courtesy of the Poozeum and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Fossil imprint

(This is the imprint of an ancient scallop shell, pressed flat underground over several million years. This summer it was stripped out by the action of sea, and the peat it rested in was thrown up on the beach. Enjoy it while it lasts; the medium is soft and friable, and will soon dry into a tiny heap of anonymous dirt. As will we all, one day.)