I find this article "interesting."

Comments?

F. Leon

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A glance at the June issue of "Prospect":
Darwinian ideas for the left

The left -- urgently in need of new ideas -- should consider adopting
Darwinian concepts to freshen its politics, writes Peter Singer, director
of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Australia's Monash University. While
evolution itself has nothing to do with left or right, the right in the
past has drawn most from Darwinian thinking, particularly as a means to
suggest that economic competition leads to the "survival of the fittest."

The left rejected Darwin's ideas because they shattered utopian notions of
human perfectibility, Mr. Singer says, since Darwin believed that the
struggle for existence, or at least that of one's offspring, is unending.
But Mr. Singer contends that modern Darwinian thought "embraces both
competition and reciprocal altruism." The left, therefore, should seek to
encourage a broader sense of self-interest by showing that the individual
pursuit of self-interest can be collectively self-defeating, he says.
Creating incentives for mutual cooperation then could help the left
achieve its traditional aims, such as avoiding economic conditions that
create outcasts.

The magazine's World-Wide Web address is:
<http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk>

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