Fruit of the spirit includes behaviors like patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. That sure makes one think about social media and politics, right?
Not.
The survival-of-the-fittest search for attention and influence on social media, or in politics, is a microcosm of evolution. Those who rise above a certain threshold win the day, winner take all. Quite like the survival of the fittest in biological evolution—those who can secure the resources and overcome their adversaries win. The rest, well, we can still dig up their fossils.
In social media, and the political world, we like to attach ourselves to powerful people, the gobblers-of-resources, the bullies, hoping we can survive and thrive with them. In such a harsh and competitive environment, can the social media world ever evolve to become more sedate, contemplative, and kind?
Maybe.
Below I offer an edited snippet from my Work in Progress (WIP), A Little Book of Becoming, a reflection on how science informs my faith. Maybe you can find in it some hope. Or perhaps, more likely, a warning.
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Scripture speaks well of characteristics that seem contrary to that which would maximize the survival chances of the individual, saying for example that strength is made perfect in weakness, that the meek shall inherit the earth, that we should turn the other cheek and offer kindness and hospitality to strangers. It claims that there is no law against love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It offers core ideals of purity, peace-lovingness, consideration, submissiveness, mercy, and good fruits. It encourages us to be impartial, sincere, compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, patient, long suffering, and slow to anger…
Yet, the testimony of science would seem to be quite different. It is the strong, the self-interested, that are most fit to survive. The weak, the meek, even the unfortunate victim of chance calamity, has no opportunity to pass on thoughts or genes…
How can these be reconciled?
Take note that self-interest does not equal selfishness. Selfishness begins when self-interest overrides the interest of the larger purpose or entity. When one acts without concern for—or equal valuing of—others, that becomes selfish…In both civil and moral law, it is clearly seen that we already possess the nascent ideals of selflessness, but they are easily tipped over when we are greedy (valuing our own prosperity more than that of others) or when we are afraid (perceiving the ‘other’ as an enemy). Then, we will torment those in our power, take for ourselves what we want at the expense of others, and empower monsters to lead us so as to gain what we want without personal guilt.
Seeing, then, that the impetus of short-term evolution favors the selfish, and that our nascent ideals are easily overrun, how can we avoid the problem that selfish interest can be chosen by natural selection, at least in the short term, at the expense of the meek and selfless?
The answer might be time. Even science reveals that in the longer term there is survival advantage to becoming altruistic, otherwise how can we explain the existence of altruism in ourselves or other creatures? Consider, for example, the ants who often act almost without self-concern in defense of their hill, or who offer their bodies as a bridge for the colony across a torrent even if they themselves are lost. Also, we see that many humans, although not all, routinely act with kindness to strangers, fight for the downtrodden, and provide help for the poor.
So, a trend toward altruism is seen in the nature of our world, but it requires the passage of time to overcome the short-term benefits of selfishness…We stand now at the threshold of transformative becoming and soon will have the power to edit who we become through manipulation of genes and introduction of technologies. This puts our becoming centered in the arena of ideas and choice since we will have to decide, collectively, what we become…
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As suggested in my snippet above, maybe the history of biological evolution offers a possible template for ultimate victory of contemplation and kindness. Natural selection has, over vast times, sometimes selected the submissive altruistic over the powerful bully. My daughter commented recently that generosity of spirit and acceptance of diversity is one of the greatest of human traits, providing a kinder, gentler life, a greater chance of group survival, and the irony that it is tolerance for diversity that allows the oppressors and bullies to survive at all!
Let’s hope and plan so that the core of kind gentleness can survive our tolerance for the lack of it, and that our choices going forward are wise ones.