12-29-2021, 03:55 AM
"Survival of the fittest" is now as much a philosophical position as a scientific one. It can extend to institutions, firms, and political entities. As businesses Sears and K-Mart, both once-impressive entities are moribund. They failed to adapt to a changing environment. I'm not certain that business entities (unless mom-and-pop outfits that die when the heirs find some easier way of making a living) have a set lifetime. Political entities? The United States is one of the oldest of the existing ones, and if I am to make a guess of what political system now intact will still be much the same a thousand years from now, the USA should be one of the most likely. The USA has proved as flexible as it is imposing.
But be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and you will be struck down. Become old and inflexible, and you become irrelevant fast. "Earth" itself was the wrong place to be when the asteroid hit at Chixculub. Size is usually good for winning fights with other creatures (elephants, hippos, and rhinos are rarely on some predator's menu), but not with facing hurricane-force winds of extreme heat. The seas were not safe havens. No large dinosaur had the stability to avoid dying when tossed into a tree. We wouldn't, either.
But be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and you will be struck down. Become old and inflexible, and you become irrelevant fast. "Earth" itself was the wrong place to be when the asteroid hit at Chixculub. Size is usually good for winning fights with other creatures (elephants, hippos, and rhinos are rarely on some predator's menu), but not with facing hurricane-force winds of extreme heat. The seas were not safe havens. No large dinosaur had the stability to avoid dying when tossed into a tree. We wouldn't, either.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.