I had to write a short note about Social Darwinism for a Geography class I have so I thought I would attached it for your reading and comments. A note the book we are reading for the class is Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel so this looks at a comment he made.

Social Darwinism is social theory created from the writing of Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus and others that can be defined “to describe the idea that humans, like animals and plants, compete in a struggle for existence in which natural selection results in ‘survival of the fittest.’” http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579584/social_darwinism.html

The idea is based upon Charles Darwin’s work The Descent of Man as applied to human society. As Darwin himself wrote in the Descent of Man, “at some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.” http://www.reference.com/search?q=social%20darwinism

Social Darwinism gave permission to the European powers to conquering the “savages” located throughout the world because these people were inferior to the white race as Rudyard Kipling called it the “The White Man’s Burden.” Throughout the nineteen and first half of the twentieth century it was used to justify the elimination of less desirables from society. Social Darwinism lost favor after World War One as anthropologists started emphasizing culture or biology. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579584_2/Social_Darwinism.html

For Diamond the less fit are eliminated by a high murder rate from New Guinea thus producing a more intelligent population. Diamond makes the impression a high murder rate can be good because it eliminates those misfits from society. I think what he is trying to show is that those who are being murdered in New Guinea are the misfits who are the burdens on society, such as law breakers, who are causing the problems. I think Diamond’s main point is that the traditional Western way of defining intelligence is not the world’s way.