Domesticated animals have been around for tends of millions of years. Many ant species look after aphids in exchange for sugary secretions from their six-legged flocks. Human domestication of selected species certainly assured their survival to a far greater degree than remaining in the wild would have.
Even species that are raised for meat and hides rather than for companionship benefit in the evolutionary sense: most of the females live to reproduce and the overall populations are considerable. The down side is their complete dependency on humans. A toy poodle seldom survives long in the wild, neither does a farm-raised hen. Moreover, other species and humans as well often find feral lifeforms to be a nuisance. Forced to create a new biological niche for themselves, they have no choice but to intrude on the established populations.
Humans have long tried to domesticate other humans. Sometimes the control is almost total (North Korea), at other times bread and circuses or dole/welfare payments were provided in exchange for votes. Individuals from a single dependent generation could transition back into independence, but after several generations of welfare culture, the results appear to resemble feral rather than wild (independent) specimens. Completely dependent people lose the ability to think or to show initiative for lack of need. The inefficiency of the welfare bureaucracy may have been a saving factor that required some ability just to navigate the system. A more perfect system of distributing resources for nothing will likely produce even less capable and more perpetually dependent clients. Would increasing numbers in themselves indicate evolutionary success of those people who succeed in becoming domesticated by others? They are generally safe from the cannibal pot, and even from such tasks as conscription as their labor becomes closer to worthless.
Completely dependent people lose the ability to think or to show initiative for lack of need.
The effect on later generations also escalates, since people incapable of caring for themselves are incapable of caring for others. In a few generations you end up without enough leaders qualified to run the country. Then the wheels fall off.
The inefficiency of the welfare bureaucracy may have been a saving factor that required some ability just to navigate the system.
Unfortunately the U.S. welfare system is dysfunctional as well. Those who learn to navigate a system based on services they are qualified for, rather than services they actually need balanced against their assets are fundamentally unprepared to survive in the real economic world. They are therefore trapped in the welfare system.
It’s the industrialization of unproductivity. As Steyn says, the real shame in the bloated transfer-payment system is not the waste of money so much as the waste of people. As far as an evolutionary process goes, I don’t believe it is irreversible. Wasn’t it Chesterton who said that a man’s worldview changes drastically after he’s had lunch? Necessity is more often the first incentive to move toward independence, than it is the mother of invention. And at some point, there won’t be any way to fund this voter-stock.
It’s a shame that so many lives have been destroyed, and that many more people will have to be harmed, but a process that cannot continue forever will eventually come to a crashing halt. Reform is morally better in every way, but I don’t see that happening. Watch out for that wall…
Reminds me of the story about the man who fell off a twenty-story building. As he passed the tenth floor he was heard to say, “So far, so good.”
Ignore economics at your peril, she can be a stone bitch.
From the standpoint of passing on their genes, it can be a short term success. But if you look at the purges under Nazi Germany and Stalin era Russia, over the long term being dependent (or domesticated) is likely to remove that person genes from the gene pool.
“A toy poodle seldom survives long in the wild”
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http://www.creativepro.com/files/story_images/20081114SAWG_fg19a.jpg
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4121/4872650427_cdec0a24a3_z.jpg
“Humans have long tried to domesticate other humans.
Sometimes the control is almost total (North Korea),
at other times bread and circuses
or dole/welfare payments were provided in exchange for votes.”
You left out domestication of humans by corporations. But that’s one scenario in which conservatives will gladly accept being farmed.
On the contrary, conservatism addresses corporations the way it addresses all other private organizations of people: namely, no crime arises if no one is coerced into interaction. If people WANT to do business with a group of other people (a corporation) then they may. If they do not WANT to, they do not have to. The only way a corporation can overcome this in America is to get the government involved, as they always attempt to do, because it’s the easiest way to regulate your competitor out of business.
This obsession with corporations is farcical. “Corporations have taken over the government; therefore we need government to take over the corporations.” Just absurd. Corporations are no threat to freedom without government.
Nice straw man. I never said, nor do I believe, that we need government to take over corporations.
Liberals don’t need to take away our guns, because conservatives have already disarmed so many gun owners — in their minds. But I’m sure that you will enjoy getting paid in scrip and being a “debt slave” to the company store in Libertarian Utopia. And if you don’t like it, at least you’ll have the freedom to choose which master to serve.
Not to mention the domestication of plants- http://www.amazon.com/The-Botany-Desire-Plants-Eye-World/dp/0375760393
Cannibal pot? Whats that?
In the days after Hurricane Katrina, a group of dolphins escaped from an aquarium and ended up free to swim about the Gulf of Mexico. It seems they had been in captivity so long they had no knowledge of how to feed themselves and would literally starve. The dolphins’ handlers were in a panic as they (the dolphins) were totally dependent and had be fed from hand to mouth to survive.
This image immediately reminded me of the ongoing scene at the Superdome, New Orleans in general, and how it was a microcosm of the general state of humanity in the USA.
A detailed letter to the editor explaining my observation left me the “Most Hated Man” in our town. It was then that I realized people like me were far outnumbered.
Undoubtedly, America is on some irreversible road to destruction.
C.H.
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