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Darwin is known for his theory of evolution, natural selection, ideas that suggest animal instincts and tendencies carry on throughout time, slightly adapting to that species environment. These theories have been applied to human interaction and human thinking, be it Social Darwinism, and Manifest Destiny. It suggests the natural aggressiveness and competitive nature of all animals; "survival of the fittest" pertains to humans as much as animals. Considering this, both Plato and Epicures were naïve in their hopes forever achieving an "ideal" society. Man has still yet to prove that he is advanced enough morally, intellectually, or spiritually to make either of these utopian societies a possibility. We are ultimately nothing more then well-dressed hairless apes caught by our non-existent tails by Mother Nature. Biologically, we are still very much animals. We eat, sleep, drink, reproduce, and defecate much like animals and we both compete for mates, food, shelter, and territory. This fierce competitiveness can also be displayed in mankind's wars, over abstract reasons, ideas, religion, and politics. In such wars, humans fight with the brutality and the mercilessness of animals. True, only humans may fight over ideas and religion, but does it change the fact that we can kill and die like a dog just as easily as we can domesticate one? One example of this is the incident at My Lai during the Vietnam war, where US soldiers opened fire on an entire village of unarmed men, women and children. The atrocities that occurred there seemed inhuman, surpassing to the world that here in the twentieth century, such barbarism was still capable of people, let alone young American soldiers. Plato's Republic would rely on the integrity and morality of the philosopher kings, animals like you and I. "Well then, do you agree that the society and constitution we have sketched is not merely an idle dream…." (Education of the Philosopher 540b) How could we possibly hope to create any sort of society close to the likes of Plato or Epicures with these types of people? If we supposedly have progressed so much since the ancient Greek times, what does any of this say about the Athenians in Plato's time? Behind our technologies, philosophies, religions, beliefs, we remain just as we did in the time of the great Socrates, Plato and Epicures, animals reaching for that next step in our evolution, not sure if we're falling down, or going up. |