Ever three generations, ideologies cross over. Liberals become conservatives and vice-versa. Religions go from liberalizing force to oppressor. Industries go from upstart to stalwart, and so on. It's nature's eternal bell curve being applied, where everything has a slow beginning, a prolonged process of middle, and a tapering end.

We are about to see one such crossover in the field of science:

The human brain lacks conspicuous characteristics—such as relative or absolute size—that might account for humans’ superior intellect.

Researchers have found some clues to humanity’s aptitude on a smaller scale, such as more neurons in our brain’s outermost layer.

Human intelligence may be best likened to an upgrade of the cognitive capacities of nonhuman primates rather than an exceptionally advanced form of cognition.

This research is a sleeper because it doesn't hit us with an obvious truth, like Bad Christians denying that we evolved from apes and terrified of anyone who teaches that.

But what it does say is this: the last thing we thought was exceptional about humanity is not. We're literally a linear extension of all others species.

People will accept that, yes, but then the conclusions of it get alarming...

If we're like them, and Darwinism applies to them, then it applies to us. We don't like that for starters, because we like to think that if we live "good lives" we'll be OK until some distant time when it's appropriate to croak and we're out of retirement funds anyway.

The idea that Darwinism applies to us implies that Social Darwinism does as well. Social Darwinism is the idea that people compete for survival, and the best rise to the top. It's a sensible theory if the surrounding civilization rewards the best, but a horrible and insane theory if the surrounding civilization rewards idiots like Dave Matthews, Bono Vox and Bill Clinton more than honest, realistic people (a delusional civilization rewards those who repeat its delusions, not those who make insights into reality).

The claims made by Social Darwinists and their heirs suffer from the ethical fallacy known as "the naturalistic fallacy" (no connection to naturalism in explanations and the study of knowledge mentioned above). This is the inference from what may be the case to the conclusion that it is therefore right. However, while it is certainly true that, for example, some families are prone to suffer diabetes, as mine is, there is no licence to conclude that they should not be treated, any more than the fact that a child has a broken arm from a bicycle accident implies that the child should have a broken arm. David Hume long ago showed that "is" does not imply "ought".

The person writing the above has forgotten that "ought" is an artifact of the human perspective, and just because it is, there is no implication that it's correct. Like most people who are playing tourist with philosophy, that writer has not considered the implication of his theories toward his own thought, because much as human beings can't see themselves except in a mirror, he has no vision of how the ideas he suggests impact the world.

However, his point is good: Social Darwinism only applies if we assume society is as reasonable a judge of fitness as nature. After all, our top quintile earn anywhere between $140,000 and $200,000 a year, and relatively few of these people even have a clue. Never mind the lower middle class, which hovers near the poverty line through its own sheer lack of judgment in boxlike exburbs, and the true lower classes, who seem to waste anything they get on entertainment, and then starve quietly. Is this misanthropic or realistic? You decide.

The early Social Darwinists, who regarded the theory as a logical extension of laissez-faire capitalism, would have been appalled at the use of the concept to promote state-run eugenics programs.

Though its moral basis is now generally opposed, Social Darwinism did have some favorable effects. Belief in Social Darwinism tended to discourage wanton handouts to the poor, favoring instead providing resources for the fittest of all walks of life to use, or choosing specific, genuinely deserving people as recipients of help and support. Some major capitalists, such as Andrew Carnegie, combined philanthropy with Social Darwinism; he used his vast fortune to set up hundreds of libraries and other public institutions, including a university, for the benefit of those who would choose to avail themselves of such resources. He opposed direct and indiscriminate handouts to the poor because he felt that this favored the undeserving and the deserving person equally.

The problem with our fear and intransigence over Social Darwinism is that it blocks us accepting the basic idea behind Darwinism itself, which is that life is a struggle in which the most realistic people who can also apply themselves should prevail. Our entire political, academic, social and artistic infrastructure seems dedicated to the opposite proposition, which is what Stephen Pinker calls the "blank slate": you can be whoever you want to be, it's all about personal choice, nothing is determined by biology or history, it's all what you choose to do. This is more clever marketing than it is science.

For example, from the "Why I can't support conservatives" file:

The Conservative Movement, as its progenitors like to call it, is now mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly embraced Darwin’s bastard child, social Darwinism.

We all know the problem with liberalism: it wants to destroy the fortunate because its progenitors fear they are unfortunate and can't fix this situation. So we have two political parties, which we might as well call the "Mine Party" and the "Welfare Party." Neither addresses the underlying problem: is our society promoting its best, and demoting its worst?

Once, we had to fight conservatives to get evolution accepted as a theory. Now we have to fight everyone else to get biology itself accepted as reality. The crossover has happened: our liberals deny biology as much as our conservatives do. Our entire society resembles a conspiracy designed to avoid the obvious fact of reality: we are our designs, which are shown in our DNA and then our physical presence. This determines how smart we are, what abilities we have, our personalities and the greatest part of our characters. Most people would have you ignore this obvious facet of reality so they can indulge in the pretense that they are emperors, rap stars, or great authors just waiting to happen, just waiting for the magic spark or chance meeting with a producer at Starbucks.

We can keep up the illusion that it's not important we worry about this so long as we indulge the fallacy that our intellect is god-like, unique, etc. If it turns out that we're just monkeys that got a +25 IQ point upgrade through some freak mutation that helped us find mangoes faster or avoid eating fish anuses or something like that, then we're suddenly without the protection of divine right of human intellect, and we see with sickening certainty that some form of Darwinism -- social or otherwise, global warming winks -- prevails.