Fitness means best-suited, not strongest

June 30, 2025

Julian Cribb says, with some, I hope excusable, editing that, ‘The pathological character of modern political leadership … has diverted us from our own survival, as a civilisation – and maybe as a species, … contributing to a humanity, as Darwin might have described it, “less fit to survive”’.

The phrase “survival of the fittest” is mostly misused these days to imply that individuals and groups who fulfill the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”, to which one might add smarter, better armed, richer, more ruthless, etc., are very justifiably most likely to succeed in life.

Julian, with his legitimate 21st century amendment of the phrase, is, I think, using it more in line with its original meaning: species that are best fitted to living in their environment are most likely to enjoy reproductive success and so survive for many generations.

The tragedy is that it is not some uncontrollable slow change or cataclysmic external event (think dinosaurs) that is destroying the good fit between humans and our environment but our own collective stupidity.

Finally, sorry to be a pedant, it was Herbert Spencer not Darwin who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”.