Survival of the mediocre holds merit

Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society by Daniel Milo is worth reading, whether you believe in evolution or not. 

Full disclosure: I’ve never been a fervent follower of Darwin. I was taught Creationism at the tender age of 13, when I was told that there are actually two diverging theories on life’s origins. Who knew? Until then, I was a whole-hearted theistic evolutionist. Now, after years of re-learning, I may be devolving back to my original childhood state. 

But whether you’re an evolutionist or creationist, or half-way between, the Darwinian ethos flows through our neoliberal veins. One has only to look at the convergence of the Religious Right with free-market capitalism to see its fruits. To many religious-minded people, survival-of-the-fittest in the economic context makes complete sense. 

This form of Darwinism can be rationalized in any number of ways, but a common one is that as the “fittest” rise to the top, they make a better world for everyone. When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes $50 billion during a pandemic, we’re all better off. (Well, maybe if you’re an Amazon Prime member.) 

Milo challenges this key tenet of Darwinian theory: that nature produces only the fittest, best adapted, and most perfectly designed. Instead, he proposes that nature is filled with mediocrity. Just because a species can survive does not mean it’s exceptional. 

The same holds true for humans. Not only are most of us unexceptional, but embracing exceptionalism can come at a steep cost. We can strive to make life better for ourselves, but there’s no sense killing ourselves (and others) to rise to the top. In fact, beyond meeting our basic needs, there is little fulfillment gained in excess – whether that be excess food, wealth, or fame. 

Yet it’s in our genes to continually gather more than we need – to ensure our “safety net,” as senseless as this has become. For someone like Bezos, that safety net is currently $200 billion and counting. That’s an extreme example, but compared to the thousands of generations before us, we’re all members of an advanced aristocracy (modern healthcare alone is worth more than we could ever realize). 

Nature creates safety nets, too, but they’re physiological. The giraffe, writes Milo, has an extra-long neck when it’s entirely unnecessary – for feeding, reproduction and safety. It's but one example, he argues, of nature’s over-compensation. 

The same could be said for the human brain. Until very recently, its size did little to benefit the human race, except to cause death during child birth (chimpanzees and apes, with smaller brains, sustained much larger populations historically). Milo suggests we got lucky: “[A]mong a tiny sliver of humans, the brain overcame itself. Its burden persisted, but by inventing the future, it rescued humanity from extinction. With the future came the seed of restlessness."

This restlessness creates a need to continually find problems and solve those problems, however trivial they might be. Or in our modern era, to create an endless cycle of production and consumption. “Planned obsolescence,” writes Milo, “is not just some conspiracy to enrich the tech sector but an essential feature of the human safety net. The alternative to planned obsolescence is mass unemployment – large swaths of humanity with nothing to do.” 

There could be nothing worse for our over-developed brains. (Try to not think of anything for just a minute – see how that goes.) At this stage of modern society, both unemployment and boredom is a pertinent threat to our existence.  

An idle mind is the devil’s workshop, as the proverb goes. Evolutionists and creationists alike would agree.