Designer Victimhood

There's no person more insufferable than the self-identified victim. Victimhood is the new cool. If you can contrive some rationalization for believing that you are being opressed by the majority culture, no matter how implausible the leaps and backflips of logic involved, you can tap into a wellspring of righteous satisfaction that once demanded some actual accomplishment to acheive.

So it was inevitable that the proponents of Intelligent Design would play the victim card. How else to explain the lack of progress that this pseudo-scientific fairy tale has been able to acheive among the academic elites that rule this country? Its a conspiracy, of course, and those that recognize the truth are the victims of it.

Just take a gander at this laughable web site set up by annoyingly talentless para-entertainer Ben Stein. On Ben's blog, he lets out this whopper of a diatribe:

Darwinism, the notion that the history of organisms was the story of the survival of the fittest and most hardy, and that organisms evolve because they are stronger and more dominant than others, is a perfect example of the age from which it came: the age of Imperialism. When Darwin wrote, it was received wisdom that the white, northern European man was destined to rule the world. This could have been rationalized as greed–i.e., Europeans simply taking the resources of nations and tribes less well organized than they were. It could have been worked out as a form of amusement of the upper classes and a place for them to realize their martial fantasies. (Was it Shaw who called Imperialism “…outdoor relief for the upper classes?”)

But it fell to a true Imperialist, from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was “owned” (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism. By explaining that Imperialism worked from the level of the most modest organic life up to man, and that in every organic situation, the strong dominated the weak and eventually wiped them out,

Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature. In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself. He was the ultimate pitchman for Imperialism.

Now, we know that Imperialism had a short life span. Imperialism was a system that took no account of the realities of the human condition. Human beings do not like to have their countries owned by people far away in ermine robes. They like to be in charge of themselves.

Imperialism had a short but hideous history–of repression and murder.

But its day is done.

Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media. Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.

Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.

Now, a few scientists are questioning Darwinism on many fronts. I wonder how long Darwinism’s life span will be. Marxism, another theory which, in true Victorian style, sought to explain everything, is dead everywhere but on university campuses and in the minds of psychotic dictators. Maybe Darwinism will be different. Maybe it will last. But it’s difficult to believe it will. Theories that presume to explain everything without much evidence rarely do. Theories that outlive their era of conception and cannot be verified rarely last unless they are faith based. And Darwinism has been such a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies, maybe we would be better off without it as a dominant force.

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

Dream on, Stein! If Darwinism was the biological paradigm for the Age of Imperialism, then Intelligent Design is obviously the biological paradigm for the Age of Therapeutic Narcissism. How could any child brought up to believe that he/she is the center of the universe and deserving of all things ever stoop to believe that he/she wasn't brought into the world by an act of divine decree?

But Ben, you may be still trying to figure things out (and humility has nothing to do with it), but some things have been figured out. As far as its ability to explain the facts as we know them, Darwinism is one of the most successful scientific theories of all time. Although no actual speciation event has been witnessed (I plead ignorance on whether this is the case), the fact of common descent of all living species is so well supported by all fossil and genetic evidence as to make its denial an act of, well, denial.

But enjoy your victimhood! I hope it is more satisfying than your entertainment career.