Sunday, February 12, 2006

 

Stacy Szysmaszek has an interesting chapbook available as a PDF here. According to the postscript, the poems were written in response to Peter Kropotkin's book, "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution." I remember a bit about Kropotkin from my Russian Studies days -- he was one of the numerous Victorian persons rather disturbed by the effects of Darwin's theories on the culture around him, especially by "Social Darwinist" tendencies. Rather than retreat into religious pieties, however, he went back to the theory, and studied the behaviors of bird colonies, He eventually devised a theory of how evolution can result in mutual aid -- cooperative behaviors that make a species hardier as a whole. This evolution of mutual aid would keep evolution from being a zero-sum game, and moreover, give a way out to people who would prefer to both (a) be totally secular and (b) not, like, kick poor people on the way to work in the morning.

posted by Reen |link| 0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -