The Rules of Evolution

When watching, analyzing and trying to understand all the news from around the world, whether political, military or economic, I am always struck by how complicated our modern world appears. The various "experts" talking to us from the TV screen try their damnedest to make every issue appear difficult to follow, something which only "people in the know" can comprehend, and which we the uninitiated have to take their word for and not try to think about it on our own.

Whenever I see this - the convoluted bailout coverage, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the influence of lobbies in American politics - I always go back to the first rule of evolution: to survive and prosper.

In nature, every organism, every kind of animal, from a single cell to dinosaurs, has one goal which trumps all other goals, to which its almost every important action is in support of.

That rule, of course, is a species' survival - and its ability to prosper.

Whether animals evolve claws and thick skin, more efficient brains, ability to walk on land or swim faster underwater, or even an ability to reproduce faster than predators can kill them, the survival is the most important, overriding goal - of everything in nature.


Similarly, survival can be, should be and must be applied when watching, analyzing and, most importantly, trying to understand the world around us.

When we apply the survival principle to almost any happening around us, from the level of a school your kids go to, to nation-states' wars and actions, to our government's bailout, it all becomes clear, the veil comes off and the people on TV start to look like the paid propagandists (trying their hardest to obfuscate, confuse and bamboozle us)... that they are.


A school bully beating up your kid at school is acting to further his own survival, by eliminating his competition to being the alpha dog in a class setting, and trying to further his influence and power - to prosper - resulting in gratification, feelings of superiority and, in the end, power over other kids in a class.

Survive and prosper in action.

Your kid, coming home from school with a red mark on his cheek, trying his hardest to NOT tell you what happened, is also trying to survive and prosper (bear with me here). By "telling" on a bully to his parent, he realizes that he will be ostracized by his classmates, who are in that bull's power and he will lose face. It is better to play along in the system, take your lumps, and survive, and prosper. Not as well as the alpha-male bully, but prosper nevertheless - the choice between that and being totally ostracized by everyone is quite clear when using the first evolutionary rule.

Your kid's school principal, reacting with outrage to your reporting on the matter of your kid being bullied in school, is also acting under the guidance of the first rule (again, bear with me here). What is going on is that the school principal is interested in his personal survival, and his personal survival as a school principal is tied to the survival of the school as a system. The system must be seen as perfect, as working well under his guidance, and so anybody who stirs up trouble, who "makes waves", who reports that something has happened on his watch, who shows that his school/system is not trouble-free, is not perfect, something that can get back to his superiors, threatening his position, threatening his survival and prosperity, is the enemy.

That is why the principal's beady little eyes bore into your son, trying to intimidate him to shut up, that is why he looks at you with palpable hate, that is why the bully is sitting there smug and smirking, feeling the support of his mother (who realizes that her kid is doing very well in the survive and prosper evolutionary goals, and that this pathetic weeny with his idiot father is threatening his hard fought for standing in the school system).

The school principal finally comes to the resigned admission that you and your kid are not going away, that you will not allow the present state of things to continue, and so with a deep sigh assigns a few days suspension to the bully, while turning his head and boring his eyes with a malicious intensity into your kid, making him squirm, assigns the same punishment, the same number of days away from school, to your kid.

The reactions in the room are interesting at this point.

The mother of the bully, turns to you, the father, with hate filled eyes, because you have just (successfully) attacked her offspring. You can be sure that she will not castigate, punish or criticize her son, whom she is proud of for becoming the top dog in the school.

The bully smirks, as to him a few days of suspension is a reward, and his head is by now full of how, when he comes back, to make the life of your son a living hell - spitting, spit balls, placing gum in the back of the head, stink bombs in your son's locker, and many, many tried and true ways of making your son trying to kill himself while keeping the bully (legally) innocent, with no (official way) to blame him for any of it. The bully is not on a college fast track, and a suspension, or even not finishing school at all, does not bother him in the slightest.

Your son is, however, on a fast track to college, and a suspension really hurts his chances and stays as a permanent mark on his record. He realizes that once the bully comes back from his "vacation", his life will become a living hell, and reporting any future bully assault on him (physical or verbal abuse, spitballs, things thrown at him, kids mocking him) is counter-productive. He will either have to use his (admittedly) superior intelligence to outmaneuver the bully (unlikely - the bully holds all the cards in this fight), or have to effectively hide away, and schedule his classes and school activities to minimize his exposure to his enemy - lunch period with all the other kids, of course, is out now.

Your reaction is of incredulousness - after all, it was your kid that was abused, beaten up - hell, there was a pattern of abuse - and now he is getting the same punishment that his tormentor is getting. When you try to explain the logic of your argument, pointing out that it was your kid who was beaten up, the mother of the bully chortles, the bully laughs, and the beady eyes official joins them in laughing at you as he smirks, and explains to you that the penalty for fighting is the same for everybody in the school code.


The thing that I hope you are getting from this admittedly simple, and fictional (although I can guarantee it scenes like this are happening all over this country in a majority of schools) example is the idea of a system.

All the organisms, all the animals in nature are part of a system, and all their struggles take part in a system. Temperature, amount of water, population density of different kinds of animals, how much grass is growing on the ground to forage for, all of these add up to more than a sum of its parts - a system.

Similarly, a school is also a system, and once you realize that, all the actions of the organisms/part actors start to make sense.


The bully wants to keep his alpha dog/top dog status, and will stop at (almost) nothing to keep his power over other kids in the school/class.

His mother is instinctively protecting her offspring, and anyway, her son did not do anything wrong in her mind, as your kid was just as guilty as her son!

Your son is just trying to survive this hell he finds himself in (no prospering possible - just surviving this without getting too physically hurt or emotionally scarred will be reward enough), and will evolve his behavior to match the situation he finds himself in - perhaps learn how to punch people out, but more probably (evolution gave the bully much bigger body mass and ability to hurt people) will learn to hide away and minimize his exposure to the bully and his allies.

You, the father, being the intelligent sort of a chap, realize that your son's chances of future prosperity just took a big hit, as a permanent black mark is now placed in his record (he was, dare I say it, fighting in school, you see), and that an official in the admissions of a college will take a look at the record of your son and see it - with, of course, the explanation written by the beady eyed, hateful little man sitting behind the desk across from you.

The most important thing to analyze here is the behavior of the school principal.

If we do not understand the (very simple) first rule of evolution, and the concept of a system, his actions strike us as wrong, and we can also fall into a trap of using strange words such as "unjust" or "immoral".

You must realize that the principal acted correctly under the circumstances, guided by the rules of evolution.

The school principal is, like everyone else and everything else in this world concerned mostly with one thing - his own, very personal survival and prosperity.

Every bullying incident is a black mark on his own personal record, a black mark on the whole school administration hurts their cause, because their superiors, if there are enough reports of bullying in a school, will take a closer look and investigate- him, the teachers, the administrators, the security guards, the whole school.

You, the father, trying to make your species/clan (family) prosper in the future, try to protect your kid's future prosperity but you do not realize the following:
You, the father reporting the bullying, has now become the enemy of the whole system (the school).

Think of the principal as someone with a vested (alongside the concept of system, another key in understanding almost everything going on around us) interest in the preservation of the system itself - because his survival and prosperity is tied completely to the survival and prosperity of the system (school).

So he takes a defensive action; he gives both kids - the criminal aggressor and the victim - the exact same punishment.

The point of this action is to make it appear that both parties are guilty, and that it was not bullying at all - just two asshole kids fighting, which makes it appear less of a black mark than a bullying pattern.

Bullying implies a loss of control by himself, his teachers, and everyone else who is part of the system - the nurse, the security guards, the janitor - over the kids. A random fight between two kids - does not imply anything, other than two kids misbehaving. No black mark on the school administration.

And the school code is made exactly to promote this action in just such an occurence - it is simplistic beyond belief, and states that two kids fighting must suffer so many days of suspension; end of law.

So the offshoot of this situation is that your son is now an outcast, a trouble maker, he "makes waves", and does not follow the right and proper course. His behavior goes against the system, and he will be shunned, made fun of, abused and will suffer.

Or he will learn to adapt to the system, learn to say what is needed, act how its needed, and in a best case scenario join the bully's allies in making fun of, abusing and ultimately making another kid's life a living hell.

So it is in nature, and so it is in any system - school, office, army, whatever.

The sub rule of the first rule of evolution is, perhaps, do not stick out in a crowd.

A herd of antelopes being attacked a by a lion will run for it, but as you watch the Nature channel you see a pathetic antelope on the fringes of the herd, not being allowed in, indeed the herd as it is running away from that lion will maneuver so that that (sick, slow, not fitting in) antelope will be the one closest to the lion. The rest of the antelopes in the herd have a vested interest in making the weakest, shunned, ostracized one get eaten by the lion, and all of them work for that to happen.

Your son in the above example was also sticking out - perhaps he did not laugh loud enough as the bully was sticking gum up another kid's nose... Perhaps he looks too intelligent, his grades are too good compared to the rest of the class, whatever it is, he sticks out from the herd.

It is very possible that other kids - the herd, recognize this and maneuver so that the lion - bully - will attack the one who is not fitting in, almost pointing your son out to the bully.


The system endures, the system never changes, the system is all - adapt to it or perish.

All are parts of this system, and if you stick out, you are not part of the herd, you will perish.

Learn it, learn to bend its laws, learn to abuse it (and, most importantly, others) and prosper.

Obey its unwritten rules or suffer.



Some examples of this in action, from personal (people level) to nation states.

Everybody in an office goes to lunch, except one guy who keeps working through his lunch. The rest of the herd starts rumours about him, ostracizing him, and vicious "behind his back" campaign of smears develops. He was sticking out, going against the herd, and by implication becoming an enemy of the established system.


The Soviet Union came into being in 1917, and became a pariah nation-state, shunned by all other established states. It began to aggressively expand its influence, recognizing that if it stayed as the only communist state in the world, as set against every other nation which was capitalist, it would perish.

It did perish - it was not aggressive enough and did not turn enough countries into communist dictatorships... or one might say it adapted and cowed itself before the system (world wide political system) in which it found itself.


American politicians resist any and all efforts to reform the current political system. The funniest to me are the reactions of people who cannot understand why is it soo hard for a third party to become a viable force in American politics, given how corrupt, bought for and ultimately destructing to this country both current political parties are.

Democrats and Republicans main goals, as is true with everything and everybody else, is to survive and prosper - a third party is a danger to both of them , threatening both the groups and the politicians personally... American politicians are stupid, but not stupid enough to act against their own survival.


Politicians who go against their party's leaders' guidelines, wishes and, ultimately, orders, are ostracized. They are the antelope which sticks out in the herd, and so are ostracized, if not destroyed.

Ron Paul, when he was a presidential candidate, was not allowed to participate in presidential debates. The most interesting thing to me, looking at this from a system standpoint (remember, everything is part of a system, and must be looked at as a whole - remember this blog's motto "Can't see the forest for the trees"), is that presidential debates in this country are organized by private organizations, mostly the news networks (the fact that presidential debates are organized by private corporations and they decide who attends them and who does not should tell you everything you need to know about the so called American "democracy").

The Republicans, alongside their allies in the media, effectively sidelined Ron Paul, doing their damndest to prevent him from becoming a viable candidate (as an example, one of many, see this article).

The logic went something like this:
Ron Paul is not a mainstream candidate and cannot be taken seriously, and therefore he is not invited to the Republican presidential debates.

Ron Paul cannot be taken seriously and is not a mainstream presidential canidate because he was not invited to the Republican presidential debates.

Can you spot the problem with this?


Similarly, Dennis Kucinich was also ostracized, as the Democrats with their allies in the media did their damndest to exclude Dennis Kucinich from presidential debates. For the logic used, see the circular logic used in the above Ron Paul example.

Both of these politicians stood out from the herd, as they dared to utter the forbidden word "reform" (and also had the temerity to question reasons for the Iraq war, going so far as to specifically ask WHY America was so gung ho about attacking Iraq when that country had nothing to do with 9/11... leading to uncomfortable questions about the power of the pro-Israel Lobby, which is a big no-no in American "democracy").

And so the system, through its people with vested interests whose fortunes are intertwined and whose being depends on the system, acted to sabotage and kill off their presidential bids.


The shock that whistleblowers in any organization experience as they point out that organization's wrong doing, is always amusing to me as they (the idiots) are then ground down, their lives destroyed, their money gone, even if they get an understanding speech from a Congress panel praising them for their actions... and then these same Congress people act to destroy the whistleblowers' lives behind closed doors.

The most obvious example of a system is the army - in fact, any country's army is ultimately the same, with the same rules as any other, just the degree of violence and suffering of its lowest ranked members varies (I think that any member of any armed forces will agree with me on this).

A soldier who questions his superior's actions (which, say, result in his whole platoon being wiped out due to the superior's stupidity) will be passed over for promotion, ostracized and taken out of the herd by expulsion from the army... in the best scenario. In a worst case scenario, he will be shot in the back while an investigating commission will find nothing unusual with his death.

The lowest, the scum, the soldiers who do the actual fighting, suffer through their superior's stupidity and see their buddies die because of it, but are smart enough to keep their mouths shut, will be given small pieces cheap metal as a reward (we call those useless things "medals").

A soldier criticizing his superior finds soon enough that he is fighting the whole system, the whole military, as exposing his superior as a completely retarded idiot leads to uncomfortable questions about the people who promoted and supported him - his superiors... who also may happen to be completely retarded idiots, and who reached their positions by shutting up when needed, never questioning and praising the completely retarded idiots above them in the hierarchy at all times.


The strange relationship between Saudi Arabia and the USofA is also inexplicable - after all, it was not Iraqis (whoa!) who staged the 9/11 attacks, but Saudi nationals, and Al Kaida's money comes mostly from - you guessed it - Saudi citizens.

You would think that the United States would speak up to the Saudis, perhaps going so far as to ask them - politely - to stop the citizens of that kingdom from giving their money to our enemies.

Far from it - after 9/11, the bin Laden family was flown out of the country, the FBI agents who wanted to question them were told to fuck off (or were fired), and 'W" Bush was photographed (quite a famous photograph) holding hands with the Saudi monarch.


Why? Our current livelihood and prosperity is based on oil, which is in everything - plastics and gasoline being the main things which come to mind. Our system needs oil, Saudi Arabia has the most of it, and so we tend to overlook such unimportant facts like the Saudi nationals support of al Kaida.

But, you might ask, why don't we just discover a substitute for oil?

That is very dangerous thinking, citizen. By asking such a question you are actively going against the system. In effect, it is almost a heresy to ask such a dangerous question.


Do you not realize the amount of money involved in the oil industry? Do you not realize that some very important, influential people are personally tied to the oil industry, and make their personal and family fortunes by being involved in this commodity (hint - look at the picture again)? An effective electric car, powered, say, by an electric re-powered battery, charged with safe nuclear power provided by a few nuclear plants, is one of the most dangerous ideas that is not floating around the radio, TV and media.

In fact, no one in the media will ask about America's (and the world) dependence on outdated, XIX Century technology, and follow up that question with alternatives - that is simply not done in a mainstream media outlet.


The current financial crisis is also very easy to understand, when looked at in the holistic, system kind of a view.

As I explained before in preceding articles, the American economy is based on bullshit - it is made up of over 70% of the so called service sector, which is chiefly banking, finance and insurance. The people/parties in power, whether democrat or republican, act to support the system as is, and so both supported the housing bubble because that allowed people to "buy" homes (even if they could not afford it), then get other loans for cars, furniture and other stuff, and all this kept the American economy going, people buying more and more stuff, and everybody was happy (all of this is explained in more detail here).

You might ask yourself, well, at some point all this must come to an end, as you simply cannot lend more people more and more money; at some point you must try to recoup your loans and when that happens and people cannot (or won't) pay you back then you have a problem.

Which, when you think about it a bit more, is exactly what happened and where we are today.

But you are thinking logically, perhaps trying to make it work for the benefit of American citizens and the country as a whole, and not thinking about the system and people with vested interest in it who have much different goals.


Banks are led by CEO's, CFO's, and during the bubble, they made incredible money (on their books) by loaning as much as they could. CEO's and CFO's do not get to these high positions in their companies by questioning the system, but by ruthlessly destroying people who do - and so any bank/finance employee who was stupid enough to question the viabilty - the logic, the sense, if any - of loaning money to deadbeats, illegal immigrants and poor who will not be able to repay those loans was fired, destroyed, ostracized.

If a CEO was stupid enough to follow that common sense advice, his bank would not make as much money from the bubble, and so the shareholders would fire him - after all, all the other banks make billions, and you are not making even a quarter of what they are making, what the fuck are you talking about "loaning practices", "background checks" and "common sense" - fuck off, I want to make money like the other banks!


'W' Bush, Clinton, Obama, and all the rest of the herd of politicians supported the housing bubble creating the situation we have today because they were interested in the survival and prosperity of the American economic system - which is, in the final analysis, based on bullshit and funny rules in accounting.

They were not acting against their own personal interests in this - first, everybody else, the herd, was on board, and sticking out is always ill advised. Second, everything in the current American economic system is based on the short term profits. Which basically means that if you can "game" the system to report great economy boom, and after you leave office the whole bullshit creation comes crashing down, you... well, win.

The same thing is, of course, happening in the world of corporate entities. Everything in that insane world of false ledgers, nonsensical accounting rules and total lack of oversight (by design, to keep the bubble going) is about the current share price, making the CEO's do everything to raise the price of a company's stock, many times effectively destroying the company in the process... but if they time it right, and leave before the meltdown, they win the game of life.

Hell, even if they do not time it, and are forced to leave a company, they do so pocketing a "golden parachute" and usually their previous bonuses (for "good performance").


Watching the TV now, one thing should strike you as peculiar (I said should, but chances are that such a simple thought did not occur to you as you overanalyze the inane babbling of the TV "experts" - no offense, bud) - no one is questioning the system currently in place, asking if this system works, if there should be changes, if there should be (gasp!) reform.

To understand why not, please look up the subrule about "standing out in the crowd" and re-read the Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich presidential bids.


Do you understand yet why president Obama pardoned American torturers?

Do you comprehend why impeachment is off the table?

Do you realize that the one action which can save this nation's future, namely the regulation, curbing (in my view) and ultimate destruction of the Lobby system (effectively a legalized bribery system in our esteemed "democracy") will never happen - hell, no one will even utter such heresy on TV?



The system endures, the system never changes, the system is all - adapt to it or perish.

All are parts of this system, and if you stick out, you are not part of the herd, you will perish.

Learn it, learn to bend its laws, learn to abuse it (and, most importantly, others) and prosper.

Obey its unwritten rules or suffer.