Origin of the Species- 150 Years Old Today

Charles Darwin went rogue on us 150 years ago today. The book was less controversial then than today. When the book was published, well to-do and educated people were the only readers. The notion of survival of the fittest played right into the egos of the British aristocracy, who already thought they were superior, and the book reaffirmed what they believed to be true. The sun never set on the British Empire. Now that they’re no longer the world’s reigning power I wonder if they still feel the same about the book.

Today everybody hears news and commentary, even if they’re illiterate, but they know what they hear, and they believe what they hear. Few people read. Fewer do research through reading. We depend on the professionals to do that for us. We don’t have the time to get to the bottom of every issue. Somehow they do, or they have a staff that does the research for them, and they hear the bottom line and pass it on to us to hear. Facts tend to get in the way, so the story is usually filtered to reinforce their view. People hear the information from a source they respect, and believe it, or want to believe it, or peer pressure helps them believe it.

Forty-two percent of the people in America think the world is 4000 years old. That’s 126 million people. That’s incredible. I have a hard time believing that fact, if it is a fact. Let’s pretend the statistic is over rated by a factor of four. So maybe only ten percent of the Americans really believe the world is 4000 years old. That’s still 30 million or so people. That’s still incredible.

And we wonder why people believe that government regulation is bad, and gun control is bad, and government run health care is bad, and social security is bad, and Medicare is bad, and sending our troops to die in a foreign land with no defined mission is good.