An interesting and worrying article, adding to the sense of doom that is looming ever larger . . .

 

Could there be a common cause for this plethora of mounting existential problems that we are some how failing to recognise . . . . ?

 

I believe there is, and that the reason we fail to recognise it is the taboo against applying Darwin's BIG idea, not to rationalising and justifying the political and socioeconomic status quo (as earlier social Darwinists tended to do), but to <i>understanding</i> it.

 

Just as many Christians were once loath (as some still are) to accept Darwin's ideas, because they undermined the authority of sacred scripture and the belief system based on it, so too today political and social scientists (along with the political and business elites who self-interestedly believe in them) are loath to accept (or even continence) the relevance of Darwin's ideas for understanding their own society and civilisation, because it would undermine the theories (belief system) on which the current socioeconomic status quo is based, along with their own authority.

 

The trouble that if we fail (or refuse) to understand our society and civilisation from an evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, perspective, we cannot understand it at all, anymore than Ptolemaic astronomers were able to understand the universe. And if we don't understand it, we cannot solve the existential problems now coming to a head. Instead, it will be left to a ruthless Mother Nature to solve them for (or rather, against) us.