How Much of Today’s Anarchic Nihilism Can Be Laid at Darwin’s Feet?
David Klinghoffer
There’s a pervasive sense afoot that something has gone wrong, in a
very serious way, in our culture. Just in 2020, problems that were of,
let’s say, an outpatient nature in their gravity have gone to full-scale
emergency — a cytokine storm of trouble, is one way of putting it. But
why? I’ve watched the once-beautiful city where I live, Seattle,
pummeled by violent protests, the police undermined by those above them
in the government. The city watches endless chaos as the mob rampages,
and no one in authority seems willing to stop it. Neighboring Portland
is worse. Such things are happening across the country. It is
anguishing.
What Is Going On?
We’ve seen things that were previously unheard of. A random example:
as others have pointed out, you may have noticed from the videos of
urban anarchy that it’s now women, not just young men, who are
assaulting police officers and otherwise creating mayhem. It used to be
that males had a monopoly on protest violence. Not anymore. What drives
the astonishing anarchism, the nihilism of the young? What has drained
the confidence of the adults, who should be the ones acting to assert
order?
That there might be something unique, exalted, and worth defending
about human lives, about our traditions of moral and spiritual belief,
about institutions like marriage or the family or about property, about
our freedom or our equal dignity, about our privileged place in the
cosmos — all these ideas, once agreed on across the culture, are
eroding, with a gathering speed, before our eyes.
A Powerful Myth that Shapes Us
Of course I’m not saying everything can be laid to Darwin’s feet. But
see how much nihilism has been justified and advocated by some very
smart and influential people in the name of evolutionary theory. This is
not just a scientific theory of biological origins. It’s a powerful
myth. That observation alone doesn’t make Darwinism false science. A
myth could be true. It only means that Darwinism conveys a vision of
reality that can’t help but shape us deep within. The malignancy of it
has been building for more than a century and a half. Something wrong in
the way Americans are shaped reached a critical threshold this year.
If you want to understand how that happened, because you want to know
how it could be reversed, it’s not possible without considering the
role of evolution advocacy, which begins in school and continues to
bombard us into adulthood. Take three minutes and see if you agree with
me.
