Darwin, Dawkins, Capitalism, and the Modern Condition
The modern story of how human beings understand themselves—and why we now find ourselves in a state of deep anxiety, alienation, and ecological peril—cannot be told without reference to Darwinian thought and its reinterpretations. From Charles Darwin’s cautious mid-nineteenth-century insights to Richard Dawkins’s late twentieth-century gene-centered metaphors, evolutionary theory has profoundly influenced both science and culture. Yet the meanings derived from Darwin and Dawkins were quickly absorbed into a capitalist framework that prized competition, individualism, and dominance. This merging of biology and economics has shaped how societies view success, how individuals construct identity, and how humanity now confronts crises of meaning, mental health, and planetary survival.
Darwin and the Early Misinterpretations
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) advanced a radical break from static conceptions of life, showing instead that all species evolved through a process of variation, struggle, and natural selection.¹ While Darwin described a dynamic natural world, he was restrained in applying these principles to human social life. Yet his contemporaries were not. Herbert Spencer, coining the phrase “survival of the fittest,” extended evolutionary thought into political economy. For Spencer, competition in industry and society was simply the human extension of natural law. To interfere with such competition through welfare or social reform was to resist the course of nature itself.²
This interpretation—later called “Social Darwinism”—quickly became a justification for industrial exploitation, colonial expansion, and class hierarchy. By recasting human society as a battlefield of fitness, it naturalized inequality and excused suffering as the necessary price of progress.³
Capitalism and the Cult of Competition
In the twentieth century, these ideas became further entwined with capitalism’s ideological ascent. Capitalism as an economic system thrives on narratives of meritocracy and competition: those who succeed are the “fit,” those who fail are “unfit.” Darwinian metaphors legitimized this worldview. The business magnate became the apex predator; the marketplace, a jungle where only the most efficient survived.
Karl Polanyi, writing in The Great Transformation, argued that capitalist society redefined all human relations through the market, dismantling older forms of reciprocity, kinship, and obligation.⁴ Where once value had been measured in communal survival or spiritual meaning, capitalism now reduced value to monetary gain. The result was a steady erosion of social fabrics that had once sustained meaning.
This capitalist-Darwinian synthesis also created a culture of individualism. The individual, not the community, became the primary unit of meaning and responsibility. Cooperation, solidarity, and care were reinterpreted as secondary virtues, tolerated only insofar as they facilitated individual success. Such individualism contributed to today’s epidemic of loneliness, anxiety, and disconnection.
Historical Case Studies
The English Enclosures: In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, communal fields and forests that had supported peasants for centuries were enclosed and privatized. Supporters often invoked a proto-Darwinian logic: the industrious and efficient deserved land, while the idle poor should be compelled into wage labor. This restructuring dismantled village economies and forced millions into industrial cities, laying the groundwork for capitalist exploitation under the guise of “natural” economic order.⁵
Colonial India: British colonial policy in India repeatedly justified itself in Darwinian terms. Famines in the late nineteenth century, exacerbated by grain exports to Britain, were described by officials as nature’s way of reducing “surplus populations.” Relief was often withheld to avoid “interference” with natural selection.⁶
United States and Race: In America, Social Darwinism underpinned racial segregation and eugenics. Thinkers like William Graham Sumner argued that social welfare violated natural law by aiding the “unfit.” Eugenics programs sterilized tens of thousands of people deemed unworthy of reproduction, a policy legitimated by misapplied evolutionary logic.⁷
Neoliberalism of the 1980s: More recently, neoliberal reforms under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan repackaged Darwinian-capitalist ideas for a globalized era. Welfare systems were dismantled, unions broken, and public services privatized. Thatcher famously declared, “There is no such thing as society, only individuals and families,” echoing a gene-centered view of human life.⁸
Dawkins and the Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene (1976) represented another turning point. His reframing of evolution at the level of the gene captivated both scientists and the general public. Dawkins’s central metaphor—the selfish gene—was not intended as a prescription for human morality. Rather, it was a heuristic for understanding how genes maximize their replication through organisms.⁹ Yet, in a society already enthralled by capitalist individualism, the metaphor resonated with cultural values.
Dawkins’s work, alongside sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, reinforced a reductionist view: altruism, morality, even love could be explained as strategies for genetic advantage. This intellectual climate provided scientific legitimacy for the idea that life is fundamentally competitive, self-interested, and purposeless beyond replication.
Capitalism, Climate, and Denial
Nowhere are the consequences of this worldview more apparent than in the climate crisis. Capitalism, driven by perpetual growth, extraction, and consumption, has destabilized Earth’s climate systems. Fossil fuel corporations, agribusiness, and industrial economies continue to expand despite overwhelming evidence of ecological collapse. Here again, Darwinian language of competition and survival serves as rationalization: markets will adapt, technology will save, humanity will “evolve.”
Fossil Fuel Expansion: For more than a century, fossil fuel development was justified as the natural progression of civilization. Oil companies framed extraction as an inevitable step in human “progress” and often employed Social Darwinist rhetoric, suggesting that nations that failed to industrialize would be left behind. This narrative silenced alternative energy traditions, from indigenous stewardship of forests to early experiments with solar power.¹⁰
Denial Campaigns: From the late twentieth century onward, corporations such as Exxon and BP funded think tanks to cast doubt on climate science. These campaigns strategically invoked evolutionary metaphors: humanity would adapt as it always had; technological innovation would provide solutions. By reframing climate change as an “alarmist” distortion of natural adaptability, denial campaigns deferred systemic change while maximizing short-term profits.¹¹
Adaptation Rhetoric: Even today, much of the policy discourse emphasizes adaptation rather than transformation. Rising seas, extreme weather, and ecosystem collapse are treated as new conditions to which the “fittest” nations and individuals must adjust. This logic mirrors the misapplied Darwinian view that catastrophe is a test of fitness rather than a call for collective restructuring.¹² The result is a global system that accepts suffering for billions as “natural,” while wealthy enclaves insulate themselves behind technological defenses.
Denial as Social Phenomenon
Climate science reminds us that individualism and denial are luxuries we can no longer afford. Denial, however, is not simply ignorance but a complex social practice. As Stanley Cohen observed in States of Denial, societies often respond to overwhelming evidence of suffering or crisis by refusing to integrate it into daily consciousness.¹³ Denial operates in three modes: literal denial (rejecting the facts outright), interpretive denial (admitting the facts but minimizing their meaning), and implicatory denial (acknowledging both facts and meaning but refusing to act).
All three are visible in the climate crisis. Literal denial persists in conspiracy-driven rejection of climate science. Interpretive denial manifests when leaders admit climate change is real but insist it is manageable through minor adjustments. Implicatory denial pervades daily life: most people know their consumption habits fuel emissions, yet they carry on unchanged because the implications feel unbearable. This phenomenon is magnified by capitalist individualism, which shifts responsibility from systems to individuals. Recycling bins, “green” consumer products, and carbon footprints become symbolic acts that ease guilt while leaving structural dynamics untouched.
Case Studies of Denial
Tobacco: For decades, tobacco companies denied the health risks of smoking, despite overwhelming scientific evidence. Industry-funded research created doubt, allowing millions to continue smoking while governments delayed regulation.¹⁴
The Ozone Hole: When scientists discovered the link between chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and ozone depletion in the 1970s, industry groups at first denied or minimized the problem. Only after mounting evidence and public pressure did the Montreal Protocol bring global action.¹⁵
COVID-19: During the global pandemic, denial manifested worldwide. Some rejected the existence of the virus; others admitted its presence but minimized its severity; still others acknowledged the crisis but resisted necessary restrictions. Denial functioned socially, allowing individuals and governments to maintain normal routines despite looming catastrophe.¹⁶
China’s International Flights: In early 2020, the Chinese government closed domestic flights from Wuhan but allowed international flights to continue. This revealed a form of interpretive and implicatory denial: the state acknowledged danger internally but minimized or deflected its global significance. Protecting internal stability and economic interests took precedence over global responsibility. The episode illustrates Cohen’s point that denial is not just psychological but strategic, used by institutions to preserve power and avoid disruptive truths.¹⁷
Contrasting State and Corporate Denial: The Chinese case demonstrates how states may practice denial to protect political legitimacy, while Western corporations such as ExxonMobil or Philip Morris practiced denial to protect profits. Different systems—authoritarian governance and liberal capitalism—arrived at the same outcome: concealment, delay, and deflection of responsibility. Whether driven by state power or corporate interest, denial serves to preserve established orders at the expense of collective well-being. This convergence shows that denial is not ideological in itself but structural: it emerges wherever powerful actors face existential threats to their authority or economic base.
Technology as Both Tool and Trap
Technology magnifies these dynamics. The industrial revolution, undergirded by fossil fuels, created both wealth and the conditions for ecological catastrophe. Today, digital technologies accelerate capitalist imperatives by monetizing attention, fragmenting community, and amplifying misinformation. Social media algorithms, functioning as memetic selection machines, favor outrage, division, and distraction. In Dawkins’s terms, memes replicate for survival, not for truth or meaning.¹⁸
Technology was once heralded as the great solution, the engine of progress. Yet increasingly it appears as a double-edged sword: enabling global communication while fueling political polarization; advancing medicine while undermining mental health; providing abundance while intensifying inequality. The cultural faith in technological salvation, inherited from Enlightenment rationalism and reinforced by capitalist ideology, now delays recognition of deeper systemic change.
Modern Malaise: Individualism and the Loss of Meaning
The convergence of Darwinian reductionism, capitalist individualism, and technological acceleration has left modern societies in profound malaise. Loneliness has become epidemic, with individuals disconnected from family, community, and place.¹⁹ Suicide rates, addiction, and mental illness climb even as medical science advances. Economic systems generate staggering wealth for a small minority while leaving the majority struggling with insecurity, debt, and hopelessness.
At the root lies the cultural insistence that individuals must forge their own meaning in a purposeless universe, armed only with the resources of consumption and self-branding. This ideology denies what Darwin himself recognized: that human beings are inherently cooperative, social animals whose flourishing depends on sympathy and community. “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members,” Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man, “would flourish best.”²⁰
Indigenous and Non-Western Alternatives
Yet this bleak trajectory is not the only way human societies have understood themselves. Indigenous and non-Western worldviews present radically different orientations toward life, meaning, and ecology—orientations often suppressed by both colonialism and capitalism.
In many Native American traditions, for example, the concept of the “seventh generation” requires that decisions be made with consideration for those yet unborn.²¹ Similarly, Andean cosmologies in South America speak of ayni, a principle of sacred reciprocity that structures human relationships with one another, with animals, and with the land.²²
In much of Africa, philosophies such as Ubuntu articulate a relational identity: “I am because we are.” Here, personhood is inseparable from community, rejecting the Western emphasis on atomized individuality.²³ In Tibetan Buddhism, the doctrine of interdependence (pratītyasamutpāda, རྟེན་འབྲེལ་) insists that all phenomena, including human life, arise only through relational causality.²⁴
Comparative Table: Competing Worldviews
Aspect
Darwinian/Capitalist Worldview
Indigenous/Relational Worldview
Primary Unit
Individual (self-interest, competition)
Community/collective (reciprocity, kinship)
Value System
Accumulation, growth, efficiency
Balance, harmony, sufficiency
View of Nature
Resource to be exploited for progress
Living web of relations, sacred reciprocity
Time Horizon
Short-term profit and adaptation
Long-term continuity (e.g., seven generations)
Meaning
Self-constructed, often reduced to consumption
Embedded in ritual, spirituality, and ecology
Technology
Instrument of control and expansion
Tool for balance and continuity with nature
Climate Crisis Response
Denial, incrementalism, reliance on markets
Responsibility, restraint, systemic adaptation
Toward a Reorientation
The challenge now is to reinterpret Darwinian insights without reducing them to capitalist metaphors. Evolutionary theory reveals that cooperation, mutual aid, and interdependence are as central as competition to human survival. Climate science reminds us that individualism and denial are luxuries we can no longer afford. Technology, if reoriented, could serve connection rather than alienation.
Recovering meaning requires rejecting the false equivalence of natural selection with capitalist competition. It requires reimagining economics not as an endless race for growth but as a system of reciprocity and sufficiency. It requires reclaiming community, ritual, and spiritual depth as essential to human life.
Conclusion
From Darwin’s hesitant descriptions of natural selection to Dawkins’s provocative metaphors of selfish genes and replicating memes, evolutionary thought has deeply shaped cultural values. Yet capitalism appropriated these ideas to reinforce competition, individualism, and denial. The result has been societies that valorize self-interest while neglecting community, that celebrate technological progress while accelerating climate collapse, and that offer material abundance alongside existential despair.
But within Darwin’s own recognition of sympathy, within indigenous traditions of reciprocity, and within sociological critiques of denial lies the seed of renewal. Human beings are not condemned to selfishness or isolation. Our survival and flourishing, both biological and cultural, depend on cooperation, solidarity, and the re-creation of meaning. The future demands that we move beyond the capitalist-Darwinian synthesis toward an ethic of shared responsibility—for each other and for the fragile planet we inhabit.
Endnotes
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859).
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology (London: Williams and Norgate, 1864).
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944).
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966).
Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001).
William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883).
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London: Verso, 2011).
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010).
Dipesh Chakrabarty, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021).
Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Richard Elliot Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
Zeynep Tufekci, Pandemic and the Crisis of Social Science (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2021).
Yanzhong Huang, The COVID-19 Pandemic and China’s Global Health Leadership (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2020).
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019).
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 1871), 163.
John Mohawk, “Subsistence and Materialism,” in Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution, eds. Oren Lyons and John Mohawk (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1992).
Catherine J. Allen, The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988).
Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Thubten Jinpa, Self, Reality and Reason in Tibetan Philosophy: Tsongkhapa’s Quest for the Middle View (London: Routledge,