struggle for existence incidents in the pearl john steinbeck

Some went further, arguing that consciousness separated humans from animals and, thus, from natural life itself. The first rule in this misreading of Darwin’s theory was a self-serving moral assumption: Humans occupy the highest rung in the evolutionary of animal life. It was especially popular among the American and British elite because it placed them, the white Christian male, at the top of evolutionary scale. Social Darwinism was a late-19th century belief system that applied Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human existence. The question haunting America today is whether it defines today’s deepening crisis and thus the nation’s historical eclipse. Social Darwinism defined morality during American capitalism’s first stage of global ascendancy. It’s the morality of the huckster, those who know how to artfully con the uninformed, get-rich-quick schmuck in America, as the 21st century version of the old adage proclaims, a schmuck is born everyday. Gilded Age values were rationalized in a simple dictum: I’ll get mine screw the next guy.

It is rooted in a return to the all-American morality of Social Darwinism that ruled during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, a period that Mark Twain disparagingly called the Gilded Age. This shared greed is a distinguishing expression of America’s new moral order. It involves all those who knew and not only did nothing but joined in to get their own. It reaches out to still others, including credit rating agencies, government regulators and the self-serving financial media. This chain links the CEO of a major hedge fund or bank to the lowest mortgage broker or loan officer. The Great Recession’s true moral crisis goes deeper, involving all those down the chain of greed that unites the system of plunder.

A new car, an expensive bottle of wine or a couple of zeros on their paychecks is all that is needed to assuage the qualms they might have felt about the immoral if not illegal practices they consciously engaged in. Truly, one can expect little in terms of moral leadership from the conspirators hidden in their Wall Street corner offices.

Those morally culpable for the crisis involved many more than those who masterminded the vast plunder and got away with it. Millions of peoples’ lives were turned upside-down, if not destroyed America’s long-term future put in doubt. The harm inflicted on the American people by the venal practices of those who orchestrated, implemented and/or facilitated the Great Recession is incalculable. At root, it was a moral crisis.īernie Madoff and a handful of other racketeers were prosecuted, but all those actively or passively involved in the financial scam were not exposed, let alone legally dealt with. The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was more than a financial and political crisis.

Struggle for existence incidents in the pearl john steinbeck