The“Survival of the Fittest”? No: It Was the Survival of the Fastest Adapting Brains

Evolutionary biologists have estimated that 99.99% of the species that have ever lived on earth are extinct today. From devastating meteors and asteroids to natural environmental hazards, their survival was under constant threats and many of which spelled immediate doom. Human beings, on the other hand, became quite adept at avoiding danger partially by creating their own environment, rather than just adapting to it. They crafted ways to solve problems, and became the only animal on the planet (1) that looks for problems, (2) that even predicts future problems, and  (3) that invents “practice problems” to solve.  (The imaginary and practice problems were/are presented in a safe and controlled environment that we called “schools”).

 

With the capacity to think flexibly, and after amassing an incredibly robust repertoire of problem-solving strategies, human beings evolved as the only species that could run away from a problem, swim away from a problem, climb away from a problem, talk our way out of a problem, create vehicles (sometimes with cooperating domesticated animals) to take us away from a problem, and use technology to design remedies to our problems. Mastering a wide range of possible problem-solving strategies and passing them down from one generation to the next permitted the survival of our species. However, it was not as much governed by the “survival of the fittest” rules as it was the survival of the most innovative and fastest adapting brains.

Fordlandia: What Happens When We Work Against Nature? (Part II)

Most of the heveas brasilis trees succumbed quickly to a local fungus that would have normally been curtailed by the natural vegetation, which was now absent. Healthy trees also need space between one anther, which they also lacked in Fordlandia. The subsequent flooding, caused by depleting the area of vegetation, washed away the few surviving trees.

Almost no trees were harvested, since they could not reach maturity. In the unforgiving nature-driven rainforest, manufacturing schedules and carefully planned production levels were the priorities, in spite of what nature had in store. The results were physically and financially disastrous.

Ultimately, Ford's $20 million agricultural fiasco was terminated and the now-useless land was sold back to the government of Brazil for $250,000. This relegated Fordlandia to the classic "case studies" list of prime examples of the high price paid for ignoring, rather than working with, nature.

On countless occasions in our human history, we have demonstrated how defying Mother Nature can be a sin that is accompanied by severe punishment. Contemporary classrooms are not exempt. Force-fitting more than 4 million years of brain evolution into a 150 year-old American classroom model has also been punished by conspicuous academic shortcomings. This is evidenced by an abundance of "brain antagonistic" educational practices that yield consistently poor learning results.

As the 20th-century British leader Winston Churchill once said, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing one’s enthusiasm.” Many of the instructional failings about which we’ve been most enthusiastic for several generations should be substituted with “brain-considerate” approaches that reflect how our brains have developed over the past 4 million years of evolutionary enhancements.