In today's society we are accustomed to scientists and politicians spouting off statistics. For example: there was fifty percent of the expected voting turnout in the last gubernatorial race, or nearly eleven percent of working Americans are unemployed. The weatherman talks about a fifty to seventy-five percent chance for light showers on Thursday or ESPN tells us that the Cavs will beat the Lakers by a five percent margin. Statistical information and statistical probability mean something to us today; they can make or break arguments based on an event’s likelihood. Everyone understands chances. When we get in the car every morning, we know somewhere inside that it’s only a matter of time until it’s us in that wreck we hear about so often on the radio. Romeo knows that when he finally gets up the guts to talk to Juliet, enraptured with her enchanting blue eyes, that there's a chance he will get turned down, or that she won't be there this time, or she might have fallen for someone else. In a word, chance is the purest scientific ground for romance. Evolution is the denial of chance. The idea of risk is lost when our natural world is considered simply a conglomeration of material that can be completely described, and thus legislated, by mathematical determination.
Some mathematicians, even some very well known ones, have attempted to speculate at the likelihood of the unprovoked origination of natural life. Some, I'm sure, ascribe to modest numbers, say, 1 in a billion or 1 in a trillion chances. But at some mathematical limit if something with odds of such a high magnitude still happens, it has no probability. That phenomenon is a certainty; it involved a force that mathematics ultimately cannot describe. Because we exist, we have not beaten the odds; we have destroyed the relevance of odds. We are forced to use such words as “lucky” or “fortunate” or “blessed” to describe the natural world. In evolutionary social construction this demolition of probability only becomes more lucid. In essence, modern science today, firmly asserts that not far in the future a good scientist, be he a biologist or a psychologist, will be able to predict any circumstance and any behavior based on the causal circumstances. Our determination is set; the weatherman simply needs better meteorological science and the politician simply more accurate voting records to know what will inevitably and necessarily happen. The best description science has been, and probably necessarily, will ever be able to formulate about our world is as a machine that yields appropriate outputs for every input. Consequently, Romeo only needs a better understanding of biochemistry and psychology to know whether he has any chance with Juliet or not.
Romance is lost, decision is lost, and like the seer or soothsayer of old, science will be our guide to nearly psychic understanding. And we think this understanding will at last achieve a worldwide peace because the knight of romances does not need to loose his sword, but rather the fear of losing his own life, and thus a respect for it. Daring and bravery are reduced to dopamine levels and adrenaline infusion rates. His loss of fear is due to a loss of meaning in his decisions. Similarly, the princess need not be saved, except from the subjective sensation of being caught and stranded. She is ultimately caught in any case by the decree of circumstance. The evolutionist preaches freedom yes, but freedom from what? From the romantic, from destiny, from identity? And some will assuredly say, yes, yes of course, because Nature does not find use in such strange and abstract trivialities. But by this natural logic, the only reasonable conception of humanity, as an evolutionary environmentalist, is Nature's greatest mistake.
In Nature all around us we see equilibrium and balance. The sun makes the plants grow which are eaten by the rabbits that are eaten by the fox. The deer have the wolves and the fish have the eagles. They are dependent on each other in a complex web of relations. And all this is well and good. So good in fact that science boasts of Nature’s burgeoning complexity and insurmountable abilities, and such is quite nearly the case. But a good environmentalist knows of one animal that does not oblige to obey her rules. He knows very well that humanity is committing matriarchal homicide, driving the knife deeper daily as greed and lack of foresight rape the world and Nature of her nobler character. But I pose to you the question, if Nature has the power we claim her to possess, humanity has put a spell on her to which no sorcerer of science has found the antidote. If Nature truly has the might of selection that we espouse her, it would only be fair to say that we did not evolve from monkeys, no, monkeys evolved from us, and to them we must return. We have out-grown this world, we have over-evolved, and our power has corrupted the very fabric of material existence.
And it is this question that may prove to be the Achilles heel of evolutionary science: By what means and for what reason would Nature have the capacity and tendency to destroy itself? If our freewill is truly illusory, as some would have us believe, what conclusion can we surmise from the existence of a natural creature with power enough to destroy all of Nature? Could it be that Nature is really a romantic at heart? Could it be that she has willed into existence a creature that can begin to understand her responsibility? I doubt this, and I presume that any scientist would doubt it as well. Yet, what option is left to us? If competition is truly the natural norm, what advantage is represented by the destruction of all other competitors, as seems to have been the human evolutionary goal? It follows that, to the extent to which the theory of Evolution is wrong so too is Industrial Capitalism. Its results are similar and it is finally based upon the same premises as its biological brother.
If the results of the theory of Evolution are at all quantifiable, it would be difficult to deny the loss of a few very distinctive sensibilities. We have lost a truly romantic spirit because we have lost the fidelity of romance. We have forgotten our sense of what life is and its true health by a simple denial of our own needs, thinking them merely evolutionary artifacts from the distant past. Finally, we have lost any conception of the value of choice, and with this, any understanding of the responsibility we have in their effects. We, unlike Romeo, kill ourselves not because we think Juliet is dead, and wish to be with her in death. But rather we kill ourselves because we forget that she had ever lived.