Autumn’s a bad season for squirrels. Crisp, cool air seems to send
these tree rodents into suicidal traffic forages. I know I see
roadkill most months when I’m jogging along the Charles, but there’s a particular
urgency to squirrels’ mad dashes across the asphalt this time of
year. I suppose it’s their last opportunity to top out their tanks for
the lean months of winter — and a lazy squirrel, no less than a lazy
grasshopper, has slim chance of making it through.
Human habitation has really created a Golden Age for squirrelkind.
You would think that with all the old ladies in the park feeding them
bread, squirrels would basically settle into species retirement. But,
of course, nature and evolution didn’t design them that way. Like all
rodents, animals, and living beings, squirrels fill – and then overfill
– their environment. In an era of prosperity, they multiply like, well,
rabbits. In times of plenty, perhaps more survive than at other times,
but the weak and unfit are still weeded out. In a few thousand more
generations, squirrels will be running across interstates with nary a scratch.
Humans seem to be the exception to this axiom of evolution. Economic
development efforts have found that prosperity actually reins in our
fecundity. When you are never quite sure how many of your children will
survive to adulthood, you have more children. In developed nations, by
contrast, childbirth rates have hit a point where populations are
actually shrinking. Is it possible, perhaps, that as a species we
recognize when our cup overfloweth? Have we transcended biological
imperative and evolution by competition?
Or perhaps has human evolution reached the next stage, a mere
reworking of the way in which the fittest survive? Listening to
political rhetoric today, you would think so. The “culture of
ownership” that inveighs agains the “culture of dependency” portrays
the down-and-out as unfit — unfit in their work ethic, their
educational attainment, perhaps even their moral or spiritual worth. By
this token, “compassionate conservatism” is simply social Darwinism by
another name. Never mind bad luck and misfortune: evolution is about
the big picture, not individuals. A squirrel that can dodge 20 mph cars
is still more likely to survive than one that can only dodge 15 mph
cars and is therefore more “fit” — even if both are going to be run
over by a 55 mph minivan. Over time, by favoring the first squirrel,
evolution will get us to that super-squirrel that can dodge speeding
trucks. Likewise, both the lazy and the industrious will find
themselves out of work in today’s economy, but let’s be honest here: we
want to weed out the lazy, even if a few deserving individuals get
swept along. The only way America can survive on the highway of
commerce is to stop being held back by those of us who are barely fit
to descend from the tree.
America, are you Man or Mouse? Or have you forgotten the difference?
