From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 22:16:13 GMT

In article <54l54f$qrr@ren.cei.net>,
Lee Kent Hempfling  wrote:
>Allow me this: I think this is backwards. Stress is felt by the
>predator in an non-self-aware condition. To succeed. Animals, in
>lowpecking order, of the kind mentioned above have no stress as they
>have no intelligence with which to feel it. It is survival of the
>intelligent which make the fittest. People misconstrue it to be
>strongest. 

Fitness is fitness, not strength or intelligence.  Cockroaches have done quite
well, thank you.  As have ferns, algae, bacteria, etc. ad nauseam.  The law of
the jungle is more a matter of fungi than it is of lions, regardless of how
many people shallowly think it is the latter because they are easier to notice
and appeal more to our empathy.  People misconstrue it largely because they
have an interest in doing so, as is quite clear from as the history of social
Darwinism and the ends to which it is employed.
--