THE DARWIN AWARDS

  “ the tree of life prunes by itself ”

Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, biologist and anthropologist who predominated over the intellectual scene of the 19^th century, but not only: a revolutionary who theorized an aukward doctrine, at first rejected, but even today studied and discussed, which radically impressed on the science progress. [1]

Who knows how the clever scientist would react if he could know that in the XXI century, the one of the development of artificial intelligence to be clear, his name is used, paradoxically, when human stupidity is celebrated.

Then let’s refer to Darwin Awards,an ironical award online conferred to the people who, because of a really stupid action, caused their own death or, at least, invalitated their procreative capability.

According to the cynical award, the merit of the foolish winners should be the one to have improved the human genetic pool by eliminating, with their suicide or sterilization, genes corrupted by stupidity.

The award inspired also a homonymous black comedy, The Darwin Awards-casual suicides for little evolved minds,that, by analysing foolish suicides from a humorous viewpoint, points out,above all, the inexperience causing them.

If for The Darwin Awards suicide is caused by human unfitness, there is only another institution that gives an alternative justification to such episodes: The Catholic Church. According to the Holy See suicides are very serious sins, but sometimes they are committed uncosciously, that is when they are due to depression, limiting the freedom to understand and act: in some cases it is possible to have religious funerals for people who committed suicide.[2]

Beyond the causticity of the Darwin Award, we don’t intend to express moral judges on, we can’t but aknowledge a brilliant intuition: “the tree of life prunes by itself”, this way one of the sentences of the “award” says, a statement we can read also according to the system of regulation at genetic feedback (genetic retroaction or negative retroaction): in fact, in accordance with the theory of the system of regulation at genetic feedback, foolish suicides or the loss of procreative capabilities, the Darwin Awards reward, are nothing but an artifice of nature to try to restrain the eccessive increase of human population.

[1] Charles Darwin was the first to deal with the theory of evolution, already theorized but not enough suported by other people, according to which man descends from apes, contrasting both the biblical creation advocated by Christianity and public opinion. So he destabilized the common idea that would put man in a commanding position as to other species.

[2] This piece of news was directly given by Joaquin Navarro-Walls, first editor of the pressroom of the Holy See during the funeral of Cedric Tornay in the Vatican parish of St.Anne. He was a Swiss guard who committed suicide after killing his superior and his wife in May 1998. A debated event (known as the Estermann Case) that made people think even of plots and the funeral, very likely, was used to stop the media interest in the question and to silence unconfessable truths for ever.

Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci