Statue of Darwin
Gurdjieff said that the chief feature of humanity is suggestibility. We can see this clearly in the general attitude to scientific theories that pervades European and North American culture. In general, they tend to believe everything that modern science has suggested to them. It can often be observed among many people who are part of the Work, even though they ought to be less susceptible to it.
Among the many things that people tend to believe simply because it has been suggested to them is Darwin’s theory of evolution and particularly the mantra of “survival of the fittest.” When we watch nature documentaries, there will almost always be a voiceover suggesting, at some point, that some aspect of a creature’s behavior marked them for survival in line with Darwin’s primary idea.
We can congratulate Darwin on his original work on the map of evolution in line with the evidence of the fossil record. It is a map of the historical activity of Great Nature. In truth this is his major contribution. One of the compelling reasons that we should give no respect to Darwin’s survival of the fittest idea, is that it accounts for only one of the six processes that exist, inevitably, in any cosmos, including the cosmos of nature.
The survival of the fittest is the process of purification (digestion), and it is a genuine force that acts in the evolutionary and revolutionary path of Nature. The actual process of the evolution of species occurs not at the level of species but at the level of local ecosystems. Every species occupies some note in some octave in its local ecosystem. If that species were to disappear, then there would be a gap that needed to be filled, and nature would find a way of filling it – perhaps with a new species for that role. Alternatively, some other species will find a way to carry out that role.
Examples of this behavior can be found on the various islands around the world that have, for many millions of years, been disconnected from the continents (the mainland). The prime example is New Zealand, which, according to geological theories, separated from the mainland about 6 million years ago. For millions of years, the ecosystem in New Zealand was based entirely upon birds, as there were no mammals. So, the birds of New Zealand filled all the roles that are normally required by various species in an ecosystem: Foundation Species, Herbivores, Carnivores, Omnivores, and Decomposers. Some were specialists, and some were generalists.
It is not species per se that evolve, it is ecosystems – populations of numerous symbiotic species whose collective behavior works towards the survival of the ecosystem.