Richard Handler
Stephen Jay Gould, the great evolutionary biologist who died in 2002, had a saying that he would continually return to in his many essays and books: Rewind the tape of evolution, and when you play it again, everything will come out differently.
Gould was a paleontologist at Harvard, a student of evolutionary history and a marvellous writer who believed in writing for everyday readers.
He fell in love with dinosaurs when he was a little boy after visits to the Museum of Natural History in New York. And his hero was Charles Darwin, whom he said everybody constantly misunderstood.
Evolution can be an evil word for religious fundamentalists. For example, Anne Coulter, that slinky American zealot, believes Darwin is the devil who has dethroned God and ruined our lives.
Gould, for his part, had no quarrel with religion. He believed religion and science addressed different questions. Science can tell you what happened after the Big Bang created the universe. But it can’t tell you anything about what went before or why the universe was created in the first place.
Life is not a highway
Gould said evolution isn’t an onward and upward highway, a straight line from simplicity to complexity, from bacteria to human beings. What’s behind evolution is natural selection. That’s what’s meant by “survival of the fittest.”
But survival of the fittest is not a moral dictum or judgment—organisms adapt to local circumstances. And natural selection works by genetic jumps and mistakes or mutations.
Those who can’t adapt, no matter how beautiful or monstrous, are just out of luck.
According to Gould and the misunderstood Darwin, the tree of evolution is a huge, branchy structure, not a CN Tower with a pointy top. Luck and contingency rule: Chance and uncertainty are nature’s solemn arbiters.
Sixty five million years ago, a meteorite struck Earth and caused a great cloud of dust to envelop the planet.
This was the world’s first “nuclear winter,” without the bomb, of course. Vast forests shrivelled and died. And the imperial dinosaurs perished because their habitat was wiped out.
Sticking out from all the rubble was our ancestor, the tiny tree shrew. Enough was left over for it to get a meal. Mammals descended from this small animal. And we are the result.
Rewind the tape
If you think you’re such a big shot, just think of your beginnings: The gopher-like tree shrew, crawling over dinosaur corpses, nosing about, afraid and alive.
Nothing is determined in evolution. That’s why we must come back to Gould’s unrolled tape. In his book, Wonderful Life, Gould tells the story of the Burgess Shale, tucked in the Canadian Rockies.
Half a billion years ago, organisms competed for resources. Some came out ahead and evolved further. A multitude of others became extinct. Rewind the tape of history, and something else could have happened.
That’s why I have come to see Charles Darwin, that 19th- century genius, as history’s first news director.
For example, people today talk of “Bush’s War,” meaning Iraq. But let’s rewind the tape of history and see whose war it really is.
If Ralph Nader had not run for president against George W. Bush in 2000 (as many of his admirers pleaded), it is very likely that Al Gore, the Democrat, would have been elected.
Gore might well have invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. But, as a more cautious man, more steeped in Washington’s ways, it’s highly unlikely Gore would have made that Bush leap of faith and invaded Iraq as well.
So it’s “Nader’s War.” Not Bush’s. But let’s unroll that tape even further.
If Gore had not been so puritanical and not disowned Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair, thereby keeping his former boss from much of the campaign trail, it’s likely Clinton would have brought in a bigger African-American vote to offset Nader.
So we could call this “Gore’s War.” Or is it Clinton’s, or maybe Lewinsky’s. That’s my favourite.
After all, the economy was humming along in 2000, the time of that fateful election. The Democrats could be seen as a shoe-in—without a sex scandal.
Poor Monica. She was just a White House intern. She just wanted to play around a little, not rearrange the Middle East.
Survival by circumstance
You get the drift. Chance, luck, contingency, adaptation. Find your examples. If Paul Martin had not been so virtuous and had he ignored the referendum ad flap (as Jean Chrétien would have), the Liberals might have been re-elected. And Canada would still be global warming fighters in good standing.
Had Ariel Sharon not had a stroke and fallen into a coma, he might have responded to the killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in a more nuanced way. Who knows? Or he could have waged a more sophisticated war on behalf of the Israelis.
Take your pick, from history or your personal life.
I met my wife in a tutorial class. Had she picked another, or arrived five minutes later to sign up (and found it full), I might never have met her. Our sons would never have been born. They don’t know how lucky they are.
We all can find a dozen twists of luck and adaptations that changed our lives forever. It’s not just survival of the fittest. It’s “survival by circumstance.”
The title of a Hollywood movie says it all: History is Made at Night. And evolution keeps us spry or dead. But either way, it keeps us in the dark.
This essay was published under the title Iraq is ‘Monica’s War’ on September 1, 2006. The author Richard Handler is a producer with the CBC Radio program Ideas.