Darwin’s law of “natural selection” of living beings in nature, a cruel and ruthless law, described by Ivan Efremov in his best (in my opinion) novel “The Hour of the Bull” in the chapter “The Echo of Inferno” as “the theory of Inferno”. Yes, its essence is infernal: Either successfully meet the requirements of an ecological niche, both biological and psychological, or die.
However, there is a small loophole: Finding ANOTHER niche and moving into it in order to survive.
In the same chapter, Yefremov, well, does not speak in a Marxist-Darwinian way about the development of life on Earth, about “Natural selection” not as a kind of benevolent improvement process, but as a bloody sewer full of incalculable suffering for decillions of dying living beings. That is, he writes “vile slander” (from the point of view of a truly Soviet, “progressive and cannibally optimistic”) for the whole process of LIFE on Earth.
“Only nature has unlimited cruelty to solve contradictions by blind experiment at the expense of all living things”
“The notorious natural selection of nature appeared as the most vivid expression of infernality, a method to achieve improvement blindly, as in a game by rolling the dice countless times. But behind every throw there are millions of lives that died in suffering and hopelessness.”
Truly, immortal lines!
I also wrote about this in myonly novel, “The idle talk with Joyboy”” There I wrote that if the sufferings of living beings only on planet Earth could be transformed into the most subtle, insignificant grains of the “Suffering” substance, then a HUGE “BLACK HOLE of SUFFERING” would have appeared near the Earth long ago, which would suck in the entire solar system and a part of our galaxy close to us.
But in this article we will talk about a GOOD NATURAL SELECTION – the selection of ideas!
I will quote again the description of a micro-episode from Einstein’s life.
There, Einstein gave us an example of HUMANITY and the HONESTY of his thoughts and feelings.
In 1912, he was already very close to creating the General Theory of Relativity.
He told his math student about it once. And student asked him:
“But, Mr. Professor, doesn’t it upset you that your idea will have to wait eight years for the next solar eclipse to be tested?”
Einstein replied with a laugh:
“You see, a man who, like me, often threw his ideas in the trash, won’t be in such a hurry to find out if he’s right or wrong again?”
“I often threw my ideas in the trash” – what is this, if not the same natural selection, but applied to the world of ideas! And he SHOULD BE CRUEL AND RUTHLESS, because only such an approach to HIS IDEAS helps the author develop the ability to generate TRULY SOUND AND ORIGINAL IDEAS!
I try to be as cruel and ruthless to MY IDEAS as possible.
Sometimes there are even funny incidents of sudden “auto-resuscitation of a once-dead idea.”
This also proves the correctness of the “natural selection of ideas.” If an idea is considered bad, unviable at some stage of reflection and thrown into the trash, and sooner or later it suddenly comes to life there and soars up like a bird, JUST PRETENDING TO BE DEAD, a LIVING AND VIABLE IDEA, WHAT could be better and more beautiful for an honest author?!
It happened to me sometimes, too. Such self-resuscitation causes a very interesting and mixed feeling. You immediately start analyzing why you threw it away earlier, DIDN’T SEE A POWERFUL LIFE POTENTIAL IN IT?
So at that moment we were not far-sighted enough!
“It is not those people who have not reached the goal who are deprived of foresight, but those who HAVE PASSED IT BY!”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld.
I’ll conclude this note with that.
5 X 2026
