Social Fitness
Psychosocial Darwinism
Darwin's «survival of the fittest» never referred to getting benefits from strength, dominance or other individual attribute. It was an ecological attribute referring to the species' "fit" with its environment conceived as physical in nature but including other species. Nature is ruthless and economical: each species requires its own unique niche and the competitive exclusion principle states that only one species can survive in a particular ecological niche.
In psycho-social reality, there is a similar demand for «fitness». However, here we are dealing with a person, not a species, and fitting their socio-physical environment, with the emphasis commonly being on the social i.e. the group, community or society.
The human condition is about individuals living in groups. Each individual is unique: individuality is one of the primal needs. However equally important is the need to be a member of various groups. The two aspects are intermeshed: membership contributes to personal identity and individuality, and individuality determines appropriate memberships.
The primal need for autonomy lies in the and yet values are not only crucial for the self and personal identity but also for group membership (see Ch.s 4 and 5 of Working with Values). Ethical requirements within this domain interact with the and provide for control of individuals in the service of the group or society (see Ch.s 7, 8 and 9 of Working with Values).
However, any actual group, and therefore the concrete daily demand on our functioning as individuals, is determined within the because this is where the primal need for association is to be found.
Depiction exposes Reality
The possibility of association is dependent on sharing a common reality. As this satellite has revealed «reality» is a slippery notion and while this core membership criterion is never precisely defined everyone in the group more or less knows what it is.
Exceptional leaders notwithstanding, any group normally dominates its individual members, not the other way around. So a person is expected to fit into the group to which they claim to belong. Fitting in to a group means not just holding similar values, but affirming a similar reality as other members.
So, members' perceptions of situations that the group faces cannot be too divergent. Any member's account of a situation faced in common must be acceptable to other group members. If a person perceives and handles a situation in a way that the relevant group finds unacceptable, then there is a clash. A lack of fit becomes apparent and the person may no longer be welcome. If repeated often enough and/or too divergent, continuance as a group member becomes impossible.
Where membership of a group is optional, the person can move on. But group membership is often at the heart of the person's identity providing meaning and often livelihood. Speaking your mind, if idiosyncratic, then becomes dangerous. Actions speak louder than words, so fitting in demands a degree of conformity in both words and deeds.
That is why "tell all" memoirs by those in high positions are published following retirement when the career risk of being rejected and ejected is past.
From Clarity to Fitness
The provide a person with clarity about situations, clarity that evolves into beliefs. Clarity plus beliefs enable choices. The choice may or may not be controversial and will be usually judged on performance criteria, but any clarification is potentially risky because the criterion is acceptability not correctness or helpfulness.
Every time there is a clarification, the shared reality of a relevant group is the context within which acceptability is judged. Anything that undermines potentially weakens the and is therefore experienced as a threat by other group members.
Fitness is assured when an individual's clear expressions fit the shared reality. Such individuals then have the Darwinian right to survive and thrive. Clarifications that do not fit face social resistance and lead the group to exclude or aggressively turn against the individual.
Personal Example: In early days when I was employed, I was passed over for promotion "despite or rather because of your many contributions". I had too often rocked the boat by exposing damaging and dangerous routine arrangements.
The therefore form that can be developed as a hierarchy. Because fitness is a requirement wherever a person is on the Spiral, even if a mode's full value set is not in operation, its essence can be brought to bear at any Stage.
Originally posted: 10-May-2025. Last amended: 5-Oct-2025.
