Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Jewish survival

For some time I have been considering this topic, but I have been temporizing for obvious reasons. I strongly support the concept of evolution and Darwin's idea of 'the survival of the fittest." This concept applies not only to the evolution of biological species, but also to individuals in any competitive situation, as Malthus originally pointed out, such as competition for food and jobs. It also applies to groups of peoples, such as tribes competing for scare resources, like land, for example in central Europe.

In the competition between Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Russians, Lithuanians and so on, and Jews, it was clear that the Jews would receive short shrift, because they did not have the wherewithal to compete effectively, namely an army and a determination to carve out a land for themselves in Europe. While one could not predict a "Holocaust" from this "survival of the fittest" of national tribes in Europe, it is obvious that the Jews were not the fittest to be able to survive under those competitive conditions. It is important to note that many groups lost land and other resources in the tough competition, for example Hungary lost land and people to Romania (what was the province of Transylvania), but Romania in turn lost land and people to Russia (what was the province of Moldavia). Similarly Denmark lost land and people to Germany (Schleswig-Holstein), and so on. But the Jews were perhaps the least fitted to survive under those conditions and so the biggest losers.

There is a process of cell death that takes place in mammalian organs called apoptosis, or "programmed cell death." If cells only divided then organs would continue to grow, but in fact organs maintain a certain average size in each individual. That is because the death of cells is programmed, so that the numbers of cells being formed and dying are approximately equal in each organ. However, while an average number of cells actually die and are removed from the system, it is impossible to predict a priori (until some change actually occurs, such as cell damage) which cell will spontaneously undergo apoptosis. This is the same situation that occurs in nuclear fission and many other physical processes. For example, uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years and one can predict that for a given sample of the substance, half of the atoms will split in that time period. But, it is still impossible to predict which specific atoms will spontaneously degrade at any moment. Another example is a gas in a container that has a minute hole to another closed container; the gas will re-distribute to equilibrium until there are equal numbers of gas molecules (equal pressure) in both containers. But, it is impossible to predict which specific gas molecues will actually pass thru the hole.

Similarly it is imposible to predict which individuals in a large population will die and when (actuaries try to estimate this based on previous experience, such as age, profession, etc.), even though at the end all of us will die. Similarly with national groups, some will spontaneously die out, while others will thrive. For example, the Slavonians were once a powerful group who controlled a large region in Eastern Europe. However, they gradually lost power and there are few remaining in eastern Croatia. A similar process occured when the American indians and the Australian aborigines confronted western European civilization. Similarly I maintain that the Jews of Europe were unable to balance their growth with their death at the hands of other more aggressive and ruthless tribes. Luckily enough Jews escaped eastern Europe to re-establish our culture and heritage in more civilized western countries, such as Britain, Canada, the US and Israel.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home