Book Review

The Evolution of Everything

Review: The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge

Author: Matt Ridley

I am slowly evolving into a Darwinist, or an evolutionist as a way of seeing and being in the world.  It makes sense regarding how the world works and suits my inherent anti-authoritarian philosophy/psychology.  Great people are not that great.  We seem to suit the distributed intelligence of an eco-system, rather than the top-down dictates of an authoritarian dictatorship.  Adam Smith is making more sense in reflecting reality than Karl Marx.

I decided to read this following profoundly moved by Ridley’s book “The Red Queen”.  He writes well and presents his idea in a coherent and well-reasoned manner.  The premise of the book is that things emerge, and generally if we try to direct or manufacture it, the phenomena end in the delay of the inevitable and misery for those that try to resist the delay.  Ridley sees the world in a bottom-up, and governments and authoritarians should get out of the way manner.

In saying this I am troubled and do not accept the complete premise of the book.  Sometimes (more rarely than Politicians, the Media, and leaders in society would have us believe) genuine leaders do emerge and lead us where we would have not otherwise gone.  To an extent, we like a competent tyranny in the form of government to stop our lives from descending towards anarchy.  According to Complexity Theory, chaotic systems self-organise.  

His ideas seem to be heading mostly in the right direction, but I am not fully on board.  I suspect that we need a balance of Chaos and Order in the way we operate ourselves and society.  Democracy provides some checks and balances against an Authoritarian Despot.  When we find good governance we should do what we can to maintain it.  Some hierarchies are legitimate and necessary.  Not every leader is an evil despot, and leaders do not have the power to fix us.  We must first fix ourselves as best we can, that is under our power.  A good leader is a role model to strive to emulate.  Even emerging systems can benefit from good and wise leadership – those that don’t have wise leadership are overtaken by those that do.  In this, I agree with Ridley.