Recent political analysis has focused on some way of trying to make consistent the positions of political liberals and conservatives. Why, for example, are people simultaneously in support of the death penalty and “pro-life?” Why are those most strongly in favor of our civil liberties generally against those liberties protected by the Second Amendment?
In ecology, scientists have theorized two major evolutionary strategies employed by species competing for resources. One strategy, like that of most insects and, say, salmon, consists in having a great number of offspring. They place most of their reproductive energies into their offspring’s quantity, with the hope that at least a couple of them survive. These kinds of species often reproduce by the thousands, losing hundreds of their progeny in their early lives, with a couple, hopefully the strongest of them, surviving by chance in a hard world.
A second strategy favors quality of offspring: putting most of their reproductive energies into the raising of well-equipped offspring, but sacrificing in turn by only having the energy to have very few children. These species bank on their offspring as individuals being able to out-compete other species by nature of their quality. While fewer are present, they have a much greater chance of survival as an individual organism.
The former are called r-strategists, named for the variable reproductive rate in ecological algebra. The latter, however, are k-strategists, named for the variable carrying capacity.
R-strategists predominate in unstable environments, such as forests that have recently been ravaged by fire. K-strategists, on the other hand, out-compete in stable environments, such as climax communities like healthy forests.
The r-strategist prefers, therefore, a less stable world, one of heavy, unrestricted competition and an intense battle for survival. In this environment, not only is it better to have more children, but those that survive the cruelties of the world will be hopefully stronger for doing so, as rapid natural selection goes to work. Equality, stability of resources and cooperation are not beneficial in this world: Any sort of ecosystem and resource stability will allow the k-strategists to predominate.
Blackberries are a good example: They grow fast and indiscriminately. Individually they are not well-adapted to channel resources over time toward developing a canopy height and overshading large trees, nor to invade established ecosystems without disturbance. Yet the moisture they do create beneath them in their rat race to cover the landscape stabilizes the resources of nutrients necessary for tall trees to grow.
The k-strategists survive better in a world of relative ecological tranquility, either undisturbed or mostly protected from ecological disturbance. Intense competition, scarcity of resources and the inability to tend the needs of growing offspring hurt their chances. They seek to secure resources early and sustain them, maintaining each generation of their progeny in a stable environment. Humans are classic k-strategists: few offspring, long periods of development to maturity, intense individual demands for resources during this development that must be provided for.
It might be safe to say, from this analysis, that humans seeking long-term survival would be wise to employ k-selection when considering politics, as it is our natural adaptation. We must nurse, educate, feed and develop our young for them to have a chance at survival. We cannot have one but every nine months, if that. We are not suited biologically to compete in an unstable world for we lack the ability to lay eggs by the thousands. Thus, the creation of an environment heavy in competition and light in cooperation, scarce in resources and ecologically disturbed by death and disease, will diminish our chances as a species, for survival.
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