No, this editorial is not going to be about the famous question Juvenal posed: ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ (‘Who guards the guardians?’), though the shenanigans of president Trump after losing the November presidential election, and the way the GOP responded to those threats to democracy, might have prepared the reader to think so. Instead, I want to return to a previous editorial of mine, in which I pointed out that the term ‘Darwinian’ is all too often misused in economic and societal contexts.^[1] There, I concluded that ‘Darwinian economy’ or ‘Darwinian society’ is NOT an accurate description of cut‐throat capitalism or a society not geared toward social justice, as these both do not seem to encompass cooperation, care, or altruism, which are stressed as natural outcomes of selection by Darwin himself in ‘The Descent of Man’. There is thus nothing ‘Darwinian’ about unchecked greed or power. Not because individuals cannot be greedy or lust after unfettered power, but because social evolution will restrict their number. There are basic biological and ecological parallels: for example, only limited percentages of ‘users’ are sustainable. It all boils down to the fact that such descriptions oversimplify complex interactions: evolution is about trade‐offs. Another way of saying this: fitness landscapes are defined along many competing dimensions.

In my previous editorial, I was triggered by an interesting column of John Harris in the Guardian.^[2] Since then, I was saddened to see that articles in the Guardian use the term inappropriately all the time. Let me give you two glaring examples (by the way, both in columns where I agree with their general tenor). Here is Jonathan Freedland discussing the ‘…Darwinian belief that the strong individual can and should do whatever they like…’ in the context of describing Trump and Trumpism.^[3] And, in a very recent column, Gina Miller expresses the opinion ‘Johnsonism is ultimately Darwinism: ours will be a country where only the strongest and richest prosper…’, while describing the descent of Britain into a corruption nation.^[4]

Of course, this misappropriation of Darwin's ideas to justify existing inequalities in wealth, power and basic protections has much older roots. In that historical context, ‘social Darwinism’ and Herbert Spencer should be mentioned (both having excellent Wikipedia lemmas, which describe complexities I will skip here). However, that we keep using the term ‘Darwinism’ in only its most basic competitive sense at present, should worry us all. And that this pernicious use even occurs with writers who are clearly strongly opposed to the extreme, ‘dog eat dog’, libertarian worldview it reflects, should worry us even more. Why? Because words matter. They shape our reality and either open up or limit our imagination. This was also eloquently described in a previous editorial by Andrew Moore, when he discussed ‘caring language’ when talking about nature, to enhance chances of preserving more of it than we currently seem capable of.^[5] He discusses the implicit tension between the necessarily precise, ‘objective’ language of (evolutionary) science and the subjective language of emotion, the latter urgently needed to make humanity more aware of the fact that we are an integral and vulnerable part of what we are describing. The distancing language of science can, for instance, easily be misused to justify the current mass extinction as ‘natural’ and unavoidable.

Before concluding, I should stress that this repeated appeal for a more positive, historically correct, usage of ‘Darwinism’ does not come from a sense of frustration regarding the lack of effect of my previous editorial. A mental picture of the ‘Guardian headquarters in great turmoil as Dave Speijer points out error’ should quickly dispel such an idea. It goes without saying that framing the term in the way described, is deeply embedded in western culture by now. However, that a certain conceptual error seems permanently ingrained should not keep us from pointing it out again and again: even The Guardian needs a scientific guardian. One might even conclude that the deep prejudices regarding nature's mechanisms that this misuse highlights, oblige us to do so. So, for future reference: when using ‘Darwinian’ in a broader context, it must signify ‘in awe of the beauty and diversity of life, aware of its myriad interconnections and the value of cooperation’. Darwin would surely have approved.

不，这篇社论不会讨论 Juvenal 提出的著名问题：“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes？” （“谁保护监护人？”），尽管特朗普总统在 11 月总统大选失败后的恶作剧，以及共和党对这些民主威胁的反应方式，可能已经让读者有这样的想法。相反，我想回到我之前的一篇社论，其中我指出“达尔文主义者”这个词在经济和社会背景下经常被误用。^{[ 1 ]}在那里，我得出结论，“达尔文式经济”或“达尔文式社会”不是对残酷资本主义或不面向社会正义的社会的准确描述，因为这两者似乎都不包含合作、关怀或利他主义，而后者是达尔文本人在《人类的起源》中强调这是自然选择的结果。因此，没有任何关于不受约束的贪婪或权力的“达尔文主义”。不是因为个人不能贪婪或渴望不受约束的权力，而是因为社会进化会限制它们的数量。有基本的生物和生态相似之处：例如，只有有限百分比的“用户”是可持续的。这一切都归结为这样一个事实，即这种描述过度简化了复杂的相互作用：进化是关于权衡的。另一种说法是：健身景观是根据许多相互竞争的维度来定义的。

在我之前的社论中，我被卫报中约翰哈里斯的一个有趣的专栏所触发。^{[ 2 ]}从那以后，我很伤心地看到《卫报》上的文章一直不恰当地使用这个词。让我给你两个明显的例子（顺便说一下，在我同意他们的总体男高音的专栏中）。这是乔纳森·弗里德兰 (Jonathan Freedland) 在描述特朗普和特朗普主义的背景下讨论“……强大的个人可以而且应该做任何他们喜欢做的事情……的达尔文主义信念”。^{[ 3 ]}而且，在最近的一篇专栏文章中，吉娜·米勒 (Gina Miller) 表达了“约翰逊主义最终是达尔文主义：我们的国家将成为一个只有最强大和最富有的人才能繁荣……”的观点，同时描述了英国陷入腐败国家的情况。^{[ 4 ]}

当然，这种对达尔文思想的盗用，以证明在财富、权力和基本保护方面存在的不平等是有道理的。在那个历史背景下，应该提到“社会达尔文主义”和赫伯特斯宾塞（两者都有出色的维基百科引理，我将在这里跳过它们描述的复杂性）。然而，我们目前仅在最基本的竞争意义上继续使用“达尔文主义”一词，这应该让我们所有人感到担忧。而且这种有害的使用甚至发生在明显强烈反对极端的作家身上，“狗吃狗”，它所反映的自由主义世界观，更应该让我们担心。为什么？因为言语很重要。它们塑造了我们的现实，打开或限制了我们的想象力。安德鲁·摩尔 (Andrew Moore) 在之前的一篇社论中也雄辩地描述了这一点，当时他在谈论自然时讨论了“关怀语言”，以增加保护比我们目前似乎能够做到的更多的机会。^{[ 5 ]}他讨论了（进化）科学必然精确的“客观”语言与情感的主观语言之间的隐含张力，后者迫切需要让人类更加意识到我们是我们所是的一个组成部分和脆弱的部分。描述。例如，科学的疏远语言很容易被滥用来证明当前的大规模灭绝是“自然的”和不可避免的。

在结束之前，我要强调，这种对“达尔文主义”的更积极的、历史上正确的用法的反复呼吁并不是出于对我之前的社论缺乏效果的沮丧感。“卫报总部陷入巨大混乱，戴夫·斯佩杰指出错误”的心理画面应该会很快消除这种想法。不用说，以所描述的方式来构建这个术语，现在已经深深植根于西方文化中。然而，某些概念错误似乎根深蒂固，不应阻止我们一次又一次地指出它：即使是卫报也需要一个科学的监护人。人们甚至可以得出结论，这种滥用所凸显的对自然机制的深刻偏见迫使我们这样做。因此，为了将来参考：在更广泛的背景下使用“达尔文”时，它必须表示“敬畏生命的美丽和多样性，意识到生命的无数相互联系和合作的价值”。达尔文肯定会同意的。