“Then there was the matter of “all men are created equal, justice is blind, and the good guys win.” Speaking of equality, for instance, if there was ever a hogwash notion that had reached the summit, this was it; and it was the principle to which many countries including France, England, the United States, Germany, and Australia to name a few, adhered to. It was in their constitutions, and their laws and their politicians repeated these platitudes everywhere they went, same as quoting from the Good Book.
Nice maybe, but wrong. Evolution as I understood it, was the struggle for survival, the survival of the fittest. The concept is simple: life is competition, and some are born better equipped to survive than others. And not just a few chosen animals and plants. All life is that way, and that included man. No amount of fancy talk and well-wishing was going to change that. Still, lots of people wanted to believe it and did. Another lie or myth, we, as a society of so-called modern men, like to believe in, I thought, and closed my eyes in the dark. It would have been good to have solutions to offer, but I didn’t have any, not now and not in the dark, but still, the question of why we love to believe things that aren’t true and that persist in their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence baffled me. Man’s folly? It could be. Maybe we should admit that all men are not created equal, thought I. Inequality is natural and inborn. That would at least be an honest statement, and then go right ahead and make sure everybody got the same opportunity and had the same rights. No reason to deny anybody, even a jackass, an even break.”
From In the Land of Fire