Darwin wasn’t the first to say it, and he didn’t mean what you think he meant.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “survival of the fittest” used as shorthand for how evolution works. Darwin did include the phrase in a later (fifth) edition of Origin of the Species but he was very clear that it wasn’t his:

“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”

What’s way more important nowadays, when it’s been reinterpreted as “might is right” is that that’s not what Darwin meant at all.

Leon Megginson, a Professor Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge summarised Darwin’s lesson as follows:

According to Darwin's Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.

In these days of polarised political opinion, it could be interpreted as survival of those most willing to listen to, and hear a range of viewpoints, to compromise. What seems to have been meant by “fittest” is the one most able to fit.

This is important to anyone who lives with disability. If evolution were really about survival of the fittest meaning the most athletic or the most able, we wouldn’t stand a chance. In fact, faced with a determined political campaign to reduce NDIS funding it would be easy to give in to despondency, to question our own worth. But think again. What I find to be the most useful explanation of the theory of evolution is that it’s about survival of the most adaptable, most cooperative.

Any contribution we make to society at large has as much value as that made by anyone else, more so if there’s an inbuild lesson about overcoming adversity. In this context then, NDIS support for “social and community participation” makes more sense and we should feel fully justified in seeking support for it at plan reviews.