Spencer’s vision of the Survival of the Fittest of how flexible, adaptive, hard-working people would be successful and will accumulate, by others following that good example, they too would become successful.  The success would breed success and failure would breed failure. I find that theory interesting but there are always exceptions to the rule. He believed that the successful breeding success was going to lead to a perfect society.

Society often believes that our families are a significant influence on our outcome. Our upbringing, if our parents are successful, the likelyhood of breeding children to have priviledges financially and for a better education can also breed success. Then we have under priviledge children or neighborhoods that struggle, or if they come from a family of substance abuse the probability of their offspring having problems with addiction statistically is higher.  However, I like to look through a rose colored lense and hope that other will beat to the sound of their own drum and if they see others around them going down a wrong path, that they can see the train wreck ahead and go down a better path. We know that we do not live in a perfect society and I don’t believe Spencer’s success will breed success is cookie cutter fix for all.  I do believe we need to start at home though and help families, and offering free education for all because I believe an open minded society that is willing to learn and adapt can breed a more peaceful, understanding, compassionate and helpful society.

Post #2 Paloma

Whether Spencer’s initial vision of social evolutionary theory is convincing has become a contentious topic. Part one of the Social Evolutionary Theory video shows Spencer’s initial perception of this theory. According to Krier (2010), Spencer used biological evolution to argue that all creatures who can adjust to the changing circumstances can adequately struggle towards survival. This scenario is also applicable to a particular culture; hence civilization could cease if it cannot adapt to the emerging circumstances (Krier, 2010). In connection to that, Spencer established four categories of evolutionary levels while explaining the process of societal evolution. In his view, a superficial society, which is often small with a weak relationship structure like Eskimos, could transform into a complex organization. That could happen through a violent or peaceful merger of more than two simple societies. Likewise, doubly compound cultures often settled and more integrated with more advanced political and religious structures could change into trebly compound societies.

In the second Video, Spencer emphasized the disillusionment of his evolutionary social theory, which he initially applauded. In his view, every occurrence must often experience a reverse evolution. That is to say that the evolutionary process could become indefinite before transforming into definiteness. This process would further occur when matter changes from homogenous to heterogeneous or differentiated (Krier, 2010). In my view, Spencer’s second view holds water compared to the second one. Whereas this theory offers basic information on how the society could transform, the first vision focused more on how the general expands in sizes, dividing labor, complexity, and other typical attributes (Krier, 2010). This description dominates the trebly compound societies, which originate from the integration of the doubly compound societies.

References

Krier D. (2010. February 10). Sociological theory: Herbert Spencer and the strategy of modernity, Part 1[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8fmPShiwME

Krier D. (2010, February 8). Sociological theory: Herbert Spencer and the tragedy of modernity, Part 2[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdzTQ-gyIgc