What does “survival of the fittest” actually mean?

Question from the Internet:

“What is the most important survival trait in the modern world?”

We have been misunderstanding, misinterpreting the principle of “survival of the fittest” for a long time.

To make it fit with our usual viewpoint, our life philosophy of “the stronger always overcoming, controlling, exploiting the weak”, for us the “fittest to survive” is always the stronger bully, the shrewd one that can trick, manipulate, cheat the others, the one that succeeds at the expense of everybody else.

These are the heroes, celebrities, influencers we adore and covet, we all want to become the strongest, wealthiest, most respected regardless of how we reach that spot.

And this is why human society looks as it does, inevitably sleepwalking towards a global meltdown, towards mutually assured self-destruction.

When we look at Nature’s lawful, deterministic system, the “survival of the fittest” means something completely different. It is the “one” that can integrate most effectively, that finds its positive, mutually responsible, mutually complementing “cogwheel role” most effectively in the general system that survives.

Today, when we cannot deny any linger that we exist in a fully integrated and interdependent world — determined by Nature’s laws and evolution’s relentless push and not by some human actions, manipulations — it is time we also understand, accept and learn how to survive according to Nature’s integral template, above and against our inevitably self-destructive ideologies, philosophies, illusions.