Two types of Darwinian Ethics are discussed here. Tooth & Claw Darwinian Ethics, and Enlightened Darwinian Ethics

Tooth & Claw

Here a business person will do anything to make money. The only rule is “don't get caught”. This is a complex type of conduct with many levels of description. A "Red Tooth and Claw Darwinian" is a social predator. It's all about the needs and wants of this person. He or she will benefit those around them in a way that leaves the immediate group safe from their predatory nature. A Tooth and Claw Darwinian is less of a sociopath and more apt to abide by many conventions of society.

This social system is many times a criminal culture that is socially involved with other criminal cultures. Unscrupulous players in one system refer potential victims to other systems with the expectation favors will be returned. The larger culture is hierarchical running from the very poor and struggling, up to the very sophisticated investment banker or CEO of a large corporation. These smooth operators can extract money and value from a company and run it into the ground. Tooth & claw personalities appear normal and sometimes well liked. But beneath the veneer of civility is a remorseless predator. These systems can be highly stable particularly in the field of investment banking where appearance are everything and the tooth & claw predator must play by the rules to a great extent. Thus, they are fairly moral and ethical in many ways but when it comes to "the kil"l for a large amount of money they are ethically absent.

Tooth & Claw practices can be subtle and sophisticated. The intent of these businesses is to extract as much money from customers as possible, short of blatant fraud. Most common are the billing scams in which bills are doctored with phony charges. At first the errors are small. Once the business determines the threshold of awareness of their customers they continue to doctor the bills. When customers complain they are bounced around, misled or the company shifts the blame to the customer such as saying "well you have been paying these bills for six months, it's up to you to notify us immediately." See constructive fraud.

The Game of Darwinian Players

Tooth & Claw Darwinians sometimes play elaborate games to pull their prey in. In this version of T&C, winning is justified in the name of being the smarter (the chosen race syndrom). There are game masters and game grandmasters. Thus, when a clever, but somewhat inexperienced game player presents themselves, they get caught up in a game way over their heads. For example, a homeowner hires a contractor thinking they can "game them." As it turns out, they are tricked in to believing that. Here, the gamemaster takes great satisfaction in "taking the owner down" for the emotional pleasure it brings and the money it provides. It would be difficult for an ethicist to intervene in this contest of cunning and skill to pronounce ethical or unethical behavior. Both parties are savvy adults out to take advantage of the other.

Enlightened Darwinians also indulge in predatory games as outlined in the next paragraph. They are not sociopath's but many times decent and caring people. But, their criterions for fleecing a person from the immaturity, ego, greed and ignorance.

Enlightened Darwinian Ethics

The cultural morality, customs and traditions define a big part of Enlightened Darwinian Ethics. In the American culture, for instance, it is part of morality that a person is self-reliant, works hard, and gets ahead by their own talents. Most business people have had to navigate the treacherous waters of running a business. Businessmen learn to recognize bad deals and dangerous situations. They continually pay their dues to posses such knowledge. This is what separates a business person from a non-business person. Thus, when a business person does something that is unethical, the non-business person gets all worked up and moral. The businessperson sees imorality all day, the naive shopper does not. For instance, a client psyd for an insurance policy. On the backside of the deal, when a claim is submitted, they are not paid. The client feels they have been led to false expectations. Most agents do not intend to decieve clients, but deception does happen due to the nature of the underwriting industry. Here, the policy holder gets all worked up about a situation that they should have been more careful in the first place.

There is a lot of winning and losing to business but the losses become the lessons of how to behave the next time. So, there is a learning curve to buying, selling and servicing that must be acknowledged before judging Darwinian ethics too harshly.

Example, Story-Telling: Sometimes the client is a willing fool. What they want is a good story they can boast about. Here a tradesperson builds themselves up as the best for miles around. They are the best mechanic in the city, the best dentist around, the best architect and so forth. An antiques dealer might cite how educated they are, how worldly they are, and how many years they have been in the business. Some clients gravitate to the best storytellers as they go through life in a bubble, living out a romantic dream of the world in which they surround themselves with the finest people in the community. This is problematic to good business people who, in order to compete, are forced to play the "storytelling game." Obsessively ethical people simply will not get involved in storytelling which places them at a competitive disadvantage. In Darwinian ethics such people are considered fools and legitimate prey.

There is a rationale that Enlightened Darwinians’ use when pricing products or services. If the customer is not paying attention they charge more. If they want a good story, a savvy business person will try to identify personality characteristics that reveal what the customer's world view of themselves. For example, does the client see themselves as cleaver buyer, socially elite, above other people, intellectually assertive, emotionally manipulative, a smart con, good liar or a deciever. The savvy business person turns the customers’ own values against them and uses their vanity to make a profit. If the customer wants emotional strokes suggesting they are cleaver, they get the strokes. But while they are indulging themselves in the satisfaction of being a cleaver person, the business person is exploiting them. Every person has some romanticized notion of themselves living in a world that can be at times terribly cold and lonely. So, a good salesperson will emotionally and intellectually strok people to elicit endorphins in their body that elicit a "feel good" sensation. In other words, a person’s dreams, delusions and attitudes about themselves become weapons in the arsenal of a savvy Darwinian business person.

This presents us with an ethical dilemma of large proportions. If a prospective client lives in a bubble, and wants to maintain that bubble about themselves, is a savvy business person really harming the client if it is known the client desires to live out a romanticized view of the world? Here a person desires the perpetuation of a deception, the merchant willingly continues it. The merchant being a successfully business person buys a house and is distracted by the strokes of the realtor who sells them a house in bad repair. The realtor buys a new luxury car and pays a premium because the car dealer plays on her illusions about herself. So in this respect there is an entire culture of people preying on each other with their deceptions. Deception becomes a cultural value. Thus, it is difficult to judge an action as being unethical without knowing something about what the person values. The people that get hurt here are those who are weak, passive, trusting, believing and kind. Certainly when they are deceived and exploited the action has been less than ethical.

Social Struggles

It is important to explain why business people sometimes appear to take advantage of their customers. An Enlightened Darwinian many times sees the world in terms of competition and social struggle. There is an element of "the glorification of struggle" implicit in their business practices. Businesses taken together might be considered "the watering hole" of society much like the watering holes in Africa. And, at the watering hole many animals who by necessity are attracted there become the prey of larger animals. Every person must go to the watering hole from time to time to survive. Businesses in this respect are the watering hole, great social equalizer. Some consumers invariably become the prey of devious business people and others are exploited by weaknesses of personality and elitist or arrogant attitudes. A savvy retail salesman has a keen eye for prospective customers’ beliefs, tastes, social status, deceptions about themselves and their dreams. For instance, a prominent professor might conceive of himself as a brilliant mind and powerful analytic who stays on top of consumer issues. To some degree he becomes a "legend in his own mind." At all levels of society this same phenomena occurs and sales people are quick to exploit the self-deception. In negotiating a sale a person of high-esteem and some self-delusion will annoy or offend the business person who takes such an action as a reason to now deal with the professor as though his business skill level were on the level master business person (see Initial Point of Struggles, or IP). In this situation the sale moves from Enlightened Darwinianism to Tooth & Claw Darwinianism. The professor is subsequently exploited or taken for a fool. His error was in believing that his mental prowess was a good substitute for experience in the business world. Was the business person acting unprofessionally, or was his action a natural part of business? It could be said every person's dreams at sometime in their life collides with the realities of the business world. Arrogant minds are tempered in a life-long process of having to deal with business people yet were the acts that tempered them that unethical? (see learning curve).

Tit for Tat

Mathematicians invented a system for making moral decisions called Mathematical Game Theory. A simple way of explaining it would be see in the example where a good person is dealing with a person who is trying to take advantage of them in a social or financial situation. The good person, having tried to appease the aggressive and manipulative person, reaches a mathematical point where it is in their interest to fight back tit for tat. In a sense, the normally "good person" is now fighting back in a dirty way. But, there are few alternatives otherwise. If good people do not fight back, bad people rule the society and centuries of moral evolution would be lost. So, in Enlightened Darwinianism the ethics of moment is defined in the act of struggle. Once it is known a person is not going to deal fairly, there seems no point to be fair in return. What makes this a very dangerous approach is that more cunning and savvy players can draw good people into a struggle where their emotions rise. In this state only the most masterful of business people can keep from falling into traps set to discredit them and to ultimately defeat them. In Enlightened Darwinianism a keen eye to this fact is kept in view at all times. Then tit for tat will be an effective tool to solve problems.

The Naive Shopper

• Eristic
• Passive Dishonesty
• Fools
• Story Telling
• Constructive Fraud
• Naive Clients
• Learning Curve
• Initial Point of Struggles