Darwin Revelation

When constructing my annotated timeline I decided to go with the theme of war. While I was looking up different events, I came across a revelation. One that I had not thought about before, which was war among one's self. I never thought about a self-conflict as a war but when looking at the definition of what war was it was a conflict, or a struggle, this could possibly mean that someone could have a war with themselves.

When someone has an internal struggle they are fighting two sides of themselves.This links to Darwin's theory of evolution, in evolving personalities. It is an evolution because in an internal struggle the stronger side of the personality will win the battle causing the weaker side to become nonexistent. When the stronger side wins this changes the way person acts, and perceives themselves, causing an evolution. It is an evolution because the person is forming into someone new. For example in the video below Gollums stronger side Smeagle took over Gollum's and eliminated him. This caused him to be a new character.

As Steve Pinker said in his segment of How the Mind Works, "behavior is the outcome of an internal struggle among many mental modules, and it is played out on the chessboard of opportunities and constraints defined by other people's behavior" (Appleman 469). By this quote, he means that everyone is confronted by internal struggles, which could create different kinds of behaviors whether it is sad, angry, or even acting distant towards others. Sometimes these behaviors could be judged by other people, mainly because other people could react differently over the same situation.




This video is of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings. It was the scene when Gollum was sitting by himself and fighting with his other half of his personality Smeagle. He was confronting himself by calling himself a liar, a murderer, and other hateful things about himself. He was basically turning into two different characters one side being Smeagle who was the good side, and then there was Gollum who tried to make himself sound like a bad person. This was the side that wanted to steal the necklace from Frodo. In the end his stronger personality Smeagle won the battle, and Gollum was officially gone. The video shows an internal conflict among a person.

Appleman, Philip, ed. Darwin. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 469