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No, but it’s silly to pretend that keeping people alive, perhaps to reproduce, who would die in a “state of nature” doesn’t have effects on society and the human organism.

For one thing, it is very obvious that in advanced societies, particularly in Europe, the people we normally consider “successful” are far less likely to reproduce than the “unsuccessful.”

Without getting too far into eugenics mode, it’s pretty obvious that we’ve set up an anti-Darwinian “survival of the least fit” scenario. A recent book postulated that the dominance of England over the last 300 years was directly related to their middle and upper classes having a considerably higher rate of reproduction than the lower classes, unlike any other European society. As a result, middle and upper class attitudes and genes were pushed “down” into society, which made it more dynamic than the competition. Looking around our society, it appears we’re doing the reverse.

If one believes in Darwinism, or even in the laws of genetics, there is no way this will not have some impact on the average level of human intelligence, at least in those societies practicing it.

Successful people are a good deal more reproductive in this country than in Europe, but one need only drop by Walmart as opposed to an upscale mall to notice the rather dramatic disparity in number of children around. Over time, these disparities are IMPORTANT, but we aren’t even allowed to discuss them.