Bad Religion frontman, Greg Graffin, has a new book out and it’s called ‘Population Wars’. I remember meeting him at Book Soup after the publication of his ‘Anarchy Evolution’ a few years ago, and I have always admired the way this guy can combine his two passions in such an awesome way. He has proved over and over that punk rock and science are totally working on the same page, writing thought-provoking and challenging lyrics for his band’s songs. ‘Anarchy Evolution’ was mostly dealing with evolution, its connection with real life and its difficult relationship with religion, but this new book ‘asks people to challenge their assumptions about competition and the struggle for existence,’ said Graffin in an interview. ‘In that respect, it’s my worldview on ecology, and the persistence of species and communities of populations that are currently existing on the planet.’
‘Let’s face it: Our community, our social connections, are really all that matters. It’s this realm of social connectivity that we must come to terms with in order to get along with all the other populations on the planet,’ he added a bit later.
‘Every enlightened citizen has to see him- or herself as in some way a caretaker of the planet. Our species has intruded on so many different ecosystems, we’ve covered the entire face of the planet. There’s not an inch of the surface of the Earth that hasn’t been mapped. We have to ask ourselves what we want to do with this power. Do we want to continue obliterating each other, and every other species? Or do we want to try to become stewards of our own environment, stewards of our own planet, and guide the evolution of the future? It’s a moral issue, and it’s something that takes not necessarily science by itself, but the implications of the scientific data. It really gets to the core of asking ourselves what it means to be human.’
Professor Graffin makes excellent points in this interview as the common opinion about evolution has always been that Darwinism equals competition, or survival of the fittest, which has led people to come up with the term social Darwinism, but Graffin wants to challenge this archaic idea.
‘I don’t know what leads some people to that conclusion [that completion is a good thing], because I see the same data as them, and I come to a different conclusion. I see competition as a waste of time […]. Usually in the past it’s been ugly and violent. But the end result is always assimilation. Why do we have to have the negative aspects of this competition when we could just focus on inevitable assimilation?’
I have read quite a bit about this idea that evolution is not always guided by competition, primatologist Frans de Waals also believes that empathy and cooperation have played a large role in human evolution, a revolutionary idea in this field.
Graffin wants to challenge this idea too and wants to question the belief that human evolution is driven by competition, because the ‘survival of the fittest’ theory is too often used to justify war and other obscenities.
‘Population Wars’ was released on September 15th and to celebrate, Graffin has embarked on a series of special live appearances. These unique events will attempt to present the relationship ‘between Graffin’s academic and musical spheres, examining the correlation between song lyrics and topics expressed in his new book’. So we should expect some live acoustic performances of songs related to the book interspersed with spoken word and followed with a Q&A
You can buy ‘Population Wars’ through Bad Religion’s online store and this includes a cool shirt and a limited-edition 7″ EP of specially re-recorded Graffin songs that inspired the book.
Here is Greg Graffin’s special appearances to mark the release of ‘Population Wars’:
Sep. 18 – Washington, DC – Rock N Roll Hotel
Sep. 19 – Philadelphia, PA – Coda
Sep. 20 – New York, NY – Gramercy Theater
Sep. 23 – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theater
Sep. 25 – Los Angeles, CA – Bootleg
Sep. 27 – Santa Ana, CA – Constellation