Online Communities and Survival of the Fittest

Like the blazing savannah grasslands or the rainy, biotic rich jungles, online communities are laden with predators and hunters of the most beastly and venomous kind. But once in a while, online communities are akin to landmasses converging, fusing a myriad of voices more commanding than rumbling volcanoes; when the objective is about analyzing problems from a different race, class and gender angle—because the angles are always different depending on one’s relative proximity to the problem—dynamic resolutions can be whipped up collectively and brought to the forefront of the political and cultural discourse.

But let’s slow down a bit because I’m jumping ahead. This story is about the compass, or rather, in our analogous era, the GPS that pointed me to the PulseWire community. Simply put, leadership of the sisterhood brought me to this transformative site. A woman leader led me here, not because she controls me, but because she believes in me and the contribution I can forward towards more dignified communities.

You see, there are leaders, and then there are Leaders of the egoless kind, the ones immersed in communities of trafficked women, the ones rooted in the nucleus of ghettoized neighbourhoods. A sort of leadership that surpasses the latest technological advances by way of creating the next line of leaders, knowing full well the limitations of the old, having the humility and foresight to step aside and let fresh, new ideas take place—in this historic period, the advancement of online communities develop and communicate ideas on a worldwide scale, faster and more cosmopolitan than ever before.

Leaders invest in the young—and not necessarily in keeping themselves young, despite society’s obsession with magic pills and vampiric formulas to keep us supple, elastic and plastic. Beyond all of this, the only thing that will outlive all of us is change and social transformation.

A leadership of this magnitude is not about manipulating minions, but bringing out the best in people, who are astute in the understanding that talent is at its best in times of social change. It’s about ensuring the survival of the fittest. Yes, I said it, survival of the fittest, which is not about who is better looking, stronger, richer. In evolutionary and biological terms, survival of the fittest means high fertility, low mortality, and the ability to pass your genes to the next generation. Flip this to a different angle, mix the formula and you can see that survival of the fittest of a genuine sort is about producing not destroying; about passing on skills and knowledge to the next line of leaders for the health and well-being of our communities.

So lace up those runners, let's get fit, and lead the way!