In nature, it seems like the idea from Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality that things can co-exist because their self-preservation does not conflict with another's. Darwin discusses the problem that there are too many individuals of each species that are born that can possible survive in the world, because the world would become too crowded and not have enough resources. This scarcity is what causes competition between organisms, since some resources are rival goods (can only be consumed by one person).
It was interesting to read that in nature, every organism is under a struggle. The struggle of self-preservation is pretty complicated to think about since in an ecosystem with increasing population, the way organisms coexist is really complex - to the point where there is a proportion of each that is "optimal" for each other's consumption and co-existence, and if one of the species were to change in proportion it would drastically affect the whole system. The struggles are not just between you and others like a dog fighting a dog - it's also a plant needing water, a plant having trouble to reproduce, a plant that lives somewhere too crowded. Or even that if too many parasites feed from one tree, it'll kill the tree! The struggle of existence includes dependence on each other, your own life, and your success in passing down your genes and leaving kids.
Natural selection only happens if the changes are favourable, and dependent on the idea that "the natural polity of the country can be better filled by some modification of some one or more of its inhabitants" (139). I feel that this is a bit sad because it means that variations that are neither useful nor injurious, such as a neutral mutation which may be beautiful or special or rare, can easily die out because there's not much of a way to guarantee its preservation. In this sense I think natural selection is kind of utilitarian because in nature we try to preserve things that are advantageous to us, but I still feel that what makes life interesting is not simply being efficient and practical.
I was a bit confused about the concept of Unconscious Selection. Is it just that the best characteristics of animals become predominant over time by themselves without anyone else's interference (if so what's the difference between this and the concept of natural selection)? Or is it that humans try to possess and breed from the best individual animals and didn't have an intention or expectation to permanently alter the breed but there are changes anyway? The second idea reminds me of Smith's invisible hand, in which you do something which causes unexpected or unintentional effects, so that the alteration is just a by-product.
The wedge passage in Chapter 3 was also confusing. "The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards with incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force." What does this mean? Is it a metaphor that the wedges that stay in this "yielding surface" are the species that can survive, but in order to stick into the surface you need to push other wedges out? Nature shows that there are costs to wanting to survive but not finding a way to work together with others (the need to push another wedge out and not being able to all just be wedges in the surface), though I think that's also because there is not enough space and resources in the world to sustain everything. Though every being strives to increase in numbers, every one has a struggle to survive.
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