"Natural preservation or survival of the fittest cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being."-Charles Darwin (pg.341) I am most familiar with this quote from Darwin's essay. I can't tell you how many times, I have heard others mention "survival of the fittest," in reference to Darwin's essay. Matter of fact, this quote was brought up in my history class last week. The professor was relating this to how the rich and the poor were going to survive after WW1. She said that many people looked at these desperate times as, "survival of the fittest." That the rich would survive because they were considered the fittest of the nation. It seems that everyone has their own defintion of what it is meant to be fit. Fit can have many different interpretations by individuals. It boils down to the necessities that you believe are needed to live your life to its full potential. For example, fit could be described as wealthy, healthy, successful, or intelligent. The list continues to go on and on. I picked this quote not only because it talked about the common theory of survival of the fittest, but because it talked about how nature cares nothing for appearances. I thought this was really interesting, because today we live in a world where people are convinced that the media is a true source of all knowledge. We are sculpted to believe that we should look and act like people on television. Everyone wants to be considered "attractive." If we are not born this way we believe that we can become attractive through our sense of fashion, cosmetics and by staying fit. Society holds these attractive characteristics to be superior. However, in this quote by Darwin, he is saying that it doesn't matter. Nature doesn't care if you are attractive, and when it comes down to it, attractiveness doesn't benefit you when it comes to survival. I think this is true depending on how you define survival, surviving what? Two years ago, I took an introduction to psychology class, where the professor a gave a situation about attractiveness. He said that if two people are dying, one being attractive and the other person being unattractive, then people will actually try harder to save the attractive person's life. Anyhow it kind of gives you something to think about, that maybe attractiveness does fit into "survival of the fittest." When reading "Am I Blue?" by Alice Walker, I picked the quote, " I was shocked that I had forgotten that human animals and nonhuman animals can communicate quite well."(pg. 139) I picked this quote because it reminded me of how funny animals actually are. They seem like little people. My grandfather had a dog named Sport who was a boston terrier. Anyhow when my grandfather passed away, Sport would not leave the chair that my grandfather always sat in. Sport sat there for three days waiting for my grandfather to return. We could not get Sport to play or eat, his attitude completely changed after my grandfather passed away. I think it is really neat, that people can have these connections to animals other than humans. I believe that animals are a necessity in everyone's lives. It really makes you happier to be around animals. You know they say that if you have animals, you live longer!