Predators, Hosts and Parasites

Predators, Hosts and Parasites by PK Odendaal. January 2026. 

Where ever you and I go or sojourn on this planet, and for that matter, any living creature or groups of creatures, we are either a predator, host or parasite.
In fact, we are most of the time all three simultaneously.

Call it geo-politics, politics, power play, the way of the world or the fate of species, it is the same thing. The playbook never changes.
The saying is that if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.
But we can be clever ...
If you are a parasite, get yourself a host.
If you are a host, get yourself a predator.
If you are weak, get yourself a stronger ally.
That is what history is made of.
In some sense we may call it symbiotic, but it is much more than symbiosis.
Of course, faking death can also be our saving grace, but we cannot do that our whole life long, or can we?

In the Shakespearian play Henry IV Part one, the village drunkard, Falstaff, a friend of the Prince, called up for military duty, finds himself in the way of Hotspur, the chief of the rebels in arms. He has the choice of being brave, but chooses to fake it by pretending to be dead, thereby saving his life, and his sililoquy afrer the event ends with: The greater part of valour is discretion.
Valour kills you and discretion lets you live.
Humourously, he adds the credibility of his actions by declaring that he did not fake death, because only a dead body can fake a living man. How clever and delusional.
The lesson in all of this is: It is better to be clever than to be strong, even if you fake cleverness. You will always end up being seen as strong, whilst the strong fool will be seen as dumb. History does not have a remarks column.
This brings me me to the theory of the survival of the fittest. Survival cannot depend on your fitness, and this is why Darwin is wrong. It should be the survival of the cleverest, and that is not randomly spread - a tenet of Darwinism. Strongness may be randomly spread and turn out to be useless in times of death staring you in the face. As a humourous corollary, I can say that it is good to be blind when death stares you in the face, as strong people of valour tend to be blind to fear.