>"We’ve taken these metaphors for evolution to heart, reading them to mean that life is a race to kill or be killed. “Darwinian” stands in for “cutthroat,” “survival of the fittest” signifies survival of the ruthless."

This is a complete perversion of the intent Darwin expressed with the term "survival of the fittest". Here it is conflated with "survival of the strongest", but that is not what Darwin meant. His point was that any species more able to adapt to change, and thus maintain their level of "fitness" to an ecological niche would be dominant.