NASTY BY NATURE: The other day I saw a TV commercial encouraging people to help old folk understand the new Medicare drug benefits. The spot begins with scenes of not-so-old folk being nice to one another; the announcer says that helping each other is “what we do” here in America.
Hmmm. I suppose that there is a lot of niceness and good deeds. But when push starts coming to shove, people put the niceness aside pretty quickly. Just get in your car and you’ll see how quickly courtesy and patience disappear amidst people trying to get somewhere. I’ll admit that I’m not much better; I try to be a safe driver, but only occasionally do I give other people a break (e.g., let somebody pull out from a side street onto a crowded road, or stop to let a pedestrian cross). The thin veneer of niceness washes away pretty quickly once traffic builds up a bit.
The bare truth appears to be that we’ve got selfishness in our genes. Biologist Richard Dawkins published a book in 1976 called The Selfish Gene, which postulates that the process of evolution could care less about the good of the species. The bottom line is whether or not a particular set of genes is good at survival and replication. Since selfishness and aggression frequently provide an animal with the best opportunity to mate and have children in a challenging environment, selfishness and aggression have become common animal traits; and that includes the human animal too. Dawkins’ theory does allow for some cooperative and altruistic behaviors to evolve too, if they help to promote survival and reproduction in a particular environment. But given that the world is a tough place to survive in, selfishness and aggression are stronger instincts than niceness. Or at least that’s what it looks like here in Northern New Jersey.
But then again — we do have brains. We are not completely locked in by our genes and our instincts. We can “do the hard thing” and go against our selfish nature if we can convince ourselves that civilization and cooperation are the better part. I recall a debate from years ago where some people thought that humankind’s only hope lie in intellect and rationality. Obviously, some other people thought that thinking too much was the root of all evil and that humans needed to get back in touch with their basic instincts, which were fundamentally good. (Obviously this implied our “getting back to nature” to learn the ways of proper living, something like the way Native Americans lived before the Euro invasion). From what I know now about the “selfish gene” hypothesis, I’ll have to stick with the rationalists. Yes, the rationalists did invent the H-bomb, but they also determined that it was wrong to use it. And Native Americans scalped each other long before they did it to land-hungry white people.
Avoiding nuclear warfare and scalpings — it’s what we do. Let’s hope.