Altruism- The Ultimate Self Interest

Whatever, we might think, there is nothing random about the choices we make.
They may be wrong, but we make them for a reason.

The apparently higher sentiments, those which distinguish from the animals, our artistic sense, our love of poetry all serve a survival purpose.
To keep our intelligence and our communication abilities at maximimum fitness.
They are the survival tools of the species.
They just happen to be unique to our species.

But there are those who say that altruism, the putting first of others, the helping of the weak, the dieing to save a friend, can not be explained by the laws of natural selection.
Not in accord with the idea of the 'selfish gene.'

False.

We are a co-operative species. Like many predators, we evolved to adopt the strength in numbers rule. The genes survive and get passed on best, which made this mode of existence work best.
Put simply, the more people survive, the better chance you have of being one of them.
The more people that breed in the future, the better chance your own genes have of being passed on.
Evolution works very simply, but leads to complexity.
The simple bit, is what works best, lasts longest.
The complex bits are the amazingly efficient models of survival that have resulted.

In a non- co-operative species, a gene truly is selfish. It is in competition with all life, barring itself.
But in a species like man, the conflict with his own kind is a secondary one.
Ultimately, the genes in man are there to serve themselves first, but the whole human gene pool best.
Your selfish genes want a nice big future gene pool to cascade through, in the coming millenia.



Your genes don't just choose the partners with the genes you want to procreate with, they look out for other genes that they might want to procreate with down the line, when you yourself are dead and gone.

And so they choose your friends for you.
You make friends who you connect with.
Who think like you.
And your genes think that these might be good parents for the partners of your children.

Why the attraction of arranged marriage?
The genetic attraction of the parents...

And we die for those we emote to, to preserve the genes that one day may preserve our own.

We help the weak to give them another day, to give their genes another chance, to throw more numbers at nature, because survival is a numbers game.
As is evolution itself.

So to be truly self-serving, you need to stop focussing just on number one.
When you feel compassion, pity, the urge to put your arms round a mate, you're meant to.
You evolved those urges for a reason- by the most ruthless of mechanisms.
You were given those feelings by 'nature red in tooth and claw.'

We evolved to Love, because it really IS the best way.