Totally Selfish.

Aggression can be defined as a behavior expected to cause harm or pain. Richard Dawkins identifies aggression between species as gene machines but he also states that “survival machines of the same species tend to impinge on each others’ lives more directly” (67) so then the most logical thing to do would be to kill our rival from the same specie. As I was thinking through this, the book asked me “why is it that all animals do not go all out to kill rival members of their species at every possible opportunity?” (68) That had never occurred to me before, I had heard of animals killing animals of their same species, but I never considered the fact that maybe we humans could do the same. The only answer I came up with was that we had not done, it was something that in our society was not considered good or normal.

According to Dawkins, we don’t do it because it may be worst for us. He uses a very clear example in the book that goes something like this: suppose that your enemies are C and B but B is also C’s enemy. If I kill B I am also favoring C by killing one of his enemies. This all goes back to selfishness and how in a way we don’t do this because it will jeopardize us. There is really no good point in killing our enemy because your other enemy may be gain from it instead of you. The author does not states this still I see it as way to relate to the title. We could kill other humans but we don’t because we are selfish. If killing one of our enemies benefits not only me but another person then I won’t do it. But what if killing my enemy would only benefit me, in that case we would kill our enemy. Wouldn’t we?

The author then talks about another concept. He shares Maynard Smith evolutionary stable strategy and how if a whole population id following one strategy that one is bets for the individual. Returning to my point stated above, humans are selfish, according to Dawkins we are selfish because of your genes so there has to be ESS for our genes in order for us to stop being selfish. This does not seem an easy task. I don’t know if it is possible at all, all I know is that it seems as the only solution until now.