As I begun reading The Selfish Gene I found myself agreeing with most of the things he had said. Selfishness and lack of morality (as defined by humans) is everywhere in nature, as much as we disagree with it and demonize it. Here we see his opinion expressed about helping others in order to defend the existence of the species as a whole: "Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply don't make evolutionary sense." (2) This sentence that was hard for me to digest. At first I had agreed with him almost completely but then I was shocked. It is true humans aren't altruistic beings because if we were to sacrifice the strong for the weak eventually the weak would be the only ones left and the species would end. The survival of the species as a whole depends on every person even though we might not see it because each of us carries genes that will be useful for the next generation. And who knows, maybe one day one of our genes will save humanity from a pandemic. In the end it is through selfishness that we compete with others in order to test if our genes are worthy of existing in the next generation. Selfishness exists only for survival of the species.
When it comes to what he defines as altruism it isn't necessarily true that humans are selfish in the sense that we are programmed to not care about anyone. We do care for others and having to leave someone behind must be a horrible experience. Placing others before us in such situations would be very bad for the wellbeing of the species since those with worthy genes would reduce their chances of survival in order to save those who don't deserve to pass their genes on. It is horrible, but if no one dies there is no evolution.
When I continue my reading after analyzing this phrase I came upon this quotation: "Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to." (3) What he proposes is that thorough nurturing our minds to be altruistic we should then control the process of natural selection and alter the path of evolution. This idea is completely insane. Things are the way we see them for a reason (especially evolution). As advanced as we humans believe to be we are still newborns in the terrain of higher thinking. We have invented a system in which the weak is given a second chance. We have began to mess things with natural selection. There is a final decision all humanity must make, do we wish to play God and are we ready to face the consequences of doing so. We have changed our own environment so that the world has become a Petri dish. In cities we are able to exist and reproduce without limits and all designs of humans are given a chance not mattering how useless or damaging they will be for the future of the species. This process will continue until the food runs out and then we will be forced to live in the environment we were meant to live in. Nature eventually wins all wars and humanity will be claimed back from its attempt to play civilization. This book seems like an attempt to control the natural impulses nature has given us in order to create a utopia but this won't work. The only way we might be able to continue living in this civilization is by using the genes to our favor. We must attempt to use the selfishness and other tendencies in order to mold a lasting civilization. We have seen many times that wars against nature are always futile and doing this would only prove such a thing right.
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