Okay, so it’s working well for you then. Good to hear.
I read the introduction to the Selfish Gene and threw the book across the room. I recognize that Dawkins is substantially more knowledgeable than the average person throwing out ideas of genetics based selfishness, but my objection goes beyond the pop-culture idea that the Selfish Gene became. I’m sure Dawkins knows that genes aren’t actually selfish, that they are just molecules doing what molecules do, incapable of selfishness, and that “selfish” is meant as a metaphor.
But what about an alternative metaphor of the compassionate gene? In human beings, the greatest antidote to selfishness is understanding other people. Most people are inclined to look after themselves and their own families, and their friends. The reason why people aren’t as interested in looking after people they haven’t met is only because they haven’t met them. It’s myopia - people are compassionate but they don’t do a good job of acknowledging the humanity of other people.
How does this metaphor apply to genes? An individual molecule floating by itself cannot be said to have any knowledge of other molecules around it. But genes interact with one another. That same process by which a gene expresses it’s metaphorical selfishness is a process by which it works with other genes to the benefit of both. As soon as genes are “aware” of one another, they “intuitively” “help” one another. Genes that don’t help get weeded out really fast (often by simply being fatal).
This metaphor explains the behaviour of genes exactly as well as the selfish gene metaphor, and it works much better to explain the behaviour of the animals that genes make as they form societies. We can regard the “selfishness” observed as a limited case of “compassion”, the case where a being is only really aware of it’s own needs and feelings but is nonetheless caring for a being worthy of that caring.
The idea that if we are selfish then we’ll help each other because it is in our own interest to help each other just shows how wrong the idea metaphor of selfishness is. When you arrive at a contradiction (if selfish then not selfish) you are supposed to recognize that you did something wrong, not say you’ve made a breakthrough. It’s not a contradiction because the selfishness involved in metaphorical and the metaphor works different ways (it’s really if metaphorical-selfish then not other-metaphorical-selfish) but it gets translated into common understanding as the contradiction. And that contradiction (selfishness helps others, greed is good) is presently in the process of ruining western society.
