Jonathan R Goodman writes:

Reading classic works in evolutionary biology is unlikely to make you optimistic about human nature. From Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871) onwards, there is a fundamental understanding among biologists that organisms, especially humans, evolved to maximise self-interest. We act to promote our own success or that of our family. Niceness, by contrast, is just a mirage, and morality more broadly is just an illusion. Sociobiology – the infamous movement of the second half of the 20th century – forced us to confront the cold, calculated nature of having evolved biologically.

More recently, however, anthropologists and psychologists have pushed back against this pessimistic view. Dozens of books over the past decade have focused on human cooperation, promoting it as the secret ingredient to our conquest of the planet. We work together, using our intelligence, language and a diverse skillset to build on complex cultures, develop technologies, and solve problems in our societies and environments. We learn at a young age what the rules of our groups are, and those rules, imprinted on us culturally, govern the safe, cohesive units that allowed us to conquer inhospitable parts of the world and out-compete unfriendly groups of people who don’t work well together.

This narrative saves us the embarrassment of accepting that biological selfishness – acting only to maximise our Darwinian success – is the foundation of all behaviour. It also matches some claims by anthropologists that ancient humans were egalitarian, living in small groups with little permanent rank, where leaders (if any) had limited authority and people collectively pushed back against anyone trying to dominate.

Yet, as with sociobiology, it is only half true. Instead, our collective predilection for exploitation, deceit and competition is equally important to cooperation in the story of human evolution. We evolved not to cooperate or compete, but with the capacity for both – and with the intelligence to hide competition when it suits us, or to cheat when we’re likely to get away with it. Cooperation is consequently something we need to promote, not presume. [Continue reading…]