Humans Override Their Genes

The Selfish Gene continues to amuse me. Something that I’d never had explained to me is altruism between animals. Dawkins has already explained that cells and some bacteria cooperate, but now he’s taken into explaining how members of the same or even different species help each other called symbiosis. He says that most animals form alliances in which they benefit mutually by forming herds, beehives, or packs.

Dawkins uses the great example of a flock of birds to explain how a species cooperates with each other. He describes the situation in which birds call out for danger to save their flock. These birds have evolved to call out these dangers, flocks that didn’t have the danger call died out. Yet there is a danger faced by the caller, he now attracts the attention of the predator, consequently birds with subtle cries have survived. This situation reminds me of the typical bank robbery as seen in the movie The Town. Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) leads his gang into the bank to steal the vault’s contents. This gang could be taken as group of predators and the bank employees are the prey or a nest being attacked. The caller would not be the employee that sounds the alarm because he or she is already in danger and by calling for help he or she is only trying to save their life and job. The “caller” would be someone who sees the bank robbery from outside and can choose to inform others by screaming or just keeping quiet and maintaining her safety. What I am getting at is: humans no longer participate in the life goal of propagating their genes they just want to live a happy life. No longer will every single person tell you their life goal is to have children.

Is our dream as humans to avoid being animals? It might be, after all isn’t ‘being an animal’ an insult. I don’t know about you but considering myself part of the Darwinian theory makes me disheartened. How can our entire life’s purpose be to procreate and create other survival machines? We have so much time to live and be about and what it comes down to is we must continue the prosperity of our genes. Not only have we changed our objective but also it seams as if evolution itself has become stagnant. I wonder if this natural process really has stopped and hope that Dawkins addresses it in future chapters. It doesn’t look like it’s continued working, lots of unhealthy, fragile, and genetically weak people continue reproducing with no limitation. With the help of medicine and just a great standard of living there really is no natural selection. Darwin’ theory might be still working in some aspects like physical attractiveness between sees, aside from this there are no contributing factors to how gets to have a children and who doesn’t.