Friday, December 16, 2011

She's a giver...

...And that's a good thing.  Apparently, selfishness is completely out of style for us modern humans.  A recent study published in the British Journal of Psychology may have just proven the traditional adage: give more than you take. Their explanation is downright, well, sexual.  The gene that produces giving behavior, called the altruism gene, was favored among the earliest evolved progenitors of modern man thus making altruistic people more appealing.

The article linked above says there is an evolutionary need for people to be nice to each other.  It was a rough time raising children in the prehistoric era, saber tooth cats notwithstanding, we also faced an ice age; probable conflict with our co-inhabitants, the neanderthals; and the threat of even neighboring tribes of our own kind.  In a global culture as we have today, how might this impact the way nations treat each other?

Good genes redefined.


In a competitive, nonrenewable world economy, it is no wonder selfishness seems to abound where we fight over resources that are limited in their lifespan.  The future holds an interesting path for the evolution of humanity.  It is this blogger's hope that eventually we will replace our scarcity psychology with something more holistic, realistic, and sustainable.  Change comes as it always does, but this gene must be maintained in our lineage.  Perhaps it is a true gift from all our common ancestors, a symbol of their plight and a characteristic that should be more regularly rewarded by current society.  At the negative extreme we could destroy ourselves if there is a genetic edit of such a quality.  Aside from global extinction, a lack of altruism at least makes anyone a little less sexy.

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