04-Building And Defending An Established Nest (2)

Building And Defending An Established Nest (2)

Thus group members had to behave in ways that were acceptable to everyone because if they didn't, it weakened the bonds that held the group together. Survival was based, literally, on doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Certainly group members competed with one another for status, for shares of food, for access to an available mate, and for a comfortable sleeping place. These pressures conferred an advantage on those who were able to read the intentions of others. The ability to gain trust, to form alliances, and to manage rivals had value. Thus human social intelligence grew and became central to life.  

Despite the emergence of human social intelligence, Wilson says there is an iron rule in genetic social evolution: within a group, selfish members beat altruists but groups of altruists beat groups with selfish members. So, while selfish activities provide competitive advantage within a group, they also are destructive to the group as a whole. That is why today each of us experiences an ongoing tension between our selfish wants and desires and pleasing others in our groups. That tension often feels uncomfortable, yet our creativity arises through finding the balance in that tension between selfishness and pleasing others.

Wilson says of this tension, “Or risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue. Humans are suspended in unstable and constantly changing positions between those two extreme forces that created us ... and that tension might be the only way in the entire Universe that human-level intelligence and social organization can evolve. We will find a way eventually to live with our inborn turmoil, and perhaps find pleasure in viewing it as the primary source of our creativity.”

Selfishness pays off; we see that everywhere. But, mutual trust, cooperation and selflessness determine which group wins. So, if you want your family, your friends and their children to survive, your best bet appears to be to belong to groups with individuals who truly trust and cooperate with one another rather than groups of selfish individuals who look out mainly for themselves.