I am not totally opposed to selfish behavior. After all selfish behavior is the basis for learning. We all want to know what’s in it for me. We all want to get a payoff for our effort. Making a profit or being reinforced for a behavior is not bad. However, when we go out of our way to profit by harming others we need to question how this will affect society.
I think one of the reasons we could not keep Vietnam a free country is that corruption was standard operating procedure for the South Vietnamese government. Making a profit at the expense of other’s suffering was standard practice. To me profiting from others suffering seems a little evil. Being the cause of other’s suffering for the purpose of making a profit is even more evil.
We’re all selfish to some degree. We all have the get what I can at the expense of others drive. What makes society call one person good and another evil is just a matter of degree.
In times of scarcity and high competition expect to see more selfish animal like behavior. When people fiercely compete over scarce resources we can see some very evil behavior. Competition does have positive benefits. However, I believe it needs to be used for the good of society. We need experimentation and we need competition if society is to evolve.
Why does any of this matter? Shouldn’t we encourage our children to be aggressive competitors? From my own experience, I have to admit there is a certain thrill to competition. It feels good to compete. It feels good to win. However there is a long term downside to fierce completion and total domination.
The biology that has been so successful at bringing humanity to our current level of sophistication may have come close to reaching its upper limits. Wars, stealing resources, and enslaving others did have its place and served humans well up until now. I feel that our current state of technology and an overpopulated world may have reached a tipping point. We now have the technology to destroy the Earth.
If ruthless competition makes all of our oceans giant oil slicks and our rain forests become deserts what will happen to humanity. Do big profits justify the destruction of the Earth? To big profits justify the destruction of human life? Will humanity as a whole evolve to higher levels of consciousness in these conditions or will countries become more competitive? With harsh environmental conditions and fewer resources will competition take on a more friendly ritualized nature or a more selfish nature? When counties become more selfish what do other countries do? When everyone is selfish, and armed, what will happen?
Can humanity allow corrupt governments and self-serving big business to control our destiny? If we think about it, big business has only one mission, to make money for its shareholders. By their nature big business is selfish.
We need to build social systems that make being selfish good for society.
It is possible to manage selfishness until our biology catches up with the current environmental conditions. We see this with our dogs. We have taken what in all practicality is a wolf and made it into our best friend. The once predator of humans is now our most trusted friend. What caused us to go from enemies competing and preying on one another to symbiotic mutual support? Going from enemy to best friends was make possible by first a change in the dogs environment and then in its biology.
We need to build social systems that make being selfish good for society and the environment.
Wishing you the best in dogs and in life,
Andrew Ledford