Why are humans innately selfish?

[Bird]

Why have we not evolved out of this?

 

[Roran]

Solipsism.

 

[Bird]

Solipsism.

Elaborate.

 

[GYX_Kid]

They have their "own little worlds" and connect to everything else from inside out, back to inside

which is at its core, an animal

 

[420MuNkEy]

Why have we not evolved out of this?

Because ensuring survival of ones self is the most important thing (evolutionarily) other than ensuring the survival of your offspring.

 

[Bird]

Because ensuring survival of ones self is the most important thing (evolutionary) other than ensuring the survival of your offspring.

Your child is yourself. Redundancy.

 

[GYX_Kid]

Your child is yourself. Redundancy.

how so?

 

[420MuNkEy]

Your child is yourself. Redundancy.

No, your child does not share your vital organs (assuming it has been birthed). It is in fact, a separate individual.

 

[blarg]

Our genes have been naturally selected in a way that the organisms that contain them are more inclined to preserve the genes.

 

[Auburn]

Because the ones that did evolve to be innately selfless got killed off...



Only the selfish survived.
Due to, y'know... their selfishness.. o_o

 

[Meer]

Well, selfishness became less useful when we started farming and shit and gathered into big groups and stuff, if you know what I mean. From there, our evolution slowed down because there isn't much natural selection anymore.

...right?

 

[GYX_Kid]

Sometimes people try to play a game of fighting monsters, which can be suicide
But then if you stare too long into a monster's abyss when fighting it, you can become one...etc

I mean if you want to be a true human-crocodile hunter and go after really real bad guys
it can be for the use of the system, and validation for one's own superior sexuality, risking survival (Reminds me of the enneagram's SX vs. SP variants)

 

[Thales]

The proponents of anti-essentialism might debate the inevitability of the nature of human beings.

 

[Architect]

I hope so. Excessive altruism does nobody any good.

 

[BigApplePi]

We can't evolve out of being innately selfish because it hard to get away from oneself. We are the person we hang around the most with. When we get involved with others, this tends to diminish because if we have any motive at all to hang around others, they like favorable treatment and will move away if they don't get it.

 

[Jordan~]

I don't think we are. Selfishness is not a cultural universal. Even if it were, that wouldn't be evidence of innateness.

 

[GYX_Kid]

suicide is the only pure self-negation

 

[Jordan~]

George R Price worked on group selection theory and ended up hating it so much that he railed against it by becoming a scholar of the New Testament, giving all of his worldly possessions to homeless genetic strangers and then, when he had nothing left, cutting his carotid artery with a pair of nail scissors and bleeding to death in his flat. He proved that humans were powerless but to behave according to the selfish diktats of the genes, then - still quite sane, according to everyone who knew him - spent his last years defying his genes, culminating in their destruction.

It is only anecdotal, but not the only example of its kind. There are a great many exaples where it appears that culture governs altruism rather than it being a genetic game.

 

[Melllvar]

Why are humans innately selfish?

Why have we not evolved out of this?

Evolution is short-sighted. It rewards immediate pay offs for the individual rather than longer term success for the larger community. In the case of humans, the low genetic variability between individuals makes it even more pointless. For example, energy intensive traits that are primarily only involved in mating/reproduction - e.g. peacock's feathers. The energy use is very non-utilitarian, which hurts the species overall by lowering survivability and functionality, but allows individuals who excel in this pointless trait to profit above individuals who don't.

In the case of humans, greed and selfishness exhibits the same pattern as peacock's feathers. I think this statement is justified by the high degree of desirability of these traits - such people are often viewed more positively by potential mates, particularly in Western culture. The obvious counter would be that such a thing is cultural and not innate, to which I would say that, as a trait, humans excel at being able to suppress instinctual reactions in favor of/using ones involving higher cognitive functions generally associated with the frontal lobe (i.e. 'consciousness'). Other animals do this to some degree too (see operant conditioning), humans are just better at it. In the cultural sense that something like innate, instinctive selfishness is being suppressed or disregarded, I believe it's using something like the above mechanism.



That was just to answer the question, the real reason I wanted to respond was because IMO there are problems with the definition of the words 'selfish' and 'selfless' - in particular there is no way to define a purely selfish or selfless action (there is a parallel here with 'free will' - it can be argued that a world with free will is fundamentally indistinguishable from a world without free will). Every action, no matter how blatantly selfless it appears on the surface, can always be judged in terms of some selfish component. Example: If a soldier jumps on a grenade to save his unit (dying in the process), it seems at first to have been a selfless act. Then we can ask what his 'real motivation' was - did he just want to be remembered as a good person or earn some medal posthumously? That's the selfish component, and I'm pretty sure it exists for every action that could ever be imagined. More interestingly though, you can always view every action in terms of a selfless component. If I murder someone's entire family, am I not helping out others in some way? Giving them a slightly better chance at acquiring resources or seeing their own offspring reproduce, for example? Yes, it's silly and a stretch, but so is claiming that someone's jumping on a grenade (or whatever example you prefer - I tried to pick the most extreme ones possible) is in fact a selfish action more so than a selfless one.

My point here is that the idea of 'pure selfishness' or 'pure selflessness' is fundamentally undefinable. With regards to everyday use of the terms, it seems more reasonable to look at the 'majority motive' behind an action/thought/desire/etc. If the primary impetuses are selfless/selfish in nature, than that's how the behavior is more reasonably defined. In common usage it seems a lot of people prefer not to do this, in favor of taking a view that pointlessly glorifies egoism or altruism instead (e.g. "one can never be selfless/selfish" type statements).

All this to say that yes, people are innately selfish, TECHNICALLY, but they're also innately selfless for the same reason. Pragmatically people are really innately neither, they just do stuff and there are always mixed consequences from it.

 

[hitode-kun]

Evolving out of selfishness will lead to extinction. One must be selfish to survive. Survival is selfish no matter how you try to justify it. Selfishness is a condition of survival, and intelligence complements that. Humans are, in a way, the embodiment of selfishness.

EDIT: Did I accidentally go off topic? My apologies.

 

[GYX_Kid]

I think that a self-negating sadist would be essentially a suicide bomber, sacrificing survival instinct for an imagined ideal. I don't think that kamikaze terrorists are necessarily extreme narcissists, in the sense that narcissists seem to often feel hyper-connected to a survival instinct. But the delusional degree of solipsism can be a similarity.

 

[Melllvar]

Well, selfishness became less useful when we started farming and shit and gathered into big groups and stuff, if you know what I mean. From there, our evolution slowed down because there isn't much natural selection anymore.

...right?

Actually the rate of human evolution has increased by several orders of magnitude since the development of agriculture. IIRC I think the estimate was advantageous mutations at an increased rate of 100x. (Based on research from by John Hawks and others).

Evolving out of selfishness will lead to extinction. One must be selfish to survive. Survival is selfish no matter how you try to justify it. Selfishness is a condition of survival, and intelligence complements that. Humans are, in a way, the embodiment of selfishness.

Mutual and commensal relationships between organisms refute all of this. Survival can be a selfless thing just as much as it can be a selfish thing (I also refer this to the comment about suicide).


@No one in particular:
I feel most of the comments in this thread were refuted in my previous post. If I'm wrong, feel free to point out why.

 

[Sijov]

As long as selfishness remains a favourable attribute to have, it will still be selected for. THe other consideration is that if you are the only selfish person surrounded by a large number of selfless people, the selfishness attribute is now much more beneficial, as it can be more effectively utilised.

And I'm defining selflessness in a Mother Theresa way (or around MT's example): a lifetime of service so that others may benefit. Sure, you could say that she got her jollies from the thought of being a saint once she was dead, but I suspect that service was its own reward to her.

Crap, now I've gone and muddied the waters some more. How do you define an act that is done for the pleasure of seeing someone else benefit? Selfish on the basis of the pleasure lived vicariously? Selfless in that it has ensured the other's benefit?

I suspect that the concepts we're playing with here are too easily gamed by the language we are using.

EDIT: So yes, Mellvar, I think I agree with you.

 

[addictedartist]

I dont see the world as haves and have nots.

 

[Words]

I think "innate" and "human" are looser than how they are commonly perceived as. ('selfish' too, but that's already mentioned)

I think we, as individuals and as collectives, go through this phase of "conflict to cooperation" in several varying and cyclical levels. The point of selfishness, I think, is to create "genes or culture competition" wherein the competition creates a "survival of the most efficient genes or culture" scenario. Evolution of culture is represented by revolution. Generally speaking, the role of competition has shifted from the individual level, tribal level, to state-level. Now there's selfishness amongst the states and within developing nations, but the fact that we, as individuals, are able to to form large nations means we are, as of this moment, 'innately' and majority-wise, individually cooperative and not selfish. (we were innately selfish but that was a long time ago.)

 

[Jordan~]

I think we, as individuals and as collectives, go through this phase of "conflict to cooperation" in several varying and cyclical levels. The point of selfishness, I think, is to create "genes or culture competition" wherein the competition creates a "survival of the most efficient genes or culture" scenario. Evolution of culture is represented by revolution. Generally speaking, the role of competition has shifted from the individual level, tribal level, to state-level. Now there's selfishness amongst the states and within developing nations, but the fact that we, as individuals, are able to to form large nations means we are, as of this moment, 'innately' and majority-wise, individually cooperative and not selfish. (we were innately selfish but that was a long time ago.)

I agree about the 'evolution of culture', though the mechanism isn't just revolution, it's any sort of interaction between the members of a culture - trade, art, conquest, displacement, syncretism, integration, diplomacy, or whatever else. Basically, the sum total of the interactions of people who have a culture, both within that culture and between cultures, results in the gradual change of all cultures. Additionally, non-human environmental factors change the demands a culture has to meet and forces it to adapt or be replaced. One could view culture as a symbiotic set of ideas that uses humans to propagate itself, almost analogous to Darwinian evolution but with very different rules. Cultural evolution has, I think, replaced genetic evolution in humans - our genes are barely relevant to our survival anymore unless we're born with some terrible defect or great advantage; rather, the same person raised in different places would have drastically different odds of survival, and our adaptation to different environments has almost nothing to do with how suited our bodies are to that environment, but rather how well our culture adapts to the demands of that environment.

This is pertinent to the OP's question as it essentially means that we're not innately selfish, but selfishness is something conferred to us by our culture - selfish behaviour is either encouraged or discouraged by culture and we have a tendency to universalise this. The Indus Valley Civilisation is an interesting example of a culture in which selfishness appears to have been almost eliminated, in that it appears to be the only example of a city-building culture where there was almost no disparity of wealth, no class distinction and no hierarchy - there are no rich graves and poor graves, buildings are about the same size and just as elaborate as one another, there are no obvious temples or palaces, and no evidence of military activity or centralised rule, and yet the culture prospered in trade until its sudden disappearance (which is put down to invasion or absorption). Essentially, it appears to have been a cooperative society.

 

[Jesse]

There'a a cut off point for worrying about other people.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

We're not.?

Like GYX mentioned, we see things in terms of our own little worlds and so act according to the rules which work in it. This means we end up acting in a way that is only relevant to us rather than the whole, simply because we are not the whole, and don't feel what it feels - only what the effects of how it feels cause us to feel.

Getting us to act less selfishly is less a question of biological evolution, and more a question of cultural evolution. Basically we need to instill views in people which correspond to how things actually are, so when people act according to what they think is best, they actually do what is best.

 

[ElvenVeil]

Why have we not evolved out of this?

Evolve out of selfishness? evolution doesn't exactly work that way

As for why we are are 'selfish' , then I think it already has been sugested that personal survival is first priority for most living beings.
Besides, everything that we experience or observe is through our own senses or eyes. Given that we can only feel the world through our own body, it makes good sense that we find it most easy to focus on ourselves first. We are ofc able to focus on others, after a few basic requirements have been met.

 

[musing]

Why have we not evolved out of this?

Under Darwinian evolutionary theory, all organisms compete against each other to survive (thus survival of the fittest). No one would survive if they were not selfish. However, one must take into account that macroevolution has not been verified by scientific study (although microevolution most definitely has). The premise is currently ungrounded in scientific knowledge. To evolve out of selfishness (one of the primary driving forces in human nature) information must be added to an organism's genetic code, as it does not have the genes to enact this. As far as our knowledge goes, it is impossible to add information to our genetic code. Some have suggested, of course, that mutations accomplish this process, but mutations have never been observed to add information to our genetic code. Rather, they take away information. In my opinion, macroevolution is in a crisis of sorts. In Origin of Species, Darwin writes (in typical INTP style) that if his theory is shown to be incorrect later with the advent of scientific knowledge, he would withdraw it. I think that with the major gaps in the fossil record and the lack of a logical explanation (at least that I've ever heard) for the addition of genetic information, macroevolution has been shown wrong. Don't misunderstand me; Darwin was indeed a genius and an exceptionally gifted scientist who sought only to fully understand the intricacies of the universe. But in the modern age macroevolution isn't holding up to scrutiny. Unfortunately, it seems that in the current state of things if someone doubts macroevolution they are automatically excluded from the peer-reviewed scientific journals and from the scientific community at large, no questions asked. In this the scientific community really does seem to act like a church, which deeply saddens me. I'm way off topic by now, but I think that's why humans can't evolve out of selfishness. We do not possess the capability to evolve out of it. As to why we are selfish in the first place, please feel free to message me if you want to know my thoughts on it.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

'Why are Selves innately Self-ish?' ?

You answered your own question.

 

[Jah]

Aren't we also evolved into Altruism ?

(forgive me if I've misinterpreted this feature)



I mean; Yeah, you can argue that taking care of strangers is a selfish act as it aids the Society of human beings, but by then the word Selfish is getting threadbare.



I don't think we are as selfish as you'd probably hold us to be.



(Though as Richard Dawkins argues; the Gene is selfish, not necessarily the creature the Gene inhabits. - The Selfish Gene. Read the book, he does deal with Altruism as well, with what should be elementary Game Theory.)

 

[Hadoblado]

+1 the selfish gene

 

[Joz_helloworld]

capitalism rewards selfishness. To be altruistic is to act in opposition to what is seen as success in this society.

 

[SkyWalker]

1 selfish is a mis-used word.
2 real selfishness is not bad
3 only 50% of the population is a (selfish) thinker
4 the other 50% of the population is a (selfless) feeler

pure selfishness is pure rational thinking, its neutral and does not hurt a fly (unless it has to)
there are very few purely rational thinkers, they are like mr spock of star trek. very few humans are actually like that and these humans dont hurt a fly.

when you guys say selfishness you actually mean narcissism, which is strong selfishness with weak hate. the hate is secret and covert, hidden by selfishness, but its not pure seflishness. narcissism is secret sadism.
mr spock does not have weak hate like that. mr spock is very selfish though he does not hurt a fly (unless he has to).

narcissism is clearly on the rise in our current age. this is not just a common feeling, it is a fact that is proven in many scientific studies.

its simply because we view others as the enemy. (and if those others are narcissists, then they are actually really your enemy so then you are actually right to be a narcissist as well to them (or you'll be the stupid loser). this is how the virus inevitably spreads)

 

[Don't mind me]

capitalism rewards selfishness.

I thought capitalism led to a price system in which profits can be derived from satisfying the most urgent wants of others, thereby encouraging people to behave in the way that best serves the desires of those around them?

To be altruistic is to act in opposition to what is seen as success in this society.

Yes, of course, people who are "charitable" are scoffed at as no-good lowlifes in all modern societies!

 

[Joz_helloworld]

I thought capitalism led to a price system in which profits can be derived from satisfying the most urgent wants of others, thereby encouraging people to behave in the way that best serves the desires of those around them?

Capitalism is a competitive system whose goal on an individual level is to profit as much as possible by satisfying the wants of others, if those wants are profitable.

Oftentimes, desirable wants are withheld from society, such as patents law, such as limiting supply, to increase price or force a need. Oftentimes, profit can be made by prducing undesirable wants (eg gambling addiction) or by satisfying a profitable need and charging the community for the negative byproducts (eg pollution). Oftentimes, wants are simply not profitable (finding a cure for malaria is a charitable thing, improving plastic surgery medicene is a profitable enterprise).

If those wants are not profitable, satisfying them is altristic.

Yes, of course, people who are "charitable" are scoffed at as no-good lowlifes in all modern societies!

People are respected who give away some of their reward (money, time), go beyond the bounds of self-interest, and give to charity.

Capitalism itself does not reward this. The more money you have, the more you can make, giving it away makes your life harder.

Yes, you see altruism everywhere. You see it everywhere despite capitalism.

 

[Don't mind me]

Capitalism is a competitive system whose goal on an individual level is to profit as much as possible by satisfying the wants of others, if those wants are profitable.

The 'competition' is really just a process of discovering prices and costs (i.e. scarcity and value of different resources) and thereby finding the best use for each factor of production. It's a method for finding the most efficient way of cooperating, really.

Oftentimes, desirable wants are withheld from society, such as patents law, such as limiting supply, to increase price or force a need. Oftentimes, profit can be made by prducing undesirable wants (eg gambling addiction) or by satisfying a profitable need and charging the community for the negative byproducts (eg pollution).

What do patents and the corporatistic defense of polluters from tort charges (and, too a large extent, price gouging) have to do with capitalism? The mere action of gambling shows a preference for it despite the risks associated, besides, it's not as if addictions are impossible to beat.

Oftentimes, wants are simply not profitable (finding a cure for malaria is a charitable thing, improving plastic surgery medicene is a profitable enterprise).

I don't know the specifics of neither malaria nor plastic surgery, but if producing something isn't profitable this simply means that the capital required to produce it can be used in another way that the members of society value more highly. It would probably be hard to draw any such conclusions in these specific cases, though, since many areas relevant to them (medicine, scientific research, higher education in general) are pretty distorted.

If those wants are not profitable, satisfying them is altristic.

I'm not sure about this. If your project is not able to break even, this means that you bid up the price of your capital goods too high. If you hadn't done this, another entrepreneur could have used them instead, probably doing something more valuable with them. Does squandering wealth really count as altruism?

People are respected who give away some of their reward (money, time), go beyond the bounds of self-interest, and give to charity.

Capitalism itself does not reward this. The more money you have, the more you can make, giving it away makes your life harder.

Yes, you see altruism everywhere. You see it everywhere despite capitalism.

You said it was opposed to what was regarded success in society, not capitalism specifically, but okay. However, I doubt people would be prosperous enough to be particularly charitable were it not for the (however hampered) capitalism that we have had.




(I apologize for any errors, it's bedtime. G'night!)

 

[Joz_helloworld]

If those wants are not profitable, satisfying them is altristic.

I'm not sure about this. If your project is not able to break even, this means that you bid up the price of your capital goods too high. If you hadn't done this, another entrepreneur could have used them instead, probably doing something more valuable with them. Does squandering wealth really count as altruism?

Okay, intention is important.

I don't mean, someone who is attempting but failing to make a profit. That is not altruistic.

I mean, when someone puts time/effort/money into a project which it is known will not make a profit. People do. A lot. (Hence, essentially I am arguing that people are not innately selfish). There are plenty of examples, none of which will be rewarded by the system of capitalism.

People coach underage sports teams. People find homeless people shelter. People run soup kitchens, write useful programs and share, people give money to beggars, people run the school canteen....

There are oodles of needs not catered to by capitalism. Malaria is a good example, it is a very real need, trouble is, most people who need help with it are not in the Western, wealthy world, are not in a position to pay for such a vaccine or drug. It is not profitable, therefore, and is a charitable cause. (Bill Gates famously sponsors this), even though it must be amongst the highest needs of the world, with so many people suffering from this.

In order to do this, people need to use their time or money, which as I said, makes their life harder, not easier.

Okay, I got a little off track, in the last post, posting irrelevant criticisms of capitalism to the argument at hand. I'm going to pass arguing the merits capitalism and focus on the nature of how it encourages selfishness only - my fault, sorry.

But, the 'invisible hand' of the market, capitalism, which is the overarching structure of our system, rewards selfishness and penalises selflessness or altruism.

The philosophy of the system sees no issue with people starving, polluted rivers etc, it is supposedly amoral but it is not, it encourages individualism and selfishness as good qualities and rewards such.

Bird:
Why have we not evolved out of this?

From an evolutionary point of view, the rich can better care for their needs etc and you get there by being selfish, lucky and sometimes talented.

But given the amount of time and money people do spend on selfless tasks, I find it hard-pressed to say there is not a lot of it around, and that we as a human species are 'innately selfish'.

Given how much of it is around despite its penalty in the system in which we live, how most people wish they could do something for say the starving people of Africa, even when they don't, I think it is possible to claim we are rather altruistic more than selfish.

 

[Don't mind me]

Okay, intention is important.
[...]
, it encourages individualism and selfishness as good qualities and rewards such.

Okay, I'll skip arguing that giving to beggars and working for free are not necessarily good acts, and stick to the issue of selfishness: it's not as if the market and freedom of action in themselves imply that monetary profit should be sought after. Indeed, the sole reason for someone to seek to obtain money is that, according to their subjective values, they prefer a situation where they have more money. They might as well wish to give up their work without receiving any physical resources in return rather than getting paid physically (as most people most of the time seem to do), and if this is so, it is because they derive what is called "psychological profit" from it. This psychprof. is also the determinant factor for someone who tries to get rich, the only difference is personal values.

Your argument that abstaining from consumption and instead giving others' the opportunity to do so means that one gets less resources is obviously true, since we live in a world of scarcity. This does not mean, however, that one's life becomes worse as a result of it: the mere fact of doing it implies that one prefers doing it to not doing it, and therefore, one's life is made better by doing it (this sentence should not be read in isolation).

But I'll stop commenting here now so as to avoid derailing the thread too much, bye.

 

[Reluctantly]

Some people would say just having a thought/desire of your own makes you innately selfish. But that would automatically make the idea of free will a selfish thing. And I would then say people use the word 'selfish' way too liberally.

It's like asking "Why are humans innately evil?" when I could similarly ask "Why are humans innately good?"; or to stay more on topic - it's like asking "Why are humans innately selfish?" when I could similarly ask "Why are humans innately selfless?". I could make an argument for each question that would contradict each other.

 

[snafupants]

Why have we not evolved out of this?

Consider the alternative: everyone giving so much to one another that individual bodies are not given the proper nourishment.

The "ego" is definitely beneficial to that particular person, at least in terms of survival. Spiritual needs and longings are usually trumped by a rumbling gut. There is an hedonic feedback loop there: food comes in, dopamine is released, and so on.

However, I also think that modern, industrialized culture has gone berserk with this notion of me versus the world.

Most animals survive and thrive by obtaining resources in groups, mating along the same lines, and generally being low key and chill the majority of the time.