An idea that may not stand up to more careful reflection.
Evidence shows that people have limited quantities of willpower – exercise it too much, and it gets used up. I suspect that rather than a mere mental flaw, this is a design feature of the brain.
Man is often called the social animal. We band together in groups – families, societies, civilizations – to solve our problems. Groups are valuable to have, and so we have values – altruism, generosity, loyalty – that promote group cohesion and success. However, it doesn’t pay to be COMPLETELY supportive of the group. Ultimately the goal is replication of your genes, and though being part of a group can further that goal, it can also hinder it if you take it too far (sacrificing yourself for the greater good is not adaptive behavior). So it pays to have relatively fluid group boundaries that can be created as needed, depending on which group best serves your interest. And indeed, studies show that group formation/division is the easiest thing in the world to create – even groups chosen completely at random from a larger pool will exhibit rivalry and conflict.
Despite this, it’s the group-supporting values that form the higher level values that we pay lip service too. Group values are the ones we believe are our ‘real’ values, the ones that form the backbone of our ethics, the ones we signal to others at great expense. But actually having these values is tricky from an evolutionary standpoint – strategically, you’re much better off being selfish than generous, being two-faced than loyal, and furthering your own gains at the expense of everyone elses.
So humans are in a pickle – it’s beneficial for them to form groups to solve their problems and increase their chances of survival, but it’s also beneficial for people to be selfish and mooch off the goodwill of the group. Because of this, we have sophisticated machinery called ’suspicion’ to ferret out any liars or cheaters furthering their own gains at the groups expense. Of course, evolution is an arms race, so it’s looking for a method to overcome these mechanisms, for ways it can fulfill it’s base desires while still appearing to support the group.
It accomplished this by implementing willpower. Because deceiving others about what we believe would quickly be uncovered, we don’t actually deceive them – we’re designed so that we really, truly, in our heart of hearts believe that the group-supporting values – charity, nobility, selflessness – are the right things to do. However, we’re only given a limited means to accomplish them. We can leverage our willpower to overcome the occasional temptation, but when push comes to shove – when that huge pile of money or that incredible opportunity or that amazing piece of ass is placed in front of us, willpower tends to fail us. Willpower is generally needed for the values that don’t further our evolutionary best interests – you don’t need willpower to run from danger or to hunt an animal if you’re hungry or to mate with a member of the opposite sex. We have much better, much more successful mechanisms that accomplish those goals. Willpower is designed so that we really do want to support the group, but wind up failing at it and giving in to our baser desires – the ones that will actually help our genes get replicated.
Of course, the maladaption comes into play due to the fact that we use willpower to try to accomplish other, non-group related goals – mostly the long-term, abstract plans we create using high-level, conscious thinking. This does appear to be a design flaw (though since humans are notoriously bad at making long-term predictions, it may not be as crippling as it first appears.)
An idea that may not stand up to more careful reflection.
Evidence shows that people have limited quantities of willpower – exercise it too much, and it gets used up. I suspect that rather than a mere mental flaw, this is a design feature of the brain.
Man is often called the social animal. We band together in groups – families, societies, civilizations – to solve our problems. Groups are valuable to have, and so we have values – altruism, generosity, loyalty – that promote group cohesion and success. However, it doesn’t pay to be COMPLETELY supportive of the group. Ultimately the goal is replication of your genes, and though being part of a group can further that goal, it can also hinder it if you take it too far (sacrificing yourself for the greater good is not adaptive behavior). So it pays to have relatively fluid group boundaries that can be created as needed, depending on which group best serves your interest. And indeed, studies show that group formation/division is the easiest thing in the world to create – even groups chosen completely at random from a larger pool will exhibit rivalry and conflict.
Despite this, it’s the group-supporting values that form the higher level values that we pay lip service too. Group values are the ones we believe are our ‘real’ values, the ones that form the backbone of our ethics, the ones we signal to others at great expense. But actually having these values is tricky from an evolutionary standpoint – strategically, you’re much better off being selfish than generous, being two-faced than loyal, and furthering your own gains at the expense of everyone elses. So humans are in a pickle – it’s beneficial for them to form groups to solve their problems and increase their chances of survival, but it’s also beneficial for people to be selfish and mooch off the goodwill of the group. Because of this, we have sophisticated machinery called ’suspicion’ to ferret out any liars or cheaters furthering their own gains at the groups expense. Of course, evolution is an arms race, so it’s looking for a method to overcome these mechanisms, for ways it can fulfill it’s base desires while still appearing to support the group.
It accomplished this by implementing willpower. Because deceiving others about what we believe would quickly be uncovered, we don’t actually deceive them – we’re designed so that we really, truly, in our heart of hearts believe that the group-supporting values – charity, nobility, selflessness – are the right things to do. However, we’re only given a limited means to accomplish them. We can leverage our willpower to overcome the occasional temptation, but when push comes to shove – when that huge pile of money or that incredible opportunity or that amazing piece of ass is placed in front of us, willpower tends to fail us. Willpower is generally needed for the values that don’t further our evolutionary best interests – you don’t need willpower to run from danger or to hunt an animal if you’re hungry or to mate with a member of the opposite sex. We have much better, much more successful mechanisms that accomplish those goals. Willpower is designed so that we really do want to support the group, but wind up failing at it and giving in to our baser desires – the ones that will actually help our genes get replicated.
Of course, the maladaption comes into play due to the fact that we use willpower to try to accomplish other, non-group related goals – mostly the long-term, abstract plans we create using high-level, conscious thinking. This does appear to be a design flaw (though since humans are notoriously bad at making long-term predictions, it may not be as crippling as it first appears.)
That is certainly interesting enough to subject to further reflection. Do we have any evolutionary psychologists in the audience?