In my case, awareness of evolutionary psychology has made me more skeptical of morality, of “should” as a moral command. I know whatever else is going on that I feel most of my “shoulds” because my ancestors who didn’t were not as successful at reproducing as my ancestors who didn’t. If aliens enslaved us and set about efficiently breeding us to meet their purposes, we would not likely internalize their goals as our goals. Until they managed to selectively breed that tendency in to us. So instead of aliens, we have been enslaved by a mindless natural selection, why internalize its goals?
I am less likely to feel depressed or guilty about percieved lack of success. This constant striving is a feature that natural selection likes, but it sorta sucks for the individual. Sure, you drive yourself mercilessly and you get more done and in the past that was the difference between almost surviving and thriving. But if I can survive without that grinding internal demand to do better, I’ll shut the damn thing off with medication and be personally better off for it.
Its extremely interesting to contemplate whether what makes you different is a feature or a bug. Is it something natural selection would be “wise” (in its mindless way) to include in future generations, or is it, as is much more likely statistically, something that reduces human’s fitness if generalized?
We know from the selfish gene and the moral animal that human social connection is a primary driver of our fitness ( a lone human or pair of humans is not a successful animal in the wild). Much, perhaps all of what we call morality has to do with internalized rules for how to interact with other humans. Knowing these evolved, I consider it educational to contemplate how the various rules helped us survive. How did they improve cooperation, or at least the kind of cooperation that was useful?
Natural selection is dumb, there is no reason to think it is looking for a “uniform” human genome which is optimized for survival if replicated. Indeed, we have the obvious man-woman split. Maybe other variations are features of the survival of the whole of us (and therefore the survival of our selfish genes). Maybe we need a few sociopaths to run big companies and countries without the survival-sapping restraints that the rest of us, who make great followers and cannon fodder, have. Maybe the optimum physicist, general, politician, and businessman really are genetically different from each other, and a human genome which becomes too homogeneous will be out-competed by groups of humans that stay more varied.
It is also fascinating to contemplate “gaming the system.” The dodo bird lays its eggs in another bird’s nest and its chicks are raised by the other birds as their own. What do our genes tell us about adultery? Rape? Dishonesty for seduction? Cuckoldry? I have read that leaders of many countries and companies are sometimes psychopaths. Maybe a society of 100% psychopaths would fail. But would a society of 1% psychopaths have any advantages over one with 0%? Do we need immoral leaders, unconstrained by conventional concerns for their fellow humans, to organize a group of humans and allow that group to compete in a less restrained way against the other groups?
The “shoulds” I take from evolutionary psychology are 1) there often is a survival reason something is a certain way, even if I find that something morally odious, 2) don’t “worship” your moral tendencies or beliefs: they didn’t come from god they were just what worked better than available alternatives, 3) when there is a feature of the world you hate, this may be a map-territory problem: genetics had to optimize you by giving you a simple map for a complex world, and that map may not work all the places you try to use it.
In my case, awareness of evolutionary psychology has made me more skeptical of morality, of “should” as a moral command. I know whatever else is going on that I feel most of my “shoulds” because my ancestors who didn’t were not as successful at reproducing as my ancestors who didn’t. If aliens enslaved us and set about efficiently breeding us to meet their purposes, we would not likely internalize their goals as our goals. Until they managed to selectively breed that tendency in to us. So instead of aliens, we have been enslaved by a mindless natural selection, why internalize its goals?
I am less likely to feel depressed or guilty about percieved lack of success. This constant striving is a feature that natural selection likes, but it sorta sucks for the individual. Sure, you drive yourself mercilessly and you get more done and in the past that was the difference between almost surviving and thriving. But if I can survive without that grinding internal demand to do better, I’ll shut the damn thing off with medication and be personally better off for it.
Its extremely interesting to contemplate whether what makes you different is a feature or a bug. Is it something natural selection would be “wise” (in its mindless way) to include in future generations, or is it, as is much more likely statistically, something that reduces human’s fitness if generalized?
We know from the selfish gene and the moral animal that human social connection is a primary driver of our fitness ( a lone human or pair of humans is not a successful animal in the wild). Much, perhaps all of what we call morality has to do with internalized rules for how to interact with other humans. Knowing these evolved, I consider it educational to contemplate how the various rules helped us survive. How did they improve cooperation, or at least the kind of cooperation that was useful?
Natural selection is dumb, there is no reason to think it is looking for a “uniform” human genome which is optimized for survival if replicated. Indeed, we have the obvious man-woman split. Maybe other variations are features of the survival of the whole of us (and therefore the survival of our selfish genes). Maybe we need a few sociopaths to run big companies and countries without the survival-sapping restraints that the rest of us, who make great followers and cannon fodder, have. Maybe the optimum physicist, general, politician, and businessman really are genetically different from each other, and a human genome which becomes too homogeneous will be out-competed by groups of humans that stay more varied.
It is also fascinating to contemplate “gaming the system.” The dodo bird lays its eggs in another bird’s nest and its chicks are raised by the other birds as their own. What do our genes tell us about adultery? Rape? Dishonesty for seduction? Cuckoldry? I have read that leaders of many countries and companies are sometimes psychopaths. Maybe a society of 100% psychopaths would fail. But would a society of 1% psychopaths have any advantages over one with 0%? Do we need immoral leaders, unconstrained by conventional concerns for their fellow humans, to organize a group of humans and allow that group to compete in a less restrained way against the other groups?
The “shoulds” I take from evolutionary psychology are 1) there often is a survival reason something is a certain way, even if I find that something morally odious, 2) don’t “worship” your moral tendencies or beliefs: they didn’t come from god they were just what worked better than available alternatives, 3) when there is a feature of the world you hate, this may be a map-territory problem: genetics had to optimize you by giving you a simple map for a complex world, and that map may not work all the places you try to use it.