Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 12, 2017)
OCTOBER 12, 2017 // 3 SCRATCHPAD Niceness is natural a background in biology, tackled these questions last week at the college’s fi rst Ales & Ideas lecture of the 2017-18 season. The event, held in the Fort George Lovell Showroom and titled “Why Being Nice Matters (Because Evolution Says So),” was standing room only. Breitmeyer led the beer-laden audience through the main theories of altruism. Is it all about kin selection (because our relatives share our genes)? By ERICK BENGEL COAST WEEKEND I f natural selection, the driving force of evo- lution, really depends on whatever set of traits makes an organism more or less likely to reproduce and pass on genes, where does altruism come in? Why does anyone work to benefi t others at his or her own expense? Chris Breitmeyer, the president of Clatsop Com- munity College who has coast INSIDE THIS ISSUE weekend arts & entertainment 4 10 THE ARTS Water Music Festival 2017 Classic jazz meets classical music 23 COAST WEEKEND EDITOR ERICK BENGEL CALENDAR COORDINATOR REBECCA HERREN CONTRIBUTORS HEATHER DOUGLAS MARILYN GILBAUGH WILLIAM HAM PATTY HARDIN BARBARA LLOYD McMICHAEL EDWARD STRATTON FEATURE ‘BloodyVox’ To advertise in Coast Weekend, call 503-325-3211 or contact your local sales representative. © 2017 COAST WEEKEND Liberty Theatre presents Halloween-themed show PHOTO BY BLAIN E TRUI TT COVERT 14 Is it simply based on expec- tations of reciprocity? Or did we evolve to help our larger community? There is evidence for all three. “The fact that you have those kinds of feel- ings is natural and normal. It’s the norm,” Breitmeyer said — though, he admit- ted, we’re in a time when it feels like it is not the norm. Many educators will make a logical leap from describing the useful things people evolved to do to prescribing, morally, why DINING Mouth of the Columbia Just killer pizza at Seaside’s Avenue Q ARTIST PROFILE ‘Junk, Elevated’ Bonny Gorsuch salvages objects for exhibition FURTHER ENJOYMENT MUSIC CALENDAR .....................5 SEE + DO ........................... 12, 13 CROSSWORD ........................... 20 CW MARKETPLACE ................ 18 GRAB BAG ................................ 21 Find it all online! CoastWeekend.com features full calendar listings, keyword search and easy sharing on social media. New items for publication consideration must be submitted by 10 a.m. Tuesday, one week and two days before publication. TO SUBMIT AN ITEM Phone: 503.325.3211 Ext. 217 or 800.781.3211 Fax: 503.325.6573 E-mail: editor@coastweekend.com Address: P.O.Box 210 • 949 Exchange St. Astoria, OR 97103 Coast Weekend is published every Thursday by the EO Media Group, all rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without consent of the publisher. Coast Weekend appears weekly in The Daily Astorian and the Chinook Observer. people should do it. But Breitmeyer didn’t say we should be nice mere- ly because we’re hardwired to be nice. (Remember: We’re hardwired to do a lot of things we probably shouldn’t do in civilized society.) Instead, he set up a conditional: If we want to feel good, make others feel good and enjoy a coopera- tive community — like, say, Astoria, Oregon — one way to do that is to act on the altruistic impulse. In his writings and interviews, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has talked about why we help people we are unlikely to meet again, when there is no kin/self/group benefi t. He says that, when we mostly lived in small-ish groups, we developed an instinctual urge to help people in need — an urge, for many, as basic and powerful as lust. Both urges, for different reasons, boosted our evolutionary fitness. Lust, Dawkins says, is actually a useful analogy: We continue to feel lust, a trait that aided us in reproduction, even though our species uses birth control, and we continue to be altruistic, even though we no longer live in tribes composed only of kin and cohorts. These urges — lust and altruism — are de- tached from the prehistoric social environment that selected for them. But that doesn’t make them irrele- vant in today’s world. As primates, we carry the mental imprint of many millennia spent surviving in tribes — an evolutionary journey evident in both our tribalism and our capacity for kindness. This journey is also evident when we do something else our ances- tors did: gather, learn and hold discourse. And if they could have done it with a finely fermented stout in hand, you know they would have. CW
