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
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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
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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