ALTRUISTIC

The Webster definition of altruistic is “unselfish regard or devotion of the welfare of others”. Dawkins completely contradicts this definition by saying that we just protect ourselves by protecting our genes. It is true that our blood relatives have some of our same genes, but are humans really that selfish? Do our lives revolve around miniscule particles inside our cells? I personally like to believe that humans are less shallow than that. In fact, I believe that being humans is making our own decisions, priorities, and life’s. We aren’t “programmed” to follow a rulebook. I do believe “animals may be pre-programmed in such a way that it behaves” (pg96) through instincts, but I can’t believe my life purpose is protecting my genes.

Maybe Dawkins is wrong, we aren’t selfish, and things like love might exist. We might protect our families because we love them and enjoy having time with them. Dawkins in his previews chapters explained that we by logic try to repeat things that are “good” (produce endorphins, satisfy us…), then protecting our families are protecting the things we enjoy.

Interest

Every species has different values, in fact every human appreciates or needs things more than others. Maybe mating is the most important part of our lives, but then why don’t we kill the competition? Killing the competition would only make the species unstable, some fighting is necessary, but depending on the organism’s traits there is a different strategy for all of us. We might not be looking for “the good of the species” (pg 67) but instead our personal goals in different ways. We need to understand and have respect “towards the individual that has beaten us” (pg 82) and as we find our place in the species we can still look for our personal goals. Something like retreating is good if you know your going to loose, it all depends on what you want and how you can achieve it. Humans don’t kill each other for mates, in our case its better to work together in a certain way even though competition exists. We cannot reproduce by ourselves so we look towards the common good of our population.

Survival and Reproduction

The best scientific meaning of fitness I can give is: to be able to produce offspring’s, hence the most offspring you produce the fitter the organism is. Heres were natural selection and survival of the fittest come into play, they are always proportional and relative to each other. Natural selection is how through time a species has a gene change (or mutation), this change might give the organism something beneficial like spikes, wings, ext that will protect it and its offspring’s in a certain way. Spike on a tree could protect its seed, poison on a snake could allow him to get more food, color on a butterfly could scare insects away, “the animals evolved to achieve rapid movement” (pg 47), we could go on forever on how your future offspring is produced more efficiently. So Natural Selection is the key to the survival of the fittest and evolution they all work on the same level.

As computers Dawkins say we live by a set of rules, our advantage is our brains and the ability to learn. We “repeat anything that is followed by one of the nice things [sweet taste, smiling child, mild temperature…]” ( pg57) and we stop doing things that conclude in a set of bad things. Learning is in a simplistic way the ability to benefit us, of course there is more to that but the basics are simply and Dawkins says this is in our genes. If the set of good and bad things are in our genes where would selfish acts that lead to beneficial things fall under? Is it not true that having money (the ability to feed yourself…) would be a beneficial thing for us, only our judgment will be able to decide what selfishness is and if it is ever good or bad but it will always be just a perspective.

Selective Breeding?

As Dawkins goes deep into the biology of genetics actually quite similar to what I am currently studying in school he proceeds to prove to the world the true complexity and miracle of life. When you think about it, it is a true miracle the perfection of 3 billion nucleotides making our bodies after millions of sperms (each also completely unique) fight as rival to combine there 23 chromosomes with the ovules 23 chromosomes to fight the odds to produce one offspring with limited possibilities of getting to live to then find 6 million of these miracles in our world. That’s how I know god exists. Human anatomy is impressive as well as any other living organism each unique. It’s amazing how the complete 3 billion nucleotides that are practically the handbook for the making of a human are contained in every single cell. 20 years ago we found DNA identification we are just peaking in Pandora’s box of infinite possibilities of genetic manipulations. It is true we could select each individual gene for its benefits and speed the process of evolution but we need to think about the consequences of this, we have only just started studying DNA how much risk are we willing to take? Maybe there is a selfish gene, maybe we could delete it in the future, but do we want to?

Replicators

In chapter 2 Dawkins talks more about Darwin and his work. He talks about the “survival of the fittest”(pg 13) and how its not completely accurate as the “survival of the stable”(pg 13). He says that things that survive are in a certain way the ones that can remain the same through some time and prove to be durable. Then he goes into complex genetics of how our proteins amino acids and hemoglobin is formed and destroyed in a stable way.

I’ve had different opinions in my life about the survival of the fittest it I true in a way that the most able capable things survive in our world. It’s a simple theory since for example the hawk that never learned to fly will probably have les survival possibilities. But also humans have taken for granted that killing and destroying is what lets us survive but we have seen that if we keep doing this things like global warming are triggered by us and killing us in return. This is why I agree more with the theory of stability since is we are able to proceed in life with longetivity and fecundity without damaging ourselves in the process that is how a species will last. This would be the living form of natural selection it would be the perfect species but its utopic one that is impossible to reach in my opinion.

The Selfish Gene

Originally I was discouraged to read the selfish gene but know I have finally started, it peaked my interest slowly in the fist chapter as it proceeded to explain how natural selection works and how the first animal came to be. He poses a very common question, why do humans exist? He tells us that Darwin after hundreds of years f uncertainty gave us the best answer so far, evolution. This commonly accepted theory is why we exist how we became the humans we know today. “The consequences of the evolution theory for a particular issue” ( pg 10) he will proceed to explain to us the evolution of the genes of selfishness and altruism. He says that that a species doesn’t evolve, instead each gene evolves by its self. He also makes clear to us that selfishness isn’t really defined there for he says we might see an act as apparently selfish but not with complete certainty. Many animals sacrifice themselves for others, but there are also many organisms that eat babies or do things apparently selfish says Dawkins. Even thou an animal might do a sacrifice for its group Dawkins tries to explain to us that he is just self-protecting himself by protecting his genes and his species future.

Back!!!

So I pretty much forgot this blog even existed until a couple of days ago when I was reflecting about life. I was thinking that everything moves to fast in life since my sister just graduated this past Friday. I was getting sentimental about things happening around me, I couldn’t believe just 6 moths ago I was living abroad. Then I though about Epictetus incredibly I was just thinking about moral. Then it hit me I haven’t updated my blog in about a month so this is it until this school year ends I will do my blog more regularly starting by uploading what i haven't i hope you enjoy my return.