Humans have been posed with the question that has boggled recent researchers as much as it has back in earlier centuries. Are humans altruistic or are they selfish, think and protect themselves? Darwin advocated that humans are not more cooperative and altruistic, but rather a selfish species. I believe that humans are a self-centered selfish species and agree with Darwin's theory because humans like the idea that they are good souls and are the helping type, but the reality is that we always make decisions after we've decided if it's too risky or it doesn't benefit us at all. Richard Dawkins "The Selfish Gene" and Ian McEwan's "Us or Me" will support this thesis more in depth.
First of all, in McEwan's short story about a group of strangers who encounter an unexpected event in which a hot air ballon was came crashing down and had a young boy and an elderly man. They had a choice to help out or just let the situation unfold naturally. They chose to save the boy. McEwan's main protagonist states, "What were we running toward? I don't think any of us would ever know fully. But superficially the answer was a ballon" (McEwan 267). This quote shows the characters were going out of instinct. Which is normal because at first insticnt people will be willing to help other people if they haven't completely analyzed the situation they're in. While running toward the balloon Jon Rose starts to analyze the situation and says, "We were running toward a catastrophe, which itself was a kind of furnace in whose heat identifies and fates would buckle into new shapes" (McEwan 267). You can start to feel the doubt in his tone of speaking. It starts to prove that even while going over to help someone in need of help a person will always think about the risk involved and what it might to do him.
After the balloon was contained the first time. An unexpected detail came up and a huge gust takes the balloon up in the air and six men are holding on to this balloon by a rope in mid air. One of them is the boy's grandfather. Once again, Jon Rose's thoughts show how humans will never be an altruistic species as he describes the running thoughts in his head, "Almost simultaneously with the desire to save the boy, barely a neuronal pulse later, came other thoughts, in which fear and instinct calculations of logarithmic complexity were fused" (McEwan 271). As soon as all these thoughts came to his mind the rest of the people start to drop including the grandfather. This shows that in the long run, humans will weigh out the risks and attempt to be altrustic only if the risks are too great, they might protect themselves rather than somebody else. Even blood or family ties cannot always make a person truly altruistic. Out of all the six men who tried to save the boy only one held on the longest, but eventually lost grip and plummented to his death. One out of six is a very low percentage to consider humans altruistic and generally good.
In Richard Dawkins book, he argues that humans are a self-centered race. We have this inner "gene" that doesn't allow us to be willing to help other people. In the case of kin saving each other, Dawkins states, "minimum requirement for a suicidal altruistic gene to be successful is that it should save more than two siblings, (children or parents), or more than four half-siblings, (or uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, grandparents, grandchildren), or more than eight first cousins, etc. Such a gene, on average tends to live on in this bodies of enough individuals saved by the altruist to compensate to the death of the altruist itself" (Dawkins 184). This quote basically means that in order for this altruistic gene to exist this situation must happen normally or statistically more than half of the time. Since this happens seldomly, the idea that humans are altruistic starts to fade away and seem farfetched.
Dawkins questions if altruism exists solely by itself or if it's brought about by our selfish gene. He states, "Basically it does this by helping to program the bodies in which it finds itself to survive and reproduce. But now we are emphasizing that "it" is a distributed agency, existing in many different individuals at once" (Dawkins 179). He feels that humans won't go out of their way to help others without thinking about themselves first. He uses the best type of experiment to support his theory, twins. Twins have shared DNA and if identical and one gives his life to save the other than that altruistic gene must exist in both of them.
In conclusion, the thought that humans are good and will sacrifice themselves to save someone else is false. Humans might save others as long as it doesn't sound or seem too risky to their own lives. Unless it involves a family member then the numbers will be higher, but only out of a selfish thought to protect and save one's own blood.
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