You’re so selfish. So am I!
So is your friend, your colleague, definitely your boss! So is the mother who does everything for her child. So is the businessman who provide jobs to many. So is the teacher, the policeman, the janitor. So is the nurse and doctor who risk their own lives to cure the patients. So is the soldier who lays his life at the war front.
Selfishness is a concern of one’s own welfare or advantage in disregard of others. At the other end of the spectrum is altruism. Altruism is a selfless concern for the well being of others. These are two behavioural traits poles apart – absolute antithesis!
I have already shocked you to the core by calling a nurse, a teacher, a doctor, a mother and even a soldier as selfish! I meant no disrespect. These are some of the greatest examples of altruism.
The point I am trying to make is that Selfishness & Altruism, by definition are antithesis, yet can co-exist! As a matter of fact, they are inextricably intertwined. An act can be both altruistic and selfish.
Selfishness is an integral and natural part of evolution with survival instincts at its core. We were born, because our ancestors living in caves, and even their ancestors, put priority on their survival. Reciprocation and cooperation came about as an evolved form of selfishness – You watch my back, I watch yours; you take care of kids & cooking, I’ll hunt meals and protect you.
With selfishness at its core, cooperation and reciprocation evolved as an adaptive mechanism. This cooperation evolved further creating a cluster of interdependencies – societies, clans, empires, countries etc. – that bound individuals together. These mechanisms of cooperation and reciprocation evolved into altruism.
Being selfish at the core, we display a range of behaviours starting with absolute selfishness to reciprocation, cooperation and altruism. Viewed in this manner, altruism is nothing but selfishness at a broader survival unit. The survival units can range in the following way, for instance:
The moot point of this article:
You’re selfish for the survival unit under your consideration.
If the survival of your own self (your life, your career, your girlfriend, your investments, your safety) is at consideration, you’re selfish for yourself. If the survival of your family (your kid’s education, your mother’s health, your home loan) is at consideration, you’re selfish for your family; even if that means sacrificing your own well being. You cook a delicious meal and give half of it to your neighbour; in order to build & maintain congenial relationship and hope of some reciprocation in future. You give your hard earned money to your financially broke friend. That is cooperation. A soldier fights selfishly for his own country; even if that means killing a fellow soldier of another country or altruistically getting killed! A doctor risks her life in attending Covid patients because her reference survival unit is humanity. People dedicate their lives for nature & wildlife preservation. How selfish of them!
Evolutionary Biologist, Richard Dawkins backward integrated this framework further and claimed that the most fundamental unit of survival is not a community or an individual, but gene and selfishness can be expected at the genetic level.
“Selfishness is to be expected in any entity that deserves the title of a basic unit of natural selection. We saw that some people regard the species as the unit of natural selection, others the population or group within the species, and yet others the individual. I said that I preferred to think of the gene as the fundamental unit of natural selection, and therefore the fundamental unit of self-interest.”
– Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Why is all this Useful?
We know that the behaviour can be viewed as selfish or altruistic depending on the perspective or the survival unit that is under consideration. The inverse is also true. By changing the perspective or the survival unit under consideration, the behaviour can be altered. I’m giving a few examples to expound on the idea:
Example 1: The spirit of a Soldier
First things first…I say this with full respect to the spirit of a soldier and the selflessness with which they lay their lives for their country.
If you look at the construct of a typical soldier…he is a simple person. His training includes not just physical aspects, but also mental. He is conditioned into being a part of a regiment, such that nothing matters more than the pride, honour and tradition of the regiment. The pride and honour of the regiment becomes his identity – his survival unit. A fractal below – his self – loses its relevance. A fractal above – humanity – loses its relevance too! He is conditioned to look at his regiment’s survival and success even at the supreme sacrifice of the lower fractal unit, his own life or the higher fractal unit, humanity (the soldier on the other side).
Viewed this way, you”ll realise that a soldier is no different than a terrorist. Both lose their own identity. Both raise their selfishness to a higher survival unit of imaginary concepts like country, beliefs or religion, don’t they!
Example 2: Junior colleague vs subordinate
Very early in my career, I had one person, say S, reporting to me for sales in a city. As the business grew in that city, I added a junior resource, say J. I asked S to shift some of the smaller business relationships to J so that he can focus on the key relationships. At the end of the year, while doing a review, I realised that S hadn’t shared enough client relationships with J. This was because of a feeling of insecurity and competitiveness. I realised my mistake. I made J report into S. This immediately brought the change in the behaviour of S. He started viewing J as his resource, not competitor. They worked together successfully in the coming years. Infact, J even followed S into another organisation subsequently.
Example 3: Change in the perspective of my son
There is a big age gap between my kids. Son is 9 years older than my daughter. It is usual to have siblings competing for parents’ love & attention. However, with a 9 year gap, I thought that won’t happen. I was wrong. My kids were behaving as if they were 2 years apart. It took me & my wife a while to explain to our son that he is as good as a guardian for his sister. He was viewing the family structure as 2+2. In such a structure, they need to vie for our attention. We managed to change his view of our family to 3+1. We convinced him that he’s on our side and it is upto 3 of us to take care of the girl. This shift in his perspective from 2+2 to 3+1 changed the way he viewed his relationship with his little sister…somewhat similar to how the relationship changed between S & J.
Example 4: Back to Genes
Look at the amazing world of genes. A fully functioning living being, is an intricate cooperative venture – with thousands of genes interacting cumulatively and constructively. It is impossible to have the end product – say a human baby crying out loud, without all the genes coming together and cooperating. There is one exception though – they compete with alleles – their alter ego of sort. Alleles are a pair of genes occurring alternatively on chromosomes, and control the same characteristic. Genes compete with their rival alleles for survival during sexual intercourse, as only the winner gets passed on to the next generation. The gene, remarkably, competes when it comes to its own survival against its rival allele, but cooperates intricately with all the thousands of other genes to create a living being.
It is quite remarkable to note that this framework of being selfish at one level and altruist and cooperative at other is present even at the smallest survival unit – gene, all the way to large groups, communities and nations.
It is also remarkable, as I illustrated with a few examples that, by changing the perspective or fractal units, one can alter the behaviour.