This is beautiful: "We’re never going to reason each other into the beloved community – we must do it through our evolutionary superpower – friendliness."
Many people since Darwin and Wallace published their theories of natural selection have tried to use "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest" as justification for ruthless non-cooperation among people.
This overlooks the many places where see cooperative behavior in social species because it's more successful than ruthless non-cooperation.
Several years ago at the Skepticon conference, neurobiologist Peggy Mason talked about altruism in humans asking if it was culture or biology.
She used lab rats to explore altruistic behavior and described this as an "innate mammalian drive to be good, to help."
She has some introductory remarks but gets into the biology of altruism around the 20:50 time point in this video.
This is beautiful: "We’re never going to reason each other into the beloved community – we must do it through our evolutionary superpower – friendliness."
These are words to live by.
Many people since Darwin and Wallace published their theories of natural selection have tried to use "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest" as justification for ruthless non-cooperation among people.
This overlooks the many places where see cooperative behavior in social species because it's more successful than ruthless non-cooperation.
Several years ago at the Skepticon conference, neurobiologist Peggy Mason talked about altruism in humans asking if it was culture or biology.
She used lab rats to explore altruistic behavior and described this as an "innate mammalian drive to be good, to help."
She has some introductory remarks but gets into the biology of altruism around the 20:50 time point in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwVy3zGxe_o