I visualized it, the steps I’d take to open fire, and I realized that the shards of glass on the ground between me and the door could provide them with a half-second of warning.
Ooh, good catch.
Slowly, carefully, I began brushing the shards aside, keeping my ears peeled for some clue about a key distraction.
“Survival of the fittest, it sounds so tidy, but it’s really hundreds of thousands of years of brutish, messy, violent incidents, billions of events that you’d want to avert your eyes from if you were to see them in person.
But not just that.
In spite of how the phrase often gets translated, fittest does not mean strongest. It means the most adapted. That includes those who survive because they cooperate and play an honest, productive part in their society. Hell, judging by the fact that we’ve evolved into a social species, it seems that’s what’s been working best for us. Survival of the fittest, for humans, seems to have favored those who get along with others.
And that’s a large part of what’s shaped us into what we are. But we wear masks, we pretend to be good, we extend a helping hand to others for reasons that are ultimately self-serving, and all the while, we’re just crude, pleasure-seeking, conniving, selfish apes. We’re all monsters, deep down inside.”
I’ll give him the self-serving part. Even empathy-fueled actions are to some extent self-serving, to relieve ourself of the negative feelings associated with not helping. But that’s because these feelings and instincts are the way our biology asks us to comply with what it believes is the best course of action for survival and propagation.
We’ve evolved empathy because it works.
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