Sublime

Wilson explains that man is perpetually suspended between the two extreme forces that created us: “Individual selection [which] prompted sin and group selection [which] promoted virtue.” Which of these forces (self-interest or collective interest) wins out in any organization is a function of that organization’s culture, which is a function of the

In a few remarkable pages of The Descent of Man, Darwin made the case for group selection, raised the principal objection to it, and then proposed a way around the objection: When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, s

They appear to want some of the same things most of us want: recognition from their peers and communities and better lives for the people they care about. Being

his human flock, and it was thus right and natural for his subjects to obey him

“Survival of the friendliest,” as one observer calls it, rescripting the story of human evolution, shining a light on how our development as a species has relied on prosocial actions and decisions for the collective good.

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature that interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”