Word: selfishnesses
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...said, "No one had to worry about conservation until the whites despoiled the land. We've always taken care of our land, and we always will." C. Earl Canderhoop, one Indian resident, dismisses white fears of Indian takeover angrily, says, "Some white people want everything. It's mean and selfish of them not to give us the common land--at one time we owned the whole island, and that's all that's left. There's a case on record where one man sold 40 acres for a hat. In the old days they had to live, but that sale...
Contrary to the impression left by the brief paragraph mentioning our views in your cover story on sociobiology [Aug. 1], we believe that the moral teachings found in the world's religions are historically developed cultural products, opposing the selfish tendencies which biological evolution builds into human nature and which are serious obstacles to social cooperation. The golden rule and love of neighbors are not gene-based tendencies in each of us, but are on the contrary socially evolved preachings designed to curb the gene-based greed for more than our share for ourselves, our children and subsequent progeny...
...mixed. Furious West German bankers charged that when they refused to bend to U.S. pressure and revalue the mark, Blumenthal resorted to stealth to accomplish his ends. They said he deliberately provoked the dollar's slide; the U.S., rasped the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, was playing "a selfish, risky game that shows little responsibility toward the world economy." In Britain, the Bank of England responded to the dollar's decline by abandoning a policy of keeping the pound at a level of $1.72. Instead, the government pegged sterling's value against the currencies of its 21 biggest...
...self-deception is also a product of evolution, simply because a cheater can give a more convincing display of honesty if he lies to himself as well as to his neighbor. Says Zoologist Richard Alexander of the University of Michigan: "Selection has probably worked against the understanding of such selfish motivation becoming a part of human consciousness." Adds Trivers: "The conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution...
...second of seven children, Trivers admits that the problems of growing up in a large family and the arguments he had with his father helped to point him toward his theory that parent-child conflict is biologically certain. Trivers believes that the child shows a selfish interest in itself and seeks to get more than its fair share of the energy and resources of parents. But the parent has only a partial genetic interest in each child and thus is preoccupied with sharing resources. The result, according to Trivers, is biologically certain conflict between the child, who tends toward selfishness...