Once, people thought God had created the world and every living thing, each with a purpose, in an ordered universe over which our creator presided, rewarding good deeds and punishing sin. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection blew a hole in this comfortable explanation of life and faced us with a blindingly obvious, yet disturbing truth. Humans don't have dominion over animals. We are animals. We're the fifth ape. But even Darwin hesitated to say this out loud.
Thus starts Richard Dawkins the second instalment of his documentary series "The Genius of Charles Darwin," an episode subtitled "The Fifth Ape". I have already discussed the first episode in an
earlier article.
In this program, I want to confront the issue that Darwin skirted around in the Origin of Species: the evolution of human beings. I want to ask what it means for us to be evolved.
As a scientist, I'm thrilled by natural selection, but as a human being, I abhor it as a principle for organizing society.
Prof. Dawkins explains that evolution is a simple idea. Individuals that are able to survive and successfully reproduce will pass on their genes to the next generation. This leads to more specialized lifeforms such as the apes: gibbons, orang-utans, gorillas, chimpanzees and us. Charles Darwin realized that the African apes are our closest evolutionary cousins.
Dawkins takes us to East Africa, his own birthplace and the birthplace of the human species. He explains that, in Africa, between five and six million years ago, there lived an ape who had two children. One of them would eventually give rise to us, the other one would give rise to the chimpanzees. Since that period, the fossil record shows extraordinary changes.
We go to visit Richard Leakey, the paleontologist who -with his family- has discovered the evidence for it all in Kenya's rift valley. The evidence shows us the evolution of our ancient human ancestors. Richard Leakey is a scientist, not a faith-head. He tells us that
Homo habilis is
probably an ancestor of
Homo erectus. It is a nice scene, because it shows us so nicely that science is about looking for answers based on evidence, not about believing myths because we wish them to be true.
Richard Leakey:
As you know, we are the fifth ape. We never separated from the apes. We just do things differently.[...] We are closer to chimps, African chimps, than a horse is to an ass. Horses and asses put together, produce offspring. Wow says everybody, are you...? Yeah, I am!
Richard Dawkins:
It's an unsettling thought. In evolutionary terms, we're so closely related to chimps that it's not ridiculous to ask whether we might still be able to breed with them. We're the human animal. Upright, big-brained ape-cousins who evolved to out-think the competition.
Prof. Dawkins continues by telling us that over half the people on earth are so horrified by what Darwinism reveals about our origins, they just refuse to believe it.
Darwin himself realised how upsetting his theory would be for the religious lot, and because of that, he shied away from it. Towards the end of the Origin, on page 488, he simply wrote this:
Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.
Once again, we follow Prof. Dawkins to Kenya, where religious groups are trying to prevent the opening of the national museum's exhibit of human fossils. He takes us to a room with several fossils, including Turkana Boy, an early humanoid
Homo erectus, 1.5 million years old who probably died too young to actually be one of our ancestors, but whose family members definitely are. "To me, " says professor Dawkins, "these are far more precious than the crown jewels." In awe for this rare relic of our past, Richard Dawkins expresses fear that it may not be allowed to be seen.
The ten million strong evangelical movement in Kenya has run the hide-the-bones campaign that is being led by Bishop Boniface Adoyo. The interview Richard has with the Bishop is enlightening. He says that he doesn't want to prevent the display of the fossils and Turkana Boy, but that he objects to attaching the theory of evolution to the fossils. He claims that there are full skulls of human beings in the display. Prof. Dawkins explains that this is not so. Those skulls are made for brains, the size of chimpanzee brains and that these "human beings" are essentially chimpanzees running on their hind legs. Turkana Boy has larger brain, and after that comes the modern human.
And then Adoyo asks why, if those fossils have evolved to our stage, chimpanzees are not evolving or why they are not extinct, clearly showing that he has no knowledge whatsowever regarding the evolution theory.
Dawkins explains that this is not how evolution works. We are not their descendants, we are their cousins. We have a common ancestor which was not a chimpanzee and not a human. So, it evolved to become a chimpanzee and in another direction, it evolved to become a human. Chimpanzees have been evolving all that time, just as humans. This evolution will probably continue but, obviously, we cannot know where it will lead them.
Adoyo: What is the goal of evolution? What is the ultimate goal? Is it for us to have big heads?
Dawkins: There is no goal.
Adoyo: There is no goal?
Dawkins: It just happens.
Adoyo: That doesn't answer my question. Where are we heading to? I mean, up to where shall we say that this is the limit?
Dawkins: It is a misunderstanding of evolution to say that it has goals. It never did have goals. It just changes.
Richard gives us an example of the cruelty of nature by showing us a strangler fig that ultimately kills the tree that gave it the opportunity to live and grow. This cruelty drives evolution, and with this cruelty begin also the attacks on Darwinism. Opponents have claimed that Darwin's goalless, soulless theory has unleashed the worst in human nature. Is this really the model for human society? Every man for himself?
Prof. Dawkins now takes us to the world of business, a world where Darwinism is supposedly loved: the strong must survive, the weak perish, the justification for brutal capitalism and denying help for the poor. In other words, social Darwinism. Prof. Dawkins shows us what this did to Enron in the 90s. He talks in the City to Eric Beinhocker, a business analyst, who quickly shows us that social Darwinism doesn't seem the true driving force behind the business world, that there is not really such a thing as business heroes and visionaries with tremendous insight who can predict where the market will go. But, can Darwinism be applied to other human affairs?
What about applying it to human evolution? Don't copy nature, but control it? Speed up our own selection process? We see Julian Huxley of the British Eugenics Society in a short clip from 1937:
Once they have been born, defectives are happier and more useful in these institutions than when at large, but it would have been better by far, if they had never been born.
A sad example of the eugenics movement of the early 20th century when the weak and the "unfit" were barred from procreation by compulsory sterilization, a slippery slope that culminated in the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, and even in Bosnia and Rwanda.
Professor Dawkins makes it clear that he finds these events atrocious, and hastens to add that eugenics is not a version of natural selection but a version of artificial selection. Contrary to popular myth, Hitler was not a Darwinist. It was Darwin's unique insight that a breeder/selector was not needed. Nature plays this role. Darwin has been wrongly tainted.
Even so, how could co-operation, niceness, even morality possibly be the result of the mindless brutality of nature?
We go back to Kenya, and this time we see less cruelty, and more kindness. We see examples of altruistic behaviour. How is this possible? Prof. Dawkins suspects that the evolution of altruism is the result of the evolution of the brain. He takes us to visit Steven Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist. Dr. Pinker explains how the brain is not merely a random collection of neurones, but that there is an evolved underlying structure that makes an evolved morality possible. Many people have problems accepting that behaviour would be evolved, so Richard looks at another example: the peacock.
Why, he asks, isn't the tail of the peacock, obviously a liability for survival, not eliminated by natural selection? Charles Darwin didn't like it:
The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick! …
Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, April 3, 1860
However, Darwin did find the answer by himself: sex. Peahens like these tails. In other words, this is sexual selection. Peahens selectively breed peacocks, the result from something in their brains that likes these extravagant and deadly feathers. Peacocks do not tend to live very long.
Darwin now realized that natural selection is about survival in combination with sex. Survival is necessary, but not sufficient. One must also be sexually attractive to the opposite sex.
Richard now takes us to meet some women who are checking a catalog to find the man they want to impregnate them through a sperm donation. Although they will never meet these men, they do seem to select them in pretty much the same way they would select a flesh-and-blood partner. They don't only want the obvious alpha male qualities such as good looks and good health, but also intelligence, good tastes, and kindness.
The manager of the sperm bank says that one of their most popular donors is not the most attractive, not the most intelligent, but simply the nicest guy.
That brings us to an intriguing point. How do animals evolve to be nice, given the brutality and cruelty of nature? We -wolves, forget-me-nots, giraffes, squid, people- are survival machines, vehicles for the genes that ride inside us, vehicles that are thrown away once we have passed our genes to the next generation, through reproduction.
The genes that survive, are the genes that give their vehicle an increased chance for survival and reproduction. Survival of the fittest is nothing else than survival of the gene. Therefore, the gene is the basis of everything. Genes are essentially immortal. They are being passed on from generation to generation.
The survival of the genes can be increased by altruistic behaviour through kinship. Parents risking their lives to protect their children doesn't make any sense, but if one understands that this ensures the survival of the genes these children have received from their parents, it makes perfect sense. Thanks to a sense of family, genes increase their chances for survival. By doing favours to people who are in a position to return them, genes once again increase their chances for survival. Niceness (altruism) is a survival mechanism for the selfish gene.
But, there must be more to it. People are often nicer than can be predicted on the basis of the selfish gene theory. Richard Dawkins goes to visit Frans de Waal, a world-famous primatologist and critic of the idea of the selfish gene. He believes that the empathy and moral concern of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, goes beyond the kin altruism of selfish genes.
Frans de Waal explains consolation behaviour with an example. If there has been a fight, another chimp will often go to the loser to console him by putting her/his arm around him and grooming him. He says that this happens often enough to collect data on it.
Frans de Waal does not agree with the title of Richard Dawkins' book "The Selfish Gene" because he thinks that the word selfish suggests that people are deep down nasty, that they are only nice to make a good impression on each other, something he calls "veneer theory," whereas he observes something else. Prof. Dawkins retorts that the title of his book has indeed given many people the impression that genes are selfish and that, therefore, people are selfish. He finds that regrettable, since most of the book is actually about altruism.
Frans de Waal continues that this is often used to promote Social Darwinism, something that is very prominent in the US and is based on the idea that animals are not nice to each other and that humans also should not be nice to each other:
There is no reason, for example to help the poor, because the poor need to help themselves and if they cannot do that, then they perish and that is fine too.
Richard Dawkins hates Social Darwinism too, but thinks that this is not a reason to romanticize nature or ignore the genetic roots of altruism. He thinks that altruism has been favoured by kin selection in small groups in nature but that something special is now going in humans.
Prof. Dawkins asks why humans can be so good to complete strangers. He thinks that our selfish genes may be misfiring in some way. He tells us that, in spite of contraception, the lust to copulate is still present in us. Maybe the lust to be altruistic, even to total strangers, is still there because it is hardwired in our genetic makeup.
The misfiring of our selfish genes leads us not to copy the nastiness of nature, but extract ourselves from it and live by our values.
Darwin himself remarked that we are the first and only species able to escape the brutal force that created us: natural selection. As we can read on page 168 of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex:
We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment.
Richard takes us to the 999 club in London. They provide less fortunate people with tea and hot meals. He sees this type of altruism as one of the pinnacles of human civilization. And now he concludes the program:
We can empathize, we can imagine how it is for others. A society run on crude Darwinian lines would be a ruthless, merciless place. Fortunately, natural selection gave us big brains. With those big brains, we can plan a gentler society, the sort of society in which we would want to live.
Evolution has no purpose. There is no benevolence there, no forward planning. Some people find that disturbing, but there is a better way to think about it. We alone on earth have evolved to the extraordinary point where we can understand the selfish genes that shaped us. They are not models for how to behave, but the opposite. Because we are conscious of these forces, we can work towards taming them. Through kindness and morality, modern medicine, charity, even paying our taxes, we can overthrow the tyranny of natural selection. Our evolved brains empower us to rebel against our selfish genes.
=> A presentation of the third and last episode of this series is on its way.
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