It is certainly true that Darwinism can help make a person saintly. No doctrine heightens one’s consciousness of hidden selfishness more acutely than the new Darwinian paradigm. If you understand the doctrine, buy the doctrine, and apply the doctrine, you will spend your life in deep suspicion of your motives.
That is the first step toward correcting the moral biases built into us by natural selection. The second step is to keep this newly learned cynicism from poisoning your view of everyone else: to pair harshness with leniency towards others; to somewhat relax the ruthless judgment that often renders us conveniently indifferent to, if not hostile to, their welfare; to apply liberally the sympathy that evolution has meted out so stingily. If this operation is inordinately successful, it might result in a person who takes the welfare of others markedly, but at least not massively, less seriously than his own.
Some people worry that the new Darwinian paradigm will strip their lives of all nobility. If love for children is just defense of our DNA, if helping a friend is just payment for services rendered, if compassion for the downtrodden is just bargain-hunting – then what is there to be proud of? One answer is- Darwin – like behavior. Go above and beyond the call of a smoothly functioning conscience; help those who aren’t likely to help you in return, and do so when nobody’s watching. This is one way to be truly moral animal. Now, in the light of the new paradigm, we can see how hard this is, how right Samuel Smiles was to say that the good life is a battle against “moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice”; these are indeed the enemies, and they are tenacious by design.
Another antidote to despair over the ultimate baseness of human motivation is, oddly enough, gratitude. If you don’t feel thankful for somewhat twisted moral infrastructure of our species, then consider the alternative. Given the way natural selection works, there were only two possibilities at the dawn of evolution:
a) That eventually there would be a species with conscience and sympathy and even love, all grounded ultimately in genetic self-interest,
b) That no species possessing these things would ever exist.
Well, a happened. We do have a foundation of decency to build on. An animal like Darwin can spend lots of time worrying about other animals – not just his wife, children, and high status friends, but distant slaves, unknown fans, even horses and sheep. Given that that self-interest was the overriding criterion of our design, we are reasonably considerate group of organisms. Indeed, if you ponder the utter ruthlessness of evolutionary logiv long enough, you may start to find our morality, such as it is, nearly miraculous.
Having crafted a moral measuring stick, Darwin gave his life a passing grade. “I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting my life to science.” Still, while feeling “no remorse from having committed any great sin,” he had “often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow creatures. My sole and poor excuse is much ill-health and my mental constitution, which makes it extremely difficult for me to turn from one subject or occupation to another. I can imagine with high satisfaction giving up my whole time to philanthropy, but not a portion of it; though this would have been a far better line of conduct.”
It’s true that Darwin didn’t live the optimally utilitarian life. No one ever has. Still, as he prepared to die, he could rightly have reflected on a life decently and compassionately lived, a string of duties faithfully discharged, a painful, if only partial, struggle against the currents of selfishness whose source he was the first man to see. It wasn’t a perfect life; but human beings are capable of worse.
PS - The above is an excerpt from the last part of the book - The Moral Animal from Robert Wright.
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