The Way of All Flesh

Here’s a hypothetical: your newborn and your grandma are drowning. If you can only save one of them, who do you save? Now it’s your sister and your aunt, your cousin and your brother. That’s what I thought; most people will save the person they most genetically resemble. Despite thousands of years of social conditioning, basic evolutionary reality cuts us to the quick. It’s troubling to contemplate how far the self-serving impulse might take us. Has altruism been doomed since the earliest symbiotic relationships sparked multicellular life? Is the very pretense of virtue just means to an end to ensure genetic survival? It’s hard to admit, and impossible to miss.