Selfish Gene reading.

Selfish Gene reading.

I often feel that for our modern Chinese people the most influence of life is Darwin, but he is a social Darwinism indirect influence on us. About Social Darwinism, I believe everyone is very familiar with its core theory of "natural selection, survival of the fittest", and in our society is to have competition, that is, the survival of the fittest, the jungle is also very normal things. And one of the most unique books to explain the idea is the gene of selfishness. In the "Selfish Gene", the author interprets most of the behavior of humans and animals as a selfish act of genes. In the words of the author, we and all other animals are machines created by our own genes. I think about this book because of the following points:

1. The machine of the gene

In the "selfish Gene", he put forward the most central point of view is: the most basic unit of evolution is not an individual but an individual's genes, the individual is merely a vector machine of genes. The genes contained in individuals use individuals to achieve the genetic purpose of survival and reproduction. Our individual bodies are merely vectors and tools of genes. One example: A footballer who is not able to get a big cup, he needs 10 other companions, and other companions must be the best in other places. Football is a team sport, and someone may only be able to perform well in certain positions, so the coach will have to compare all the players in each position and finally pick out the one who is the strongest in each position. In this process, every athlete on the field can be likened to a gene, and his substitute is his dual gene. Of course, every starter that the coach picks is not necessarily the strongest one in the position, as long as it is appropriate. It's like some genes are managing our teeth, it can make teeth very sharp, very sharp, which is very good for Tiger lions, but for us humans certainly not-because it air leakage.

2. Altruistic behavior

For altruistic behavior, many people believe that it is selfless, is great, and is opposed to selfishness. But in the "selfish Gene", the author is more willing to believe that this behavior is also part of the gene selfishness. According to the author, all genes are selfish and blindly pursuing their own maximum in the gene pool. For example, we have some "selfless" and "sympathetic" genes. These so-called "selflessness" are also a means of maximizing their own genes. For example, a mother bird with a flock of birds on the grass foraging, suddenly a fox appeared in their vicinity, then the mother will pretend to be injured to lure the fox to catch him, thereby protecting his children. So we can say that he sacrificed his life to protect his children. But from the genetic point of view, his behavior is only to make the same genes with him more to reproduce, in essence, is a selfish behavior.

3. Free will

There are a lot of people who think that the biggest difference between ourselves and animals is that we think and have free will, most of us decide by our own thoughts and free will judgment when we do selfless things, this is the idea of many of us, and I am no exception, but after reading Freud's "Dream Analysis", I know most of the time we humans are subject to their own "subconscious", the majority of decisions are the result of the flow of the crowd. People just mistakenly take the subconscious as their free will. So what is the difference between a human and an animal if the subconscious mind is also determined by the genes?

4.meme

Perhaps in biology, the evolution of genes is cold and ruthless, but in the end the author gives us a little consolation. This consolation is the "cultural gene"--meme. What the hell is this meme? In the words of the book, he is a kind of thing that permeates our culture, and his relationship with our brains is the same as the relationship between the genes and the body, which he spreads through our brains. As far as I am concerned, meme is everywhere, he may be my favorite singer of a piece of music, may also be Wu Chengen wrote the journey to the world, may be just old Liu today on the 32 words. He doesn't have any restrictions, and it spreads through our brains. His role in the evolution of human beings is like the life molecule chosen from Enron. For humans, meme is more important than gene.

Finally at the end of the article I still want to actively tell myself, in fact, no matter how selfish the genes in the process of evolution, but people are not all affected by him, we are a cultural animal, we can get rid of some of the genetic limitations, if we are all affected by the gene, we all behave like animals, Then why do we so hard to pursue the girls, we directly knocked her into the cave to go to the right, this is the most animal-like pursuit of the spouse approach. Why do we not dare to do so, because we are human beings, we are slaughtered by another set of things, we were meme slaughtered.

Selfish Gene reading.