Genetic explanations of human social behavior should in general, I think,
be treated as highly suspect, and especially genetic explanations which
serve to justify behavior of various sorts that otherwise might be
considered morally or politically unjustifiable.
The idea that animals exist primarily to pass on their own genes is
problematic to begin with; as Gould (among others) has said very well,
much of the process of natural selection is really rather random and
messy, and even when it's not the teleological postulate of "survival of
the fittest" (a phrase coined not by Darwin, but by the racist social
theorist Herbert Spencer, by the by) is a rather serious reduction of the
actual process.
Aside from this, the fact remains that human beings seem to be less driven
in their day to day lives by such considerations than other animal
species; and in fact this is one of the most distinctive things about us.
One can argue, as Freudians do, that our bizarre array of cultural
behaviors is really just the product of the social repression of basic
drives, but even then, the character of that repression would seem to be
just as important as the nature of the drives themselves for understanding
human beings.
I happen to like Goffman's ideas too, but I think they work better if we
understand self-deception as at least partially socially produced, rather
than just biologically inherent.  I believe there are all sorts of
functions which are hard-wired into the human brain (among them, notably,
universal grammar), but this can never eliminate the need to understand
the different ways in which these are deployed socially ... if we are to
see all of society as driven by genetic competition, how do we explain
things like suicide?  lower birth rates among the rich?  celibacy?
homosexuality?  a social-darwinist approach simply can't account for these
without sounding silly (not that I am accusing you of promoting social
darwinism, although I am not certain from your post that you would not
advocate it, given what you've said) ....

 m@2

"You're not really in love with yourself - you're just in love with the
idea of being in love with yourself"

        - said to me by one of the two little fellas who hang out on
either of my shoulders ... I can't remember which ...

On Tue, 29 Apr 1997, Jay Hanson mailto:[log in to unmask] wrote:

> At 11:55 AM 4/29/97 -0500, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
>
> >First, I feel that homo sapiens is the only species on earth whose
> >ability to live is primarily conceptual rather than genetic. By this
> >I mean that human adaptive systems are learned rather than
> >genetically stored. This gives an enormous amount of adaptive
> >flexibility to this particular species. A deer must grow a coat of
>
> I have quite have a different view of humanity.  Modern evolutionary
> theory argues that humans were selected to be the best at getting
> their genes into the next generation.  In other words, best at
> exploitation[1] and deception[2].
>
> I see the vast bulk of social theories as merely ways to rationalize
> what we are genetically programmed to do.  Moreover, we are still
> totally dependent on our natural life-support system.
>
> Jay
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> [1] Exploit: To employ to the greatest possible advantage.
>
> [2] In the late 50s, the social scientist Erving Goffman made
>     a stir with a book called THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN
>     EVERYDAY LIFE, that stressed how much time we all spend
>     on stage, playing to one audience or another.  Goffman
>     marveled that sometimes a person is "sincerely convinced
>     that the impression of reality which he stages is the real
>     reality."
>
>     What modern evolution theory brings to Goffman's
>     observation is an explanation of the practical function
>     of self-deception: we deceive ourselves in order to deceive
>     others better.  In his foreword to Richard Dawkins' THE
>     SELFISH GENE, Robert Trivers noted Dawkins' emphasis on the
>     role of deception in animal life and added, in a much-cited
>     passage, that if indeed "deceit is fundamental to animal
>     communication, then there must be strong selection to spot
>     deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of
>     self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious
>     so as not to betray -- by the subtle signs of self-knowledge
>     -- the deception being practiced."  Thus, "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." pp. 263-264,
>     THE MORAL ANIMAL ,Robert Wright; Pantheon, 1994;
>     ISBN 0-679-40773-1.
>