I’ve just finished reading “The Social Conquest of Earth” by Edward O. Wilson (one of the world’s pre-eminent biologists and naturalists) in which he summarises his research on why animals, especially ants and humans, evolved to act socially and dominate the earth.
He obviously agrees with Darwin and natural selection, which is based on the successful reproduction of the genes best adapted to their environment, but also agrees with the theory of group selection, which is the continuation of societies whether it be ant colonies or human societies that successfully compete with other groups within their environment.
Now in an ant colony, only the queen can pass on her genes, as all the workers etc are infertile females. So natural selection only applies to the queen. But in humans, all the members of the society or group can reproduce so natural selection applies to the individual and the group. This creates a selection tension. As Wilson says -
“….an iron rule exists in genetic social evolution. It is that selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, while a group of altruists beat a group of selfish individuals. The victory can never be complete; the balance of selection pressures cannot move to either extreme. If individual selection were to dominate, societies would dissolve. If group selection were to dominate, human groups would come to resemble ant colonies.”
This makes sense to me as cheats (selfish individuals) prosper when they seal from a shop, but they lose when the majority (ie the altruistic group) demand something be done about the crime wave, and form a local community action group or employ a strong police force. It explains why we will always have crime. From another angle, it explains why communism failed, as if everyone is working for the state, there is no outlet for individualism ie freedom. Living like slaves to the state (ie the queen ant) is not for humans.
However, group selection is a bit controversial, as no genes have been identified that directly transfer behaviour, but if group selection acts upon cultural traits then evolutionary like processes have something to work on, so I agree with premise. ( for example, If a group decided to abandon all medical knowledge, it would soon be out competed by one that didn’t.) So I think Wilson is correct in his iron rule, but there is a problem, and that is - when it comes modern humans, what groups are we talking about?
With ants the group is clear, it is a queen in a nest served by her workers. With prehistoric humans the group is a clan or tribe interacting and “competing” with other clans and tribes in its location. But in todays world, human groups are merging and forever changing as people constantly join and leave. We have global trade, cheap fast global travel, global communication, political unions between nations, global sporting events, mass migration and world wide social communication at all levels of society. There are no longer hard group boundaries and group identities. Groups competing with each other is becoming meaningless as we now belong to hundreds of groups. Or are we now one large super group?
Wilson’s Iron rule is correct and explains a lot of what is happening in the world of human societies today. The rise of nationalism is the old small group fighting back against globalism and the larger merged groups that are successful today. Teaming up together makes individuals more successful and larger groups cooperating can out compete small groups, (That's why I totally disagree with nationalism). . Powerful individuals like Trump and Putin want to be the top individuals, but are failing because they are up against larger groups of altruists. They can only beat individuals or small groups. Countries like Afghanistan fail because the individuals dominate and there is no sense of society or Afghanistan as a nation, so it remains a failed state. In China the group dominates but the balance point is found because of a culture based on Confucianism and Taoism where the Chinese are expected to know their place and be content with the current situation/status quo (ie suppressed individualism is accepted).
So how can this knowledge be used to make the world a better place? Well firstly it highlights the need for balance in our societies and it follows that this balance is continually shifting as political opinions change with the times. There must be balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the group to provide a pleasant life style for all. If the balance shifts too far to one extreme or the other, stresses are created which manifests itself as protests or violence. Here in the UK our governments have swung from centre right (who favour the individual) to centre left (who favour the group) so the overall balance is maintained. But now trends from the US, pushed by social media, are promoting more wild swings from hard right to hard left which will create unnecessary social stress.
Also it should be recognised that we are rapidly transforming into a global society, so the rights and freedoms of the individual need to be balanced with the needs of the whole world not just where the individuals live. The iron rule needs to be scaled up to the human supergroup.
