Peter Moore: Being nice

Despite the news and social media, are humans inherently nice to each other? Are we instinctively decent?

This may sound ridiculous in the world of the Ukraine war, Gaza and Iran but consider the response of passers-by when someone falls over in the street or appears to need help. People rally round. How many of you behave in the very British way of running across a zebra crossing and waving a thank you at the waiting car.

When I was in London recently I saw a young man turn and run back to the tube train. He had noticed the doors had closed before an elderly lady had managed to get out. He pressed the button and helped her although it was clear they had never met before. Is helping others our natural behaviour after millennia of evolution or an aberration? How does it fit in with survival of the fittest?

Biologically speaking we are the most successful species ever to inhabit the earth. We are the only species to cover the whole planet and may even have a future on the moon. The world population is now over eight billion. We can argue whether this has also damaged the planet but in pure biological terms the Homo Sapiens are massively successful. Why? Darwin’s idea of survival of the fittest means that we that we should have become extinct in Africa just after we had evolved. We cannot fight off a lion, run faster than a cheater or swing through the trees like most of the other primates.

Any animal to survive needs a “survival characteristic”. The giraffe’s long neck allows it to eat food other animals cannot reach. The rhinoceros can charge and the zebra’s stripes help it blend into the background.

Our survival characteristics are similar to the ants and bees. Individually we are hopeless but as a coordinated team we have conquered the world.

Early humans worked as a team to bring down some of the largest animals around. Today we still work as a team. No one person is a skilled electrician, computer engineer, surgeon or

navigator. Each person has their own expertise which, alone, would not run our society but together it works.

So why are there wars and conflict when people have evolved to work together? Research in monkey colonies showed that, when the population becomes too big for one colony, they split into two. One of the groups moves away to new territory. But if land is limited, such as on an island, and the groups cannot separate they fight. In each group the monkeys were working together but working against a common enemy.

Sadly, we have not evolved as far as we like to think. Many of the current conflicts still involve land, whether it is Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan. It was also behind the troubles in Northern Ireland.

We are still tribal trying to exclude anyone from a rival tribe. This explains antisemitism and other racist attitudes. We are kind to anyone we see as in our tribe but hostile to other tribes.

Again this is similar to ants and bees. Put red ants into a black ant’s nest and they fight.

Unfortunately, this tribalism is exacerbated by social media. The companies paying for the advertising are motivated by money. The algorithm ensures that the more hits a post has the more the advertising revenue. There are more clicks in emotive tribalism than rational debate.

The idea of caring for others may be out of fashion. In the 1960s and 70s the younger generation was interested in caring careers such as social work. Today people may be more interested in making money in the financial markets but what do these jobs add to society?

Even some of the people with an ambition to become a doctor quote the income rather than the desire to help people.

Aiming for a compassionate society would embrace our natural instincts. Cooperating with others is why our species has survived. Despite social media we need to leave our tribal bunkers and cooperate with people we may see as enemies. Or, to quote Oscar Wilde, “forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much”.