A
It’s difficult to overstate just how radical a departure this picture is
from the traditional organism-centered view. For one thing, it rewrites our
understanding of adaptations. From an organism-centered perspective,
adaptations are designed to enhance the organism’s inclusive fitness. From
a gene-centered perspective, on the other hand, adaptations are designed to
propagate the organism’s genes. To be more precise, adaptations are
designed to propagate the genes giving rise to them. Spikes and shells are
designed to propagate the genes giving rise to spikes and shells; peacocks’
tails are designed to propagate the genes giving rise to peacocks’ tails; and
nipples are designed to propagate the genes giving rise to nipples. Of
course, for any particular individual, a useful adaptation benefits all the
genes in its genome, not just those that helped build the adaptation. But
across vast numbers of individuals and over vast periods of time, the genes
responsible for the adaptation come to share genomes with essentially every
other gene in the gene pool.
A
The generalized form of this error is the idea that, according to
evolutionary psychologists, people have an innate motivation to pass on
their genes, and that we’re all constantly scheming about how we might
achieve this. As the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker points out, though,
“If that’s how the mind worked, men would line up outside sperm banks
and women would pay to have their eggs harvested and given away to
infertile couples.”
30 Rather than having a very general motivation to
propagate our genes, humans have a portfolio of more specific motivations
– motivations to eat and drink, to run away from predators, to have sex and
care for our young. Collectively, these lead us to act as if we’re trying to
propagate our genes, but without any strategizing on our part and without us
having gene propagation as an actual, literal goal. To be more precise, our
basic drives and motivations led our ancestors to act in ways that typically
propagated their genes in the environment in which our species evolved.
These motivations may or may not accomplish this goal in our current
environment.
A
Granting anger, grief, sadness, and all other painful emotions their rightful
place is a magnificent act of compassion toward self. It is for this reason that
Aaron advises not to say, “I should forgive,” but rather to be present in a loving,
nonjudgmental way with pain. Then does compassion grow, and compassion is
the fertile ground in which forgiveness takes root. As Pamela said, forgiveness
happens naturally when we embrace every part of ourselves that has been hurt.
For years Beverly ran from these parts of herself, fearing that to acknowledge
them was to give power to the rapist. Only when she became receptive to them
did her healing journey begin.
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