Notes on The Selfish Gene
I first heard about The Selfish Gene at the end of 2021. I had just left Xiaomi, and the start date at my new company was slightly delayed. I planned a spontaneous trip to clear my head, but the year-end pandemic outbreak disrupted everything.
Being confined at home felt endless. I watched episodes of Round Table every day to pass the time. The most memorable was Season 5, Episode 11, where the guest was Yin Ye, CEO of BGI Genomics. A scientist and three humanities scholars had a heated discussion around “genes” — from in vitro embryo technology to cellular renewal, from the Ship of Theseus to Dawkins’ selfish gene. Every topic sparked intellectual fireworks. At the end, Yin Ye recommended this book.
After reading it over several months, I gained a great deal. Here I briefly record the author’s main arguments and some of my own reflections.
“Throughout history, humanity’s self-image has been continually diminished.”
From Copernicus’s heliocentric model shattering the notion that Earth was the center of the universe, to Darwin’s theory of evolution making us realize we descended from primates, to Freud’s psychoanalysis revealing that our behavior is driven by primitive libido rather than self-control — and finally Dawkins taking it further in The Selfish Gene, arguing that humans are merely vehicles for genes, nothing more than tools for genes to replicate and propagate.
Dawkins argues that genes manipulate humans. Just as when a person drives a car — the car has no sense of direction; the person controls it. Humans drive cars to satisfy their need for rapid movement. For the car itself, existence is blind and meaningless. Similarly, individual human survival is blind and meaningless — we are merely tools for our internal genes to replicate and spread, existing only to help genes replicate faster, spread further, and live longer.
“Apparently altruistic behavior is actually selfishness in disguise.”
From an individual organism’s perspective, nurturing offspring is altruistic. But Dawkins argues this behavior is premised on genes achieving replication and propagation through such altruistic acts. All behavior that appears altruistic from the individual’s perspective is a product of gene selfishness.
For genes, the only meaningful thing is to continuously replicate and spread to gain more advantages in the “war” of biological evolution — to increase the chances of survival.
Reading this, one can’t help feeling somewhat disappointed — disappointed in humanity, disappointed in oneself. Human existence is accidental and absurd; the meaning of life seems insignificant. The noble acts of self-sacrifice and fearlessness in human history seem so unreasonable in the objective world of genes.
But as Dawkins writes, we cannot turn a blind eye to facts, nor should we despair because of them. The views and conclusions in the book are observations of biological nature — statements of scientific fact, not Dawkins’ personal moral philosophy.
On the contrary, he argues that if we want to build a society of generosity and selfless devotion, we cannot rely on our biological nature. We must try to instill generosity and altruism through education, because we are born selfish.
“We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism — something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines, cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”
As Yin Ye said at the end of the show: “If humanity is a set of code, then I believe love is written into that code.”
To you and me — may we encourage each other.