Empathy: The Peace-Maker

Why are there war-mongering politicians and peace-loving hippies in an incessant battle for dominance? I argue that selfishness and empathy have co-evolved in a constant fight for domination, and the battle for war vs. peace between groups is the physical outcome of the variance of empathy and selfishness within humans.

In order for empathy to have evolved as it did in the human brain, it must have carried with it some substantial survival benefits. In my opinion, the chance that empathy evolved by mere chance, by tagging along with some outgrowth of the brain, is extremely small. Empathy can be so extreme as to cause a significant alteration of mood and change to our lives; how would such a strong emotion just catch a ride in our brains as we evolved? More likely, it found solid ground and stuck in brain when humans realized that working together in tight-knit groups provided better chances of survival. Dr. Jean Decety argues that "empathy increases the inclusive fitness of organisms by enhancing survival in a variety of ways (e.g., providing increased defense against predators) and it serves to bond individuals to one another, especially mothers to offspring." It's probably obvious to most of us: we feel the pain of a loved one with far more strength than we do for an individual we don't know or care for. This empathy provides the loved one with support and defense (if needed, as was while we were evolving), increasing their chances of survival. With empathy reciprocated throughout a group, the group has an increased 'fitness' because they are more likely to survive than a group lacking empathy.

As empathy gained strength over the course of evolutionary time, I believe that it became one of the primary causes of our desire for peace. All the while our innate selfishness has grown simultaneously, causing conflicts both locally and globally, from greedy CEOs to wars between countries, for reasons like the desire for resources (think of America and the middle east). Robin McKie of The Guardian states that most "accounts of evolution stress the innate selfishness of the process. Species change because individuals are driven by a blind urge to thrive at the expense of others." But he goes on to argue that empathy "holds our societies together and drives us to care for the sick and the elderly for example. It also allows us to get along in cities." So then, empathy has grown from merely providing us with increased fitness to providing bonds that allow us to live together in massive populations. I believe that empathy and selfishness have grown alongside each other during our evolutionary history, at a constant competition to beat out the other.

Think about it - if we had little empathy and extreme selfishness, it is unlikely that we would work well together because betrayal and backstabbing would always cause failure between groups. If, on the other hand, empathy were more prevalent, it is likely that we would far too often be caught up in the troubles of others and make little progress on our personal growth, stunting our progress as a whole. However, humans show massive variance on all personality traits, selfishness and empathy being no exception. This is why we have the highly selfish, even aggressive politicians or CEOs and the like, and the highly empathetic or compassionate, peace-loving radicals. The right balance between empathy and selfishness provides us with a good level of competition, allowing societal growth toward being the best, and the right amount of compassion, allowing our society to work and live together well.

Sources:
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/19/evolution-frans-de-waal-primatologist
[2] Decety, J., & Svetlova, M. (2012). Putting together phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspectives on empathy. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2, 1-24.