fistfulls of nerdglee: can't help it

what makes us human? we share 98% of the same DNA as chimps, so what separates us from chimpanzees and the other primate species?

one study says it is our (possibly) innate desire to help others. the author suggests it is shared intentionality that creates our social norms and our need to enforce those norms. we evolved the ability and desire to take care of our group, which allowed us to survive and outlast all other hominids.

a fascinating article in the NYT describes several studies that point in the direction of this answer. however, daily observation of humans (and how stupidly mean they are to each other) makes this hard to believe. of course, we have to study children to uncover what is actually innate. adults are way too fucked up.

one of my favorite parts of the article described how the whites of our eyes were an important adaptation --

An interesting bodily reflection of humans’ shared intentionality is the sclera, or whites, of the eyes. All 200 or so species of primates have dark eyes and a barely visible sclera. All, that is, except humans, whose sclera is three times as large, a feature that makes it much easier to follow the direction of someone else’s gaze. Chimps will follow a person’s gaze, but by looking at his head, even if his eyes are closed. Babies follow a person’s eyes, even if the experimenter keeps his head still.

-- if you can easily tell what someone is looking at, you can glimpse their intentions. other especially nerdgleeful fun --

This could have happened at some point early in human evolution, when in order to survive, people were forced to cooperate in hunting game or gathering fruit. The path to obligatory cooperation — one that other primates did not take — led to social rules and their enforcement, to human altruism and to language.

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We evolved to be nice to each other, in other words, because there was no alternative.

If people do bad things to others in their group, they can behave even worse to those outside it. Indeed the human capacity for cooperation “seems to have evolved mainly for interactions within the local group,” Dr. Tomasello writes.

Sociality, the binding together of members of a group, is the first requirement of defense, since without it people will not put the group’s interests ahead of their own or be willing to sacrifice their lives in battle. Lawrence H. Keeley, an anthropologist who has traced aggression among early peoples, writes in his book “War Before Civilization” that, “Warfare is ultimately not a denial of the human capacity for cooperation, but merely the most destructive expression of it.”

The roots of human cooperation may lie in human aggression. We are selfish by nature, yet also follow rules requiring us to be nice to others. “That’s why we have moral dilemmas,” Dr. Tomasello said, “because we are both selfish and altruistic at the same time.”