Selfish Gene (pg. 223-244)

During this passage of the book, Richard Dawkin's talks about the Prisoner's Dilemma and gives every day life examples to make the explanation easier, he also expresses how to identify a nonzero sum and zero sum conflict (which can affect a Prisoner's Dilemma game). "Spectator sports like football are normally zero sum games for a good reason. It is more exciting for crowds to watch players striving mightily against one another than to watch them conniving amicably. (The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkin, Ch. 12, pg. 224)" Later on, the reader learns about segregation distorter, which according to James Crown -quoted by Dawkin- is a 'gene that beats the system.' The author explains that this 'evil gene' can be destructive and that the biggest problem is it's ability to spread like a virus throughout the genes. "Nevertheless, most of them have at least some adverse consequences. (Almost all genetic side-effects are bad, and a new mutation will normally spread only if its bad effects are outweighed by its good effect. If both good and bad effects apply to the whole body, the net effect can still be good for the body. But if the bad effects are on the body, and the good effects are on the gene alone, from the body's point of view the effect is all bad). In spite of its deleterious side-effects, if a segregation distorter arises by mutation it will surely tend to spread through the population. Natural selection (which, after all, works at the genic level) favours the segregation distorter, even though its effects at the level of the individual organism are likely to be bad. (The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkin, Ch. 13, pg. 237)" The positive part of segregation distorter's is that they normally don't occur, it isn't a very common gene, so this could be considered as 'good news.'

There is a connection one can make and it has to do with the idea of the 'diabolical gene' (as Dawkin calls it). As we already know, this gene is very hard to find or it doesn't seem very common in an organism and it spreads it's 'evil' as much as possible. The connection I decided to make was to our -as human beings- ability to spread our hatred amongst ourselves. The main difference between this gene and our hatred is that the gene is not commonly seen, but our hate towards each other we experience everyday. The best example one can give to show our hate (and in a way our jealousy which leads us to Dawkin's theory of being selfish) is war. Why do we go to war if not for wealth, power and glory? Throughout history our greatest civilizations have fallen because of there hate for each other, for their insatiable desires, among others. Like the 'evil gene', human beings can also be called diabolic because all we do everyday that passes is spread our hatred amongst each other and not unify ourselves, some say it is because of our differences, I say it's because thinking that we have differences will never let us come together.