Great Start Shiawassee
Forget Survival of the Fittest: It is Kindness That Counts
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Friday, September 25, 2009 8:27 AM EDT
This is the headline for an interview with psychologist Dacher Keltner in Scientific American Mind (September 2009; www.ScientificAmerican.com/mind).
Keltner explains...
"'Born to be good' means that our mammalian and hominid evolution has crafted a species — us — with remarkable tendencies toward kindness, play, generosity, reverence, and self-sacrifice, which are vital to the classic tasks of evolution — survival, gene replication, and smoothly functioning groups. These tendencies are felt in the wonderful realm of emotion — feelings such as compassion, gratitude, awe, embarrassment, and mirth. Recent studies have revealed that our capacity for caring, play, reverence, and modesty is built into our brains, bodies, and social practices."