Subconscious Interests

Through all our life we have been taught on how animals depend on each other, and thus they remain together maintaining flocks, herds and packs. For instance, bees have to work together in order to survive. They have to coexist and many animals have symbiotic relationships that allows them to survive. "The suggested benefits that a selfish individual can wrest from living in a group constitute rather a miscellaneous list." (Pg. 10) However, animals do not just live in flocks of the same species to benefit themselves in different selfish ways as Dawkins explains, consequently allowing them to spread and conserve their own genes. This has a bigger meaning, and it is much bigger than just selfishness between the same species. This kind of selfishness comes way back to the beginning of the world, between interspecies there are connections too. 

Symbiosis: (noun)  A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

Many animals live in groups that their genes believe will benefit them in different ways. Genes are selfish, and they only think upon their own interests, not thinking in those of the rest. However, there are some species, and again using the bees as an example, are social insects. "Their individuality is subjugated, apparently to the welfare of the community" (Pg. 171) If they want food, they have to work together. That's the key to their survival, bees are not selfish at all, they have to share in order to survive, and that is their genes goal. Not only this social insects are not selfish, but the symbiosis that exists between different species depicts a different kind of selfishness, that of "by helping you, I'm helping me survive, because if I don't help you, I don't survive". For instance, plants and insects (bees and butterflies) depend on each other, or clown fish and sea anemones, without the other, they both die. 


This leaves the question if organisms are really that selfish or they're just being overrated. We have to live in a community, not only between those of our same species, but of others too if we want to live and survive in this planet. Which means that we cannot be that selfish as they say we are, as we have to not be selfish in order to survive.