Why This?

Just by looking at the cover of the book, it is obvious that this book will be dealing with science. After all, the title of the book itself is The Selfish Gene. I couldn't really get myself to understand why the word selfish would be put in a title of a book of science. As we now know from Mr. Tangen's class, NOTHING in literature and writing is accidental. This made me wonder what the book could really be about. Just by reading the first page, Richard Dawkins already started answering some of my doubts.

On page 1, he says, "my purpose is to examine the biology of selfishness and altruism," (1) This answered the question that I had about 'selfish' being in the title of the book. Dawkins then goes into much further explanation of the 'selfishness' of genes. Each gene competes with one another to survive. All of the genes in our bodies are rivals, and are fighting each other to survive. There is also another competition to see which will end up having the most quantity. This already marks from the beginning of the books why the word selfish deserves to be in the title. As the title of the book says, genes are selfish. Instead of working together, they compete against each other to survive.

This really shocked me because I honestly had no idea at all that genes fought inside of our bodies. I always thought of bodies as organisms that worked together to create one powerful whole. After reading just this first chapter, the book has hooked me in the sense that I want to know what other interesting things Dawkins talks about that I had no idea about.

Another thing that I agreed with Dawkins was when he says, “Our genes may instruct us to me selfish, but we are not necessarily compelled to obey them all our lives.” (3) I agree with not just with this, but with the whole idea that Dawkins is trying to say. Humans are too often mediocre because they 'can't change anything. Such as if you are born poor, you will die poor. Just because our genes insist on humans being selfish, it doesn't mean that we have to obey our genes.