Greg McKeown:
Welcome back, everybody. I’m your host, Greg McKeown, and this is part two of my conversation with Yale professor Samuel Wilkinson, who wrote the rather bold book Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence. He’s wrestling with the secrets of the universe but doing it in a way that can help us find increased meaning in our lives.
By the end of this part of the interview, you will better understand the science that supports the bold idea that a part of us is designed for greater altruism and service, not that we are entirely designed to pursue our self-interest, the survival of the fittest, to use that tone.
And in a world that is celebrating in so many ways looking after yourself independently, a sort of radical independence where freedom means not feeling responsible to other people or to family, this interview is a breath of fresh air. Let’s get to it.
It seems like a natural segue, as you called it, about this second idea does evolution require it to be true that humans and everything else adjust? Self-interested, just purely the survival of the fittest? This is. You have a whole chapter in the book specifically about this. I wonder if you can outline what you’ve been able to gather to address this in your research and writing.
Samuel Wilkinson:
Yeah. Thanks for shifting that and clarifying this part of the conversation. I think this was one of the things that was so initially off-putting about the theory of evolution is what it implied about human nature and this notion of survival of the fittest. Only the fit, the selfish, the hypersexual survive, and so forth. What it boils down to is an issue that, in my mind, well, let me back up just a little bit and say an empirical observation of human nature and nature from animals suggests it’s not that way. There are plenty of examples from animals and plenty of examples from humans where behavior is altruistic. That was initially very puzzling to biologists, those studying nature from a lens of evolution.
Greg McKeown:
Can I just interrupt you for a second? I don’t want to miss this point. I had read that Darwin had said himself that altruism was the primary obstacle in accepting his theory of evolution that he himself had identified that. Is that right?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Well, in The Origin of Species. He brings up this example. He brings an example of honeybees. The way that honeybees work in their society is you have a hive of honeybees, and there’s one queen, a female queen. There are about 200 or 300 male drones, and there are about 50 or 60,000 female worker bees, all of whom are incapable of reproduction. That was a puzzle to him. How would nature, if reproduction is so important, how would nature have come up with this quirky society where these worker honeybees toil their entire life for the benefit of the hive? The resolution to this is the understanding that, well, the queen is the sister to all these worker honeybees.
There’s this sense — genetics was not really understood, or the structure of a gene was not understood when Darwin was writing, but there was this understanding that traits were passed on and traits were shared among siblings and so forth. The trait of altruism, even though it didn’t directly benefit the direct lineage of the worker honeybee because they were infertile, their nieces and nephews, through the offspring of the queen, they would go on and survive and therefore reproduce.
So he got at this issue, which biologists refer to as the levels of selection, this concept of natural selection, where you have a biological entity that reproduces and it passes on traits to offspring. What is the level at which nature or natural selection works? Is it a gene? Is it a cell? Is it a whole organism, like in our example, a person, or is it maybe a family or, even further, a group? So there are all these different levels on which, theoretically, natural selection might work.
And when you think about behavioral traits, there’s a bit of an opposition. If you have a single organism and a group of organisms, those behavioral traits that natural selection operating on different levels might produce are in somewhat of opposition, right? An individual may thrive within a group if he is selfish, but a group composed of purely selfish individuals is going to deteriorate and not do very well compared to a group that is cohesive and cooperative, and so on and so forth.
So the two famous biologists, Edward Wilson, who recently passed away, and David Sloan Wilson, they summed it up this way. They said, “Selfish individuals outcompete altruistic individuals, but altruistic groups outcompete selfish groups.”
And everything else is commentary, and that kind of illustrates how it is not just selfishness and altruism but all sorts of behavioral traits when you look at different levels of selection, are somewhat pitted against each other.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I mean, I think that phrase is so interesting. I mean, it’s trying to make the math like the mathematics changes when you’re trying to think about what helps a system of people, a community of people, a family of people succeed together versus what strategies would help an individual to be able to make the most progress on their own. And so you’re saying, as soon as there’s a hive mind right, as soon as there’s a collective to be considered, and that you’re trying to optimize with more than one person in mind, suddenly altruism will be extremely advantageous over a group that’s just thinking for themselves. I mean, it’s a brilliantly clear and simple way of pushing that.
Samuel Wilkinson:
Yeah, and Darwin himself noted that not in The Origin of Species, but I think it was in 1871. He wrote a subsequent book where he tried to apply evolutionary theory to humans and human behavior, and I think hit many points correctly. Let me just make a bit of an academic caveat because so I’ve outlined kind of two principles. One is this individual level selection and another is group selection.
Now, group selection as a concept is controversial among biologists and those who study evolution. There’s debate as to how much it happened and whether it really influenced human nature. What is not controversial is something called kin selection, which there are a lot of nuances that I’m glossing over here. But you can think about it as group selection, where the group is composed of people who are closely related. There are a lot of nuances to that, but one of the key messages that I’ve tried to make in my argument is that the very best, the very best in human nature, the deepest forms of altruism, of love, of cooperation, and so forth, their origins in the flesh, are found in the way that evolution shaped our family relationships.
Greg McKeown:
Can you unpack that for us?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Well, it goes back to what we talked about human offspring being extraordinarily premature when they are born. This, by necessity, parents had to develop a deep concern and care and a sense of altruism for their children. If they didn’t, that wouldn’t be a very good long-term evolutionary strategy. Does that make sense?
So the thinking that I’m trying to bring home is that, again, the deepest forms of altruism and cooperation and love and so forth have their origins in the flesh, in kin selection, the way that evolution shaped family relationships, and therefore, when human beings today find themselves in a context in which their family relationships are doing well, are enriched, the better angels of their nature will tend to predominate. There’s a lot of sociological literature that actually supports that. So, because we’re just thinking of the origin of the most pro-social aspects of human nature, have their root in the way that evolution shaped human family relationships. When our family relationships are harmony, that tends to bring out the better aspects of our nature.
Greg McKeown:
So you’re saying that when the family, the team, the group of humans is operating by overarching rules of altruism, that individuals within that system will tend to rise to those norms?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Essentially yes, and it’s especially true for men, and this is one of the messages I tried to take away when men are involved in the rearing of the children, which is less of a biological tie between men and their children and women and their children. I think that’s somewhat self-explanatory. And I’m happy to go into the details of that. When men are engaged in the rearing of their children, they are less likely to commit crimes. They’re less likely to be involved in problematic substance use. There are all sorts of ways in which their kind of evolutionary role as a father tends to come out more.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I literally was just reading something about this that really stopped me in my tracks, and it was this idea. Let me see if I can find it here. “Though the culture may tell us otherwise, we are not designed for self-actualized, pleasure-seeking autonomy. We are deeply relational beings, designed not for independence but for radical dependence and connection. These things are not just the means to an end. Familiar love and belonging are the end.”
I really thought that was fascinating.
They go on in their article to identify specific research that supports this, that you know findings, sociological findings from people that aren’t, let’s say, predisposed to come to these conclusions, that found that in the city areas, when young women became mothers, they would describe that having this child filled their life with meaning and purpose, and that the effect was even larger when men were, you know, have children and take responsibility for those children, that it just fills their life with meaning.
So, instead of this idea of like, no, just be an atomized, you know person, free to roam and do whatever you want, that that will get you to the highest need, Abraham Maslow’s you know self-actualization, you will have arrived. That, I think, is promulgated in all sorts of ways in social media and just in just common parlance today is just wrong, you know. Anyway, I don’t want to go too far down that path, but your reactions to any of that?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Well, I agree with it and the quote about the importance of relationships that is certainly over and over again we’re hearing. Robert Waldinger published a book recently called the Good Life, in which he detailed the results of this essentially the longest running study of adult behavior and development, and comes to the conclusion that, you know, relationships are just foundation.
Greg McKeown:
What study is that? Is that the Harvard Longevity Study?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Yeah, yeah yeah, the Harvard Adult Development Study started in the 1930s, maybe late 30s, and it eventually merged with another study and looked at some 700 men over their lifetime, and I think, is now studying their, their descendants. But several of the key people involved in that study have concluded that look, you know, the fundamental factor that determines well-being and happiness and so forth is how capable these people are of forming and maintaining warm and healthy relationships. You know, science didn’t always understand this. In psychology, around the, you said, the early 1900s, there was a sense that, you know, relationships were just a means to an end.
Freud wrote a little bit about this. You know, the mother because she gave the infant milk. The wife, the husband loved the wife because she gave him sex, and so you know it’s all transactional, correct, correct, and it’s much deeper than that.
And I think one of the professional ancestors that I most look up to is this man named John Bowlby, a psychiatrist, who developed what’s called attachment theory, and how important you know the mother-infant relationship was and how that laid the groundwork for the development of relationships for the rest of a person’s life, and how critical they were to really mental health and what we.
Greg McKeown:
Well, and if that wasn’t the case? I mean, I don’t know, there’s a sort of chicken before the egg and what I’m about to observe, but it’s like, well, why is a lack of attachment? Why is detachment so damaging? Why, when children really believe, and maybe because it was true, but when they really believe that their children, their parents, did not value them, I mean, in fundamental ways, right, that they were abandoned by their parents, or why does it cause so much pain? Why, if it’s not true that the attachment itself is extremely powerful for everybody involved, why would the absence of it cause such damage? You can keep saying that it has no effect, but you know, you just watch the natural law play when you don’t invest in this way.
Samuel Wilkinson:
Yeah.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, more. What else did you find as you looked at this altruism side of the equation?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Well, that it’s deep, and again, going back to this concept of, I think the way to bring it out in people, and in the best way, is to help people as much as possible to form families and to nurture good relationships with their, good relationships with their families.
There is a wealth of sociological data to suggest that, you know, family relationships are just critical to well-being. I don’t think I’m having to convince you of that, you know, doing so is it’s easier said than done, but I think, like you, you said, our culture maybe doesn’t understand this, and so, you know, as we talked, you know what, what are some of the takeaways that I can offer is there’s really good evidence that having a good marriage, good family life, is going to have more significance and more bearing on your happiness and well-being than a good, your dream job. Not that work isn’t important, it certainly is, but there’s just, you know, very strong empirical evidence that a good marriage, a good family life, can be, usually is the most important factor in, you know, someone’s just overall psychological well-being.
Greg McKeown:
I was just rereading again, and in more in depth this time. You know I mentioned before Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which, like anyone who has taken any beginner course in psychology or none at all has seen the pyramid right, has seen this, these five ascending needs that he spent his whole life trying to understand and for the sake of human flourishing, right. So the motive isn’t. The problem is he’s trying to. He’s trying to make sense of how to help people thrive. But what’s interesting and a bit unfortunate is that he wrote a book right before he passed away in which he changed the hierarchy and so, instead of self-actualization being at the top, meaning, like personal growth, the autonomy to pursue what it is that you think you should do he changed it, and he put self-transcendence at the top of the hierarchy, that he felt that this was more accurate in describing what really happens and that you know what did he mean by self-transcendence?
There are a few different things, but it literally includes what we’re describing here altruism. It certainly included a sense of unity, connection, and belonging with other people, and he felt it required quite a highly developed person to be capable of doing it. I mean, I just think that’s an illustration of what we’re describing here. I mean, it’s just this promulgation of one theory and it’s just broadened out into the whole world, and I think, even has become almost radicalized now. As you know, that is how you pursue happiness, and the data just consistently tells a different story. So there’s data with one narrative but another narrative that seems to be so dominant now, you know, in the west. But were you familiar with that with Maslow?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Yeah, and he’s not the only one who has helped to contribute to this very individualistic culture which I think is still fairly dominant in the west. Certainly, there’s certainly there’s something to be said, and you know, every marriage has to negotiate how to differentiate individual from group goals and so forth, and a family has to do that. Certainly, there’s something to be said for individual pursuits and meaning. Yes, but when our lives are, when we have no deep, meaningful relationships, our lives are often devoid of meaning.
You know something you said a few minutes ago about how, when people become parents, they have this deep sense of meaning, I think in a very real way. That is related to our evolution, right, and that’s a function of how we were created. So if God really created us with a sense of wanting for us to multiply, to have joy in our posterity, it’s no wonder that a process such as evolution was used. Does that make sense?
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I want you to unpack it a little more because I think that this goes to sort of the direct core of what you’re writing about, but also, it is like the conclusion, too, because you’re trying to bring in a way, back together these things that have been represented as completely at odds with each other for the last 150 years. So this is the profound enterprise that you’re on is to try to say is there not a way to merge two sets of truths that are often, just at the beginning, just presumed to be at odds with each other?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Well, certainly, when you ask people what is it that makes your life meaningful and these are the sorts of surveys that the Pew Foundation does really well. There’s one from, I think, 2018, Pew asked something like 5,000 Americans what is it that gives your life purpose and meaning. And this was an open-ended question, and then they had to clean up their results and tally them and categorize them and so forth, and the number one response was family and children. I think that was something like 70%. The second most common was work, and that was about half right. Half. 35% of people listed that as one of the top things.
So I don’t quite understand all the mechanisms of it, but it certainly seems to be related to this deep need that we have for personal relationships, and the way in which I think the strongest relationships were created in nature was through evolution.
So if you ask a question, what is the meaning of life? And some people will criticize that that’s overly broad, it can’t have an answer, I would disagree and say that at least one such meaning is to form deep and personal relationships, and the relationships that are most relevant in evolution are the ones with whom we share our genes and that is our family members, I do think it is a function of kind of our psychological architecture and makeup and the way that nature has created us.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, it’s a beautiful note to kind of end on here that we are. What you’re saying is, I think, that we are quite literally evolved physically, psychologically, biologically, in such a way that the probability of our happiness and the probability that we will find meaning is that we will prioritize these essential relationships in our lives and make trade-offs along the way, sacrifices in order to maintain and nurture and grow them. That seems to be what you’ve concluded from this important work Purpose.
Samuel Wilkinson:
That’s one way to frame it. It’s tricky, though, because it’s something you said. I just wanted to reframe it a little bit, please. We don’t always understand this, right? One of the things that we’re really not good at as human beings is what some psychologists would call affective forecasting. We’re predicting what is going to make us happy, right, and so we need to remember over and over and over again and tell ourselves no, it’s the relationship dummy. We focus on that. Certainly, other things need our attention at times and so forth, but if we starve our relationships by focusing too much on work or hobbies, whatever it is, that is a recipe for misery. And it’s not always top of mind, it’s not always intuitive from a psychological perspective, right?
There’s an exercise that, when I conduct, honestly leaves me a little unsettled. Imagine if you had a couple of hours that you ended up with at the end of the day. How would you fill them? Would you catch up on work? Would you write a love letter to your spouse? Would you do something with one of your kids? When I’m honest about that, I need to kind of go back and say, hey, what are my priorities here? And I know you might not like that word priorities. Right, you say there’s only one, but we’re psychologically engineered in such a way that we’re not great always at predicting what is it that is going to make me fulfill or make me happy. So it’s tricky.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, so what you’re saying is that we’re not entirely evolved to do in order to actually maximize even our own happiness or meaning? That’s what you’re saying. You’re saying that there are forces at play that make that we that we are well, that we are forced to have to think for ourselves. It’s not just so embedded in us that it will just happen automatically. Maybe that would be helpful, but we’re actually designed in such a way that we have to choose between these things, which is a theme, of course, at the very heart of your, of this book, that we haven’t really touched on at all, which is, which is the choice that we are literally designed in such a way that all these forces exist that allow us to make choices between that. That we could say it maybe I think this way that you would agree, I think, that evolution has left us in a position where we have to make trade-offs, and we cannot not make trade-offs, that it is absolutely required. We were built somehow to do this. Did I catch that right? What did I get wrong?
Samuel Wilkinson:
Yeah, no, I think that’s a great way to say it. Certainly, we are pulled in different directions, and right now, there are many secular, non-believing students of human nature and scholars of human nature who have observed this. Edward Wilson, again, the late Harvard biologist, said you know, “No wonder that the human spirit is in such constant turmoil because of the different pressures that evolution exerted on us over time that leaves us pulled in different directions.”
I do believe part of that original formulation of evolution is leading us in this in a selfish state. We definitely have a deep capacity for silvery. It’s an unfortunate part of our nature. We also have a capacity for altruism and in order to make a family work, you kind of have to kill a part of yourself and put that away, or at least subdue it right.
A marriage doesn’t work if the selfish aspects of both parties are, you know, coming to the forefront, you know, frequent. You know marriage can be extraordinarily fulfilling, but it can go, it can go wrong, and in some ways, each person that enters into a partnership like that has to turn off a part of their nature or suppress it or, you know, continually address those parts of his or her nature that are going to get in the way of a flourishing partnership. So it’s a crucible, right, life is a test. It’s a crucible, and we do have to make choices as to which part of our nature we are listening to. It wouldn’t be a test if we weren’t pulled in one direction or another.
Greg McKeown:
I love the idea that we’re not just being pulled in different directions like only by – you can analyze that just from a moral point of view, a religious point of view, and you say, ok, well, there’s good, and there’s evil, and you’re not saying that that is inherently not true, but you’re adding to that. But yes, but biologically we are also in exactly that way, that we have evolved in such a way that we are pulled in these different directions, and I think that is sort of the very it’s like that’s the exhausting reality of life, like that is ever-present. So, even if you don’t think about it as a test, we feel it from the moment we wake up. Oh, my goodness, what should I do? Do I check the email? Do I? Do I take a moment to really think? Do I? I mean, we’re constantly pulled and so it’s.
But I love that idea that you’re emphasizing for us that really, that that’s also a biological evolution, so that it really is literally in my body, it is literally in the way my mind has been configured and is as has developed because I feel that I feel it, everybody listening to this, everyone you know a lot of people feel it, everybody, and, and I love that that’s just that that is within us and so that we have to make these sacrifices in order to pursue, you know, the best angels of our nature, and that that may be biologically true, not just morally true, it is a fascinating addition to that understanding.
Samuel Wilkinson, it has been a real pleasure to have you to be able to go deep, and I love that you’ve taken the time to be able to put this thinking down into a marvelous book, Purpose, and whoever of us does not need more of that in our lives. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Samuel Wilkinson:
Thanks, it’s been a real pleasure, Greg. I appreciate it.
Greg McKeown:
If you’re getting reflective as we come to the end of this year about how to make sure that next year is a life filled with meaning and purpose, I’d invite you to consider joining with somebody else and signing up for the Essentialism Academy and stay tuned for a series of new announcements about the new content that will be arriving soon there.
Well, there we have it, the interview with Samuel Wilkinson. What is something that stood out to you? What is one thing that you can do differently to be able to be grateful for the test that has been provided for us, built quite literally into the DNA of our bodies, this requirement to choose, a requirement to make tradeoffs, and ultimately, to choose a life of greater meaning and contribution or a smaller life where we become, as one author put it, one self-wide and one self-deep.
If you found value in today’s episode, please write a review on Apple podcasts. It helps us to be able to get the best guests, and for the first person who writes a review of today’s episode, you’ll receive free access for one whole year to the Essentialism Academy. Just go to gregmckeown.com/essential for further details, and I’ll see you all next time.
