一位心理学家给出了他对人类如何变得以自我为中心的看法

A psychologist gives his view on how humans became self-centred

长期以来，人们普遍认为人类本质上是自私的。我们显然是无情的，有强烈的冲动相互竞争资源，积累权力和财产。如果我们对彼此友善，通常是因为我们别有用心。如果我们是善良的，那只是因为我们成功地控制并超越了我们与生俱来的自私和残忍。

There has long been a general assumption that human beings are essentially selfish. We're apparently ruthless, with strong impulses to compete against each other for resources and to accumulate power and possessions. If we are kind to one another, it's usually because we have ulterior motives. If we are good, it's only because we have managed to control and transcend our innate selfishness and brutality.

这种对人性的悲观看法与科学作家理查德•道金斯(Richard Dawkins)密切相关。他1976年出版的《自私的基因》(the Selfish Gene)一书之所以大受欢迎，是因为它与20世纪晚期盛行的竞争和个人主义思潮非常契合，并为之辩护。和其他许多人一样，道金斯用进化心理学来证明他的观点是正确的。进化心理学的理论认为，当今人类的特征是在史前时期发展起来的，这一时期被称为“进化适应环境”。

This bleak view of human nature is closely associated with the science writer Richard Dawkins, whose 1976 book The Selfish Gene became popular because it fitted so well with – and helped to justify – the competitive and individualistic ethos that was so prevalent in late 20th-century societies. Like many others, Dawkins justifies his views with reference to the field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology theorises that present-day human traits developed in prehistoric times, during what is termed the 'environment of evolutionary adaptedness'.

史前史通常被视为一段激烈竞争的时期，当时的生活是一场残酷的战斗，只有那些具有自私、侵略和无情等特征的人才能生存下来。由于生存依赖于获取资源——比如河流、森林和动物——敌对群体之间必然会发生冲突，这导致了种族主义和战争等特征的发展。这似乎合乎逻辑。但事实上，这一切所基于的假设——史前生命是一场为生存而进行的绝望斗争——是错误的。

Prehistory is usually seen as a period of intense competition, when life was such a brutal battle that only those with traits such as selfishness, aggression and ruthlessness survived. And because survival depended on access to resources – such as rivers, forests and animals – there was bound to be conflict between rival groups, which led to the development of traits such as racism and warfare. This seems logical. But, in fact, the assumption on which this all rests – that prehistoric life was a desperate struggle for survival – is false.

重要的是要记住，在史前时代，世界人口非常稀少。据估计，大约1.5万年前，欧洲的人口只有2.9万人，而全世界的人口还不到50万。那时的人类是狩猎采集者:他们靠捕猎野生动物和采集野生植物为生。在人口密度如此之小的情况下，史前的狩猎采集者群体似乎不太可能为了资源而相互竞争，也不太可能需要发展出冷酷无情和竞争能力，或者发动战争。

It's important to remember that in the prehistoric era, the world was very sparsely populated. According to some estimates, around 15,000 years ago, the population of Europe was only 29,000, and the population of the whole world was less than half a million. Humans at that time were hunter-gatherers: people who lived by hunting wild animals and collecting wild plants. With such small population densities, it seems unlikely that prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups had to compete against each other for resources or had any need to develop ruthlessness and competitiveness, or to go to war.

当代狩猎采集群体的生活方式与史前人类相同，这一观点得到了重要证据的支持。正如人类学家布鲁斯·克瑙夫特(Bruce Knauft)所说，狩猎采集者的特点是“极端的政治和性别平等主义”。Knauft观察到，这些群体中的个人不会积累财产或财产，他们有道德义务分享一切。他们也有保护平等主义的方法，确保不会出现地位差距。

There is significant evidence to back this notion from contemporary hunter-gatherer groups, who live in the same way as prehistoric humans did. As the anthropologist Bruce Knauft has remarked, hunter-gatherers are characterised by 'extreme political and sexual egalitarianism'. Knauft has observed that individuals in such groups don't accumulate property or possessions and have an ethical obligation to share everything. They also have methods of preserving egalitarianism by ensuring that disparities of status don't arise.

例如，非洲南部的孔族人在打猎前会交换箭，当一只动物被射中时，人们的称赞并不属于射出箭的人，而是属于箭的主人。如果一个人变得太霸道，群体中的其他成员就会排斥他，把他驱逐出社会。在这样的群体中，男性通常不会支配女性的行为。在世界各地的狩猎采集群体中，妇女往往受益于高度的自主权，她们能够选择自己的婚姻伴侣，决定自己做什么工作，并在自己选择的时间工作。如果婚姻破裂，他们对孩子有监护权。

The !Kung people of southern Africa, for example, swap arrows before going hunting and when an animal is killed, the acclaim does not go to the person who fired the arrow, but to the person the arrow belongs to. And if a person becomes too domineering, the other members of the group ostracise them, exiling the offender from society. Typically in such groups, men do not dictate what women do. Women in hunter-gatherer groups worldwide often benefit from a high level of autonomy, being able to select their own marriage partners, decide what work they do and work whenever they choose to. And if a marriage breaks down, they have custody rights over their children.

许多人类学家认为，像孔族这样的社会直到几千年前才变得正常，当时人口的增长导致了农业的发展和定居生活方式的形成。综上所述，似乎没有理由认为种族主义、战争和男性统治等特征应该是进化选择的——因为它们在史前时代几乎没有什么好处。行为自私和无情的个体生存的可能性较小，因为他们会被群体排斥。

Many anthropologists believe that societies such as the !Kung were normal until a few thousand years ago, when population growth led to the development of agriculture and a settled lifestyle. In view of the above, there seems little reason to assume that traits such as racism, warfare and male domination should have been selected by evolution – as they would have been of little benefit in the prehistoric era. Individuals who behaved selfishly and ruthlessly would be less likely to survive, since they would have been ostracised from their groups.

因此，将合作、平等主义、利他主义和和平等特质视为人类的先天特征就更有意义了。这些特征在人类生活中普遍存在了数万年。所以这些特征现在在我们身上仍然很强烈。

It makes more sense, then, to see traits such as cooperation, egalitarianism, altruism and peacefulness as innate characteristics of human beings. These were the traits that were prevalent in human life for tens of thousands of years. So presumably these traits are still strong in us now.

但是，如果史前生活真的不像人们通常认为的那样残酷，为什么现代人的行为如此自私和无情呢?也许这些负面特征应该被看作是后来的发展，是环境和心理因素的结果。研究一再表明，当类人猿和大猩猩等灵长类动物的自然栖息地遭到破坏时，它们往往会变得更加暴力和等级森严。

But if prehistoric life wasn't really as brutal as has often been assumed, why do modern humans behave so selfishly and ruthlessly? Perhaps these negative traits should be seen as a later development, the result of environmental and psychological factors.Research has shown repeatedly that when the natural habitats of primates such as apes and gorillas are disrupted, they tend to become more violent and hierarchical.

所以，很可能同样的事情也发生在我们身上。我相信狩猎采集生活方式的终结和农业的出现与某些人群发生的心理变化有关。有一种新的个性和分离感，这导致了一种新的自私，最终导致了等级社会，父权制和战争。无论如何，这些负面特征似乎是最近才发展起来的，用适应或进化的术语来解释它们似乎是不可行的。

So, it could well be that the same thing has happened to us. I believe that the end of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the advent of farming was connected to a psychological change that occurred in some groups of people. There was a new sense of individuality and separateness, which led to a new selfishness, and ultimately to hierarchical societies, patriarchy and warfare. At any rate, these negative traits appear to have developed so recently that it doesn't seem feasible to explain them in adaptive or evolutionary terms.