tempered by altruism than this justification for 'natural' heirarchy with Haidt and the scientists as queen bees and the rest of us 'workers' in conformity with the dicttates of the hive. Selfish' seems often to be taken to be the antonym of 'altruistic', individualism often equated with individuality, and cooperation sometimes taken as a denial of that individuality. Dawkins has 4 index references to altruism, none for cooperation. ...' Aaaaactualy... ttp://macroevolution.narod.ru/gene/gene30.htm#intro30 'Another good alternative to The Selfish Gene would have been The Cooperative Gene. It sounds paradoxically opposite, but a central part of the book argues for a form of cooperation among self-interested genes. This emphatically does not mean that groups of genes prosper at the expense of their members, or at the expense of other groups. Rather, each gene is seen as pursuing its own self-interested agenda against the background of the other genes in the gene pool -- the set of candidates for sexual shuffling within a species. Those other genes are part of the environment in which each gene survives, in the same way as the weather, predators and prey, supporting vegetation and soil bacteria are parts of the environment. From each gene's point of view, the 'background' genes are those with which it shares bodies in its journey down the generations. In the short term, that means the other members of the genome. In the long term, it means the other genes in {x} the gene pool of the species. Natural selection therefore sees to it