Helping other people, they concluded, even though you may never even meet those other people again, will lead to your being seen as a valuable asset to the community and it will increase your chances of having other people be helpful to you. For the Arabian babbler bird, this translates into the ladies of the species being more likely to want those helpful genes in their eggs. The notion of nature as some kind of vast battleground in which only the fittest can survive and prosper, and only by ruthlessly clawing their way to the top in an environment of danger and hostility, came to prominence at the end of the 19th century. It reflected the philosophy of a new Industrial Age in which success was measured by how many continents you d plundered, how many natives you d converted, and how much of nature you d taken dominion over. But that s a hopelessly distorted and dangerous view of how life really works.
Nature invariably seeks out harmony and balance.
The individual parts that survive and prosper are those that learn to harmonize themselves with the whole. Fifty years ago, biologist J. B. S. Haldane told a group of theologians that God must have an inordinate fondness for beetles. Over the past 250 million years, beetles have been perfecting a harmonious relationship with plants, and today they are the most diverse species on the planet, comprising fully one quarter of all known species. There is, happily, one subset of the human race that passes that test with flying colors. These caring and generous people thrive on doing good, especially for other animals.