> Read Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene"

I have, I don't fully agree with Dawkins. I'm not a biologist, merely a dilettante, but I can point to source [1] for some counter-arguments. First, there's a difference between the biological and the common use of the term 'altruism':

> This biological notion of altruism is not identical to the everyday concept. In everyday parlance, an action would only be called ‘altruistic’ if it was done with the conscious intention of helping another. But in the biological sense there is no such requirement. Indeed, some of the most interesting examples of biological altruism are found among creatures that are (presumably) not capable of conscious thought at all, e.g. insects. For the biologist, it is the consequences of an action for reproductive fitness that determine whether the action counts as altruistic, not the intentions, if any, with which the action is performed.

When I used the term I used it in the common sense, not in the biological one.

Then there's the concept of kin selection:

> The basic idea of kin selection is simple. Imagine a gene which causes its bearer to behave altruistically towards other organisms, e.g. by sharing food with them. Organisms without the gene are selfish—they keep all their food for themselves, and sometimes get handouts from the altruists. Clearly the altruists will be at a fitness disadvantage, so we should expect the altruistic gene to be eliminated from the population. However, suppose that altruists are discriminating in who they share food with. They do not share with just anybody, but only with their relatives. This immediately changes things.

[...]

> Contrary to what is sometimes thought, kin selection does not require that animals must have the ability to discriminate relatives from non-relatives, less still to calculate coefficients of relationship. Many animals can in fact recognize their kin, often by smell, but kin selection can operate in the absence of such an ability. Hamilton's inequality can be satisfied so long as an animal behaves altruistically towards other animals that are in fact its relatives. The animal might achieve this by having the ability to tell relatives from non-relatives, but this is not the only possibility. An alternative is to use some proximal indicator of kinship. For example, if an animal behaves altruistically towards those in its immediate vicinity, then the recipients of the altruism are likely to be relatives, given that relatives tend to live near each other. No ability to recognize kin is presupposed.

Separately, I have found interesting points of view different from those of Dawkins in the works of ethologists (I read de Waal and Lorenz myself) and in 'What Darwin Got Wrong' by Fodor and Piattelli. Just because Dawkins is the more popular author it doesn't mean he's right by necessity. There are a host of theories about how evolution works, the role of altruism etc. Things don't begin and end with the selfish gene.

Robert Sapolsky's work [2] also touches on selfishness, aggression, altruism etc. He discussed the baboon troupe in detail on the Joe Rogan Experience as well.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UMyTnlaMY