Which is my point, humans can be selfish, ,motived by such and violent, so what? That doesn’t make them primarily motivated by those things, the ‘primary motivation’ of a human being as an organism (what its adaptations are meant for) is genetic propagation, selfishness, violence and power all usually help that goal, which we’re adapted to, ,but individual organism survival is not all there is to the story.
Love, ‘morality’ ( a sense of it anyway and a sense to create morals, on top of which ones are universal) altruism, evolve because they help genetic propagation more than 100% selfishness would in their place. An organism unconcerned with its children and family is an organism whose genes hit a dead end wall, they don’t pass through a population, let alone through all of humanity.
No, a creature with super complex mental adaptations (ones which are extremely sensitive/complex and plenty of times contradictory) would pass on its genes. Meaning depending on environmental input and output and genetic predispositions humans can be violent, hateful, unselfish, selfish, in a variety of situations.
The mental model you suggest belongs in the dustbin of history because it is demonstratably false and evolutionary ruinous. No one can argue that kindness/love towards organisms with your genes doesn’t propagate those genes more massively than unconditional self-envolvement ever could.
Take two groups of humans, group A only cares about itself. Group B cares 90% about itself but 10% towards bodies with its own genes/other organisms that can help it survive also.
Do you really think that people in group A would outreproduce people in group B without any care for their children in circumstances where it couldn’t benefit them? Its delusional and stupid.
My point is that a sense of right and wrong drives conflict. As in, theres always going to be people who think that everyone should have freeom, and others that think that have an inherent right to slaves based on divine right (or some other moral claim. This is one example) whether someone is driven by selfish or unselfish motives is irrelevant, as the conflicting goals envolved in complex organisms interacting (complex organisms with our types of adaptations) is going to create massive amounts of violence.
If you feel deep down that blacks should have freedom and think violence is worth that measure, you are going to violently oppose slavery of blacks. Whether or not this is motivated by selfish-ness or not, its going to result in massive bloodshed. This has been a driving force of violence throughout history, its not only “lets kill and rape and take everything for ourselves” its somtimes “they’re aligned with evil spirits we need to save ourselves” or etc.
people may exploit ingroups (their own tribe) but its usually to an extent, as theres a benefit to the scheme, and they’re willing to work together/cooperate to some extent.
altruism is an adaptation, to deny it exists in humans is to put humans on a pedestal outside almost every social mammal that exists.