A hefty buck lords it over my orchard, waiting for apples and chestnuts to fall. He’s muscular, even fat. He’s gotten that way by letting other deer make the latest finds for him, then chasing them away. One could imagine he reasons about his actions, what he wants and how to get it. Yet, by a Darwinian account, he does what he does simply because he wouldn’t exist otherwise.
He needs to be strong to challenge or resist challenge by other males, so that it will be him that mates and leaves offspring. For this he has antlers, which are also used to chase away his food-finders, so that he can eat more and be strong to reproduce. He does all this because the genes he got from his forebears encourage him to, and following their dictates ensures the cycle will not be broken. We needn’t imagine him thinking about any of this in order to understand why he does it. If it weren’t in his programmed behavior, his line would have perished long ago and he wouldn’t be standing here. This kind of explanation reasons about the whole system and its implications for the individual. It’s backwards from how people usually reason about how to navigate life.
Without intending to, the buck has fattened himself up nicely for the hunter. While we needn’t suppose he obligingly had the hunter in mind, at one time people did suppose that God had designed the world with Man in mind, and even designed the buck to suit the hunter. Even today, the hunter could reason two ways about which deer to shoot. Should it be the nicely fattened buck, the epitome of fitness and the maximum gain of meat for the least effort? Or should it be the genetically less fit, culling of which would strengthen the stock for future use? (One used to throw the small fish back; now we are not so sure.)
If we reason about the system as a whole, then we have to wonder about our place in it. Religious people used to assume (and some still do) that humans were special, made in God’s image, whereas animals were like machines, without souls. Science now tells us that humans too are no less like machines. Yet, we are machines with headstrong purposes, bent on controlling the system if we can. We consider ourselves special, exempt from the rules of natural selection. The weak and the sick are protected, so that the human stock is far from genetically strengthened. We hold our dominance on the planet by dint of numbers and collective intelligence. The values that make us strong as unnatural creatures make us weaker as natural ones—an experiment with inconclusive results.
Are we indeed the lords of the system? Whereas God was assumed benevolent, we have our doubts about any sort of flesh. Could we be food for angels? Could Earth be a game preserve for alien carnivores? Perhaps we don’t need to look so far. Don’t we have predators within our own ranks? With our little entitlements, are we little more enlightened than the buck in the orchard, lord of his small domain? Are we more secure than the fattening goose feels right up to the moment of losing its head?
The buck’s greed serves him and his genetic line, even though he does not reason about his motivations or his possible end on someone’s table. He does not need to understand the system. If humans or an asteroid somehow bring about the end of his line, it was never his concern. He just needs to seek the falling apple or chestnut and potential mates. The sensations involved must seem reward enough. How different is it for us?