大象传媒

听

I have a friend 鈥� his name is Michael 鈥� who is really annoying. And the reason, to be blunt, is that he鈥檚 just a lot nicer than me. Honestly. Genuinely. He really is. For instance, I bumped into him in the street the other week. I hadn鈥檛 seen him for a whole year - since the start of the pandemic.听 Typically, he spotted me before I spotted him and ran across the road to say 鈥榟i鈥�. He asked me how I was doing. Asked what I was up to. Told me how much he鈥檇 missed seeing me around. And introduced me 鈥� in glowing terms 鈥� to another by-passer, whom he also greeted with genuine enthusiasm.

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When I was at school I learned 鈥� just like everyone else 鈥� Charles听Darwin鈥檚 theory of evolution; the 鈥楽urvival of the Fittest鈥�. It is a听dog eat dog world. The biggest, the strongest, always win. But, in the last few years there鈥檚 been a growing amount of research that has begun to question some of that. Instead it talks about the 鈥楽urvival of the Friendliest鈥�.

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Take the well-known term 'fight-or-flight'; coined to represent the choices that our ancient ancestors had when faced with danger in their environment. So, how was it that Homo Sapiens managed to survive?听Of course, actual听鈥榝light鈥� was never a literal option for our forefathers,听but the point is that they听couldn鈥檛 even outrun some of their predators. And neither would they have been good in a one-to-one听鈥榝ight鈥�. Who would fancy their chances against a Sabretooth Tiger. So why are we still around?

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The truth is that we survived as a species because we learned to work together 鈥� we learned to get along with one another and collaborate.

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One of my heroes,听Martin Luther King put it like this 鈥渕odern psychology is calling on us now to love. But long before modern psychology came into being, the world鈥檚 greatest psychologist who walked around the hills of Galilee told us to love.鈥� Jesus, he said: "Love your enemies; don鈥檛 hate anybody."鈥�because hate destroys the hater as well as the hated.鈥�

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So, what if friendliness;听being able to cooperate and form strong relationships is the real key to our听evolutionary success; an evolutionary process that is an听ongoing process that continues today 鈥� in which my friend Michael is just way ahead of me.