Evolution, Altruism and Business

We’re all familiar with the shark-tank competitive world of day-to-day life, especially in the world of economics, business and politics. We’ve taken for granted, since Darwin, that evolution’s process of Survival of the Fittest mandates this tough reality we live in. But often our hearts, and deeper senses, make us wonder if this world of competition and conflict is really what nature intended. Mainstream science took a big U-turn on this about one year ago when Yale/Templeton’s series on The Foundational Questions in Science declared that, at the level of group relations, nature’s process selects not for selfishness but for altruism, that is, structures and processes the serve the whole. Dr. David Sloan Wilson, author of that landmark book, joins us with global change-makers Dr. Richard Clugston, Steve Farrell, and Catherine Bell in this discussion of evolution and altruism. The discussion concentrates on the implications of all this on our world's business practices.