Sublime

Such behaviour can be both a warning to others and a form of social punishment.

Could it be that dopamine was literally the molecular currency of reward in the brain?

Suppose we took you and forty-nine of your coworkers and pitted you in a game of Survivor against a troop of fifty capuchin monkeys from Costa Rica. We would parachute both primate teams into the remote tropical forests of central Africa. After two years, we would return and count the survivors on each team. The team with the most survivors wins. O

Human society as we know it – indeed, even primate society – would be impossible without it.

our brains are not designed to reward generosity as reliably as they punish meanness.

‘The Hobbesian image of humans, judging from the most common evidence, is empirically wrong,’ Collins asserts. ‘Humans are hardwired for […] solidarity; and this is what makes violence so difficult.’29

It is rather the degree of connection—or maybe even affection—that decides how helpful a tree’s colleagues will be.

When we look at nature, we are only looking at the survivors. Stephen Budiansky, If a Lion Could Talk