CHRIS CHRISTIE AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

Something we should but are not paying attention to in the New Jersey bridge scandal is Gov. Chris Christie’s attitude about winning. During his famous marathon press conference, he said something to the effect that he was trying to build up a big win. Of course, I was trying to build up a big win; that is what politicians do. Perhaps he should have said that is how people act—it is in our genes. It is a form of greed.

There should be little question that behavior is genetic and that greed is one genetically embedded or fundamental trait just as chickens act like chickens, dogs act like dogs, and people act like people. In addition, there should be little question that we modify our behavior within physical and mental limits. An amalgamation of many, many of the same traits with individual modifications of each traits result in myriad human personalities. Thus, evolutionary psychologists base their studies of us on this concept of an organic origin of behavior.

We know that greed is universal and is necessary for survival—we could not have survived without it. Therefore, in the most primitive human sense, the objective is survival and physical strength as well as strength of personality makes survival possible. The challenge is to sort out what each of us sees as the best way to survive in modern society, the means of obtaining that objective. The intensity of greed we see in different people reflects that.

We also understand hierarchy dominance or peck order. Greed for power goes hand in hand with greed for material goods—the top chicken gets the most and the best off everything. The question brought out by the Christie example is, “When is enough, enough?”  It is the same question that we can ask of an already rich person’s obsession to earn more money. A rich person often shows that he or she knows that goal is ridiculous by philanthropy or by a powerful person sharing his or her power; however, they never go to the extreme of impoverishing themselves of either power or money.

Another aspect of this question of human greed is to consider why we understand the term ‘greedy’ or “selfish’ is a pejorative. We know that we can only survive if we are greedy and survival is the most powerful instinct; therefore, we should hold the “greedy” in high esteem an not ridicule those that show the trait. No person I know teachers their children to be greedy, which we should do it we want them to survival as individuals, but we don’t. As parents, we teach our children to share so they can survive as a group; however, everyone recognizes that they grow up to be individually greedy, which suggests our teaching has not modify that organically instilled trait. Perhaps, the truth is that learning has not modified the genetic trait its self but it has modified our understanding of drive instituted by that innate tendency.

We understood that Christie wanted to win but he also wanted to build up a “big win”. We understand that Warren Buffet has enough money to afford the best lunch in town but still acts as if he is going to starve. There is no logical explanation for this kind of behavior; when logic fails look to genetics. We look back at evolution and see our development in the ancient world of cyclical periods of feast and famine but mostly of scarcity. Those who survived were the ones who could genetically adapt to periods of famine: accumulate body fat, control of physical activity, control of body temperature, and other “energy” saving devices but never adaption to overabundance; we eat until we physically can eat no more. In our modern world, through our cleverness, most of us live in an environment of abundance. As part of our humanization, we have complicated the situation by the substitution of money for food which side tracks physical limits. Banks can hold a lot more money than stomachs can hold food.

We are adapting to that artificial environment of cyclical abundance and scarcity but our genes remain back in a world of feast and famine. Excessive political power or accumulations of huge bank account are the equivalent of a highly desirable layer of fat in a cyclical world feast and famine. Our learning may be modifying our attitude toward greed but not the inherent trait. Greed is OK, but excessive greed is not. Excessive greed is especially abhorrent when obtained by unfair or even nefarious means; such as a powerful governor closing bridge lanes to hurt a small town mayor as an example to people who might not vote for him. Reward and punishment may be debunked as a why to shape personalities or write on a blank slate, but it still works well in politics if we allow it to be that way, which is why Christie must be punished and not rewarded for the way he operates.

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