FoundationalConceptsNeuroscience

is that the human condition is one of fear and dread, and the domi-
nant human emotions are negative ones related to states of fear, anx-
iety, anger, pain, suffering, and desire. In this view, positive emotions
are considered secondary to these negative states and emerge only
with the occasional cessation of the negative states.
The dramatic opening scene in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey
described in Chapter 1 (portraying ancient hominins discovering how
to kill one another), and the long human history continuing to the
present day of violence, mayhem, murder, and warfare, might give the
impression that perhaps our primary emotions as a species are indeed
those related to fear and anger. Influential thinkers over the centuries
have described humans as being largely driven by self-interest, with
our behavior—especially in the face of limited resources—domi-
nated by selfishness. Sigmund Freud frequently wrote of the power
of selfish and violent tendencies in humans. And Darwin's nuanced
discussion of variation and selection as the driving forces in biological
evolution is sometimes reduced to a simplistic statement of “survival
of the fittest,” imagining biological evolution to be driven chiefly by
“selfish genes” and a bloody “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”
Darwin, in fact, was very much an advocate of goodness, com-
passion, and sympathy as important forces in human evolution—a
kind of survival of the kindest. This he makes clear in his first book
specifically about human evolution—The Descent of Man, and Selection
in Relation to Sex—published in 1871, the year before his book on
emotions. About the expression of sympathy, he wrote that it “will
have been increased through natural selection; for those communi-
ties, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic
members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of off-
spring.” Several pages later, he goes on to say that