Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor in their article Love thy neighbour defend kindness and debunk the myth of humans as basically selfish, it’s a worthwhile read and here’s quote to whet your whistle.

Capitalism is no system for the kind-hearted. Even its devotees acknowledge this while insisting that, however tawdry capitalist motives may be, the results are socially beneficial. Untrammelled free enterprise generates wealth and happiness for all. Like all utopian faiths, this is largely delusory. Free markets erode the societies that harbour them. The great paradox of modern capitalism, the ex-Thatcherite John Gray has pointed out (False Dawn, 1998), is that it undermines the very social institutions on which it once relied – family, career, community. For increasing numbers of Britons and Americans, the “enterprise culture” means a life of overwork, anxiety and isolation. Competition reigns supreme, with even small children forced to compete against each other and falling ill as a result. A competitive society, one that divides people into winners and losers, breeds unkindness. Kindness comes naturally to us, but so too do cruelty and aggression. People placed under unremitting pressure become estranged from each other. Like the bullied child who bullies others in turn, individuals coerced by circumstances become coercers. Sympathies contract as open-heartedness begins to feel too exposed. Paranoia blossoms as people seek scapegoats for their unhappiness. Such scapegoating is a self-betrayal because it involves sacrificing our kindness. But this is a price many pay when tribal loyalties, sometimes vicious in their expression, replace wider communal bonds. A culture of “hardness” and cynicism grows, fed by envious admiration of those who seem to thrive – the rich and famous, our modern priesthood – in this tooth-and-claw environment.

What is to be done?

Nothing, many would say. Human beings are innately selfish and that is that. Newspapers bombard us with scientific evidence to back up this pessimism. We read about greedy chimpanzees, selfish genes, ruthless mate-selection strategies, even about meerkats – those famously cooperative creatures – who instead of looking out for their fellows spend most of their time “watching their own backs”. Richard Dawkins of “selfish gene” fame lays it on the line: “Human society based simply on the gene’s law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live. But unfortunately, however much we deplore something, this does not stop it being true …” Yet Dawkins does not despair: “If you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish … Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.”

Although we must accept that nature makes people nasty, “we” – that is, altruistic people like Dawkins who somehow, mysteriously, have escaped their genetic destiny – can none the less set things right. Here we are truly in the realm of magical kindness, akin to the type experienced in infancy, but which now is required to overcome not just ordinary human unhappiness but the realities of human biology. The speciousness of Dawkins’s diagnosis of the human predicament is matched by the absurdity of this solution.