• • • Is Human Nature Fundamentally Selfish or Altruistic? 
Maia Szalavitz, TIME - Healthland Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  |Individualism  |Paul Ryan  | Did selfishness — or sharing — drive human evolution? [....] Last week on Slate, evolutionary anthropologist Eric Michael Johnson explored the question against the backdrop of two cultural events in 1957 — the consequences of the rogue, selfish activities of a pygmy hunter in a Congo forest, who used the group’s collective hunting efforts to benefit only himself, and in New York City, the publication of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, whose protagonist champions the author’s notion that human nature is fundamentally selfish and that each man “exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.”   Published: 2012-10-08