I suggest re-reading The Selfish Gene and not getting caught up too much at the title, but actually paying attention to the content (as a high schooler it may n

I suggest re-reading The Selfish Gene and not getting caught up too much at the title, but actually paying attention to the content (as a high schooler it may not be easy to grok, especially if your school taught evolution wrong, even teachers often don't understand it). Dawkins never says people are always selfish by necessity. He says genes (not individual organisms) propagate as if they were selfish, but this is just a metaphor, if the metaphor disturbs you you can ignore it, the actual content of the evolutionary reasoning does not require using words like selfish. Also, that quote on playing just dodges the question. Why is what we call "play" so pleasurable to animals? "Because they enjoy it" is not an answer. Why don't animals do other things for pleasure? And there are very good evolutionary arguments, but that's not the point now.