One reproductive strategy is to have a few offspring and invest heavily in them; another is to have as many as possible and accept a lower success rate. Accord

One reproductive strategy is to have a few offspring and invest heavily in them; another is to have as many as possible and accept a lower success rate. According to your initial comment, the purpose of live is to reproduce, and if that was the end of it, then having as many kids as possible and let the seeds fall where they may is a winning strategy (and many animals do exactly that), but for humans it is a winning strategy only if one can get other people to raise your kids, which means it works only if the cohort of freeloaders is small enough. As for the genetics part, it seems you think there is an altruism gene(s) and that I can somehow determine if others have the same genes that I have and then invest in them. The idea of an altruism gene is dubious; if if such a thing exists, the mathematics say it is a dead end. The two kids I adopted (from another ethnic group even) are far less likely to have "my" gene than had I married a woman who could bear my children. The source of my altruism (as such -- we adopted to fulfill our own emotional needs) is far more determined by culture and circumstance that by the influence of genes. That last point closes the circle for my own stance: meaning is cultural and personal. It makes me scratch my head when Christian friends try to convince me that their morality is not objective because it is based on the Bible, but we can see historically that different people/generations interpret the Bible and justify whatever morality is in vogue at the time. It is no more fixed than that of atheists.