During the 500 billion years that our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, what they usually did when they encountered a stranger, was try to kill him. After the invention of agriculture, about 11,000 years BC, this behaviour evolved into one that was more consistent with this new way of livelihood. Defrauding our fellow humans has been a behaviour among us that has become more adaptive since we became sedentary.
A person is seen as a fraudster when they make others believe, by deceit or trickery, the existence of something that does not exist in reality. Although this deceitful behaviour is widespread among animals, it is only among humans that is has reached levels of excellence, thanks to our huge brain, which is able to build hypotheses and use language to invent stories.
The most active element of a scam, contrary to what it may seem, is the cheated person. Before it is defined and used by the scammer there is usually a hypothetical reality (the third element of the scam) in the minds of those being cheated. Historically, the Greek world has produced some of the most famous fraudsters in history. In the Iliad Homer told us that every scam is a collaborative affair, which requires close harmony between the victim and the executioner. The case of the Trojans is truly unfortunate. They were well aware of the moral depravity of the builders of the horse, following ten years of war during which time they had unsuccessfully attempted to murder them. Yet, against all reason they trusted the Greeks. Encouraged by the success of Troy, the Greeks repeated this move some centuries later, with EUROSTAT, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, once again leading a group to believe in the existence of something, honest accounting, which in fact did not exist.
Centuries after the kings of Argos and Mycenae, another Greek royal house displays the universality of scams to the world. Queen Sofia, formerly Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark, daughter of King Paul of Greece, became such a virtuous victim of fraud that she even managed to beat the Trojans by adopting the symbiotic behaviours of her very own scammer. Not only did she sign a contract with the person who was to swindle her, but she also helped to find similar specimens of husbands for her two daughters. It would be as though Aeneas, after fleeing from Troy and founding Rome, had sold the plans of the horse to the Carthaginians, so they could repeat the Achaeans’ dirty trick in the Eternal City.
We humans cheat our closest loved ones first, in this particular order: parents, spouse, and children. When we are babies we usually simulate that we have more needs than we actually do to force our parents, through feigned crying and fake laughter, to give us more resources (R.Dawkins). There are bird species where the chicks go even further and become blackmailers, screaming to attract the attention of predators, thus forcing the terrified parents to give them more food.
The aim of our teenager years and youth is to achieve our socialization as individuals. During this period we learn to deal with other humans through theatrical roles that present an idealized version of ourselves (emphasising some aspects of ourselves and supressing others). That is what the adult life of the individual in society is about; the management of several different masks, in different scenarios in which we have to perform until death; Erving Goffman.
Each person’s life takes place in their own mind, which is far from possessing the ability of free will and of being unique. In general, relationships with other human beings do not usually go beyond sharing ceremonies, rituals and social gatherings, in which we know each other through the roles we play and the masks with which we perform. Sexual relations are one of these typified meetings that allow actors, as with in other ceremonies, to act with great freedom within their mind, thinking about any other partner, except for the one in front of them.
But no human being, whether the defrauded or the fraudster, queen or commoner, is guilty of deceiving or of being deceived. As far back as 1859, Charles Darwin, in his book On the Origin of Species, had unmasked the real culprits, which are none other than our genes. These small units of genetic material are responsible for almost everything.
Genes are almost immortal and are successively passed on through various generations throughout their existence. They have a less specific identity, as on average they spend half their time in female bodies and the other half in male bodies. We humans are their survival machine, the vehicle they have built to prevail over all other genes. (Richard Dawkins).
Genes are responsible for their own future survival, and to do so they depend on building highly sophisticated machines (us). Other genes that built different survival machines, like sheep or pigs, are now our slaves.
Our enormous brain is part of the survival machine called a human being, which our genes built. The passage of time has proven that this was a wise decision by our genes, and a terrible error of other genes that by not evolving along this path, led their survival machines into extinction.
Evolution is an arms race consisting of the survival of those who are most capable, and one that led our brains to equip themselves with self-awareness, and about 11,000 years ago, led to the creation of Culture, in order to be able to manage these survival machines whose number currently exceeds 7 billion units. Nothing is what it seems in the world of humans because genes took care of providing us with the ability of self-deception (Trivers) and with a taste for consistent stories rather than true ones.
Since genes allowed us to create culture, about 11,000 years ago, scams and lies have become adaptive and helped our genes to manage a population of survival machines (humans), of which estimates suggest they have created around 115 billion replicas. Sometimes genes have slipped up, resulting in big swindlers, like Hitler and Stalin, who caused humans enormous pain. On other occasions they have resulted in mediocre ones, like Barak Obama and Neville Chamberlain, who have produced more moderate amounts of damage. The cruel management that genes have made of human beings has only a remote hope of liberation, which is none other than our enormous brain someday breaking the carcinogenic tyranny of the damned replicators and finding another way for us, their survival machines.
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