I read a thought-provoking reader review of the book 'The Selfish Gene' on Amazon.com some time ago. Excerpts below, and further thoughts from me further below :

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"The literal idea of 'The Selfish Gene' contains a mistake. The concept 'selfish' applies to entities possessed of a self - paradigmatically, humans. A gene has no self. To apply the term selfish to a gene is, thus, ( to make an error. )

pre-judgment: the illusion of thought. the abandonment of self-responsibility, a betrayal of self.

for example, as related to conversation and honesty: every time you think, "i can't talk to X about this because X would react in such-and-such a way/i can't be honest to X because X wouldn't understand" whether because X has not understood in the past, or because no one in a larger subset that X appears to be in has understood in the past, you have pre-judged qualities of X and have made that a part of a static worldview.

you have mistaken the map for the terrain.

the terrain is ever-changing, so wake up, look up, look at what's in front of you before you stumble into the abyss or get eaten by the lions or fail to realize you've been walking in circles for days and you're about to get sunstroke. the terrain does change, but not when you're walking in the same damn circles. your map has an expiration date of yesterday.

don't rob yourself of the chance to perceive for yourself, rather than dancing with ghosts of perceptions past. don't rob others of the chance to be perceived as they are now, not as ghosts. no, change isn't easy for anyone, so maybe you've become jaded to the thought that it ever truly happens, but when it does, you don't want to miss it for the world.