W/O education,R people prone to thinking & acting selfishly seeking their selfinterests like lower life forms?

Question

Because Q-box is now 110, the fully-worded Q ,the complete Q is this:

Without education, are people prone to thinking & acting selfishly seeking their self-interests like lower life forms do?

No answer is required to this rhetorical Q. Comments following an A to my Q are always welcome, but only after one answers my epistemic Q first!

ps: How can there be a subcategory for "teaching" and not one for "learning"?

Answer 1

Have you ever heard of evolution....I think that's a bit more significant than education.

Answer 2

I don't think that selfish actions come from a lack of education - I know some highly educated people who are also incredibly selfish.

"Lower life forms" don't act selfishly, they act instinctively.  They do what they have to do to survive.  Each has their own temperament; saying that they act "selfishly" would insinuate that they have the ability to reason.  They don't.

Quite frankly, you could sit a jellyfish down and "teach" reading and math to it until the day it died, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference - it would still float with the tide and sting anything that touched it.  It would still instinctively release the toxins from its nematocysts upon the slightest touch, and it would still ingest whatever it stung.  It doesn't reason, it just does.

In the same way, you could "teach" the writings of Caesar to a cow for years on end, and it wouldn't be affected in the least.  It would still instinctively eat grains, partially digest them, regurgitate them, and eat them again.  The cow would still instinctively give milk whenever its udder is milked.  It doesn't reason, it just does.

Reasoning is not animalistic.  A dog doesn't "reason" before it goes through the trash or eats its own poo.  A mother bear doesn't "reason" before it attacks you for taking an up-close picture of its cub.  A fish doesn't "reason" before it eats the worm that is hiding the nasty little hook.  They don't reason, they just instinctively do.  There's a huge difference.

People, however, have the ability to reason.  Some are raised in an environment that allows them to be selfish little twits, and some are taught to be responsible.  Their level of education does not matter a bit - their parenting and environment does.

So, short answer, no.

Edit:  Sorry, but your question does border on fallacious and absurd, as well as quite abstract.  You compare humans, who can reason, with "lower life forms", who can't, and ask if education alone separates their actions.  I answered with equally absurd examples to press that point.  You asked a question, we all gave answers, sorry if you didn't like them...

Answer 3

You're confusing reasoning of humans with the biological drives & instincts of all other forms of life.  The options open to an aardvark are basically survival & procreation.  Their cognitive abilities don't extend to complex reasoning that we have, even sans education.  

Additionally, repercussions of abhorrent behaviors among pack animals would be expulsion.  Humans have a complex legal system in place to incarcerate those who fail to comply with the rules. Which in turn, acts as a deterrent for most sentient human beings.