Why Living Is So God-Damn Hard

Along with the other things Dawkins discusses in Chapter 4 of The Selfish Gene comes the topic of genes as instructors. To explain this point, Dawkins introduces an analogy with computers playing chess and how they do it. "When it is actually playing, the computer is on its own, and can expect no help from its master. All the programmer can do is to set the computer up beforehand in the best way possible, with a proper balance between lists of specific knowledge, and hints about strategies and techniques." (Dawkins 52)
Likewise, all genes can do to help their survival genes live, is to set them up in the same way. "But life, like the game of chess, offers too many different possible eventualities for all of them to be anticipated. Like the chess programmer, the genes have to 'instruct' their survival machines not in specifics, but in the general strategies and tricks of the living trade." (Dawkins 55)
As people always say, it is human nature to screw up and fall, so to speak. Life presents too many different possibilities which we cannot forsee. All we can hope to do is attack each moment with the 'hints' our genes have given us and hope that it benefits our survival. And if we do happen to fall, luckily our genes have programmed our brains with the power of learning so that, next time we confront the situation, we wont fall as we did the first time.