Bastard Coated Bastards
Image by net_efekt via Flickr
Nick Kristof, who must get headaches from feeling so strongly all the time, has a column this morning on the behavioral economics behind why people in the West don’t seem to give a damn about global poverty. If I sound callous, that’s not my intention. But should anyone really be surprised at this point in human history (or at any other) that people, at the end of the day, are bastard coated bastards with bastard fillings?
And that, at the end of the day, that’s just the way God (read: evolution, for the elect 32%) made us?
In terms of natural selection, humans are actually much more altruistic than one might expect. If the goal of life is to stay alive and reproduce, why should anyone ever help out anyone else (unless that person is one’s mate, potential mate, etc.)? However, biologists theorize that we developed group-beneficial altruism — which might have hurt an individual’s chance of survival, but which increased the chances of survival for early human groups. The downside of this group altruism, however, is that it applies to people of your group, but quite thoroughly excludes people from other groups.
Thus, you’ll lend your brother money. That kid you see on TV with flies landing on him — well, he can piss off.
Now, I’m not saying this is a good thing, exactly. But, consider a world in which humans were unable to prioritize who deserved their altruism. How could you raise your family, support your wife and kids, provide for your elederly parents, etc., if you considered every needy person in the world to have an equal claim on your sympathy… and cash? After all, how can you possibly justify, say, helping your brother put his kids through college when there are kids starving in Africa? Likewise, how can you justify even sending your own kids to college under the circumstances? They’ll live without a college education; those kids will die. To take it further, how can you even justify buying yourself clothes or putting a roof over your own head? You could live with one pair of pants and sleep in a tent; those kids will die. And how can you even justify buying yourself palatable food? You could survive on wheat paste; those kids will die.
I could keep going…
At the top of his column, Kristof wonders why the leaders at the G8 would presumably jump in a pond to save a drowning girl but wouldn’t allocate as much aid as Kristof deems necessary to save children from gobal poverty? The answer, of course, is that a drowning girl is real and tangible while global poverty is distant and intangible.
Kristof complains that the “bleeding hearts” need to do better at marketing. After all, he says, they’re being outdone by toothpaste salesmen, in terms of the effectiveness of their advertising. But, of course, this is apples and oranges. Toothpaste benefits the buyer; altruism, by definition, doesn’t.
Any poverty reduction strategy built around a bottomless well of human altruism for people half way around the world… well, can we even pretend not to know how that’s going to turn out?
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Ryan, I believe we are altruistic when we believe it will work. Real altruism, in my opinion,is the kind established by people like Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, who helps the world’s poorest start businesses of their own with tiny loans. He is also generous with his courtesy and interest. Here’s a link about him. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vickie-karp/third-screen-can-banks-en_b_188681.html
Right up front I like Kristof and I like his work. And frankly Ryan I’m a little confused at your take on his article. Kristof isn’t chiding the G8 for not giving enough, he’s chiding them (some members) for not giving what they promised they would but have no problem from assuming the glory such promises garner. Nor do I understand the either-or aspects of your piece regarding how can you help your brother’s kid go to school while children die in Africa. I didn’t get that all for Nick’s piece and am puzzled how you did. Nor do I see anything that in the piece that justifies your hinting of Kristof clinging to some heady sense of moral superiority (your opening sentence), it’s certainly not born out by what’s in his op-ed today.
Group-beneficial altruism makes a lot of sense, Ryan, for it still benefits humans. But why do humans preserve other species? Even when those species offer us no benefit? Condors, say. I think that’s the burning question and cutting edge of altruism.
I’m not sure I exactly believe in altruism. I knew a WWII hero who said that he faced the machine gun nest because he wouldn’t be able to face his buddies if he hadn’t. Even Jesus, dying for an intangible, prays that his moral obligation pass from him. In the end, I think altruism is a matter of an individual’s concern for their own self-worth. Mere guilt? That would be the part that makes “altruism” offensive. More like still getting something for something. And that should be familiar territory for marketeers.
Still, it’s all kinda useless unless people believe in Spirit, in holiness, in some form. That tigers and condors are God’s living body, Gaia, for example. Or that the Constitution is a sacred work of rationalism, as another.
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