Selfishness
and Altruism
by Zhahai
Stewart
Musings
of a Meme Gardener #4, March 1995
A "meme" is an idea which
can be passed from person to person, the basic unit of
cultural transmission. Memes are often analogized to
genes, as self replicating information patterns; or to
viruses, organic or computer, which prosper by
infecting new hosts with copies of themselves. The
term was invented by Richard Dawkins in his book The
Selfish Gene. This column is broad ranging, but will
usually weave in some concept of memes and conscious
living rather than being a passive host.
One of the insights not rarely
associated with new converts to individualistic
political philosophies, such as Libertarians,
Objectivists and some anarchists, is that everybody is
doing what they do, ultimately, for their own benefit.
In some cases this can be a pretty direct sham, such as
supposed philanthropy which is really an attempt to buy
something on a calculated basis of getting at least a
dollar's gain for a dollar spent, whether for public
relations, a tax shelter, or entry into a social class.
Perhaps more often, the personal gain is in feeling good
about oneself, or earning the esteem of others; this
might be said even of Mother Teresa (to use a modern
icon). In any case, such people will say, behind the
giving is the goal of making the giver feel good, in
some manner, rather than true selflessness.
From this, some conclude that all
altruism is false, and everybody is really selfish - so
it is more honest as well as effective to just throw
away the pretty packaging and directly go for pure
unabashed selfishness. Greed is good, people of this
persuasion say. Political, social, and economic
philosophies have been built on this concept (or meme).
This convenient rationalization misses
a few key points, however. One is that altruism and
selfishness form a spectrum, not a binary choice. Some
people are relatively more selfish, some are relatively
more generous or altruistic. We all know people with
these characteristics, and this real difference can't be
swept under the rug by a rhetorical sleight of hand.
If we posit that at some level
everybody seeks self benefit in their actions, and yet
observe that some people seem more "selfish"
than others, how do we explain this difference? The
basic answer is that most people are not only trying to
benefit themselves as isolated individuals - they also
often wish to benefit some group of others. Humans are a
very social species, and individuals who stay isolated
from everybody else for long periods are rare. In fact,
deprivation of contact is often used as punishment,
almost a psychological torture, of prisoners.
So most people have an underlying
desire that their actions benefit an "us", not
just a "me". One of the most important
questions is: how broadly or narrowly do they conceive
of "us". At one extreme is the extremely
selfish person (and the sociopath) who really does
define "us" as simply themselves, period. Such
people exist, but on average tend not to function well.
Most people tend to include at least
their families, however. This level of broadening of
"us" is supported even by simple genetic
biology, as parents feed and protect their young, and a
parent bird may even take some risks to draw a predator
away from their nest. Many scientists have pointed out
that these behaviors make sense if you recognize that
the basic "atoms" of genetic evolution are
genes, not individual organisms. From this viewpoint, an
individual organism is a type of collaborative
reproduction machine for a team of genes (whatever set
that individual has). Each gene is a replicator, an
information pattern which has evolved towards most
efficiently making more copies of itself in the world.
Genes don't have conscious intent, of course, but the
process of competition for survival means those which
don't produce enough copies of themselves have tended to
die out long ago, so we humans can sometimes fall into
saying that genes "try" to duplicate
themselves, or similar projections of our own context.
(These dynamics are well covered in Richard Dawkins'
books, starting with "The Selfish Gene").
Humans have a pronounced tendency to
define "us" even more broadly, however. We
have since earliest times apparently formed into clans
and tribes, and have sometimes worked to preserve and
support this larger group. In the last few thousand
years, there has been some tendency to form into ever
larger political groups - city-states, empires, nations,
and now international organizations. While these broader
groups do not usually provide the same immediacy and
depth of identification as the family, say, they
nevertheless do have enormous power in the psyches of
individuals. This is well demonstrated by the number of
people who have gone to their deaths to defend their
country, and the positive association most people have
with patriotism. Anything people will deliberately die
for (or voluntarily take great risks of dying for) must
have quite a bit of "us" identification, to
override simple self preservation. (It has to be
mentioned that many, perhaps most, casualties of the
conflict between large political units are involuntary;
nevertheless there are millions who go forth to battle
with pride and determination to benefit their nation in
battle).
It would seem that it is memes, not
genes, that would impel a person to travel to distant
lands to fight people they've never seen on behalf of a
nation of hundreds of millions of people they've never
met - especially since the "enemy" are people
too, who have the vast majority of their genetics in
common - as compared to other species. Once we start
identifying with very large groups, genes alone become
especially inadequate to explain our concepts of
"us" and "them".
There would seem to be a slowly
growing conceptualization of "us" to include
all humans, the "family of man" around the
globe. This is not a new idea, and roots can be found in
many cultures, but with the knitting of the world
economy, communications, and travel this meme may be
spreading faster than ever today. One common icon of
this has been the view of Earth from space, a powerful
image never before seen. That doesn't mean the global
"us" meme is uncontested - nationalism and
tribalism are still very strong, and are currently very
much in reaction against this "globalism".
After all, memes are replicators too, and compete to
insure the greatest number of copies of themselves, and
nationalism memes are no exception. The trend I suggest
is a slow one, which takes not years but generations to
gain major ground, represented by more and more human
"hosts" being "infected" with the
concept (meme) that we are all one "us".
One place the resistance to this meme
particularly comes out is the pattern of "ethnic
conflicts" which comprise much of the bloodshed in
the world today. The US has a history of ethnic conflict
too, though by world standards it is relatively peaceful
on that front today. On the other hand, today there are
"militias" forming around the US with the idea
that the United Nations will soon send vast hordes of
troops into the US to take over and only these
tribal-level armed "us" groups can fight back.
This is a pretty direct counter-attack from a meme which
has a narrower of "us" and is threatened by
broader conceptualizations. These groups seem to have an
immediate affinity with violence and bloodshed.
The general meme of dividing humans
into "us" versus "them" is indeed a
very strong one, and I don't foresee it disappearing in
any foreseeable future; after all, it has some survival
value in the short to medium run. However, the existence
of awesome weapons of war and terrorism whose technology
is becoming more and more accessible, and the fragility
and interdependence of the systems on which we today
base our existence, would argue that violently
conflicting narrow definitions of "us" versus
"them" do not have as much survival value for
getting through the twenty-first century as they once
did. Destruction is becoming much easier than
construction. A few people, with a few hundred dollars
worth of fertilizer and diesel fuel, can destroy scores
of lives, millions of dollars of property, and the
security of a whole nation. Small, culturally isolated
groups can produce and release deadly poisons that could
kill thousands. That's a lot of leverage brought on by
our technology, something which was a lot harder in the
days of swords and bows. It's going to be very hard to
prevent these outbreaks of violence by purely technical
means. In the longer run, our primary hope may be that
most humans become infected with a broader
"us" meme, one that cannot dismiss other
people's dead babies as a minor matter compared to the
benefit a bombing produces produces for a narrowly
defined "us".
We humans are also beginning to be
more infected with memes about still larger
conceptualizations of "us", which include
other species than ours. This is of course more of a
resurgence of a meme which many earlier cultures already
had, but it is nevertheless an important occurrence as
it makes its way into a technological global culture (or
metaculture, as discussed in a previous
column). We have long considered some animals to be
property, and thus protected from damage by non-owners
by our memes about that. It's quite a revolutionary
concept to be thinking about the "rights" of
wildlife to a healthy existence. I don't expect this
level of broadening of "us" to ever be quite
as strongly held as our identification with our own
species. For example, we aren't very likely to consider
it acceptable for humans to be killed for food by other
predators, so this newest (and oldest) expansion of
"us" identification will probably always be
somewhat fuzzy. However, it can nevertheless be
important, in that it can affect our actions in dealing
with the rest of our planet, hopefully in ways that
nurture life rather than sacrifice it for narrow
concepts of "progress". There is real power of
transformation behind the Pagan chant of "Fur and
feathers and scales and skin, different without but the
same within".
One key factor in this broadening of
identification to more than humans is the meme of
"ecology", by which I mean the idea that we
are all connected in a web which is beyond our full
comprehension, and that we cannot simply remove one
piece without ripples spreading throughout our
environment. That is, it can seem survival-positive not
to blindly tamper with the natural world or with other
species. Interconnection with mutual positive benefit is
a key component to broadening an "us"
definition meme - we expand best when we can see or feel
that it's in our own best interest, albeit indirectly,
to open our minds and hearts to a larger portion of the
universe around us. Unwillingness to accept or perceive
indirect benefits is one element of selfishness.
Can broadening of "us", or
narrowing of "them", go too far? Undoubtedly
so; as with so many things, a proper balance is the goal
-- and getting too far ahead of the curve can sometimes
be dangerous. But for the foreseeable future, the
overall healthy survival of the Earth and her creatures
seems to be generally associated with Homo Technologicus
either disappearing, or becoming more widely infected
with broader definitions of "us".
And to bring things back to the
beginning, we now have a framework in which to
understand selfishness and altruism. The true altruist
consists of somebody with a relatively broad implicit
definition of the "us" to be benefited by
one's actions and a perception of indirect benefits.
This can be considered "enlightened self
interest" rather than simple reflexive
self-seeking. I hope the perspective of this column will
be helpful as you are choosing among the memes which
seek a place in your own gardens.
Author: Zhahai
Stewart <mailto:garden@hisys.com>
Other
Columns at: <http://rainbow.rmii.com/~hisys/garden
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