Human inclinations are not primarily selfish:
kindness and altruism have been evolutionarily valued in mates, and even the
youngest children often try to be helpful.
Did selfishness —
or sharing — drive human evolution? Evolutionary theorists have traditionally
focused on competition and the ruthlessness of natural selection, but often
they have failed to consider a critical fact: that humans could not have
survived in nature without the charity and social reciprocity of a group.
Evolutionary
anthropologist Eric Michael Johnson explored the question against the backdrop
of two cultural events in 1957 — the consequences of the rogue, selfish
activities of a pygmy hunter in a Congo forest, who used the group’s collective
hunting efforts to benefit only himself, and in New York City, the publication
of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, whose protagonist champions the
author’s notion that human nature is fundamentally selfish and that each man
“exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his
highest moral purpose.”
Atlas Shrugged counts many politicians as admirers, perhaps
most notably Republican vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, who cites the
book as one of his main inspirations for entering politics and is known to give
Rand’s books frequently to his interns. So, does Rand’s theory comport with
current evolutionary theory? The data is not exactly kind to her position. For
example, Johnson describes an anthropologist’s account of the pygmy tribesman,
Cephu, in the Congo who lived by the Randian ideal that selfishness is the
highest morality. Cephu was part of the Mbuti tribe for whom “hunts were
collective efforts in which each hunter’s success belonged to everybody else,”
Johnson writes, detailing how the tribe “employed long nets of twined liana
bark to catch their prey, sometimes stretching the nets for 300 feet. Once the
nets were hung, women and children began shouting, yelling, and beating the
ground to frighten animals toward the trap.”
It was a group
effort, for most:
But one man, a
rugged individualist named Cephu, had other ideas. When no one was looking,
Cephu slipped away to set up his own net in front of the others. Soon caught in
this blatant attempt to steal meat, Cephu was brought in front of the whole
tribe:
At an impromptu
trial, Cephu defended himself with arguments for individual initiative and
personal responsibility. “He felt he deserved a better place in the line of
nets,” [the anthropologist Colin] Turnbull wrote. “After all, was he not an
important man, a chief, in fact, of his own band?” But if that were the case,
replied a respected member of the camp, Cephu should leave and never return.
The Mbuti have no chiefs, they are a society of equals in which redistribution
governs everyone’s livelihood. The rest of the camp sat in silent agreement. Faced
with banishment, a punishment nearly equivalent to a death sentence, Cephu
relented. He apologized, handed over his meat to the tribe and then,
essentially, was sent to bed without dinner. As Johnson explains, selfishness
is considered far from a virtue in such tribal groups, which still live in ways
similar to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Indeed, every such group ever studied
has been found to idealize altruism and punish selfishness, in everything from
their mythologies to their mating practices.
Although Rand
accepted that early human life was a collective effort, she failed to realize
how this shaped our brains. In most societies, for example, a man like Cephu
would be seen as the opposite of a good catch for a woman wanting a partner. A
good mate — and one whose genes were likely selected for and passed on in our
earliest evolutionary history — would have been a cooperative hunter, one who
didn’t put his own goals ahead of those of the tribe. He would have been
altruistic in battle too, particularly when warring with other groups. A
selfish soldier, after all, is known as a coward, not a hero.
The evidence for
altruism as a critical part of human nature isn’t limited to anthropology. Studies
of 18-month-old toddlers show that they will almost always try to help an adult
who is visibly struggling with a task, without being asked to do so: if the
adult is reaching for something, the toddler will try to hand it to them, or if
they see an adult drop something accidentally, they will pick it up. However,
if the same adult forcefully throws something to the ground, toddlers won’t try
to retrieve it: they understand that the action was deliberate and that the
object is unwanted. These very young children will even assist (or refrain from
helping) with a book-stacking task depending on what they perceive to be the
adult’s intention. If the adult clumsily knocks the last book off the top of
the stack, the toddler will try to put it back; if the adult deliberately takes
the last book off, however, toddlers won’t intervene. Even before kids are
taught to chip in — perhaps especially before they are told it’s an obligation
— children are less selfish than often presumed.
Another study found
that 3- to 5-year-olds tend to give a greater share of a reward (stickers, in
this case) to a partner who has done more work on a task — again, without being
asked — even if it means they get to keep less for themselves. And those cries
of “That’s not fair!” that plague sibling relationships: they’re not only
selfish; they reflect children’s apparently innate desire for equity.
Fundamental
tendencies toward altruism aren’t only seen in children, either. Worldwide, the
aftermath of natural disasters are typically characterized by heroism and a
sharing of resources — within the affected community and in others farther way
— not selfish panics. During the terrorist attacks of 9/11, for example, there
were no accounts of people being trampled rushing out of the World Trade Center
towers; rather, those who needed assistance descending were cared for, and calm
mainly prevailed. The same occurred after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear
meltdown in Japan in 2011. The cases in which people stampede or look out only
for themselves tend to be rare and involve very specific circumstances that
mitigate against helpfulness.
Moreover, our
stress systems themselves seem to be designed to connect us to others. They
calm down when we are feeling close to people we care about — whether related
to us or not — and spike during isolation and loneliness. Even short periods of
solitary confinement can derange the mind and damage the body because of the
stress they create. And having no social support can be as destructive to
health as cigarette smoking. Of course, none of this is to say that humans are
never selfish or that we don’t have a grasping, greedy part of our nature. But
to claim, as Rand does, that “altruistic morality” is a “disease” is to
misrepresent reality.
Healthland
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