February 24, 2003

• Altruism

  
  

  Have you ever done anything, performed any action on the behalf of another person for which you had no expectation of benefit to yourself?  That's the definition of altruism, unselfish regard for the welfare of (an) other. 

  
  

  Tucker was born on a Monday.  I brought him home from the hospital on Wednesday.  On Saturday, my parents who'd stayed with us for a month prior to the birth left Minnesota for Arkansas.  On Sunday, Tim left for a meeting in Louisville, Kentucky.  He was gone for a week.  His return flight landed sometime in the evening on Friday, and his next flight out was midafternoon on Sunday.  This pattern continued for the next two years. 

  
  

  I had sole care of an infant and a two year old.  On the Saturdays that Tim was home, we washed his clothes, repacked his cases, and did errands.  On Sunday mornings, we faithfully attended church before dropping him back at the airport.  Many, many Sunday afternoons, Michael, Tucker and I cried all the way back to our house.  I was tired.  Michael missed his Daddy.  Tucker has a policy that no one ever outcries him for any reason under any circumstances. 

  
  

  We'd have a quiet evening.  I'd put the kids to bed.  And approximately 32.7 minutes after my head hit the pillow.  Tucker would wake up.  Hungry.  There was no one else around who could get up and feed that baby.  There was no one else around who would hear if I didn't feed him.  Why not just roll over and put in the ear plugs?  I think I went for weeks on end without any REM sleep at all, surely it would have been morally acceptable to judge that the baby's need for milk was less than my own need for rest at that point.  Empirically speaking, the data were clear.  One exhausted adult with care of two small children has an obligation to guard her own health and well-being.  But, in two years, I can honestly say that baby never once cried that I didn't go to him.  I may have gone slowly, with stiff joints and bleary eyes.  But, I went.

  
  

  E O Wilson, whom I mentioned in my blog yesterday, argues that all behavior is selfish.  Period.  He says that anyone who would behave as I did is motivated by selfish desire to be thought of as a good mother, or fear that I would be thought a bad mother if I let the baby "cry it out."  He says of Mother Teresa that her belief in Christ and immortality constituted a selfish desire for reward that motivated her work among the poor in the gutters of Calcutta.  Wilson and his colleagues in the discipline of evolutionary psychology have written books, given lectures, and made the circuit of NPR and other media who cater to the intellectual among us.  They insist that evolution forces the conclusion that human beings are incapable of unselfish behavior.

  
  

  Yesterday, it was suggested that I had stacked the deck with the various representatives of religious/spiritual life that I mentioned in my blog.  Those people are obviously on a different plane than the rest of us average run of the mill kind of people, it's unfair to compare Mother Teresa to the woman in the grocery store with her children.  But, I didn't pick those examples at random.  Those are the examples that Wilson used to make his point.  In essence, his argument is this, if even Mother Teresa can be shown to have selfish motivations for her behavior, then how much more so can it be assumed that average people are also motivated selfishly.

  
  

  My getting up in the night with Tucker isn't anything I'd hold up as an example of spiritual behavior.  But, I defy Mr Wilson to prove that my motivation was selfish.  The equation was very simple "baby's need = Mom's response".  If he can show me one thing that I got out of that beneficial to myself, I'll eat my monitor.  Because I'm certain beyond anything else in this world that I can imagine that he can't.  When you get to the point that you are beyond exhaustion, beyond thinking, beyond even feeling one thing or another that you can recognize as an emotion, then everything Mr Wilson discusses as potential motivation is burned way.  It's just "baby's need = Mom's response."

  
  

  Mother Teresa in her autobiography describes something very similar in her response to the poor.   Wilson's premise requires that she be detached enough from her behavior to think it through.  Help for poor = reward in Heaven.  But, when you read her words and the testimony of the people who worked with her and benefitted from her labors, there is no detachment.  Neither Mother Teresa herself nor the people around her assume that there is a connection between her labor and any presumed reward.

  
  

  Yesterday, I spoke in general terms as Mr. Wilson does, lumping all spritual behavior under the single heading of religion.  Today, because Mr Wilson pointed to Christian Theology for the source of Mother Teresa's "seflish" motives, I want to zero in on a particular bit of Christian Theology that Mr. Wilson ignored in making his case.  Christians believe that a relationship with God is sufficient.  A person in relationship with God doesn't have to do anything to "earn" heaven.  Heaven is nothing more than the natural state of being for those who are in relationship.  It is as though Mr. Wilson argues that once Tim and I were married, we both had to continually earn through our efforts the hope of becoming married.  (If he argued that we worked for the continuance of our marriage, he might have a point, but that's not what he says.)

  
  

  E O Wilson is a brilliant man.  Many of the insights he presents are fascinating for consideration.  It was thrilling to me to read your comments yesterday, I only wish that men of Mr. Wilson's stature and persuasion were open to hearing your responses.  You see clearly what he does not.  There is more to life than appetite. 

  
  

  Oftentimes, our behavior may have multiple motivations.  Even that mixture if it contains the intuitive desire to meet a need, qualifies as an answer to Wilson's argument.  Or it may be that we act with no expectation of reward, but in fact we do receive unexpected recognition or tangible benefit as when some organization later offers a reward or honorarium to a person who's behavior meets specific guildeline.  The key element of Mr Wilson's argument is not whether a benefit appears later, but whether we had any reason to expect one at the time of the action. 

  
  

  I can think of other clear examples of altruism, such as when the small child offers his candy to another, not because he thinks he'll get anything from it, but because he has candy and his companion does not.  The classic example of altruism is the person who risks his life for a stranger.  What's the purest example from your own life of a time when you did something to promote the welfare of another person with no expectation of benefit to yourself.

  
  

     

  
  

  I must also thank Fugitive and Moniet for the graphic they posted on my site yesterday.  It's ... inspiring. 

  • 9:45 am
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