Human beings can genuinely take risks for others
Recently, while working on The Spiritual Brain, I had a chance to study “altruism,” a technical term for the quality that causes people to prefer others’ welfare to their own, even if the others are unknown strangers.
Much social science literature on altruism is not worth reading because it proceeds from a fundamentally wrong assumption: Concern for others is basically fake. People pretend to be concerned for others in order to gain an advantage, so that they can survive and leave offspring.
That is the view of “evolutionary psychology.” Don’t confuse evolutionary psychology with evolutionary biology. The latter is a serious science field, currently under fire because of problems with its major theory, Darwinian evolution. How that will turn out, who knows? But evolutionary psychology is not really science at all, so far as I can see. It is a collection of fairy tales, attempting to ground all human behaviour in the ways that early humans allegedly survived hundreds of thousands of years ago. But our long-ago ancestors left no written records, so no one really knows how they survived.
A rock on which evolutionary psychology founders is the apparently uniquely human quality of self-sacrifice or altruism, on behalf of unknown strangers. As science writer Mark Buchanan asks in a recent article in New Scientist, “In evolutionary terms it is a puzzle because any organism that helps others at its own expense stands at an evolutionary disadvantage. So if many people really are true altruists, as it seems, why haven’t greedier, self-seeking competitors wiped them out?”
Good question. On Tuesday, August 2, 2005, during a torrential downpour, an Air France airbus carrying 309 people overshot a runway at Pearson International Airport in Toronto and burst into flames. The governor-general of Canada issued her heartfelt condolences to the grieving survivors of the estimated 200 dead. In fact, as the rain and smoke subsided, it emerged that no one had died (though 43 people had suffered minor injuries). Why was that?
As it happens, the plane came to a halt near Highway 401, Ontario’s main artery. Canadian-born columnist Mark Steyn recounted in the British newspaper Telegraph that
Eyewitness accounts vary: some people are said to have panicked, others to have stayed calm. … passing motorists pulled off the road and hurried toward the burning jet to help any survivors. Of the eight emergency exits, two were deemed unsafe to use, and on a third and a fourth the slides didn’t work. None the less, in a chaotic situation, hundreds of strangers co-ordinated sufficiently to evacuate a small space through four exits in less than a couple of minutes before the Airbus was consumed by flames.
Many evacuated passengers were later picked up on the shoulder of the 401 and driven by strangers to Air France’s terminal.
So let’s see … passing strangers pulled off the road and ran toward the burning wreck, not away from it? Hundreds of unrelated people who would never see each other again cooperated to ensure that all got out in time? People offered rides to strangers from around the world, even though some of them might well have been terrorists who were responsible for the grounding of the plane?
Of course, one can always construct a plausible story set in prehistoric times to account for altruism as a self-seeking behavior. But surely it makes more sense to conclude that the Toronto strangers who took the risk of helping were not seeking any benefit, either for themselves or their descendants. In a recent edition of Scientific American Mind, psychologists Ernst Fehr and Suzanne Viola conclude, based on evidence such as this,
In an age of enlightenment and secularization, scientists such as Charles Darwin shocked contemporaries when they questioned the special status of human beings and attempted to classify them on a continuum with all other species. Humans were stripped of all that was godlike. Today biology is restoring to them something of that former exalted position. Our species is apparently the only one with genetic makeup that promotes selflessness and true altruistic behavior.
Christians, of course, accept that we can make genuine sacrifices to help others. Jesus assures us that “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:33, NIV) That is the true answer to Mark Buchanan’s question, even though it is a paradox. Indeed, from a Christian perspective, narrow self-interest is a shallow grave, and it is heartening to see how many of our fellow citizens have avoided falling into it.
This column first appeared in ChristianWeek, September 30, 2005.
Also:
Ottawa Citizen’s David Warren on anti-Christian rubbish taught in science class
Finnish school shooter – social Darwinism’s role
Scientists terrified that people don’t trust them?
The lazy paddlefish could have had hands, feet, but didn’t bother?
My name is Denyse O'Leary, born 1950, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. I have been a journalist all my life. I began to publish books in 2001. I live in Toronto, and I have two daughters and two granddaughters, as of 2008. You can reach me at oleary@sympatico.ca | More from Denyse O'Leary
Stumble It!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Evolutionary psychology stems from the premise that if physical properties of livings things derive from natural selection, then why not behavioral? Or, for that matter, why not morals, which are, after all, just codes of behavior? This applies at all levels from the individual psychology to the group (e.g, oh dear, Christians), even the species levels. That it appears to manifest as a series of Just-So stories is a function of the limitations with which the idea can be explained to people with little background in the field and the limitations of the understanding as a new idea is explored. There is a growing and solid structure of reasoning underlying these “stories” which suggests that it may finally represent a useful revolution in the mind sciences. Doubtless some will be discarded as in error while others will become better and better supported by the evidence.
Just because you think you’re motivated by higher ideals doesn’t mean that you actually are. To not make a serious investigation of the possibility is to choose ignorance and fear. The altruistic rock on which you perceive EvPsych to founder is, to the researchers involved, an exciting challenge. Should altruism prove to be an illusion in the eye of the beholder, then some moral structures will have to adjust, others will be strengthened by a more concrete understanding of why they should be accepted and followed.
Any armchair philosopher with half an education will be able to tell you that you can’t get an “ought” from an “is”. If altruism *is* explained by evolutionary drives, that still doesn’t say why you personally *ought* to throw down your life for your neighbor, but it might help you understand how you come to have the urge and give you an alternative way of looking at it. Do you see yourself as independent from, or part of the human race? To what extent is your behavior common to that of your fellow man and to what extent are you unique? These are not questions anyone can ever fully answer, but should never stop exploring. EvPsych is part of that, so is religion.
Science does not answer “why?” questions, it addresses the “how?”s. There is no reason why the “why” of altruism might not also be seen as a “gift from God” while science tells you how it works, all it takes is a little wisdom and an adjustment of point of view to incorporate new knowledge.
That altruistic behavior has a genetic payoff in no way detracts from the heroism of those who rescue others from burning airplanes. Indeed, if some of those heroes were aware of and even believed in the potential evolutionary underpinnings of their behavior and went ahead and did it anyway, or even felt that this meant they should throw themselves in with greater fervor, their heroism could well be thought of as all the greater and more worthy of praise.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:51 am
Psychology itself isn’t a true science. While it is grounded in the scientific method, it lacks one fundamental aspect of science – discarding of false notions. There are a dozen or so different “types” of psychology, and none of them are compatible. And none of them are ever considered obsolete. They all have their “true believers”. I’ve never met a person who was “cured” by a psychologist of any “flavor”, though I’ve met many who were impoverished by the bills.
And just for your info, I have the college credits to apply for my BS in psychology (from UAB, which has what is considered an excellent psych department). I’ve never bothered, and I never will.
November 15th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Squiggy,
There are many types of psychotherapy. Some have been proven to work, and others have not. As for research psychology, it adheres to the scientific method just as rigorously as physics, chemistry, and biology do; psychological theories are disproved and discarded all the time.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Here’s Wikipedia on “Meliorism”:
Wikipedia says Meliorism is an “idea in metaphysical thinking.”
But Meliorism may go beyond the realm of human ideation, and may even be a Principle of Nature.
Tipler and Barrow discussed Meliorism in their famous text, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle….
You can read more at this link.
Meliorism may suggest that there is a mechanism which moves the universe in the direction of ORDER, actively operating against the chaotic influences of Entropy and eventual Heat Death.
Human instances of self-sacrifice could be expressions of this universal Melioristic tendency.
November 16th, 2007 at 4:51 am
matt said,
Squiggy,
There are many types of psychotherapy. Some have been proven to work, and others have not.
I would very much like for you to point out a single instance of “psychotherapy” working.
And you can’t use psychiatric drugging as your evidence, as that is a stopgap measure. Though it can help alleviate symptoms, it doesn’t cure anything – you must keep taking the drugs or the symptoms return. Not that I’m against drugging paranoid schizos – it beats the alternative.
But my point is, psychology is for making money, and not for “curing” anyone. Hell, for Freud (the founder of this “science”) it was a way of making lots of money and having sex with his patients. The sex was a part of his “cure”. Get paid for boinking hot chicks – pretty good gig if you can get it.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Squiggy: EMDR works for bona fide sufferers of post traumatic stress disorder. Unfortunately, it also suffers from many of the common disorders of many forms of therapy, such as its highly restrictive approach to “qualification” (when I learned about it, you had to have gone to just the one institute somewhere in CA), a quasi-religious attitude in its practitioners, their tendency to think it can solve anyone’s ills, traumatic or otherwise, and an excessive loyalty inculcated in some patients (largely, I think, because it automatically validates victimhood upon entry into a program).
It’s all a bit cult like, but it does actually work in the right cases.
Also, Matt is entirely right about research psychology, it’s in the practice where the nonscience/nonsense creeps in.
November 17th, 2007 at 5:17 am
Also, Matt is entirely right about research psychology, it’s in the practice where the nonscience/nonsense creeps in.
JD, what good is something that doesn’t work? The research is great, the ending is (at best) a waste of time. I.e. – the intentions are good and the outcomes are bad. Sounds like pure Democrat philosophy in action.
P.S. you said It’s all a bit cult like, but it does actually work in the right cases. Whatever “EMDR” is, by definition, if it only exists in one location, and it’s “cultlike”, it’s definitely not science.
November 17th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
EMDR = Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (wikipedia).
Briefly, one recounts what one can of a traumatic experience while watching a light that moves from side to side. The more traumatic the memory, the better the results. That is, people who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder can have their symptoms ameliorated by the regimen. The effect seems to last too.
It doesn’t exist in one location, but there are (were?) a very limited number of places when one could get trained and then be permitted to practice using the name “EMDR”. By cultlike I mean that the practitioners I have encountered appear to be somewhat overly enthusiastic and it gets applied under circumstances which really don’t warrant it. It depends on what is meant by traumatic.
The practice of any therapy, including medicine is not science. Science is the process of establishing valid descriptions of natural phenomena through the process of generating and testing theories. Therapy of any kind is by definition individual instead of general and is all about treating a patient, preferably through tried and tested means, to improve their situation in life. Any given therapy is not guaranteed to work for everyone, but is considered valid if it does better than doing nothing. Therapy is by definition not science, but one uses the results of science to determine the validity of a therapy. If EMDR produces measurable improvements in the symptoms of PTSD sufferers, then it works.