Martian

I'm so bad for this. I've been meaning to reply here for a while and have not gotten to it. Apologies to those who've been waiting to hear from me on this subject.

Firstly, before I go any further, I think it's important to note that biology is not my area of expertise. I don't know much about it and what I do know is chiefly confined to the sphere of arthropods, which have always fascinated me for no adequately explained reason. Interestingly, the animals aside from humans that could most easily be said to be altruistic in nature are primarily arthropods; I'm thinking particularly of eusocial colonial insects, such as bees, ants and termites.

The discussion, as noted by Willravel, evolved in the chat as an off-shoot of some other socio-political discussion, in which I asserted that there is no such thing as altruism, except as an intellectual construct.

Altruism is defined as an unselfish concern or devotion to the welfare of others. It implies to me that the altruistic individual performs an action (or actions) that are devoid of personal gain. What's interesting about this is how it contrasts with criminal psychology, which teaches that there's nearly always a motive or benefit behind an individual's actions, even if it's not readily apparent. In other words, people very rarely do something for no reason at all.

Of course, this becomes easily obfuscated. An above example is the soldier who jumps on a grenade for his comrades. Such a person seemingly has nothing to gain and everything to lose from this action, yet chooses to undertake it anyway. I've no idea how common such a thing actually is, but there's certainly enough apocryphal accounts of such heroics that we can assume that it does at least happen. I think one would need to look more deeply at the soldier's motivations. Religious and military indoctrination are of course quite high on the list.

What's interesting about humanity is how we conflict with our own instincts. We've taken socialism and technology to an extreme where in some situations we counter our own instincts. On a warm day, for example, I still choose to leave the house fully clothed. I don't particularly need or want my clothes, except that it would be socially unacceptable for me to leave without them.

I think that if we move into other animals we begin to see some more clear-cut cases. My dictionary has "behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species" as an alternate definition for the word altruism, and that is pretty clear cut and again with eusocial insects it's very common.

I'm not particularly interested in discussing altruism in primates or arthropods if I'm honest, precisely because it is so clear cut. What particularly interests me is altruism within humanity. I argue that humans are almost entirely selfish and small minded and there has to be a real benefit in order to break out of that thinking. Perhaps it seems pessimistic to think that way, but it's important to note also that the gain behind an action does not need to be material. Sometimes it's spiritual or emotional instead, and that's equally valid. As a child I was taught to be kind to others. Such behaviour was positively reinforced, and now I continue to get a good feeling from being kind. It's not an instinctive thing by any means; on the other hand, instincts, while powerful, are not all-controlling.

Virtue is not it's own reward, except in cases of complex social conditioning.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame