An anthropology for Christmas:

...In bare-bones abstract, it says that self-interest matters greatly but doesn't begin to account for all human behavior...

...I suspect that proclaiming self-interest as the dominant or only motivator of human behavior serves the self-interest of the proclaimers...

...and for darker purposes as well...

...call it disin-terestedness, agape, caritas, love...

...Amitai Etzioni argues, more charitably, that while the neoclassical paradigm has numerous and fierce critics, it has few robust rivals as theory: Not Communism, not "socialism with a human face," not the theories of the Greens...

...we are moved by "normative/affective" factors as well as "rational/ empirical" considerations...

...viz., our grudging response to AIDS victims, the homeless, drug addicts, destitute nations trapped in debt...

...It says that human beings can perceive the true, the good, the beautiful in objects or persons outside themselves, and are drawn to them...

...rather more mysterious, to my mind, than the existence of evil...

...That has the confident ring of an assumption turned into a dogma...

...founding editor of the National Catholic Reporter, is a writer, editor and consultant...

...The trouble is, this theory with holes in it, which runs contrary to instinct, common sense, our experience, and (for many) our ideals, is still alive and operational...

...The rescuers were too few, but numerous enough to redefine our species...

...Goodness, along with imitations and approximations of goodness, is particularly rife at Christmas...

...The Wealth of Nations, which The Moral Dimension would displace, was not merely the Big Book of 1776...

...Outside economics, it helps explain why, in the Me Decade, many therapists automatically equate mental health with self-seeking and try to win other-serving clients from their aberration...

...AN ANTHROPOLOGY FOR CHRISTMAS IN WHICH IS EXPLAINED THE MYSTERY OF GOODNESS ROBERT G. HOYT I know a woman-let's call her Helen-who will start planning for Christmas 1989 on December 25,1988...

...But while Etzioni does a lot to put self-interest in its place, for me he does little if anything to explain or advance its opposite...

...and we don't dwell in the world as atomistic individuals but rather as members of collectivities in a setting of code and culture...

...It was just an incredibly Good thing to do...

...that's how you get your kicks...

...Some of this, of course, is the result of cultural hangover...

...Gifts are bait, says a proverb in several languages: they come with hooks attached...

...Now, what explains our power to love and our willingness to give...

...because gift is voluntary, and of all voluntary acts the object is to every man his own good...

...Given some access to our own inner maze, we know that sometimes (often...

...you may be a Helen yourself (though if you're as insightful about gift-giving as my Helen, you're a wonder...

...Not believing in goodness, Thomas Hobbes didn't have to explain it...

...Thomas Hobbes nailed it down still tighter: "No man giveth, but with intention of good to himself...

...We honor her, as Samuel and Pearl Oliner honor those Gentiles who risked their everything to rescue Jews in Nazi Europe (The Altruistic Personality [Free Press...

...This capacity can be strengthened or distorted or abandoned, but we all have it as a birthright, and it makes us able to love things and other people for their own sake, not for what we get out of them-sometimes, or usually, or often...

...If enough of them are persuaded, the dust jacket blurbs ("a seminal work," "may be the most important book of the year") will turn out to be faint praise...

...Applied more broadly, even if imperfectly, Christmas as paradigm would change the odds for homeless people, the sick and friendless, debtor nations, fractured families....We should maybe give it another try.give it another try...

...And, in fact, questioning the doctrine isn't easy...

...In electoral politics, the real power of the paradigm is multiplied by a presumption that it is too pervasive, too closely identified with the "American way," the "free market," and with "democratic capitalism" as the antithesis of demonic Communism, to be challenged: It was late in the 1988 campaign before Michael Dukakis was willing to come across as a true nonbeliever...

...And you can't beat somethin' with nothin...

...To borrow from Etzioni's own final-sentence summation, the aim of "socio-economics," or the "I/We paradigm," is to replace a theory and morality "entirely focused on self" with one that enfolds the pursuit of self-interest within "the broader context of human nature, society, and ultimate values...

...John Steinbeck said a gift is a bribe with bells...

...And acts like theirs are only particularly vivid instances of behaviors that could not happen in the world of Thomas Hobbes but do take place in ours...

...Some gifts do indeed come from the heart...

...But "often" or "usually" won't do...

...The question before the house this Christmas is: Why do some people behave this way...

...When gifts reflect the givers' insight into tastes and preferences not their own, something is at work that is not self- but other-oriented...

...usually...

...For neoclassical thinkers in the social sciences, it is, indeed, a tenaciously held canon of faith, which together with other doctrinal presuppositions about human behavior offers an elegantly simple and "unsentimental" explanation of how the world really works, one that can be defended against all comers...

...Experimental evidence is hard to come by, but a hypothesis exists: We are able to perpetrate goodness for the same reason we can perceive the beauty of sunsets and butterflies: We are made in the image of God...

...in some part, or in large part, or totally...

...One reason I like this theory is that it explains to my satisfaction the behavior of people like Helen...

...There is a theory around, not usually discussed in economics texts, that does better...

...But most of us, whether Tories, Whigs, or radicals, know that altruism is real...

...The Giver did not weigh the investment to be made against the utility to be gained...

...And next Christmas, like this Christmas, she will bring much pleasure to many people...

...the pure neoclassical faith posits that human beings are not capable of disinterested action: We are all specifications of the genus homo economi-cus, that radical individualist never distracted from the rational pursuit of personal interest by the temptations of love, honor, empathy, or conscience...

...At some later point she will begin making lists...

...They don't project goodness onto reality but discover it...

...Commonweal, July 18, p. 388...

...We don't think she is irrational but suprarational...

...The first Christmas gift, the Incarnation, was neither bait nor bribe...

...for example, the lepers of Molokai...

...we offer gifts for less than noble motives: to assuage guilt, to look generous, curry favor, observe a ritual, sell a bill of goods, buy attention or affection, earn a return gift, keep peace in the family...

...But reflection is in order...

...Neither does he say which values are "ultimate," or where they came from...

...socio-economics...

...Etzioni, a sort of polymath among social scientists, devotes his latest book, The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics (Free Press), to filling the theory gap through the creation of a new, non-Marxist, "deontological" paradigm, the "I &We" paradigm, a.k.a...

...It was not the product of cost/benefit analysis...

...Even if doing good for others doesn't pay off in dollars or status or admiration or gratitude, maybe it makes you feel good: That's your secret, selfish "utility...

...It helps account for much of the hard-nosed resistance to public policies based on equity or compassion...

...If you sacrifice for others at the cost of suffering to yourself, it's because you're a masochist...

...There may be Neoclas-sicals of the Strict Observance-practicing curmudgeons, unconverted Scrooges-who actually conform their lives and all their thoughts to the theory...

...As anthropology, this explanation compares well with the axioms of neoclassical theory...

...I wish him luck with his peers...

...It's older, simpler, more encompassing of reality, and far more elegant...

...Without it, as Amitai Etzioni points out, we cannot explain the behavior of a mother who dashes into a burning building to try, against the odds and at great risk, to rescue her child...

...But there it is around us...

...In the hubbub of gift presentation, unwrapping, trying on, showing glee, giving thanks, she will be unobtrusively on the alert, observing givers and getters for clues about their tastes, unmet needs, unsatisfied yens...

...You may know other Helens...

...If the giving gives pleasure to the giver, the pleasure is different in category from the pleasure of satisfying self...

...It set an example which, when followed, may not appear to make for sound economics but works out well from the perspective of people who are left out of other systems...

...as the year wears on she will begin eyeing store windows and paging through catalogues...

...No society or polity perfectly embodies any theory, but the neoclassical "paradigm" is powerfully influential in ours...

...But does anyone really believe this...

...Confronted with examples of seemingly generous acts, even deeds of hidden heroism, neo-classicists are adept at exposing the roots of such acts in self-interest...

...Why is it so powerful...

...even people who will act with extraordinary generosity this month may not reflect on how appropriate it is to act this way in this season...