Past the Whirlpool of Selfishness

...she asks her altruists, how would we proceed...

...or spintual ones like eternal life She further raises objections to the proposition that altruism is a "luxury item" purchased once the needs of self and family have been met, and to additional hypotheses as well Then, attacking the cost-benefit calculations she believes are the foundation of economics and rational choice theory, Monroe holds that when rescuers nsked themselves "The costs were simply never relevant to [then ] efforts to save lives " Economics, therefore, "can continue to help us understand only the behavior of rational actors," but not the behavior of heroes or rescuers Monroe's evidence in support of this claim, however, is too thin, it is based on interviews with 25 people, 10 of whom she classifies as pure altruists A different picture emerges from the more voluminous evidence of Samuel P and Pearl M Oliner in their monumental 1988 book The Altruistic Personality...

...Past the Whirlpool of Selfishness The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a Common Humanity By Kristen Renwick Monroe Princeton 292 pp $29 95 Reviewed by Michael Collins Contributor 'Parnassus, The World and I In her adventitious new book Kristen Renwick Monroe, a University of California at Irvine political scientist, takes mainstream economics psychology and evolutionary biology to task for assuming self-interest is the key to human behavior To show that axiom's limits, the author interviews and scrutinizes a spectrum of personality types—ranging from entrepreneurs she presents as the classic rational actors of the going theories, to philanthropists who share their good fortune without risking it, to "heroes" (so named by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission), to "pure altruists' epitomized by their having saved the lives of lews in Nazi Europe The advantage of this "continuum,' we are told, is that it "allows us to view self-interest and altruism as the two poles between which human behavior oscillates, rather than as separate, distinct and inversely related phenomena Monroe undermines her case, though, by portraying her pure altruists as always benevolent, never oscillating But then, impurities are hard to find in her rescuers One, referred to as Irene, hid Jews in the home of her Nazi employer, became his mistress to secure their protection once he discovered them, and left the Catholic Church after she confessed everything and was advised to turn them in She never wavers not even when a family of rescuers is executed before her eyes The distinguishing feature of such people Monroe writes is that they literally see themselves as being bound to all mankind " Another, whom she refers to as Tony, tells her the world's people are like "the cells in our body They are individual, they each strive for their own little survival Yet they also will sacri-fice themselves at times for the whole " By contrast Monroe's representative entiepreneui, a self-made millionaire she calls Billy, draws "strong distinctions between [relatives] and the rest of the world " He thereby provides evidence for the "kin selection" notion of altruism put forward by a number of evolutionary biologists The evolutionary logic at work in family men like Billy, according to these biologists, rightly reckons that loyalty to blood raises the odds one's genes will thnve To capture the many philosophical shifts she finds on the road from Billy to Irene and Tony, Monroe proposes that a person's perspective on the world and his place in it dictates the behavior he considers normal and, not incidentally, what he will or will not do for others Thus even when taking the gravest possible risks, the strong altruists she interviews see their actions as not at all unusual This indifference to personal safety in the face of another's need is crucial to Monroe's argument Rescuers, she stresses, did not stop to weigh costs and benefits before sheltering Jews, they put their lives on the line as easily as one might say, "Come in' Turning to previous explanations of altruism, Monroe devotes chapters to so-ciocultural and economic approaches, and to theones derived from psychology and evolutionary biology The close fit of Billy's behavior with the kin selection reading of altruism, and the fact that rational choice theory—the field the author appears most eager to modify—applies economic ideas to politics, make her treatment of biology and the dismal science of special interest Against the ai gument of some biologists and economists that altruists expect compensation of some sort—in effect, make investments when they help others—Monroe cites her rescuers, who did not anticipate material rewards, future favors, praise for their good deeds, psychic benefits such as the alleviation of guilt...

...We can start by pondering that question...

...Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe Drawing on interviews with 406 rescuers, 150 Holocaust survivors and 126 bystanders, the Olm-ers are able to identify distinct types of rescuers And the group they place in the majority (52 per cent) is not utterly divorced from cost-benefit considerations Its members plunged into rescue activities under the influence of norms affirmed by their church, their resistance cell, or some other reference group" they feared to disappoint One man begins his rescue activities at the request of a self-centered black marketer brother-in-law who is afraid his name will come up if his Jewish clients are arrested In another example, a network of Dutch rescuers hiding several Jews pays an "unusual bribe' after one of their charges is captured through her own error Because she has information about the entire operation, they actually consider killing her But a policeman offers to arrange her escape if shelter is provided for him and his family In such cases, costs, benefits, kin based altruism, self-interest, and plain bargaining come into play So do "shadow pnces," measured in risk None of this makes the eventual altruistic acts any less impressive Rather, it implies that even in the worst of times there is a supply and demand aspect to altruism—a market for good deeds Altruistic acts, in fact,can be exchanged between species, biologist Robert L Tnvers has shown Moreover, as Nobel laureate Gary Becker's "rotten kid" theorem suggests, self-interest and altruism can work together, somewhat like opposite charges m an atom Discussing Becker's efforts to apply his economic ideas to evolutionary biology, Monroe concludes that what he is really talking about is "strategic altruism or enlightened self-interest" But in the 1976 work she mentions, Becker is careful to distinguish his concept of altruism from one expounded by the influential sociobiologist E O Wilson In a footnote, Becker calls Wilson's version of altruism a simulation of the virtue, since under it "a person helps others in the expectation or hope that he will be helped by them in the future " Monroe incorrectly concludes that Becker is agreeing with Wilson Becker's formulation of altruism may seem like mere glorified self-interest because he builds it around the idea of budget constraints—the inescapable reality of scarce resources and the consequent necessity for rationing, which is to say rational, behavior The purest of altruists can deliver only as many people as his or her ingenuity and power will allow Monroe backtracks toward the end of her book, admitting that the universalist "heart of altruism" may be "activated by many different factors, from genetic coding and religious teachings to group or kmship ties and psychic utility" Yet the fact that a state of complete benevolence, magnificent as it may be, was probably not most rescuers' prime mover, indicates it is not only rare but insufficiently inclusive Few can manage it Becker and the Ohners demonstrate that societies must—and can—work with less The spotlight Monroe places on the "heart," though, does raise the question of the ultimate source of altruism Psychologist Ian Vine has speculated that it comes in the "we-cognition" of infants at the mother's breast The evolutionary biologists Monroe discusses offer explanations that include kin selection and "group selection " The former does not account for Tony-like umversahsm which, even m a sample as small as Monroe's, is startling The group selection thesis Monroe discusses maintains that natural selection preserves altruism because groups with benevolent types outcompete those without them Again, the Tonys who transcend local allegiances and are above the battle for social approval seem beyond the reach of this model Though her find-ings do not stand up across the Olmers' sample, the existence of just one pure altruist raises questions about the particular group selection arguments Monroe takes on But she creates difficulties for herself by pressing her point too far Her rejection of some biologists' suggestions that the phenomena of "clusters" ("altruism by imitation") or "networks" (altruism as a way of paying social membership dues) might have improved the trait's chances in the course of human history runs afoul of both the sort of do-gooders found to be in the majority by the Ohners, and those purer types the Olmers show to be driven by internalized humanistic norms or by a more personal "principle of care " Monroe's own rescuers mostly "had to depend on neighbors or friends turning a blind eye" to then activities, and on informal networks that helped with logistics Its lapses aside...

...The Heart of Altruism is an important achievement, for it sketches a partial loute past the whirlpool of selfishness "If we wanted to have more people like you in the world...