Introduction
My dictionary defines “altruism” as “unselfish
concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.” I have always found it a slippery concept.
Quite recently I had a brush with
altruism that has caused me to ponder it afresh. This post describes this incident, provides
some quick background on how biologists deal with the concept, explores my
misgivings about the prevailing explanations, and—via another incident—tiptoes
into the murky realm of pseudo-karma. At
the end you’ll get to weigh in on an ethical quandary.
Incident
#1
I was bike riding with a pal in the
Berkeley hills the other evening, and we came upon another cyclist standing on
the side of the road with his bike. My
pal asked, “You got everything?” A
pause, and then the guy gave a tentative, Doppler-shifted response: “Uh, actually, no.” We stopped.
It’s an unwritten rule that if you ask “You
got everything?” you have to be willing to stop and help. (Riding on and calling back, “Sucks to be
you!” is simply not done.) The help you
provide is usually really straightforward:
putting a chain back on, showing a guy how to get his tire off,
etc. (One time I asked a guy, “Got
everything?” and he said, “Yeah,” but I stopped anyway. He was trying to remove his tire and tube
without removing his wheel. I was able
to fix his bike, but the guy’s tendency toward delusion is somebody else’s
problem.)
I don’t always ask if a stopped rider
needs help. Often, I have a limited
window of time to ride, and I’m not willing to be late getting back. Sure, it’s a bummer to be stranded on the
side of the road, but it’s a bigger bummer for my daughter to be waiting around
a park after soccer practice wondering where her dad is. Besides, the places I ride are well populated
with cyclists. Probably that stranded person
I ignore will get help from someone else.
That said, I offer help when I can. After all, I myself have been helped out a
number of times. I once broke my chain
on the Golden Gate Bridge and some anonymous cyclist pushed me for five miles, all
the way back to my San Francisco apartment.
Another time I broke a spoke about nine miles out, and, astonishingly, my
bike wouldn’t even roll. Within minutes
a friendly motorist picked me up and drove me all the way home.
Back to my recent episode: the guy announced, “I have a flat tire. I’m a total novice and don’t have a spare
tube or pump or anything.” He had a
brand-new, decent quality road bike. I
asked him if he’d hit a bump. He asked
why that mattered. “If you bottom out
the tire, you can get a pinch flat, which can’t be patched,” I explained. “I’m perfectly happy to patch your tube, but I’m
a lot less happy to give you my spare.”
By this time I had his wheel and tire off and was running my fingers
along the inside of the tire, checking for an embedded thorn or shard of glass.
The guy said he hadn’t hit anything. That boded well, but on the other hand I
wasn’t finding anything in the tire. My
pal was inspecting the tube but couldn’t get any air in it. “Uh-oh,” he said,
“looks like the valve.” The valve was separating
from the tube—probably due to being jerked sideways when the guy (or the shop)
pulled the pump chuck off. The tube was
toast. Thus my dilemma.
My friend was off the hook, because he
was riding sew-ups and didn’t have a spare tube. But I did:
a Vittoria Evo 55g. It’s about a
$12 tube, is light enough to be mailed with two stamps, and is virtually
seamless, and these things matter to a gearhead like me. Plus, its valve is 42mm long: exactly the right length for my slightly deep-dish
rim. (Other tubes have valves that are
either too short, making it hard to pump them up, or too long, which is an
aesthetic blight: the valve looks
aroused, almost lewd.) Moreover, I can’t
find Vittoria Evo 55g tubes anymore. This
was almost the last one I had in my stash.
It seemed a shame to waste it on this dorky stock Fuji.
And don’t even get me started on the
rider. What kind of irresponsible person
goes out on a ride so totally unprepared—not just lacking a tube and some
tools, but not even having a phone? If he’d
been a teenager, that would be another story—teens’ brains aren’t fully wired yet and I have a soft spot for young fools.
But this guy had to be at least twenty:
an adult, supposedly. If he were a
well-equipped rider who had just had really bad luck—two pinch flats, say, or a
spare tube that was defective—I’d feel more generous. But why should I give up a tube just because
this guy is lame?
Then there was the matter of his
brand-new bike: why hadn’t he bought the
accessories he’d clearly need? This
particularly rankles me given my bike shop background. Shops barely make any money on new bikes,
because the markup is low to begin with, and by the time they’ve assembled the
thing, talked a customer into buying it (which can take multiple efforts, as customers
frequently take half an hour of Q&A before saying, “I have to test ride
like twenty other bikes from five other shops before I decide”), and done the two
free tune-ups, the shop is lucky if they’ve broken even. The only reason to even sell a bike is the
hope that the customer will buy some accessories for it. To pass up the accessories is practically
like robbing the shop. Surely the
salesman recommended these items; how did this guy respond? “Naw, I’m good”?
I weighed these considerations against my
original snap judgment that giving up my tube was obviously the right thing to
do. Of course I had an airtight
justification for holding out: if I gave
away my tube, I’d be at risk of subsequently getting a pinch flat and being
stranded myself. But of course this was
just rationalization; in all likelihood I wouldn’t
get a pinch flat and I knew it.
I silently decided I’d let the guy use my
cell phone, and only if he couldn’t reach anybody would I give him my
tube. On his second try, he got
somebody. His end of the conversation
was suggestive: “C’mon, man, I’m totally
stranded! You could be here in like 15
minutes!” I pictured his roommate back home
on the couch, groaning at the prospect of bailing him out. Finally the guy gave me back my phone and
said help was on the way. My friend and
I took off, leaving the guy behind with his wheel off his bike and his tire off
his wheel, his useless tube lying in the grass like a dead snake.
What
is altruism?
At least I helped the guy get home. But had I
behaved altruistically? I don’t
think so, because my assistance hadn’t really cost me anything. But as I said before, altruism is a tricky
concept.
The first time I came across this term
was in a textbook, in sixth or seventh grade.
The text on this subject was accompanied by a photo of a fireman
carrying a child out of a burning building.
I was immediately confused; after all, a fireman rescuing somebody from
fire isn’t behaving selflessly—he’s doing his job. Imagine if he told the fire chief, “I’ve
decided not to go in there—I could get hurt or killed!” He’d be out of job.
Far greater minds than mine have
struggled with the idea of altruism. Charles
Darwin worried that it would contradict his theory of natural selection. As described in a recent “New Yorker” article, a satisfying explanation of altruism
didn’t come about until 1964, when a British grad student named William
Hamilton came up with a mathematical formula:
rB > C, which stated,
“genes for altruism could evolve if the benefit (B) of an action exceeded the
cost (C) to the individual once relatedness (r) was taken into account.”
E.O. Wilson, a respected entomologist,
began promoting this idea a year later and it was gradually embraced by the
scientific community. It became known as
“inclusive fitness,” as it “expanded the Darwinian definition of ‘fitness’—how many
offspring an individual manages to have—to include the offspring of surviving
relatives.” In other words, selfless
behavior can be explained by the instinct to help your genes survive, even at
your individual expense.
But what about altruism outside of your
family line? People sometimes help out
complete strangers who aren’t going to perpetuate their gene. I was intrigued to learn, from the same
article, that in the last few years Wilson has turned against his original
position on inclusive fitness, calling it “a ‘useless gyration’ characterized
by a tendency to ‘theorize without precision.’”
(The scientific community is royally pissed off by Wilson’s reversal, by
the way.) Wilson’s new tack follows an
early theory of Darwin’s that helping others in your tribe helps your chances
of prevailing over enemy tribes. Most
evolutionary biologists dismiss this because “the benefits of generosity are
much less tangible than the benefits of selfishness.” Wilson refutes this neatly: “Selfishness beats altruism within
groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish
groups. Everything else is commentary.”
Lingering
questions
I’m still not satisfied with these explanations
for altruism because the scientists seem to focus too much on the idea of
survival. Sure, for most animals, and
for most of the history of the human race, the stakes were high—literally life
and death. But as humans have gotten
more organized and society has evolved, the decisions we make are almost never
a matter of life and death, and usually don’t even remotely affect our chances
of survival. I could give small change
to literally every homeless person I see and I still wouldn’t lose my
home. As we move up Maslow’s need
hierarchy, the ways we expend our resources have less and less to do with mere survival.
So, especially when we focus on humans,
the idea of “cost” gets complicated. The
equation rB > C is hard to apply
across all of humanity because a legitimate cost to one person is trivial to
another. If I donate $500 to a charity,
that’s a significant outlay. But that
were all Bill Gates gave to charity, he’d be scorned. Now, say I give fifty cents to a homeless
guy. No sweat. But for Bill Gates to incur the same relative
cost that I just did (i.e., the same percentage of his net worth), he’d have to
buy that homeless guy a car. No sweat—to Bill Gates. Meanwhile, based on that homeless guy’s net
worth, if he gave away fifty cents, that would be the equivalent of Bill Gates
giving away 300 Learjets.
The B
in the equation is even trickier. The
original equation depends on notion of relatedness, r, to confer benefit. But
I’ve already rejected r. This leaves
B > C, which looks too simplistic even if C were a simple matter. And
doesn’t the conventional notion of altruism involve selflessness—which requires
that no benefit accrue from
helping?
This is where I start to doubt the very
existence of pure altruism. Why? Because whenever we commit a selfless act,
we’re bound to feel good about it—and isn’t feeling good a solid benefit? Think of those MasterCard commercials,
comparing tangible prices of things to a feeling that is priceless.
Sometimes I think that the pleasure of
simple generosity isn’t even the whole story.
Consider this scenario: you see a
homeless guy sitting outside a sandwich shop.
You offer to buy him a sandwich.
He says, “Wow, that would be great.”
You find out what he’d like, go buy it, and give it to him. Without a word he tears off the paper and
starting chowing down. As you walk away,
you can’t help but notice he didn’t even say thanks, but you decide that’s just
because he was so dang hungry. So you’re
feeling good. But then the guy yells, “Damn it, man, I
wanted Havarti with dill! Not provolone!” Suddenly you don’t feel so contented.
But why not? Is the homeless guy’s need any less just
because he’s a prick? Suddenly, it
matters very much to you exactly how bad off this guy is. But should it? Don’t you have a nice house and car, and
isn’t he still a beggar? Is your good
feeling dependant on feeling that your action wasn’t only generous, but also just?
And maybe it’s not only justice that motivates you; maybe it’s your own ability
to dispense justice. In the sandwich scenario you have the strange
sense of being duped somehow, and it rankles.
In this light, the good feeling you’d initially had—that you’d bought,
essentially—starts to look almost petty.
Not much like the lofty ideal of altruism.
Earlier I mentioned that I’d much rather
surrender my spare inner tube to a responsible, well-equipped cyclist who merely
had some really bad luck. Why? Because in my mind, the well-equipped cyclist
is more deserving, as his plight isn’t his fault. If a better equation could be developed to
explain human altruism, one of its components might be d, the discretion I enjoy (as a human vs. a mere an army ant) in allocating
my largesse. Giving is an exercise of
power.
Meanwhile, if I give a tube to the
irresponsible guy, maybe my satisfaction would be soured by the fear that I’m an
enabler, teaching this guy that it’s okay to mooch off others instead of having
his act together. As a stranger, I can’t
exactly lecture the guy on being responsible, but the person who drives out and
picks him up can. (Or maybe this is self-deception—maybe
I’m actually judging the dude for his wheel reflectors, or for the brand of
bike that tells me he went with a mail-order outfit instead of a proper bike shop,
or for the fact that he’s tucked his damn jersey into his shorts.)
Incident
#2
Two days after the inner tube incident,
this same friend and I are ten miles into an ambitious ride on a glorious
morning. Everything is just peachy
until—BLAM! My friend’s front tire explodes. He manages to stop the bike without crashing,
but inspection reveals that his tire—a brand-new $80 Continental 4000
4-Season—is shot. Our plan for the day is
ruined. The first word out of my
friend’s mouth is the same one that’s already in my head: karma.
“You should’ve given that guy your tube,
and this is what we get,” he continues.
I can’t deny it: ever since
leaving that hapless newbie on the side of the road, I’ve felt guilty. Sure, I can tell myself it’s not right to be
an enabler, and remind myself that I needed that tube in case I pinch-flatted,
but the fact is, it all came down to the cost of parting with my Evo 55g, which
was more important to me than the benefit of doing the right thing. At least, it was at the time.
I tell my friend that the only problem
with his karma theory is that his
tire blew, not mine. Not missing a beat,
he says, “No, I’m being punished for my complicity.” And it’s true: I’d been on the fence, so had my friend simply
said, “Dude, give him your tube,” I certainly would have. Of course we’re not talking about karma in
the true sense of our behavior in this life affecting our next incarnation;
we’re using the popular connotation (karma-lite, you might call it) of “what
goes around comes around.” Taken one
step further, I might say my friend had a case of second-hand bad karma. I’d love to know what E.O. Wilson would make of
this concept.
Final
considerations
Whether or not we choose to acknowledge
the fanciful notion of karma-lite, the fact remains I’m still thinking about
the spare tube incident, and still second-guessing my choice of action. What bothers me isn’t the plight of the guy
on the Fuji (in fact, I’m beginning to resent him), but the disconnect between
my head and my heart. No matter what I
tell myself about pinch flats and enablers, my heart knows I should have given
him my tube—but I didn’t. Is it okay for
the brain to trump the heart? Should the brain trump the heart?
A final thing to acknowledge is the cost
of not helping. If the benefit of helping is emotional, the
cost of not helping is as well.
Altruism, at least the human flavor of it, has a whiff of moral
imperative about it. I’ve talked to my
wife and two friends about Tubegate, and so far I haven’t been excoriated, but all
three had conflicting feelings about it.
(My wife posed this question: if
the cyclist had been a young female hottie, would I have given her my tube? That was an easy one: no, because I’d have figured the hottie had
slyly saved money on accessories by counting on her looks to solve all her
problems. You know, playing the
damsel-in-distress card.)
One friend contends that the issue of my
culpability hinges on being straight with the stranded cyclist. Because I told the guy “you can’t have my
tube,” I’m fine. But if I’d lied and
said, “Sorry, I wish I could help but I don’t have a tube,” then I’d be clearly
in the wrong. This distinction hadn’t
occurred to me.
Questions
for the reader
Perhaps you’ve been forming your own
opinions as you’ve read this. I’m interested
in your answers to the following questions:
- Do we have a moral imperative to help another person, if we can do so without much sacrifice?
- Would you have given that guy your tube?
- Should I have given that guy my tube?
- Should my friend have exhorted me to give that guy my tube?
- Is safeguarding myself against being stranded a legitimate reason to keep my tube?
- Does it matter that the guy was irresponsible and ill-equipped vs. a responsible rider who ran into very bad luck?
- What’s worse: helping people while judging them, or not helping them at all?
- Suppose the guy was on a crappy old bike: does that change anything?
- Do you believe in karma, quasi-karma, and/or second-hand quasi-karma?
- Does true altruism exist, or do we always get some benefit from helping others?
You can respond anonymously, in mere
minutes, by clicking here to
launch a simple online survey. You may
answer any or all of the questions. If I
get enough responses, I’ll share them in a separate post.
Dana, I am a big E.O. Wilson fan. I also recommend reading some Matt Ridley, as well as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker... All of your questions will be answered. (Nonetheless, I am going to answer your survey questions...)
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