I'd say I feel bad for Ayn Rand, but were she still around that probably wouldn't be received as intended.
People are selfish creatures, just like our cousins - after all, altruism is simply selfishness that plans ahead.
Did selfishness — or sharing — drive human evolution? Evolutionary
theorists have traditionally focused on competition and the ruthlessness of
natural selection, but often they have failed to consider a critical fact: that
humans could not have survived in nature without the charity and social
reciprocity of a group.
Last week on Slate, evolutionary anthropologist Eric Michael Johnson explored the question against the backdrop of two cultural
events in 1957 — the consequences of the rogue, selfish activities of a pygmy
hunter in a Congo forest, who used the group’s collective hunting efforts to
benefit only himself, and in New York City, the publication of Ayn Rand’s novel
Atlas Shrugged, whose protagonist champions the author’s notion that
human nature is fundamentally selfish and that each man “exists for his own
sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral
purpose.”
Atlas Shrugged counts many politicians as admirers, perhaps most
notably Republican vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, who cites the book as
one of his main inspirations for entering politics and is known to give Rand’s
books frequently to his interns.
So, does Rand’s theory comport with current evolutionary theory? The data is
not exactly kind to her position. For example, Johnson describes an
anthropologist’s account of the pygmy tribesman, Cephu, in the Congo who lived
by the Randian ideal that selfishness is the highest morality. Cephu was part of
the Mbuti tribe for whom “hunts were collective efforts in which each hunter’s
success belonged to everybody else,” Johnson writes, detailing how the tribe
“employed long nets of twined liana bark to catch their prey, sometimes
stretching the nets for 300 feet. Once the nets were hung, women and children
began shouting, yelling, and beating the ground to frighten animals toward the
trap.”
It was a group effort, for most:
But one man, a rugged individualist named Cephu, had other ideas. When no one was looking, Cephu slipped away to set up his own net in front of the others.
Soon caught in this blatant attempt to steal meat, Cephu was brought in front
of the whole tribe:
At an impromptu trial, Cephu defended himself with arguments for individual initiative and personal responsibility. “He felt he deserved a better place in the line of nets,” [the anthropologist Colin] Turnbull wrote. “After all, was he not an important man, a chief, in fact, of his own band?” But if that were the case, replied a respected member of the camp, Cephu should leave and never return. The Mbuti have no chiefs, they are a society of equals in which redistribution governs everyone’s livelihood. The rest of the camp sat in silent agreement.Faced with banishment, a punishment nearly equivalent to a death sentence, Cephu relented.
He apologized, handed over his meat to the tribe and then, essentially, was
sent to bed without dinner. As Johnson explains, selfishness is considered far
from a virtue in such tribal groups, which still live in ways similar to our
hunter-gatherer ancestors. Indeed, every such group ever studied has been found
to idealize altruism and punish selfishness, in everything from their
mythologies to their mating practices.
Although Rand accepted that early human life was a collective effort, she
failed to realize how this shaped our brains. In most societies, for example, a
man like Cephu would be seen as the opposite of a good catch for a woman wanting
a partner. A good mate — and one whose genes were likely selected for and passed
on in our earliest evolutionary history — would have been a cooperative hunter,
one who didn’t put his own goals ahead of those of the tribe. He would have been
altruistic in battle too, particularly when warring with other groups. A selfish
soldier, after all, is known as a coward, not a hero.
The evidence for altruism as a critical part of human nature isn’t limited to
anthropology. Studies
of 18-month-old toddlers show that they will almost always try to help an adult
who is visibly struggling with a task, without being asked to do so: if the
adult is reaching for something, the toddler will try to hand it to them, or if
they see an adult drop something accidentally, they will pick it up.
However, if the same adult forcefully throws something to the ground,
toddlers won’t try to retrieve it: they understand that the action was
deliberate and that the object is unwanted. These very young children will even
assist (or refrain from helping) with a book-stacking task depending on what
they perceive to be the adult’s intention. If the adult clumsily knocks the last
book off the top of the stack, the toddler will try to put it back; if the adult
deliberately takes the last book off, however, toddlers won’t intervene. Even
before kids are taught to chip in — perhaps especially before they are told it’s
an obligation — children are less selfish than often presumed.
Another study found that
3- to 5-year-olds tend to give a greater share of a reward (stickers, in this
case) to a partner who has done more work on a task — again, without being asked
— even if it means they get to keep less for themselves. And those cries of
“That’s not fair!” that plague sibling relationships: they’re not only selfish;
they reflect children’s apparently innate desire for equity.
Fundamental tendencies toward altruism aren’t only seen in children, either.
Worldwide, the aftermath of natural disasters are typically characterized by
heroism and a sharing of resources — within the affected community and in others
farther way — not selfish panics. During the terrorist attacks of 9/11, for
example, there were no accounts of people being trampled rushing out of the
World Trade Center towers; rather, those who needed assistance descending were
cared for, and calm mainly prevailed. The same occurred after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear
meltdown in Japan in 2011. The cases in which people stampede or look out only
for themselves tend to be rare and involve very specific circumstances that
mitigate against helpfulness.
Moreover, our stress systems
themselves seem to be designed to connect us to others. They calm down when we
are feeling close to people we care about — whether related to us or not — and
spike during isolation and loneliness. Even short periods of solitary
confinement can derange the mind and damage the body because of the stress they
create. And having no social support can be as destructive to health as
cigarette smoking.
Of course, none of this is to say that humans are never selfish or that we
don’t have a grasping, greedy part of our nature. But to claim, as Rand does,
that “altruistic morality” is a “disease” is to misrepresent reality.
(Share the love and read the rest of Johnson’s fascinating feature here.)
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