The Sexual Adventures of Fruit Bats and Extending Human Empathy

In a few paragraphs this title will make much more sense, I promise…

The idea of the ‘Empathic Civilisation’ is as grandiose and idyllic as the expression would suggest. It is a global cultural shift, described by Jeremy Rifkin, characterised by the extension of human empathy to every other person and living creature upon the planet, so that this empathy becomes consistent with the profound and far-reaching impacts that our actions have come to bear.

As ambitious as this shift may seem, if it can be realised, it could prove to be a valuable step towards eradicating the daunting array of social and environmental issues that persist throughout the modern world, and facilitating the development of a fair and sustainable global society.

And the essential question is, if we can’t achieve this, does a global civilization have any chance of surviving? Or will it simply implode under the weight of perpetual social and environmental catastrophes, dissolving into detached societies on a scale that we have the capacity to regulate?

Fortunately, despite the overwhelming nature of this transformation, his argument arouses a far greater feeling of optimism (for me at least) than might be expected.

‘Soft wired’ for empathy?

His argument begins with a discovery of modern brain science, namely that humans are ‘soft wired’ to feel empathy for others via the use of ‘mirror neurons’. These are the part of our brains that allow us the capacity to feel the experiences of others as we perceive them in particular situations.

Now this probably doesn’t come as much of a revelation, as most of us have had fairly extensive personal experiences of this feeling, and are fully conscious of it. So the next part of the argument is perhaps more interesting.

He points out that, throughout history, human empathy has already extended dramatically in line with the increasingly connected societies that have been formed. So from its initial confinement to within small tribes in early hunter gatherer groups, empathy then extended along with the development of increasingly complex societies: as theological consciousness developed it came to exist throughout religious groups, and similarly as markets grew it began to extend within the boundaries of the Nation State.

Given this historical context, he argues why stop here? Is it unrealistic to strive for our empathy to extend throughout the human race, or even to all other living creatures?

So back to the fruit bats

It may still not be entirely clear why the sexual adventures of fruit bats are mentioned in the title, so I’ll now try to shed some light upon this.

Some time ago I stumbled upon what must be one of the most entertaining scientific papers in existence, ‘Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs CopulationTime’ (I seriously recommend reading the abstract). I’m pretty unfamiliar with that particular branch of research, to say the least, so I couldn’t put my finger on its intended practical application. However, I think if we have any aspiration to increase our empathy and respect for other living things, it’s hugely valuable to observe in animals anything that is typically considered to be ‘human behaviour’.

Consider dogs, for example. In the UK at least, the animal receiving the largest share of human empathy must surely be dogs, but why is this? I’d conjecture that this is because we are so intimately interwoven with these creatures that we come to recognise within them a wide spectrum of emotions and behaviours that we can relate to ourselves: whether it is joy, misery, excitement or anxiety. Through this experience we perceive them to live a meaningful existence, and hence their lives become something worth respecting.

So what should we make of the discovery that fruit bats engage in a type of sexual deed that we would typically consider to be uniquely human? Is this not a delightful demonstration  of how the means and behaviours that we have developed to satisfy our own needs and desires ‒those things that give us an appetite for life‒ may in fact be mirrored within the lives of countless other living things, however primitive they may seem?  And if this is the case, should we not also recognise the potential capacity of other living things to suffer, and hence develop within us a universal sense of empathy?

Admittedly this would be quite a grand conclusion to draw solely from oral sex in tiny flying mammals, but of course this is not the only relevant evidence.

Selfish and selfless empathy

So the motivations to develop an Empathic Civilisation appear to be twofold. Firstly, if civilisation is to remain as extensive, and as heavily dependent upon the biosphere as it has become, it surely requires a global consciousness and respect for this system. An extension of our empathy to all other living things is perhaps the most effective way of beginning this process. And secondly, in any case, if we can recognise a capacity for joy and suffering laying within other creatures then it should be our duty to respect this, given that it so often comes at such an insignificant cost to ourselves.

So perhaps by extending our empathy throughout the biosphere we can learn to protect it, putting an end to the mass species extinction human activities are currently responsible for, and giving global civilisation a chance of survival. And then, just maybe, one day the humble fruit bat will undergo enough social development for a feminist revolution to emerge, giving future zoologists the opportunity to continue the study of these intriguing creatures and report their observations under the title ‘Cunninlingus by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time’.

I’m certainly going to try to do my small part to help keep this dream alive.

Some final pessimistic thoughts

Of course there are some issues with the idea of the Empathic Civilisation, perhaps the most obvious being the considerable gap between the formation of a globally empathic culture and its practical capability of addressing problems. After all, it’s one thing for me to feel empathy for a malnourished African child in a TV commercial, but knowing exactly what I can do to help alleviate that suffering, or perhaps more importantly, how my lifestyle may contribute to the circumstances that facilitate it, is an entirely different issue. Although in any case, the more genuine empathy I feel for the child’s situation the more determined I will be to seek out some real solutions, rather than simply offering a meagre financial donation.

But there is a more disturbing potential issue that comes to mind. What if within groups or societies ‒be it tribes, religions, or nation states‒ the development of this shared sense of empathy (or at least its magnitude) is dependent upon the recognition of a common ‘other’? A perceptible enemy that is required to affirm the group identity? And if this were to be true, for the Empathic Civilisation, where would this enemy lie if not on earth?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007595

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528836.200-animals-are-conscious-and-should-be-treated-as-such.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empathic_Civilization#Reception

Capitalism on the Rebound

If you’ve been through a tough break up, there is a chance that ‘going on the rebound’ will do you wonders. It may be the perfect remedy for regaining self-confidence, eliminating unwanted anxiety, and forming some sort of base to start enjoying life again.

On the other hand, this could prove to be a hazardous and volatile method of therapy: it may bring out the worst in you, there’s a very real possibility it could do you far more harm than good, and whatever benefits may come of it could probably be gained by other means anyway. And to compound these issues, the impact you may have on those caught up in your self-involved behaviour may be rather harmful, perhaps even exploitative. You may just begin to break a few too many hearts.

Whether it works out for you or not, what’s for certain is that as a long-term strategy this behaviour is disastrous. Play around like this for too long and any increase in emotional wellbeing that may initially have occurred will begin to plateau, perhaps even begin to decline, while the casualties of broken hearts continue to pile up.

Now if you haven’t guessed already, I’m not, in fact, a proficient relationship counsellor (and I’m not even speaking from much experience…). So my simplistic psychological analysis may be a little off the mark. Nevertheless, this thinking has led me to wonder whether this behaviour (and the likely consequences) offers a surprisingly accurate metaphor for those of global capitalism (at least in its current form) and the drive for economic growth. I should probably try to explain what I mean…

First of all, it’s clear that this capitalism has, in many parts of the world brought around some huge benefits. In the Western world, we generally have secure food supplies, good access to healthcare, and a decent amount of leisure time relative to one or two centuries ago (or much of the developing world in the present day). More recently, the opening up to free trade and kick starting of industrial production has brought similar levels of wealth to countries like Singapore and South Korea.

On the flipside to the economic progress we’ve made is that it’s certainly not brought out the best in us. This relentless pursuit of growth has locked us into the on-going practice of exploiting the people and resources of less developed countries, while within our own countries an uncomfortable, unnatural culture has emerged with individualism and materialism at its core. And on top of this we can’t possibly know if there was a way we could have achieved our prosperity without these adverse effects.

These undesirable side effects of capitalism are where the parallels with risky post-break-up behaviour start to become more clear.

Equally worrying is the fact that in many countries capitalist economic programmes, often in the form of ‘shock therapy’, haven’t worked out at all as planned (for example in Chile, Russia, and Iraq post-Saddam; see Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine’). Even when on paper these programmes achieve the economic growth they were aiming for, all too frequently the wealth ends up concentrated in the hands of an opportunistic few, and it shows little sign of it trickling down to those at the bottom who are at the heart of the problem.

So again these hazards resemble those of post-break-up rebounding, which may too either fail entirely as a strategy, or succeed only in satisfying a select few body parts (not including the heart).

Moving back to those parts of the world where the outcomes of capitalism have been more positive, in these countries we are now in a fantastic position to live prosperous lives, but the usefulness of economic growth in increasing our happiness has surely ceased. In another words, once people’s basic nutritional and health needs are met and sufficient leisure time obtained, capitalism seems to have little to offer us: instead it serves only to perpetuate the exploitation of people and planet and accelerate the deterioration of society.

Overall it seems that, although both capitalism and post-break-up rebound may well bring some benefits, they are risky, volatile, inevitably exploitative, and hopeless in the long-term.

The graph shown below (from ‘Prosperity without growth’ by the UK Sustainable Development Commission) gives empirical evidence of the initial, but subsequently diminishing benefits of economic growth. It can be seen, for example, that there are countries with half the GDP per capita of the USA whose people are equally happy, and that generally once a country reaches a certain level of wealth any additional growth has a negligible effect upon peoples happiness. In fact, arguably, the eternal sense of dissatisfaction required to drive consumption and maintain growth eventually leads to a decline in life satisfaction.

 

Yet increases in GDP invariably lead to increases in resource use and pollution emissions, which in turn leads to increasing exploitation as more powerful countries feed on the cheap labour and natural resources of those less well off, and millions (perhaps billions) of lives are disrupted by the environmental damage caused by this resource use.

May be my drawing parallels between post break-up behaviour and economic institutions is worthless, but the motives for scrapping the doctrine of economic growth seem flawless, even though putting this into practice is a truly daunting task. And in any case, environmental constraints will force us to abandon this doctrine eventually anyway, which begs the obvious question ‘what the hell are we waiting for?

Unfortunately, metaphorically speaking, most of civilisation seems to have become dangerously addicted to sleeping around, rather than searching for a stable life partner.

Notes:

See ‘Development Economics’, at MRUniversity.com’ for a discussion of many of the arguments revolving around the various approaches to tackling poverty with economic programmes (albeit, with a bias towards free-trade and privatisation, and in my opinion far too little discussion of environmental limits).

In contrast, ‘Prosperity without growth’ by the UK Sustainable Development Commission is focused on our urgent need to drop the doctrine of growth.

Four Angry Relatives and a Funeral

Recently I attended the funeral of a relative who, although close to me in a genetic sense, was more distant from me emotionally than the owner of my local corner shop. This lack of any connection between us meant that I got little from the event in an emotional sense, but in the aftermath I was profoundly affected in a way I didn’t foresee, which was far from the intention of the ceremony. Hand in hand with this came a valuable lesson in the damage that can be caused by adhering to a rigid moral code.

It had been years, may be decades since I had seen this relative prior to his death, so I knew almost nothing about him first hand. Most of what I now know I learnt the day of the funeral from conversations with other relatives and from the occasion itself.

The funeral itself was unremarkable. His personality was honoured by the Christian Minister who described the uncountable moments of humour and joy he brought to those around him before praising his commitment to his chosen profession in motoring journalism and public relations through which “he made his unique contribution to the world, which only he could have made.”

However, what I learnt of him from other relatives before the ceremony contrasted greatly with this image.

It turns out that he’d left his immediate family to deal with his debts including a (quite elderly) mother, and also abandoned his wife and daughter and in the process of leaving the country failed to pay the child maintenance money he owed them. And the level of contact I’d had with him over the past years seems to have been typical even for those much closer to him.

So for the first time that I can remember, I had a picture of his identity painted in my mind. The result of this was that for me the event felt utterly surreal. Moreover, I would hazard a guess that for many of the others in the audience —which included a number of the relatives involved in the incidents mentioned above— the picture they had of him in their minds and the image of him that the words said at the ceremony fought to create were in just as stark a contrast as they were for me.

Later that day my bewilderment began to subside as I realised that for me the account of his life given in the ceremony only gave rise to confusion, while for others it caused pain. This filled me with anger, as I imagined the resentment I would have felt, had I been in his daughter’s position, for having to listen to a celebration of his dedication to his career and extravagant cars, while the part this may have played in his abandoning of her was left unspoken: buried in the dishonest atmosphere of the funeral.

I was distressed and confused. Why, when so many of the people present were aware of the harm it could cause, either to themselves or to others, did this situation occur and was in fact even planned in this way? Unfortunately, it seems we were abiding by the rigid morality of respecting the dead: even though in this case it resulted in upsetting many of those still living. For those who could foresee the distress that the ceremony may cause them, had they not wanted to attend this moral code will have compelled them to regardless. The same morality then forbade the verbalising of anything that could be perceived to taint the memory of him, but had so little consideration for the living they allowed him to inflict a final stab of pain to those he’d already hurt.

Now I’m not saying I know best how this situation should have been dealt with. Maybe there was no better way for it to be done. But the morality that was followed seemed only to exacerbate the situation and its rigidity only hindered any objective discussion about how the least harm could be caused to those whom may be vulnerable. And quite strangely, even though it seems he made choices in his life that would be strongly condemned by the teachings of the Bible, in death these appeared to be forgotten. So maybe one way the ceremony could have been made less harmful is if more forgiveness had been exercised rather than forgetfulness. Instead, I came away with the feeling that had I been at a funeral following these same principles but instead for a man well known for having a chain of secretive affairs behind his partner’s back, then he would have been celebrated for his womanising skills in front of his widow.

I see this experience as a valuable lesson in the unfavourable consequences that can result from following a rigid and potentially outdated moral code. To explain what I mean by outdated, consider that in our current society it’s become increasingly acceptable and indeed common to devotedly pursue one’s own individual goals and desires, whereas historically one was expected by society to focus more on the best interests of the family. Perhaps as a consequence of this transition, the breakdown of marriages and families seems to be increasingly familiar. However, strangely, society's moral code still dictates that when someone dies, relatives - estranged or not - should attend their funeral, show respect and pay tribute to their life. In this way the code seems to remain unchanged, in a sense not ‘keeping up’ with cultural developments."

And the more I think about it, there must be countless other situations where we apply rigid, potentially outdated, moral codes.

Extending Morality through Space and Time

One example of a morality we hold that I think should be questioned is our tendencies to let the immediate life around us dominate our moral judgement. I believe that it’s important to update this morality now that we’ve grown to be capable to be affecting our planet so profoundly in ways that reach far through space and time and which many future generations will have to deal with. There should be no excuses made as we are well aware of the capabilities we hold and their possible consequences.

Forced population control is a subject where the implications of this morality are highly relevant. In the UK for example, where we each consume far more than our fair share of the world’s resources which is almost guaranteed to be detrimental to future generations, people are still paid more money to have more children, in honour of this basic human right. In stark contrast to this, the severe rules implemented in China to control their hazardous levels of population growth shatter our established morality.

Unfortunately, a vast number of social issues that have arisen in China have been attributed to these policies, and consequently they have been repeatedly criticised. But consider this thought experiment:

If a person were driving along a reasonably fast road and suddenly saw a young girl who looked to be about to wander directly into their path, if they were to swerve in an attempt to avoid her, crashing and severely injuring their passengers, should the driver be condemned? And should this verdict change if the girl did not in fact walk out into the road, or if it was proven that an emergency stop would have been sufficient?

From the little I’ve read, China’s policies seem to be excessive, and the reaction of the driver in the above scenario may have proved to be, too. But in the UK it’s as if we’ve just shut our eyes and kept our foot on the gas, and as we’re abiding by an established morality we receive little criticism for this. I’d guess that the optimum solutions for population control in both the UK and China, and around the world, probably lie somewhere between these extreme, opposing strategies.

If optimum solutions to the growing number of issues in the world are to be reached I believe we need to constantly question the basis of our established moral codes. The development of our societies, almost globally, in the past century or so has occurred at an astonishing pace, and hence we need to recognise that our morality needs to keep up. Moreover, it needs to be increasingly considerate of long term prosperity rather than short term comfort.

Cheating and Consumerism: Thou Shalt not Steal Money, but other things are OK

Cheating is OK, provided that it doesn’t directly involve money, at least one of our friends is doing it, and we can still look in the mirror and feel good about ourselves. Also, whether we believe in God or not, cheating is even more acceptable if we can successfully keep the 10 commandments from entering our minds.

These are a few of the conclusions Dan Ariely’s team made from their experiments on the subject of cheating, but just in case my paraphrasing has distorted them slightly I’ll now be a little more specific

The experiments involved measuring the tendency of people to cheat in a test consisting of 20 maths questions that were simple enough that everybody would be expected to be capable of solving them. The difficulty was that the time limit wasn’t enough to complete them all. At the end of the test, each person went to the examiner, reported how many questions they’d answered correctly, and received a dollar for every correct answer. This test was used as a method to explore people’s tendency to cheat and how this varied with the external conditions.

Some unexpected patterns emerged. For example: it was found that a lot of people cheated a little rather than there being a few ‘bad apples’ that cheated a lot, and, surprisingly, the likelihood of getting caught cheating seemed to have no effect upon people’s tendency to cheat.

This led the researchers to ask themselves: ’If having more chance of getting away with cheating doesn’t increase people’s inclination to cheat, then what does?’ They then dug a little deeper and made some quite strange discoveries.

When a group were asked to attempt to recite the 10 commandments prior to the test they stopped cheating completely, even the self-proclaimed atheists. When actors placed within other groups clearly and publicly cheated in the tests ‒and got away it‒ the cheating in the rest of the group increased when the actor was wearing a jumper from their university, but decreased dramatically when the actor was displaying the logo of a local, rival university. Finally, when people claimed one token per correct answer from the experimenter, and then walked just 12 feet to collect a dollar for each token at another desk, cheating in the group doubled.

In his lecture, Dan Ariely points out the worrying implications of this research for the current form stock market. Traders generally don’t deal with money directly but rather with stock options or derivatives, and, if they all cheat just a little then the boundaries of what is considered to be acceptable may slide, the consequences of which can be catastrophic. Additionally, it’s doubtful that they’re asked to recite the 10 commandments on their way into Wall Street.

But the results of this research are also applicable to other areas of society, as they reveal how easily and frequently we let our morals slide. When they’re applied to consumer culture, the implications are particularly disturbing.

Firstly, the fact that we can use the behaviour of other people in our ‘group’ as an excuse for loosening our morals is clearly a recipe for disaster when it comes to unethical consumption which is so widespread. Furthermore, as the most dedicated ethical consumers are often in groups quite detached from mainstream society, their ability to influence the rest of the population may be limited.

Another obvious point is that if being only one stage removed from money ‒and just 12 feet removed from our cheating‒ allows us to slacken our morals, then what hope do we have of being ethical with our consumption in globalised markets? Here we’re confronted with many complex stages of separation as well as the vast physical distances involved. Consequently, connecting the impacts of our food, clothes and the other ‘necessities’ of the western lifestyle such as electronics, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics can be utterly baffling even for those dedicated to understanding it.

Additionally, there may be a reverse consequence of our tendency to allow ‘pure’ money to strongly moderate our morals: we’re likely to gain considerable moral satisfaction from any monetary charitable donations we make, while our perception of our ‘taking’ in the form of consumer goods (effectively ‘tokens’) may seem far less significant to us. Quite worryingly, considering my last post, this may well further increase our ability to ‘morally self-license’ any of our suspiciously-unethical consuming.

So, given that we look set to remain detached from the impacts of our lifestyles for the foreseeable future, how can we best uphold our personal moral integrity when spending?

Well, the answer to this is likely to depend upon why just one step of separation from money is enough to allow people to cheat more. Do we give ourselves more credit in a cognitive or a moral sense? In other words, does this separation really make it so much harder for us to connect events and recognise the morals of our behaviour? Or does it give our conscience an ‘escape route’ that we can purposely take to sidestep any guilt we may otherwise feel and retain a positive perception of ourselves?

Reading Dan Ariely’s work he seems to suggest the latter. Unfortunately, this puts us in quite a desperate situation when confronting the task of eliminating goods with damaging and exploitative impacts from the market. It appears that even if we can become fully aware of the negative impacts of the things we buy, we’ll always still have some degree of separation which we can use to help evade any significant feelings of guilt.

If we really want to help to improve the world through our personal, day to day behaviour, it looks like we must strive to evaluate our own behaviour mindfully, and try hard not to let our moral judgement be swayed by the behaviour of others, or deceived by the self-interested parts of ourselves. But how this can be achieved on a large-scale is a difficult question.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

Nina Mazar, On Amir, and Dan Ariely, The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of Self-Concept Maintenance

Every Little Hurts?

‘Every little helps’— it’s the feeling charities endeavor to leave you with when you donate money to them. Don’t worry if you only have small change, it will still make a difference.

Charity has become a widespread method by which we express our altruism— a characteristic which has evolved to be a valuable aspect of human nature. We give to charities supporting malnourished African children, the terminally ill, the homeless, and abandoned pets, fully aware that we are likely never to meet, or receive anything in return, from any of the people we support.

Why then, if so many of us feel this compassion for the well being of others, do we still wear clothes made by underpaid children, collect stocks of electronic gadgets assembled by poisoned workers, devour industrially farmed meat and guzzle soft drinks from factories that have polluted whole community’s water supplies? As philosopher Slavoj Žižiek puts it, are we not just damaging with one hand while repairing with the other? And, if altruism is built into our nature, why are we so comfortable with this situation?

There are a number of obvious reasons why we do, including the lack of awareness of the impacts of our behaviour, and the financial premiums and inconvenience often attached to more ethical consuming. However we often go ahead with behaviours even when we’re aware that they have unethical impacts, as what miniscule difference does our decision make when so many other people are doing the same thing? Unfortunately, considering the world’s 7 billion and growing population, this appears to be quite a rational attitude.

However, there’s a glaring inconsistency between this attitude and the ‘every little helps’ message associated with charitable donations.

From a rational perspective, If I buy a can of Coca Cola every lunchtime it makes no noticeable difference to their profits, and so neither am I making any noticeable contribution to the dried up, polluted water supplies around their factories in India or the murder of union leaders in Columbia. If I treat myself to a transatlantic flight I’ll be responsible for a few tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, but they’ll just be added to the vast quantities already up there, and I doubt anyone will be able to detect the increase. And, if I give £25 to Oxfam then it’s simply added to the millions of pounds of other donations and makes a negligible difference to the sum.

The real difference between these cases is that Oxfam will let me know that, because of my £25, an underprivileged family is now the proud owner of a new goat. This is fantastic! Now I can see my donation has had a quantifiable, positive effect. It’s stuck in my memory and I feel good about myself (and even if the goat dies prematurely its highly unlikely I’ll ever find out). As for the fizzy drinks and carbon dioxide, even assuming I’m aware of their adverse effects, I can only really see them in a global sense, which makes it so hard to pick out my individual contribution that I might as well round it down to zero and keep enjoying myself.

So it appears that this inconsistent thinking can result in us vastly underestimating the size of our ‘taking’ hand, while exaggerating the size of our ‘giving’ hand. And, unfortunately this seems a natural consequence of the fact that: (a) companies want us to feel happy buying from them and hence they’ll keep any negative impacts of their activities well concealed, and (b) charities are effectively in competition with each other for our money, so it’s to their advantage to make us feel that it’s had the most impact by giving to them.

Well if this is the case, we should probably aim to correct this problem by independently evaluating our behaviours ourselves.

To start with, we could be far more conscious of our ‘taking’ hand if an attitude of ‘every little hurts’ was routinely associated with unethical consuming. However this may be extremely difficult to achieve unless specific events can be associated with particular behaviours, which very often is a near impossible task. For instance, given all the uncertainties surrounding the impacts of manmade climate change, if I treat myself to a transatlantic flight how could I possibly know if the emissions will eventually cause the failure of an Ethiopian farmers harvest and the death of his goat, cancelling out my £25 donation to Oxfam? 

In this case, we have the other option: thinking more realistically, and globally about our charitable donations— a goat may be very useful to a struggling family, but they’re going to need much more than that to solve their problems, and there are 500 million others in poverty in Africa. And in any case, £25 is a rather meagre proportion of most of our annual disposable incomes anyway.

Well this isn’t so appealing. If we don’t feel good about giving, would we bother at all?

But there may be something more in this, as there is substantial evidence suggesting that performing acts we deem to be moral allows us to ‘morally self-license’ our less desirable behaviours. Therefore, in a sense, any altruistic behaviour within us can effectively ‘run out’ when we feel we’ve done our bit. I saw a memorable example of this phenomenon whilst myself and an ex-girlfriend were working at a homeless shelter and she whispered to me as we walked past a begger on the street, ‘keep going, we don’t have to give him any money now we work at the shelter.’

If this is in fact how we behave, then giving to charity may actually be an overly effective method of satisfying our altruistic urges, which allows us to live the rest of our lives in a guilt-free, business-as-usual manner. So if charity didn’t exist would we simply offer our altruism elsewhere, perhaps even in more involving ways? Would many of us then think more deeply about the effects of our consumption? Maybe even more readily campaign for human rights, or challenge our governments over unjustified wars?

All this is not intended to suggest that charity is a bad thing in itself: there are a great number of charities doing valuable work, and clearly donating money to proficient and effective organizations can help bring about positive change. But, whether or not the existence of charities has a positive effect overall depends upon whether its main function is to access the good in people and help it flourish, or to cheaply satisfy our altruistic urges and alleviate any guilt we accumulate from the unethical behaviours of our daily lives. And in any case, if we continue to overestimate the value of our altruistic behaviors relative to our less desirable behaviours, then the altruistic part of ourselves may remain totally bewildered and its potential to lead to a better society vastly underutilised.

Notes:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225772.500-survival-of-the-nicest.html?page=1

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10750-why-altruism-paid-off-for-our-ancestors.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626281.500-evolution-survival-of-the-selfless.html

http://vimeo.com/13852158 (Slavoj Žižiek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce) 

http://www.righttowater.info/ways-to-influence/legal-approaches/case-against-coca-cola-kerala-state-india/

http://www.thecoca-colacase.org/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/20/foxconn-raise-wages-apple-contractor?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Anna C. Merritt, Daniel A. Effron, Benoît Monin: Moral Self-Licensing: When Being Good Frees Us to Be Bad