I was given an article about the nature of altruism in human beings by my Form Teacher last week. The article's title is 'the Evolution of Goodness' and the author is Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin. It uses a lot of Darwinism social theories; the most obvious one is Natural Selection. The article discussed about how can such human behavior like altruism, the willingness to do good for the others without any special benefits
Darwin's theory of Evolution really puzzles me because, for me personally, it deteriorates the uniqueness of being human. It also distorts the meaning of being moral. In the past, people used to question why there is 'bad'. Now, to fulfill the unquestionable authority of Natural Selection in the modern science, intellectuals question why there is 'good' in human.
The attitude of being good the other people is one thing that differentiates human beings from animals. It is not the same with the altruism in animals which largely depends on the survival of the community, thus the individual. Man also has the same point in doing altruism, to improve his society. However, man can also work together with the other living creatures of different species and put affection towards them. We can see now there are many environmental organizations whose members dedicate their life to preserve creatures that are almost extinct, even tough the creatures are dangerous such as alligators or don't produce food for human such as rhinoceros. It will be ridiculous if all those naturalists are adamant to protect the endangered species only to be exhibited in the zoo. Those people can try artificial preservation for that. And of course, those people's egoism nature, or whatever they mostly believe in their Darwinism social theories, will not let them spending useful money which is useful to their own survival. I think that besides symbiosis, no other creature but human can sacrifice their life for the survival of the other species whose gene isn't the same. Natural Selection tries to make human a high-level animal; yet, it fails to explain why human has such a passionate desire to conserve other species which are realtively lower and sometimes has no specific purpose in human survival.
Scientists, like in that article, compare the human nature of altruism to bee's behaviors. Some bees are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect the queen thus ensure that their gene survives and is inherited. There are also many heroic stories of human beings, from comical superheroes to ordinary people such as fireman. I think that if they are questionied of what is their mere intention, it will be humanity (or at least salary). None of them will automatically think about the survival of their genes. Furthermore, altruism nature will contradict Natural Selection as man tend to preserve the 'inferiors' (according to the theories) which includes the disabled ones whose genes are not going to be useful if inherited.
To think about this, we have to find our own opinion about true human nature. Are men naturally evil or good? You are free to adopt Hobbes' Leviathan or Locke's social contract, but history has proved, that most people adore good values, which include altruism. I cannot say that the meaning of good for our ancestors is exactly the same with our values now. But we can see from all the civilizations in the world that there will always be heroic stories everywhere, whether the heroes are fighting the dragons or the cruel rulers. From this pattern, we can see there is a strong element inside human which pushes human to do altruism. Human is usually naturally interested and admiring the values of helping others, sometimes weaker and considered 'useless'.
To imagine what the nature of human behaviors will most probably be, I think it's useful to recognize what the human has done while other creatures don't. Human can build civilization, organize themseleves to improve theirlives due to their high intelligence. They also have other basic needs besides basic physical survival: cultural expression. Though human beings have high intelliegence, they will not likely create systematic languages like we are using now except that the human beings really need it. Whereas if we look at the animal examples, they don't need much language to eat and live long. They just communicate with body signals. From the invention of language alone, we can see that man has special need to communicate with each other. The need of communication has broken out the limitation of the need to survive; it's the unique aspect of human beings to share with each other. This is the proof that man is a social creature. And one of the product of the social needs is altruism.
The theory of Natural Selection is actually very vague; Darwin himself said that Natural selection is to preserve what is good and to eradicate what is bad. I don't attempt to redefine what is 'good' or what is 'bad' because of those words' relative interpretations. The problem is every human being has his own potential, regardless the physical situation he is into. Natural selection only considers about physical features that are coded by the 'selfish' genes (as Richard Dawkins said). It doesn't concern the human emotional and intellectual ability. Since the theory is made by human intelligence, it's improbable for the theory to judge the level of human intelligence. Let me give you an example.Let's say that a 'bad' intelligence is to create irrational theories. Theories will be irrational if it is not valid and/or not supported by factual evidences. Natural Selection is meant to be universal theory, so if there is only one evidence that can break the prediction made by the theory, the theory will break down as its induction proves to be wrong. Then the theory becomes a myth and irrational so it will be automatically assessed by itself as 'bad'. I have shown you some examples in which Natural Selection doesn't seem to apply. How can a theory contradict each other?
In conclusion, I think that Natural Selection is very inappropriate to explain the truth of human nature. Firstly, it is very inappropriate to conclude human behaviors by observing the animals or even plants. Animals don't have the human behavior to conserve other species which are 'inferior' in the nature. Then, is it advisable to do experiments on human? You have to concern about moral laws and long-term impacts about that. Maybe, you really want to test yourself by pondering on it, find out whether your curiosity or your conscience wins. If you are a human and human does have the same behavior nature like the animals', you won't even waste your time to think about the truth of your experiments. Isn't it enough to be your subjective proof? Hence, if Natural Selection falls down, then altruism can re-take its place as one of the original and unique human behavior, no longer going against the nature laws. Thus, you may understand that I disagree with the author's of the 'Evolution of Goodness' opinion.
I think it is really a waste of time to think why there is 'good' or 'bad' in the human nature due to the vague interpretations of those words which are subjective, since we are the thinking thing and we do the interpretation while we are also free from assumptions. Why don't we try to erase the 'bad' and persevere to implement the 'good'?
It remembers me of OBS' motto:
To strive, to serve, and not to yell.