The One With The Cave, Selfless People, And Other Primates

Wow. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve updated my blog. February had me riding the hot mess express, but I’m back in the swing of things. Never you worry.

In class we discussed the Allegory of the Cave. One point which seemed to be in slight contention was the role of the individuals who are holding up the images for those chained to the wall. Are they purposefully being deceitful with some unknown ill intentions? Are they showing those in chains the shadows of the images to somehow protect them by shielding them from the entire truth? Or perhaps they are trying their best to show the full truth of things? Somehow my gut reaction was that these people could not possibly have purely altruistic intentions. Why would they venture back into the cave and bother trying to help the others? It’s their duty, sure Plato. But why? A deeper question that this conversation got me thinking about was altruism itself. Do people ever do anything completely selfless?

For my anthropology minor I took a course in primate behavior, which I absolutely loved. One of the topics we discussed was the evolutionary history of “altruism”. The main takeaway from this discussion was that pure altruism does not exist in nature and if it did, it would be fantastically maladaptive. Any seemingly selfless act could somehow be traced to something that would benefit the altruistic individual. For example, since relatives bear a certain percentage of one’s own genes, it is in one’s evolutionary fitness interest to help that individual. If the individual is part of a larger social group, it would benefit you to help them so that they help buff up the herd and decrease your chances of getting picked off by a predator. And perhaps this is true for non-human primates. But could this principle hold true for humans? That pure altruism does not exist?

For a cynic such as myself this concept doesn’t seem completely unfathomable. After all, if one reads far enough into most any action they could find an ulterior motive or perhaps manufacture one to suit this trend. I used to do this a lot as a teenager. I’d say that Christians, for example, don’t ever do anything selfless because every good deed is in fact a product of a fear of hell or desire for heaven. I’d see Mother Teresa as collecting and hoarding little stepping stones to heaven which were thinly veiled as altruistic acts.

So perhaps this isn’t a question that can be answered. But a thought that logically follows this conversation--does it matter? So what if an altruistic person is simultaneously helping themselves and someone else? That seems efficient after all--two birds with one stone and all that. However, I would argue that it does matter. The difference between a pure act of selflessness and that of mutual benefit is significant. I couldn’t possibly articulate why, but it is. Maybe that’s just the cynic in me.