Reciprical altruism results from a sense of fairness which transcends
humans and is displayed by other species. Self sacrifice and helping
predate your mamma.
On Human Nature - Edward O. Wilson 1978
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067463442X/
...Other than man, chimpanzees may be the most altruistic of all
mammals. In addition to sharing meat after their cooperative hunts,
they also practice adoption. Jane Goodall has observed three cases at
the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, all involving orphaned
infants taken over by adult brothers and sisters. It is of considerable
interest, for more theoretical reasons to be discussed shortly, that
the altruistic behavior was displayed by the closest possible relatives
rather than by experienced females with children of their own, females
who might have supplied the orphans with milk and more adequate social
protection.
In spite of a fair abundance of such examples among vertebrates, it is
only in the lower animals, and in the social insects particularly, that
we encounter altruistic suicide comparable to man's. Many members of
ant, bee, and wasp colonies are ready to defend their nests with insane
charges against intruders. This is the reason that people move with
circumspection around honeybee hives and yellow-jacket burrows, but can
afford to relax near the nests of solitary species such as sweat bees
and mud daubers.
The social stingless bees of the tropics swarm over the heads of human
beings who venture too close and lock their jaws so tightly onto tufts
of hair that their bodies are pulled loose from their heads when they
are combed out. Some species pour a burning glandular secretion onto
the skin during these sacrificial attacks...
...Sharing the capacity for extreme sacrifice does not mean that the
human mind and the "mind" of an insect (if such exists) work alike. But
it does mean that the impulse need not be ruled divine or otherwise
transcendental, and we are justified in seeking a more conventional
biological explanation...
...the form and intensity of altruistic acts are to a large extent
culturally determined. Human social evolution is obviously more
cultural than genetic. The point is that the underlying emotion,
powerfully manifested in virtually all human societies, is what is
considered to evolve through genes. The sociobiological hypothesis does
not therefore account for differences among societies, but it can
explain why human beings differ from other mammals and why, in one
narrow aspect, they more closely resemble social insects...
...we must distinguish two basic forms of cooperative behavior. The
altruistic impulse can be irrational and unilaterally directed at
others; the bestower expresses no desire for equal return and performs
no unconscious actions leading to the same end. I have called this form
of behavior "hard-core"altruism, a set of responses relatively
unaffected by social rewar or punishment beyond childhood. Where such
behavior exists, it is likely to have evolved through kin selection or
natural selection operating on entire, competing family or tribal
units. We would expect hard-core altruism to serve the altruist's
closest relatives and to decline steeply in frequency and intensity as
relationship becomes more distant "Soft-core altruism, in contrast, is
ultimately selfish. The "altruist" expects reciprocation from society
for himself or his closest relatives. His good behavior is calculating,
often in a wholly conscious way, and his maneuvers are orchestrated by
the excruciatingly intricate sanctions and demands of society. The
capacity for soft-core altruism can be expected to have evolved
primarily by selection of individuals and to be deeply influenced by
the vagaries of cultural evolution. Its psychological vehicles are
lying, pretense, and deceit, including self-deceit, because the actor
is most convincing who believes that his performance is real...
...But in human beings soft-core altruism has been carried to elaborate
extremes. Reciprocation among distantly related or unrelated
individuals is the key to human society. The perfection of the social
contract has broken the ancient vertebrate constraints imposed by rigid
kin selection. Through the convention of reciprocation, combined with a
flexible, endlessly productive language and a genius for verbal
classification, human beings fashion long-remembered agreements upon
which cultures and civilizations can be built.
Yet the question remains: Is there a foundation of hard-core altruism
beneath all of this contractual superstructure? The conception is
reminiscent of David Hume's striking conjecture that reason is the
slave of the passions. So we ask, to what biological end are the
contracts made, and just how stubborn is nepotism?
The distinction is important because pure, hard-core altruism based on
kin selection is the enemy of civilization. If human beings are to a
large extent guided by programmed learning rules and canalized
emotional development to favor their own relatives and tribe, only a
limited amount of global harmony is possible. International cooperation
will approach an upper limit, from which it will be knocked down by the
perturbations of war and economic struggle, canceling each upward surge
based on pure reason. The imperatives of blood and territory will be
the passions to which reason is slave. One can imagine genius
continuing to serve biological ends even after it has disclosed and
fully explained the evolutionary roots of unreason...
...it is a remarkable fact that all human altruism is shaped by
powerful emotional controls of the kind intuitively expected to occur
in its hardest forms. Moral aggression is most intensely expressed in
the enforcement of reciprocation. The cheat, the turncoat, the
apostate, and the traitor are objects of universal hatred. Honor and
loyalty are reinforced by the stiffest codes. It seems probable that
learning rules, based on innate, primary reinforcement, lead human
beings to acquire these values and not others with reference to members
of their own group. The rules are the symmetrical counterparts to the
canalized development of territoriality and xenophobia, which are the
equally emotional attitudes directed toward members of other groups.
I will go further to speculate that the deep structure of altruistic
behavior, based on learning rules and emotional safeguards, is rigid
and universal. It generates a set of predictable group responses...
...Lawrence Kohlberg, an educational psychologist, has traced what he
believes to be six sequential stages of ethical reasoning through which
each person progresses as part of his normal mental development. The
child moves from an unquestioning dependence on external rules and
controls to an increasingly sophisticated set of internalized
standards, as follows:
(1) simple obedience to rules and authority to avoid punishment,
(2) conformity to group behavior to obtain rewards and exchange favors,
(3) good-boy orientation, conformity to avoid dislike and rejection by
others,
(4) duty orientation, conformity to avoid censure by authority,
disruption of order, and resulting guilt,
(5) legalistic orientation, recognition of the value of contracts, some
arbitrariness in rule formation to maintain the common good,
(6) conscience or principle orientation, primary allegiance to
principles of choice, which can overrule law in cases the law is judged
to do more harm than good.
...To the extent that this interpretation is correct, the ontogeny of
moral development is likely to have been genetically assimilated and is
now part of the automatically guided process of mental development.
Individuals are steered by learning rules and relatively inflexible
emotional responses to progress through stage five. Some are diverted
by extraordinary events at critical junctures. Sociopaths do exist. But
the great majority of people reach stages four or five and are thus
prepared to exist harmoniously - in Pleistocene hunter-gatherer
camps...
...Can the cultural evolution of higher ethical values gain a direction
and momentum of its own and completely replace genetic evolution? I
think not. The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long,
but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their
effects on the human gene pool. The brain is a product of evolution.
Human behavior - like the deepest capacities for emotional response
which drive and guide it - is the circuitous technique by which human
genetic material has been and will be kept intact. Morality has no
other demonstrable ultimate function....
On Human Nature - Edward O. Wilson 1978
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067463442X/
