Dark Shadows of Altruism

There are some dark sides to altruism, some of which I have written about before. One of them is rage against cheaters. And another is guilt.

All humans—except the one percent who are psychopaths—feel shame at doing something that hurts other people who are not hurting them; and more shame when they get caught. Shame is a feeling that reinforces altruism. In fact, the intensity of shame might be a rough measure of altruism. People who do not experience shame, and maybe do not even try to fake it, are a public menace.

A Japanese research team in 2013 announced that they had discovered a way to induce body cells to turn into stem cells. If this report had been true, it would have revolutionized medical science. It seemed too good to be true and, of course, it was. I don’t know why scientists sometimes try this, because they will always get found out eventually, often sooner than later. And that’s what happened in this case in 2014.

In the summer of 2014, one of the researchers hanged himself in a stairwell.

This level of remorse is excessive, but is understandable for someone who has not just abused research funds but abused the public trust. Remorse, occasionally extreme remorse, shows that the person has a functioning instinct of altruism, absent which the person may be clinically psychopathic.

The point I would like to make is that I have never heard of a politician or business executive or preacher or lawyer committing suicide in shame over deliberately faulty conduct that is just as abusive of the public trust as anything that any scientist has ever done (except for the Nazi doctors and Stalinist creators of mass famine).

Scientific fraud is relatively rare, compared to the countless illegal actions so common among politicians, lawyers, preachers, and business executives. The prodigious discrepancy between sincere acts of remorse—and it doesn’t get much more sincere than suicide—among scientists and among politicians, preachers, etc., is a clear measure that scientists are much more sincerely altruistic than politicians, business leaders, preachers, and lawyers. I trust scientists—while keeping my eyes open for the remote possibility of fraud—while I assume outright that preachers, politicians, and business leaders are liars—while keeping my mind open for the possibility that individual ones are not.

Might I suggest that some business and political leaders who have blatantly abused the public trust—such as the CEO who oversaw the illegal activities of Bank of America, for which the corporation recently had to pay a $16.65 billion fine to the government, the largest settlement in history between the federal government and a single corporation—consider the suicide option. The same for tobacco corporation executives, who knowingly profit from marketing deadly products. Maybe they should consider seppuku (hara-kiri, which is ritual Japanese suicide). It would make a great YouTube vid.

The Functions of Governments

Happy President’s Day, everybody. It’s tax time again, the perfect time to think about the functions that governments perform.

There are many functions, of course, but one of the major functions of a government is to oppress people and keep them in a subservient position; to demean them and make them feel inferior. This is never more apparent than at tax time.

Taxes are necessary. We all know this. And I am not going to speculate about whether taxes are too high (or low) or comment on how the federal government or state governments use tax revenues. But it is the process of taxation that seems designed to frustrate and demean citizens. The federal government, and at least the state government of Oklahoma where I live, have several ways of frustrating and demeaning taxpayers that appear to be new this year and are unlikely to be the result of mere errors.

Two examples come from the IRS.

• The PDF of the 1040 form indicates that, quote, “You can save data typed into this form.” But this appears to be impossible. When I try to save the form, only the blank form is stored on my computer. If I have to make any changes in the form, I have to completely start over.
• Form 1040 indicates, on line 45, that we are required to submit Form 6251 (Alternative Minimum Tax). But no such form exists on the IRS website, whether you use the search box or scroll through the hundreds of forms, and whether you search for the name or the form number.

In previous years, I never encountered these problems. I always found, filled out, and submitted Form 6251, and I always saved my filled-in tax forms. These are new problems the IRS has created for this year. They have succeeded in making me hate them.

The Oklahoma Tax Commission also has PDF forms for the taxpayer to fill out online. The instructions indicate that, for married couples filing jointly, both the taxpayer and spouse receive one exemption. But the online form will not allow the spouse exemption to be entered. Try clicking on the box, or filling in the number, and nothing happens. By law, my wife and I constitute two exemptions; but the tax form only allows one, unless you fill it in by hand. The entire form is “automatic” which means that this glitch cannot be overridden. Again, this feature worked fine in previous years. The OTC has also succeeded in what appears to be their attempt to make me hate them.

Every year I find taxes frustrating, but I thought that at last I had worked out the system so that filing would be easy. This is impossible, however, since each year federal and state governments ruin something that used to work.

These new processes seem to have no function except to make people like me, who are willing to pay taxes, grovel in the dust and feel like criminals. I feel like I am breaking the law by disobeying the requirement to submit the federal form 6251. Rather than making us feel like fellow citizens who are contributing to the common good, the IRS and state tax commissions want to show us that they are the alpha gorillas and put us, psychologically, in our places. The federal government is not of, by, or for the people. If it were, I would be glad to pay my taxes.

Altruism: The Third Alternative for Ecology and Evolution

Consider the following to be my holiday message to you. It is adapted from an essay I wrote for my website.

I recently read a book entitled The Penguin and the Leviathan, by Yochai Benkler, a leading scholar in business research. I have read many books about altruism, many of them by scientists such as Frans deWaal (The Age of Empathy), Dacher Keltner (Born to Be Good), and Martin Nowak (Super Cooperators). These books repeatedly make the point that individuals within animal species, individual humans, and businesses can profit from being nice and generous to others. Altruism, rather than violent competition, is the most important component of “the law of the jungle.” Just ask any of the chimps that deWaal has studied. The way to the top is primarily through cooperation, not violent competition. Even apes understand this. Benkler’s book is published by Crown Business, a division of a major New York publisher. Its intended audience is not science buffs but business leaders. In the title, the Penguin is Tux, the icon of Linux, whose business model is cooperation rather than top-down command, and the Leviathan is the cynical view of life presented centuries ago by Thomas Hobbes.

Benkler, though not a scientist, has done a very good job of summarizing the evolutionary science of altruism. But the thing that opened my eyes the most was that Benkler presented altruism as a third alternative for how a society could operate. The other two ways are state control and free market. We usually think that these are our only two choices. But, as Benkler explains, this is not true.

Both state control (as exemplified by dictators on the political right or the political left) and free market economics operate from the assumption that humans are fundamentally selfish. State control attempts to force people to not be selfish. The free market tries to capitalize upon those utterly selfish economic machines known as humans. But Benkler points out that altruism is a fundamental instinct of the human mind. As Michael Shermer said, it feels good to be good; humans enjoy being altruistic. Altruism motivates much of what we do.

Our only hope, from Benkler’s viewpoint, is to build our society and economic system in a way that facilitates altruism. Governments should not try to solve all social and economic problems by law and by creating big agencies; governments should be (in my words) conduits of the altruism that already exists in people’s minds. Governments should be altruism enablers. Similarly businesses should embrace altruism, appealing to their customers’ instincts to want to create a better world for everybody. Customers are selfish, but also altruistic. Customers are increasingly offended by corporations that display conspicuous selfishness; that assume the customers are merely selfish; or that use little greenwashing gimmicks to make themselves look environmentally friendly or socially altruistic. We customers are not stupid, nor are we totally selfish. We are (some of us more than others) partly altruistic and we expect our governments and businesses to also be altruistic.

Benkler makes the point that right now, when dictatorships are falling and the free market has proven ineffective enough that it has shaken the very faith of Alan Greenspan himself, is the time when altruism has a chance to influence the very structure of the economy and government. Governments and business CEOs have been good only at spending money, with disastrous consequences that nobody can ignore any longer.

Altruism, perhaps the greatest gift of evolution, is also the only way to solve our environmental problems. Neither of the other alternatives, government fiat or the profit motive by itself, have significantly deflected our worldwide momentum toward ecological disaster.

Joy to the world? Altruism? Maybe.