Empathy and altruism are two qualities that humans believe that our species possesses to a significant degree. While both qualities certainly play a vital role in the socialisation of our species, neither is actually evident in normal human behaviour to anything like the extent that people assume.
In other words, we are not nearly as inherently empathetic or altruistic as a species as we believe ourselves to be. In fact, to be frank, the empirical evidence suggests that the vast majority of people are largely indifferent to the welfare of all other humans who are not either genetically or strongly emotionally related to them.
Our illusion that we are significantly empathetic and altruistic as a species presumably rests upon the fact that some people are indeed very empathetic and very altruistic. By casual extrapolation, this rare human trait allows us falsely to ascribe the same virtues to our species as a whole.
There is a sound reason for our very limited empathy and altruism. Humans are all naturally self-interested creatures, all programmed biologically to attend first to their own needs in the battle for survival. (A mother’s concern for her children also equates emotionally to self-interest). Like the ever-diminishing circles spreading out on the surface of a pond into which a stone has been thrown, our empathy and altruism clearly diminish in intensity, the further their potential beneficiaries are from our personal egos. While we do (almost) anything for those in need close to us, we do virtually nothing for those beyond our immediate circle.
As social creatures, we are to a small degree concerned about the welfare of those in our own community who lie outside our immediate circle. This concern is of necessity limited, however, as the practical cost of altruism in a world of finite resources that are difficult to acquire might well be counter-productive to our own survival and that of our family. As for the individuals who exist beyond their cultural community, humans in general very little regard for their interests or welfare. From an evolutionary standpoint, the emotions of empathy, and particularly altruism, really apply only to family and close friends. For anyone beyond the inner circle, most people have little more than sentiment.
The observations above raise the question as to exactly why humans should choose to delude themselves as to how empathetic and altruistic the species is. What is the purpose in doing so? After all, each individual probably does not regard him or herself as particularly empathetic or altruistic. In fact, on the contrary, they are more likely to experience feelings of personal guilt at their frequent failure to adequately assist those fellow humans who are obviously in need of assistance. So, the question then becomes, why do the members of a species that only practises empathy and altruism to a very limited, but biologically appropriate extent, believe that the species as a whole is, and should indeed be, far more empathetic and altruistic than it actually is?
The most likely answer to this important, but ignored, question is, “Because they have been convinced that it is true by those who benefit from their doing so, and who possess sufficient moral authority over them to obtain their compliance”.
Throughout human history, until the anomalous advent of modern Liberal Democracy, most of the population in each society was dominated by one or the other minority group within it. The members of such a group, religious, social, or political, directed and controlled peoples’ lives. They defined what was true, what the people should believe, and how they should behave. The cost and the resistance generated by domination that had to be violently enforced was high, however.
Accordingly, those who led society came to realise that by far the most productive and cost-effective way of controlling large numbers of people was by using the system that society itself had evolved to control human behaviour: namely, morality. In order to do this, however ̶ manipulating the local moral code for their own benefit, ̶ the leadership had first successfully to claim and establish its moral authority in the eyes of the majority. This they did by means of their particular religious or political ideology, which used a compelling moral narrative that appealed to, and supposedly existed for the benefit of the subordinate majority. Once they had taken on board the moral ideological narrative dominant in their era, the majority fell effectively under the control of the minority.
Monarchy, aristocracy, and the various religions were all ancient and successful systems of control by the use of this morally-based, mass-indoctrination process. Each system in its time was based upon an ideology that portrayed the dominant minority in society as possessing morally superior qualities and/or morally superior understanding, compared with the majority of the people. This moral capture by the dominant minority succeeded in getting the majority to accept the position of relative moral subordination that they had apparently been born to. Morally-based mass indoctrination, it would appear, is the human expression of the herd instinct, common to social animals.
Idealistic modern political ideologies are based on the same controlling moral principles as these ancient social systems. Like the Western religions, both socialism and communism assert the moral claim that the whole structure and organisation of society should be dedicated to furthering the collective interests of the poor and the disadvantaged, rather than those of the normal individuals that liberal democracy serves. They are also autocratic, as were the ancient systems.
People believe that they ought to be more empathetic and altruistic towards strangers than they are instinctively, when they have been convinced that they should be so by the leaders who control them. People are generally predisposed to believe what they are told by those they regard as their moral superiors.
[Photo: by wendy CORNIQUET from Pixabay]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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