The world is getting better
I’m reading Peter Singer’s book The Life You can Save (you can freely download the book from the website), in which he makes a profound observation. He challenges the assumption about our behavior that permeates western, and particularly American, culture: “the norm of self-interest”:
Alexis de Tocqueville, that sharp observer of the American psyche during the formative years of the United States, noticed the norm even then: “Americans,” he wrote in 1835, “enjoy explaining almost every act of their lives on the principle of self-interest.” He thought that in doing this they were underplaying their own benevolence, because in his view Americans were, just like everyone else, moved by spontaneous natural impulses to help others. But in contrast to Europeans, Americans, he found, were “hardly prepared to admit that they do give way to emotions of this sort.”
He goes on to say:
Many of us believe not only that people are generally motivated by self-interest, but that they ought to be—if not necessarily in the moral sense of “ought,” then at least in the sense that they would be foolish, or irrational, if they were not self-interested. Conversely, when people appear to act contrary to their own interests, we tend to be suspicious, especially if the action is carefully considered (as opposed to something impulsive like jumping onto a subway track to save someone from being hit by an oncoming train). When celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Bono, or Amal and George Clooney support organizations that help the poor, we look for hidden selfish reasons. We readily agree with the suggestion that they are doing it only for the publicity. Truly selfless behavior makes us uncomfortable.
Singer goes on to describe some interesting experiments on the subject
Notes
- In spite of what you might think, the world has been getting remarkably better over the past 50 years, and human instinct is to act altruistically.