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Holy altruism: An instinct for self-sacrifice


dream_weaver

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Curious as to what “Altruism as Self-Sacrifice” would turn up on the Internet, I typed it into a Google search query. Not surprisingly, there are several links to Objectivism oriented materials, as well as this article posted back in early 2011 by the National Catholic Reporter.

The author related a story that reminded me of my years growing up in a rural area. More than once I had seen a Whippoorwill dragging one wing. The first few times (I was unaccompanied by an adult) I headed toward the ‘wounded’ bird, only to have it fly off by a few feet when I got close enough to it.

I recall my mother (an avid bird watcher) informing me that the Whippoorwills did this to lure squirrels and other animals away from the nest when I related the encounters to her.

Reasoning then that the bird was not really injured, I returned to the vicinity watching for the creature. Noting where I first noticed it, I returned later from a different angle and watched the parent bird repeat the performance in a different direction. Returning again later from a different angle for another act on the world stage, it was a matter of putting the several diverse directions together to note what the bird was moving away from to discover its nest of eggs.

Rich Heffern’s article states:

It’s a particularly ugly bird, yet my niece was greatly impressed with its willingness as a parent to sacrifice itself for its brood. Visiting with her recently just after the birth of her first child, she reminded me of our encounter in that spring forest many years ago.1

Sacrifice itself? Give me a break. The parent bird was perfectly capable of flying off, as it demonstrated numerous times.

The author further writes:

Examples of animal altruism abound. Dogs often adopt orphaned cats, squirrels and ducks. Dolphins support sick or injured animals, swimming under them for hours at a time and pushing them to the surface so they can breathe. Wolves and wild dogs bring meat back to members of the pack not present at the kill. Velvet monkeys give alarm calls to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators, even though in doing so they attract attention to themselves, increasing their personal chance of being attacked.1

In John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged we come across;

"The tragic joke of human history is that on any of the altars men erected, it was always man whom they immolated and the animal whom they enshrined. It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idol of instinct and the idol of force.2

While man is indeed recognized under the genus of animal, what is often left implicit is the differentia of rational. Indeed Mr. Heffern appeals to a product of reason, Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, and raises an alleged ‘problem of altruism.’ Citing science writer Eric Strong comments:

Altruism is one of the great mysteries of social behavior in animals, as it appears to contradict our understanding of natural selection. Even 100 years after the birth of Darwinism, scientists are still continuing to debate the causes and effects of altruistic behavior.1

The contradiction is that natural selection was not about trying to understand a moral code. As Miss Rand articulates via John Galt:

"An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil. It has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it.2

To reword one of Mr. Heffern’s concluding questions, he would have to ask: “Is the evidence for animal altruism a finger pointing at God?”

This brings me back to the idol of instinct and the idol of force. Using an example Attila and a Witch Doctor in For The New Intellectual, Miss Rand compares Attila to an animal’s means of dealing with nature without understanding by range of the moment brute force, and the Witch Doctor seeking to escape into his emotions. Describing them as superficially different, she points out what they have in common. Both are

a consciousness held down to the perceptual method of functioning, an awareness that does not choose to extend beyond the automatic, the immediate, the given, the involuntary, which means: an animal's "epistemology" or as near to it as a human consciousness can come.3

Why look to the animal kingdom for examples of altruism? Man has no instinct of self-preservation.

"Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires.2

Published prior to the discovery of DNA, Darwin's 1859 classic is exemplary of the application of reason culminating into a description of evolution by natural selection.

Ayn Rand’s exemplary application of reason culminated with the philosophy of Objectivism. Using her understanding of the nature of man and need for a code of rational morality brought her to this identification, stated as:

the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.4

The morality of altruism is not a rational morality. This is why:

no man or mystical elite can hold a whole society subjugated to their arbitrary assertions, edicts and whims, without the use of force.4

So how do we get here from a consciousness held down to the perceptual method of function? The key is revealed in the meaning of an animal’s “epistemology” or as near to it as a human consciousness can come.

By appealing to the problem of altruism contradicting natural selection, observations of animal behavior are drawn and compared to human causal efficacy, without reference to the faculty of reason setting him apart from the animals. Altruism, as used, is a combination of a floating and frozen abstraction.

It is a floating abstraction in that many who use it, sort of know what it means. It is a frozen abstraction because they apply a selective aspect of its meaning, not having discovered a rational morality.

When disagreements arise, how to resolve them rationally requires that both parties agree to allow reality be the final arbiter. This method, and its many nuances, is not widely known and taught. 

 Ayn Rand identified the philosophical root of altruism as mysticism. In Faith and Force she asks why we kill animals in the jungle and answers:

Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is the state to which mysticism reduces mankind—a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence.4

The evidence, as used for animal and human altruism, is a finger pointing at philosophy. The state of the world bears testimony to its inescapable power.

 

References:

1. Holy altruism: An instinct for self-sacrifice is evident in animal evolution, by Rich Heffern

2. This Is John Galt Speaking, For The New Intellectual, by Ayn Rand

3. For The New Intellectual, For The New Intellectual, by Ayn Rand

4. Faith And Force, Philosophy: Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand

Edited by dream_weaver
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