Instead of abandoning the injured to death, disability or insanity the human mind has discovered innumerable ways to ease suffering. So many people are compassionate in their work, thoughts and deeds despite their own struggles and personal failures. Is compassion at base an instinct to ensure human survival by cultivating those who choose the health of the other (and thus the group) over limited self interest? Or is compassion a learned ethical stance divorced from survival? I hope the desire to relieve suffering signifies more than a selfish need to relieve our own pain from witnessing suffering. I hope it says something about our character and ethical evolution. Recently, acts of compassion and understanding toward me by my friends helped me take some steps to try to alleviate the suffering of someone I love. Thanks...........http://www.usip.org/
*Peonies from my garden
4 comments:
"I hope the desire to relieve suffering signifies more than a selfish need to relieve our own pain from witnessing suffering. I hope it says something about our character and ethical evolution."
Ah, but then you've got to wonder about the reason for the pain that arises in the witness....
If you want to avoid evidence for the evolution of compassion, then by no means should you consider the extent to which compassion is extended to those with varying degrees of genetic similarity. For instance, 18th/19th-century persons of European descent generally considered Africans as another species; and... not a lot of compassion there. Coincidence? I'd say no; a human has a strong tendency to side with the guy who looks more like himself, with looks being (for most of human history) an efficient surrogate for genetic relationship.
Compassion can be considered a subset of altruism, and there are volumes written on the evolutionary justification of altruism. One instructive example is provided by bees. Worker bees toil in procreative futility-- they're effectively sterile. But, they are helping to ensure the survival of siblings and their siblings' offspring (nieces and nephews). And guess what? There is a statistical chance of being more closely related to your siblings than to your own children! Your vertical descendants are capped at being half you, whereas chromosomal recombination in your parents' gametes provides the opportunity to share more than half your siblings' genes (twins being the extreme example).
But just because altruism makes sense biologically doesn't mean that it's dispassionate or robbed of its subjective satisfaction. There are people who stop enjoying things when they learn that they're not accorded (by) magic. But if you never believed in magic in the first place....
Is compassion a subset of altruism? Certainly it can be considered helping but relieving suffering seems very distinct from altruism which fosters or enhances survival of a species. After all if you relieve the suffering of someone who is making 0 contribution to self or society, how is that beneficial to the species? It could be seen as destructive because of the precious resources it diverts. Thus, eugenics.
"After all if you relieve the suffering of someone who is making 0 contribution to self or society"
That assumes that rational thought goes into compassion. Most ethologists would say that altruistic behavior is usually instinctive. The instinct is engrained into the species's genetics because on average it confers a survival advantage for the group. The alternative-- an instinct that allows for the individual to consider (or calculate in a subconcious way) the futility/utility of the behavior-- is so complex (and prone to error) that it has rather poor odds of evolving.
It is also possible for a trait (either physical or behavioral) to become established as an accident (e.g., "genetic drift"). As humans increasingly use technology to separate their survival and reproduction from the traditional limits on fitness, such accidental traits are allowed to persist in the absence of a practical advantage. It is possible that compassion has arisen as an accidental elaboration upon an earlier, more practical version of altruism.
So, you're right: it is a trade-off. And the degree to which compassion becomes futile limits the reproductive future of a group/species. Perhaps compassion only becomes a selective disadvantage under leaner, harsher times. It may exist with impunity when the calf is fat and peace reigns. But once the Mongol hordes attack, it is maladaptive.
For this and related reasons, the most successful groups are those with diversity-- those that contain some kind souls AND some blood-thirsty soldiers, some quiet intellectuals AND some goofy purveyors of comic relief, some beautiful people to idolize AND some grunts to clean their bathrooms. Versatility, that's the ticket!
I will immediately cease to feel disdainful of Paris Hilton!!!
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