Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 23, 1993 TAG: 9312220080
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joel Achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A: This being the holiday season, a time for love and sharing and happiness, we thought it only appropriate that we devote a column to the milk of human kindness, to that special spirit of beneficence that makes this time of year so wonderful. (Next week: Sexual sadism.)
The existence of altruism is one of those things that consternate people in lab coats but offer no mystery whatsoever to regular people. Regular people know, with utter certainty, that they do things out of love, and caring, and good will toward fellow man and woman. But to a scientist, charity seems, at first glance, weirdly maladaptive. You say you give money to the United Way? How un-Darwinian of you!
The fact is, however, there are other species that do the same thing. It's not a dog-eat-dog world after all (isn't that a Disney song?). Rats in a cage will eat less food if doing so stops the electric shocks given to another rat. Dolphins will physically support another injured dolphin and keep it from drowning. Monkeys take turns picking lice from one another's back.
So why aren't all these creatures merely self-interested?
The answer is that altruism, though not necessarily benefiting an individual, benefits the genes that the individual is carrying. Yet another Hallmark sentiment from the Why staff!
The classic example is the lioness sacrificing herself for the safety of her cubs. She dies, but her genes survive within those cubs. Among those genes is the gene that says that it is better to sacrifice oneself rather than let one's cubs die.
We might say that the behavior of the lioness is a particular kind of altruism called nepotism. That's simply the investment of energy in the support of offspring and kin, and it's common in humans, apes, birds, mammals, insects, you name it. What's far more rare is "social reciprocity." You find it in the lice-picking chimps. But you find it most of all among humans. Humans are constantly being reciprocal. We constantly cut deals with, or work with, people who aren't kin. When you buy a burger at McDonald's you're engaging in social reciprocity of sorts. Our entire human civilization is a monument to reciprocity. Do you think birds would ever do a deal like NAFTA?
The good thing about social reciprocity is that, on the whole, we prosper, because we can accomplish more working together than working individually. Economies of scale and all that. Scratch someone's back, later he'll scratch yours when you're really itching. The bad thing about all this is that, as an individual, you might get the shaft. Social reciprocity is risky. People may cheat you. Maybe that guy won't scratch your back after all.
Richard Alexander, an evolutionary biologist and author of "The Biology of Moral Systems," says that human intelligence may be an evolutionary response to the risks of our social structures. We might have needed savvy brains in order to detect cheaters and frauds. It's a great theory!
"We're all lie detectors in a sense," Alexander says. "When you start that business of potential cheating, you have to have a defense against that."
We have constructed an ethical and moral structure on top of our primitive impulses. We teach values to our young. We try to create a decent world, not simply as a biological instinct but as an intellectual and moral choice.
We are gifted, most of us, with the ability to empathize, to understand how another feels, and to feel that feeling ourselves. But the power to empathize has one drawback, notes Frans de Waal, a primatologist at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center of Emory University:
"Empathy makes it also possible to be cruel," he says.
Animals are not cruel, intentionally. They may be tricky, deceptive, bloodthirsty, but they are not sadistic.
Perhaps that is another reason why it is better to give than to receive: There's so much evil in the world, you have to try your best to tip the scales back in the direction of love.
Q. Why do some people have innies and some outies?
A. We're talking about bellybuttons, of course. As opposed to, for example, noses. You have to admit that would be interesting - an innie nose.
According to Howard Bennett, the official Why staff pediatrician and editor of "The Best of Medical Humor," true outies are extremely rare. In some cases people have a slight puckering of the skin around the navel, so they may call that an outie, but it's really an innie surrounded by an outie, a kind of in-and-outie.
A true outie, a serious protuberance, may be caused by a granuloma, a little bud of soft, inflamed, pinkish tissue that becomes covered with skin (or "epithelialized," as the smart set calls it). These things can be attacked with a little silver nitrate and should go away. If not, they're not a big deal - just an outie.
It's possible that some outies are due to umbilical hernias - the protrusion of the intestines through the abdominal wall - but that should be surgically treated by a doctor.
The bottom line is that most true outies can be turned into innies, and so you don't see many outies anymore, because of the perfect-children fetish that is sweeping the land. If you or your child has a bellybutton that is not 100 percent perfect, you know what to do: Sue your doctor for millions. Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB