Giving can often be to earn approval. Buying a round of drinks, buying presents and doing the washing up, can all be motivated by the expectancy of appreciation or reciprocal gestures. This, though good in itself, is very different from generosity without benefit to the giver. Selfless giving to merely benefit the recipient is purely altruistic in nature and it is this form of giving that causes a major problem for evolutionists.

 

Natural selection is based on an element of competition to survive. Certainly the local stags fight it out each year for the survival of their genetic make-up. If individuals are in competition to survive why would they aid the starving in Africa? International politics is still largely motivated by control of limited resources; so why do we seek to help our competition?

Theory 1. Recipricol Giving. Localised reciprocal giving, like an ant farm, is a community effort to survive. ‘Reciprocal altruism’ (Trivers, 1971) was put forward as a possible solution to the clash of evolutionary theory and altruism. However, by definition, 'reciprical altruism' struggles with its own contradiction in terms. Its aim to pacify the tension between giving and survival also has had to face the issue of selfless giving and remains problematical to evolutionary theorists. However, the extension of altruism to other species largly fits the 'recipricol altruism' model where a donkey is fed for the work it does. The theory is being developed to offset the modern growth of societies like Greenpeace who don't work with domestic or working animals.

 

Theory 2. Inclusive Fitness ( Hamilton, 1964). This is based on the belief that if you benefit the survival of your family/clan/people group you are participating in the continuation of family genes. This is juxtaposed to the example of the stags who don’t stand back and think of the family! As with the stags, 'survival of the fittest' struggles with giving charitable donations to weaker siblings. Instead, evolutionary theory maintains the development of life is due to genetic refinement by the survival of the successful. If by intelligence we opt out of this animal system, we would be undermining our own genetic future. 'Inclusive Fitness' is set to return to the problem of giving; the adoption of children from around the globe and fighting for the rights of the ‘alien’ which are just not cricket in the evolutionary game.

 

Whilst the finer details of evolutionary theory are being hammered out, perhaps we should also be teaching giving in our schools?

 

 

Sarah Bainbridge