Donating to charity is selfish
I’ve finished watching a repeat of Richard Dawkins’s The Genius of Charles Darwin, The Fifth Ape. I never caught it the first time around. In this episode Dawkins was trying understand how kindness and morality fits in with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Part of the reason, Dawkins says, comes from kin selection, where an animal will sacrifice itself or its safety in order to ensure the survival of its relatives, and the ongoing survival of its DNA.
The other reason for this relates back to Dawkins’s own work on the Selfish Gene. He says under various circumstances an organism will commit acts of kindness in order to receive some sort of benefit from it in the future. A sort of quid pro quo, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours kind of deal. In smaller social groups this made sense as the benefits of this exchange could be received back directly, but Dawkins wanted to know why this instinct to be kind to others is there for complete strangers. Why should we do something to help an anonymous person by donating something to charity, when we will receive nothing in return? This is of no benefit to the survival of the genes of that individual, yet those strong stirrings of compassion are still there.
Dawkins concluded that this was an example of our selfish genes misfiring. That this instinct to help others is something left over from when our ancestors lived in much tighter and smaller groups, but really serves no useful function for the survival of that individual.
This is where I disagree with Richard Dawkins.
I believe that as the human species has developed much larger and more complex societies than our ape like ancestors, maybe the genes are evolving with it. Just because helping a stranger in trouble, or giving money to a charity has no obvious benefit to you and the survival of your genes, it doesn’t mean that the gene isn’t acting in some selfish way of looking after you. Perhaps on some genetic level it recognises that society as a whole must function on a level of co-operation, understanding and compassion. That the well being and survival of your own genes relies on the well being of the society that you live in. After all, you wouldn’t want your offspring to grow up in a lawless and violent society would you?
But then again, I’m not an evolutionary biologist so what do I know?
