The Scoper

And For What

Every winter my family travels to Mexico with a large group to build houses for poor families that could not otherwise afford to own a home.  Two days of construction work yields a simple wooden house approximately the size of a two car garage, some simple furnishings and the house warming gifts that our group brings along for each family. 

 

This building project is organized through Homes of Hope, an offshoot of a Christian missionary group called Youth with a Mission.    YwAM pre selects recipients based on financial need, family circumstances and their ability to purchase the land on which the home will be constructed.  Our group arrives at the work site with the cement slab prepared, materials on site and power tools and generators ready to go.  Our investment in the project is our travel and lodging expenses and the $300 per person contribution for the cost of building materials.  We also give up 4 days of our lives to make the trip, two days to build and 2 travel days. And for what? 

 

Our participation in Homes of Hope is not unusual.  One of my coworkers has made repeated trips to the New Orleans area to rebuild homes, clear rubble, and extend help wherever needed at considerable cost and discomfort to him.  People donate blood all the time. Others tend to the homeless, staff hospices, offer free legal assistance to the indigent, and tutor the needy.  Doctors travel to remote lands to perform life saving surgery.  My hard drive does not have the space to list all kind acts people extend to others with no expectation of any reciprocity.  And for what?

 

They do this 1) on behalf of a group of people that they will never see again 2) on behalf of a group of people who will never be able to reciprocate the generosity 3) with no other direct reciprocal activity – in other words they get no measureable return for their effort.  And for what?

 

Why would any sane person do this? Even Carl Spackler said to the Dali Lama, “Hey, Lama, how about a little something, you know, for the effort…”

 

I think of these acts of charity as a secular humanist – a fancy pants way of saying I am an atheist.   

 

I mention this because I am incapable of looking at this subject through the window of the pious.  I cannot consider the impact that “God” had on this blind altruism.  I admit that there are probably some Homes of Hope participants who build because they think their involvement will get them a “skip the line pass” for heaven or penance for offenses committed.  But I cannot accept the fact that all, or even the majority, are being driven by a need to please an imaginary deity (oops…I have to hike my skirt as my bias is showing); a god that has his score pad in hand ready to complete the slash chart that could send them up or down, clouds or fire, to an REM concert or a Milli Vanilli Reunion party (I afford the reader to determine the relative direction of that analogy). So if you want to tell me that we are doing “God’s work” or being guided by “God’s hand” I will have to allow you to educate me by your response. Or to twist a phrase made famous by Cuba Gooding Jr. “Show me the deity”

 

I prefer to use scientific research, theory, and data as my Windex to the world.

 

If you ask the people on the build why they do this work, their responses center around a central concept which is simply, “it makes me feel good.” 

 

This begs the responding question, “Why does it make you feel good?” 

 

The typical responses to this question are circular.  “It makes me feel good because I know it is the right thing to do,” “It makes me feel good because I like helping people,” “It makes me feel good because I want to leave the world a better place.”

 

Trying to get to the real root cause would force us to ask again:

 

What does doing the right thing make you feel good?

Why does helping people make you feel good?

Why does leaving the world a better place make you feel good?

 

And the reply when everything is boiled away is the classic “Because it does.”

 

Smarter men than I have tackled this question.  Evolutionary biology combined with high definition magnetic imaging and other various sciences have developed some very interesting theories that demonstrate altruism is, in fact, inbred.  The theorists have come up with several reasons why we need to help. Bottom line, you can’t fight the need to do good and there’s damn good reasons you have that drive.

 

Before we can understand the theory, we have to consider where we have come from.  “For millions of years we evolved in small groups of a few dozen to a few hundred individuals in hunter gatherer communities in which everyone was either genetically related or knew one another intimately, most resources were shared, wealth accumulation was unheard of and excessive greed and avarice were punished.¹”

 

So why would greed and avarice be punished?  The bottom line is these traits were not good for the group.  They lead to unequal distribution of “goods and services” like yak meat and child rearing.  If goods and services were not distributed equally, the small size of the group would make it easier to be weakened by that person who did not get his share. Michael Shemer in his book, “The Mind of the Market” refers to this as “evolutionary egalitarianism.”

 

Consider that we spent almost all of our “evolutionary time” in small groups of hunters and gatherers and only a relative microsecond in what we refer to as “civilized times” that consist of mega cities in mega countries. In the old days you wanted to make sure that Ork was well fed and ready to help with providing food or defending the group. Today, we don’t even know who our neighbor is until the odor from his apartment indicates that he went to the Milli Vanilli Reunion party several weeks back without telling anyone.

 

So going back to when we ran around in those, oh so hot, loin cloths “fairness evolved as an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) for maintaining social harmony in our ancestors’ small bands, where cooperation was reinforced and became the rule and freeloading was punished and became the exception.²” “The reason hunter gatherers are egalitarian is not because they are naturally altruistic or lack some impulse for competitiveness and avarice but because greed and selfishness is kept in check by the fellow group members.

 

So we spent millions of years like this and a relatively few centuries living like we do today.

 

As a result of our evolutionary upbringing we exhibit several types of altruism.

 

Kin Altruism is that which is extended for a direct relation. If you got my genes I got your back.

 

Reciprocal Altruism probably resulted from larger communities where genetic relationships were less concentrated.  This is the “I’ll Scratch Your Back if You Scratch Mine”   Or perhaps more accurately, I’ll pick your lice if you pick mine.

 

Finally Blind Altruism characterized by “I’ll scratch your back you scratch mine later” also resulted when the group got bigger and could even be the precursor to our system of money. Basically, people remembered when you did them a favor and were ready to reciprocate when called upon.  This is how the Don buried Sonny.  But I digress.

Peter Singer in his article The Biological Basis of Ethics writes, “Suppose I want to have the lice in my hair picked out. To obtain this I am willing to pick out someone else's lice. I must, however, be discriminating in selecting whom to groom. If I help everyone indiscriminately I shall find myself grooming others who do not groom me back. To avoid this waste of time and effort I distinguish between those who repay me for my assistance and those who do not. In other words, I separate those who deal fairly with me from those who cheat. Those who do not repay me I shall mark out to avoid; indeed, I may go further still, reacting with anger and hostility. Conceivably it will benefit me and other reciprocating altruists in my group if we make sure that the worst ''cheats" are unable to take advantage of any of us again; killing them or driving them away would be effective ways of doing this. For those who do all that I hope they will do, on the other hand, I will have a positive feeling that increases the likelihood of my doing my part to preserve and develop a mutually advantageous relationship.”

This altruistic sense of right and wrong evolved from humans living in these small societies.  The scale of the communities meant that these traits were inbred, just like the upturned nose of the Pug that won Westminster.  An anthropological example of this can be seen today be examining the Chewong Tribe of Malaysia.  The Chewong place food above everything and developed a detailed system of religious rituals that required hunters to publically display the catch, have everyone in the tribe “lay hands” on it (just like at Old Country Buffet) and then required everyone to eat together. “

We do not need to make social and moral computations about what is right and wrong. Evolution has done it for us and our emotions guide our behavior.

 

To address the specific issue of acts of charity for which no return is expected, two evolutionary biologists from Israel, Amotz and Avishag Zahvi suggest a mechanism they call Costly Signaling Theory (CST).  This theory states that many times we do things for people from whom we expect no immediate return.  This model explains that we do altruistic things primarily for two reasons. First, we help others to send a signal to others that my altruistic and charitable acts prove I am trustworthy member of the community.  Second, it states that we do these things to show that we are successful we can afford to do for others. Bottom line we to it to gain trust and exhibit status. Both could help us in later days and as such, is a delayed indirect reciprocal altruistic act.

 

There is very broad and conclusive evidence of how our very genetic makeup has been altered by our past need to be altruistic.  Using fMRI technology, scientists can identify key areas of the brain that respond when we are kind to others. These researchers have shown that when we do good, the caudate nucleus and the nucleus accumbens, ancient regions of the brain, which produce feelings of pleasure and fulfillment, fire like the stage at a Great White concert.

 

Additional research has shown that 98% of the population (the other 2% are sociopaths) actually experience a release of oxytocin when people feel that they are being trusted. Oxycotin is a hormone that gives us a high. While the hypothalamus is a cautious drug dealer which is why you don’t lose complete control and consume an entire tube of Pringles while muttering “feel the crunch”, there is no doubt of its positive effects on us all.  For example, when woman smell their own new born, Oxycotin is released. It also increases during sex and surges at orgasm.

 

But going back to Singer’s discussion about how I decide whose lice I pick, another interesting discovery of mirror neurons has improved our understanding of why we do those groovy things we do for others. Mirror neurons help us “mirror” the actions of others and thus are directly involved in anticipation, imitation, and empathy.  This research has lead to proof that we see other people’s problems, we understand and feel their hurt, and, from other inbred neurological responses, want to right the wrong.

 

To summarize, evolutionary biologists have presented a very plausible theory as to why it was important to our very survival to be altruistic.  The theory that through evolution this response has been inbred has been supported by the results of fMRI studies and other neurological indicators.  And finally, we know there are chemicals that are released to make us feel good when we do good.

 

In other words, there is empirical evidence for Adam Smith’s philosophical deductions in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (which he wrote in 1759 which is really woot^* if you think about it): “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.  Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.”

 

 

 

1. The Mind of The Market, Michael Shemer, p. 18
2. IBID  p. 126
3. IBID p. 128

 

 

^*(see http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot)

Amazing

 

I am writing this on the final leg of my trip home from our Mexico location and had a sudden intuitive perception (I was going to use “epiphany” but is that a tired word or what?) that I must share with you.

 

We walk through life oblivious to the amazing things that occur all around us.  Yes, I assume you exist in the same ethereal fog that blankets my consciousness and if you don’t, good for you, Maharishi.

 

Back to the point. So I am sitting in first class on a flight from Phoenix to Chicago. Yes,  I upgrade when feasible so that I can get off the airplane without deep vein thrombosis, my knees not permanently locked at 90 degrees, and my ribs unbrusied by the boorish wide body clod who thinks the world is his toilet and had the extra large bean barrrito for lunch.

 

The meal came.  I chose the stuffed shells.  The pasta shells were nicely stuffed with a ricotta cheese mix and smothered in a better than passing tomato sauce. Not close to anywhere in Italy or even Olive Garden, but hey, pretty darn tasty.  Accompanying it was a nice whole wheat roll and a salad of bib lettuce, Greek olives, artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes and capers.

 

So I button the napkin to my shirt.  For those that don’t frequent the front of the MD80 your cloth napkin has this ingenious little button hole perfectly situated so that you can anchor it to that second from the top button on your cotton pinpoint.  Now that I was protected from stray marinara and random salad dressing I looked at my meal.

 

Let’s start with the shells.  Pasta made from wheat probably grown in North Dakota, harvested, and sent to a storage silo.  Just think about that sentence.  Imagine what is involved in preparing the soil, planting the seed, harvesting the grain.  Think about the business of a silo and all that requires.

 

The wheat, after being traded several times on the Exchange makes its way to a mill that grinds it into flour.  The flour is then sold to a wholesaler who sells it to a commercial food wholesaler who markets it to a producer of pasta in, oh let’s say, Cleveland.  Why Cleveland?  I dig The Flats.

 

They make the pasta and let’s even assume they produce the shells.  They send the shells to a wholesaler in Tennessee. The wholesaler sells it to a distributor and eventually it finds its way to a Phoenix catering company. 

 

Then, there is some tomato grower in Santa Maria, California. He harvests his crop (and let’s not forget about all his effort to plant and grow the little suckers) and sells it to a wholesaler who sells them to a marinara sauce producer located in Dallas.  He produces the better than passing sauce and sells it to that Phoenix catering company.

 

That smooth ricotta cheese mixture starts in a Wisconsin farm where there are these hundreds of dairy cows eating and lactating for your pleasure.  Consider what is involved in making the cow’s feed and the equipment required to milk the cows.  The milk goes to a cheese maker in New Hampshire where it is processed into that soft cheese that is only a couple of steps away from clotting your arteries. Next, to that caterer in Phoenix.

 

The caterer takes all these inputs, hires people, pays taxes, deals with those HR problems that plague all business owners, accepts customer abuse that plagues all business owners, and makes a tasty dish and ships it to American Airlines every day.

 

We haven’t even touched the salad yet.  It is actually too much to detail in this little article. Bib lettuce.  Where was it grown and how was it handled before it got to that dish on my tray?  How about those tiny tomatoes and artichoke hearts?  And what about the capers?.  Where the hell do they come from?  I don’t know but by the look of them they would appear to be the offspring of a rabbit’s rear end.  But I digress.

 

I won’t even waste your time with the whole wheat roll or even tax your cerebum with the little plastic sleeve of salt and pepper. But let me tease you with the fact that salt is a mined mineral, pepper is a plant by-product and then there is all the activities surrounding the little plastic sleeve that holds the two seasonings.  Mining rock, growing stuff, making plastic just so you can insult the chef.  Pretty cool.

 

The above logistics description does not even come close to identifying the literary thousands of people involved in getting me this evening supper.  It is a very abbreviated outline but I hope you get the point.

 

And so I am eating this meal produced by the magic coordination of thousands of people and millions of dollars of equipment in a long aluminum tube at 30,000 feet above sea level travelling at 500 miles per hour writing this on a laptop powered by a rechargeable lithium battery listening to the latest Radiohead CD through a device smaller than my American Express credit card with earphones that not only block out extraneous noise but delivers concert hall quality sound and sipping a Malbec produced in Argentina.

 

Ayn Rand would be proud.  Think about it.  Amazing.

Half Full

February 7, 2008

 

If Christmas is the season to be jolly that election year must be the interval requiring us to be despondent.  Politicians thrive on the need to make the morose commonplace and public attitude, along with biased media, walks in lock step. (Note – by bias media I am not stirring up the insipid debate regarding the press’s “liberal” or “conservative” bend but rather their inarguable commitment to “if it bleeds, it leads.”)

 

Having been sucked into this melancholy vortex is probably the reason I reacted as much as I did to an article that appeared in a recent edition of The Economist magazine (Jan 26^th – Feb 1^st, page 27) titled Somewhere Over the Rainbow.  The article took a step back from the proverbial trees of our terrene to look at the forest, and used data to support its presentation.  It was a refreshing look at how the world is significantly improving and I would like to summarize the article’s main points for you.  However, I urge you to buy the magazine and read it yourself (Or better yet, plunk down the c-note for a yearly subscription.  Expensive, but the best value in news on earth.)

 

The article states that there are three pieces of evidence that support the fact that our planet has significantly improved as a place to live during the last several decades and there is cause to be optimistic about the future. Their three legged stool of optimism is supported by data on the improvements in the underlying social conditions in poor countries, poverty alleviation over the past decade, and the reduction in the incidence of wars and political violence

 

In China 25 years ago over 600 million people (2/3 of the population) were living in extreme poverty.  Today, the number there is below 180 million. In the entire world between 1999 and 2004 135 million people escaped dire poverty. This is a faster rate than at any time in our history.

 

With the reduction in poverty there have been great improvements in basic services. The number of people without clean water has been cut in half since 1990.  As a result of this and other public health provisions, the rate at which people die from infectious diseases has fallen, Africa the exception. In 2007 UNICEF reported that for the first time in modern history fewer than 10 million were dying before the age of 5.  I know that this number is staggering, but consider it represents a 25% reduction since 1990.  The efforts for world-wide literacy has resulted in 90% of the people between the ages of 15 and 25 being literate while that number in 1975 was 75%.

 

The article states that the most significant change affecting people’s lives is that people in poor countries are now able to exert more control over their own fertility and, hence, the size of their families. At one point in time the biggest worry about poor countries was over-population. But since the time when the books “The Population Bomb”(1968) and “The Limits to Growth”(1970) were published the average fertility rate in low and middle income countries has crashed. In East Asia and the Pacific, the rate was 5.4 in 1970 and is now 2.1. In the world as a whole the fertility rate has fallen from 4.8 to 2.6 in just 25 years.

 

The most significant reductions in the fertility rate were in countries involved with globalization.  Globalization, it appears, leads to a shift in the direction of the “replacement fertility.” “In closed agrarian societies, families need a lot of children as insurance against disaster. But in countries that have opened themselves up, families can rely on other sorts of protection such as urban jobs or trade.” It should be noted that all countries that have fertility rates higher than 5 are in Africa (with one exception which is Yemen).

 

(Note – for more on the issue of shifting demographics two books with significantly different perspectives are “Immigrants – Your Country Needs Them by Philippe Legrain and American Alone by Mark Steyn. Both are very interesting)

 

The state of the world economy is also a major reason for the reduction in poverty as supported by a World Bank study of 19 poor countries that concluded for every 1% increase in national income per head translates to a 1.3 point reduction in extreme poverty.  In 2007 the world’s economy grew 4% for its 5^th straight year.  In addition, growth was spread around fairly evenly. The EU rose slightly more than the States but growth in East Asia was 10% and in South Asia was 8% and even Eastern Europe was 7%.  Africa showed a 6% increase thanks to the commodity boom.  “Almost half of humanity, spread over more than 40 nations, lives in countries growing at 7% a year or more, a rate that doubles the size of an economy in a decade. This is twice the number of fast growers that existed in the years between 1980 and 2000.” Emerging markets are experiencing the lion’s share of this growth over the industrialized nations.

 

The rate of growth has not been totally equitable.  The rich have done best.  But the article presents data that this is not a result of globalization but, rather, technological progress. The people best suited to make use of new technologies are already educated and with wealth.  But obviously, to stop or retard technological progress would be ridiculous as it is also the source of opportunity, even in the under developed nations.

 

It is also noted that while the distribution of the growth has not been ultimately equitable, the incomes of the poorest fifth have risen everywhere except, marginally, in Latin America (impacted by their debt crisis). In Asia the poorest fifth’s income rose 4% per year and in Africa, 2% per year. This is faster than the rise of other income groups. The bottom line is that in 1990 those living on a $1 per day were 25% of developing countries and by 2015 it is expected that this number will be reduced to 10%.

 

While economic growth improves lives, “the most dramatic explanation for the improved living standards is the decline in the number of wars and in deaths from violence and genocide.”

 

Most people believe there are more and deadlier wars and more acts of genocide but the data does not support this. Civil and international conflicts have fallen from 50 at the beginning of the 1990’s to over 30 in 2005. The definitions for these conflicts were developed by scholars at the universities of Uppsala and British Columbia for a project called “Human Security Report.”). Based on their definitions, 1970 was the peak year for international wars and has fallen slowly since.  1990 was the peak for civil wars and then fell dramatically. “In total, the death toll in battle fell from over 200,000 a year in the mid-1980’s to below 20,000 in the mid-2000’s.”

 

Deaths from genocide has also been reduced.  While Dafur is ever-present, the late 1980’s and early 1990’s were far worse with 10 cases of mass slaughters of civilians including Bosnia, Rwanda, and Burundi.

 

During the recent years there has also been a dramatic reduction in the number of conflicts resolved or restrained including Aceh, Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Nepel, Timor-Leste and Sierra Leone.

 

To be balanced the number of international terrorist incidents has increased since 9/11/2001 after a decade of decline.  And the number of terrorist deaths has climbed everywhere.  However, this can be misleading.  While more attacks have occurred in Europe, Asia, and Latin America more fatalities and violence has occurred in the Middle East then the World put together.

 

This does not mean all is well.  It does not mean that any progress we have made the past several decades could not be easily derailed. And despite the title of my summary, I don’t believe the article’s intent was to encourage us to look at the world with the bias towards the “half-full” perspective.

 

I believe its intent was to show that we have made great progress and to use data to assist our observations of the world. I think it wants to show us that there are no magic pills and no quick solutions but that when people are free to pursue their own interests and when the fruits of their progress are not siphoned off by corrupt governments, the world can slowly and steadily become a better place for all of us. And finally, rather then make us complacent based on the results presented, I think it is trying to encourage us to continue the journey.

 

Scott