The Human Spark

I had the oppor­tu­nity to see Alan Alda host a panel at the World Sci­ence Fes­ti­val in NYC Fri­day night. Because of the non-profit I’m launch­ing, I was curi­ous about the topic, “What It Means to Be Human: The Enigma of Altru­ism”. I learned a lot.

I would like to share a bit more of what I’m doing since the panel touched the related topic of altru­ism. In fact, since I wrote the first draft of this post, I saw a tweet that said some­thing about need­ing to find a bet­ter word for char­ity. I think altru­ism is it. We can then refer to altru­is­tic lifestyles or altru­is­tic liv­ing (peo­ple who live an altru­is­tic life).

Did you know that Charles Dar­win wor­ried that the exis­tence of altru­ism would wreck the the­ory of evolution?

(I didn’t.)

Once pointed out, it kinda makes sense. If we evolve along the lines of sur­vival of the fittest, then any­thing that doesn’t help an organ­ism sur­vive should be among the first char­ac­ter­is­tics to disappear.

The panel dis­cussed three ways to account for altru­is­tic behav­ior, but their rea­son­ing didn’t sat­isfy me. It seemed to leave some­thing out. And, this omis­sion, coin­ci­den­tally, is what my com­pany is about, so please read on.

The three ways to account for altru­ism were:

1. For the good of the genes… mean­ing, an organ­ism would some­how know that it’s related to another, and to help related genes sur­vive would coop­er­ate towards its sur­vival. (I have an objec­tion to this whole line of rea­son­ing. Con­sider the fact that we’re killing the planet, and yet with­out it we’ve got a real sur­vival challenge.)
2. Direct reci­procity, mean­ing though I don’t get a direct ben­e­fit by help­ing you, I can expect that you will in turn help me in the future.
3. Indi­rect reci­procity. Even though I may not have an expec­ta­tion of you help­ing me in the future, if I help you, we build a cul­ture of help­ing other peo­ple, and even­tu­ally that help will work its way back to me.

What about doing some­thing just because it makes us feel good? Do we? Or, do we always have some ulte­rior motive, hop­ing to get some­thing in exchange even at some point.

Is this good feel­ing we get when we do some­thing good/altruistic impor­tant? I sus­pect sci­en­tists sim­ply ignore it as unquan­tifi­able emo­tion. Some­thing that doesn’t really fac­tor into hard-science.

How­ever, in look­ing for some­thing hard, these sci­en­tists are ignor­ing the obvi­ous. Indi­rect reci­procity is not only about some ben­e­fit in an indis­tinct future… I believe the good feel­ing itself is a direct reward that moti­vates this behavior.

I also believe that par­tic­u­lar good feel­ing we get when help­ing oth­ers as part of a “human com­mu­nity” is quite important.

Have you ever had an expe­ri­ence that shar­ing has made big­ger? I have.

Have you ever come into a con­ver­sa­tion with a group of peo­ple talk­ing about some­thing pos­i­tive, and sim­ply felt bet­ter? I have. (Unfor­tu­nately, the oppo­site is true too!)

Humans are pretty unique in this area of altru­ism (though not totally… one pan­elist kept bring­ing up mar­masets as another exam­ple). Behav­iorally, we actu­ally have a sense of “we” that enables us to get along even if we don’t know the other person.

It turns out, “Indi­rect reci­procity catches fire in humans” and that  “lan­guage is crit­i­cal to this.” I think lan­guage is the first tool to help reward social behav­ior, but that tech­nol­ogy has evolved to take it to another level. I truly believe social com­put­ing, while in its infancy, is a world-changing par­a­digm of the sig­nif­i­cance of language.

We’re going to use tech­nol­ogy to bring peo­ple together for altru­is­tic purposes.

In my opin­ion, “tech­nol­ogy will accel­er­ate indi­rect reci­procity.” And, I believe this is impor­tant not because indi­rect reci­procity is about some pos­si­ble ben­e­fit received in the future. I believe the good feel­ing itself is crit­i­cal and suf­fi­cient reward.

Together, we’re going to remem­ber our hearts in our daily lives, which is reward itself.

The panel men­tioned that “com­pas­sion is the essence of altru­ism.” I like that. I believe com­pas­sion is another step along the evo­lu­tion­ary path, and there­fore that good feel­ing we get by being com­pas­sion­ate is “evo­lu­tion­ar­ily impor­tant” as it points us in the right direc­tion. The high we get is like a drug, reward­ing us for the evo­lu­tion­ar­ily impor­tant behav­ior of “doing good.”

Remem­ber how Pres­i­dent Obama made every­one feel? Every voter that cast their vote for him felt like they were chang­ing the world. One vote cast indi­vid­u­ally, counted together. Changed world. Sim­ple. And all he was doing was run­ning for president.

This is our mis­sion. Bring peo­ple together through altru­is­tic liv­ing to be a part of some­thing big­ger than any of us can be alone.

I believe our cul­tural value sys­tem is expe­ri­enc­ing a major shift. We are mate­ri­al­is­tic and have an extrin­sic reward sys­tem. We mea­sure our suc­cess in title, salary, and the size of our TV. With falling port­fo­lio val­ues, lim­ited job oppor­tu­ni­ties, and no sign of a return to any­thing else in sight, either we’ll con­tinue to have very low self worth, or need to find another way to mea­sure worth.

We’re not only going to value this good feel­ing we get through altru­is­tic liv­ing, we’re going to actively gen­er­ate it. Yep, that good feel­ing. That’s our out­put. That’s our mea­sure. Peo­ple are going to find that it’s infi­nite. That the more good that’s shared, the more gen­er­ated. The more gen­er­ated, the bet­ter we all feel. By bring­ing this into our daily lives, we’ll replace the worry and crappy feel­ings we get when think­ing about our sink­ing mate­r­ial worth, with hap­pi­ness and pos­i­tive feel­ings about the altru­is­tic com­mu­nity we’re belong to.

And, that’s what Where’s Your Heart? is about. It’s about improv­ing people’s lives through altru­is­tic liv­ing.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Here’s a take-away. Next time you’re stressed out, at the end of your patience, grumpy, and about to take any of these things out on some­one else. STOP! Then ask your­self “where’s my heart?” Get your mind into your chest and find it. How does that make you feel? If it’s been a while, you might need some help. As a booster, think about that uncon­di­tional love your chil­dren throw at you as you walk in the door. We’re con­di­tioned to respond to that. Writ­ing this arti­cle in the cafe, I can’t help but smile pic­tur­ing my nieces run­ning up and hug­ging me as I walk in for a visit. That’s the energy we’re going to tap into and bring to the forefront.

It’s not a side-effect of life. It is life itself.

PS The title of this post came from a doc­u­men­tary Alan Alda / PBS are releas­ing on Novem­ber 9th on PBS titled “The Human Spark”. It was pre­viewed by the panel, and looks quite inter­est­ing. Mark your calendars.