Stuff You Should Know - How Altruism Works

Episode Date: April 17, 2008

Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast and learn more about the nature of altruism. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. You're getting smarter. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. With me is trusty Etitrix Candice Gibson. Candice, what are we talking about today? The question is, is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act?

And what do you think? Is there? I don't know. I'm sort of on the fence about this one, but one of my favorites at Combs of All Time, friends, had an episode in which they sought to answer the question. And this episode was called The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS. Season five, I remember. Exactly. And just to bring it up to speed, she had just given birth to her brother's triplets. And Joey said that wasn't really an unselfish thing to do because it made her feel so good. So she set out to find something that is good for someone else, but not good for her in any way. And she stumped. And finally, she decides to let a bee sting her because it'll help the bee look cool in front of his bee friend. But that didn't work though, right?

No, because the bee died. Yeah. So finally, toward the end of the show, she decides she is going to make a pledge to PBS. And Joey is taking pledges. And when he receives Phoebe's, he actually gets to be on TV. And that does something good for him. And the plant is foiled because Phoebe feels great. Yeah. So her altruistic act is ruined. No. So in the span of about, what, a 30 minute sitcom, that question couldn't be answered. But there have been some deeper perspectives throughout the century. Yeah. And I'm sure you already know this, but what Phoebe and Joey were engaged in is a

centuries old philosophical debate. Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act or an altruistic act? And we should probably define that real quick. Altruism is performing some self-sacrificing act for the benefit of another person. Clear enough. I don't think we'd be even having this discussion if that was it. But there's one caveat to that. And which was posed by philosopher Emmanuel Kant, who liked to shake things up. And that was that the person performing the unselfish act can't get anything out of it. And we're not just talking about tangible things. We're talking about the intangible warm fuzzies. Sure. Sure. Now, this has already been shown to actually have an effect on us humans, these warm fuzzies you just described, and using MRI machines.

We've seen that by at least donating to charity, the pleasure center, the reward center in our brain sets off a flow of endorphins. And we feel just as good giving out money as we do receiving money. So clearly there are warm fuzzies, which kind of supports Kant's idea that there is no such thing as an altruistic act. But so too does evolution, right? Yeah. So in the natural world, there's also a couple of perspectives on dust. And we look at something from the flora side. We have a tree. And when the tree sheds its leaves in the fall, essentially what it's doing is it's providing a cushion of warmth to protect its roots throughout the winter so that it can regenerate again when there's warmer weather. So it's propagating itself for future generations. And you

could say the same holds true for a mother who protects her child and the face of adversity too. She's also trying to protect her lineage. But again, you know, both of these things, the tree and the mother, they get something in return. The tree gets longer life. The mother gets the love and loyalty of her child. Well, let me ask you this. What happens if the mother sees her child in the street about to be hit by an 18 wheeler, runs out, pushes her child out of the way and is hit herself? She's not getting anything out of that, is she? Well, I don't know. I guess at that point you're sort of tapping into religion and storing up good deeds for the afterlife and final judgment, aren't you? I guess so. That's one way to look at it. That might be a question for

another day though. And we had to talk about Josh's favorite philosopher, Emile Durkheim. Now, Durkheim was, he was a pretty heady fellow. He had the impression that altruism was merely a social construct that was used to control people. Basically, if we just all went around stabbing one another because we needed money, rather than just going out and working for it or borrowing it, society would fall apart. To Durkheim, one of the things we have to have to function as a society is something like altruism, self-sacrifice for the greater good. But Durkheim's view kind of makes us all look a little bit like dopes, actually, like we're performing all these self-sacrificial acts. And under his view, the person who's benefiting from it isn't really

benefiting from it. It's really all for society, which is about as depressing a view of altruism as can be. So, clearly, once again, the philosophers, sociologists, and evolutionists have really screwed up the warm fuzzies, haven't they? They really have. They're trying to take the heart out of the issue. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's all the same. If you do something nice for someone else and you happen to feel good in return, I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. I think I agree with you, actually. Well, Candice and I are going to go not stab anyone for money, so we'll be performing our own altruistic acts. Be sure to read, is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act on HowStuffWorks.com?

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