Savour International

What makes people altruistic? Scientists are puzzled too. Was Mother Teresa a flat out egomaniac? The question is less absurd than you might think, for didn't the Nobel Peace Prize winner and grande dame of altruism say: "The wonder is not that we do our work, but rather that we enjoy doing it." In other words, Mother Teresa liked her job, a typical trait of the egotist – the only difference being that she loved helping people and wasn't aiming to buy a Maserati.

It turns out that pinpointing the driver of altruism is surprisingly difficult, though many intellectual heavyweights have tried. Nietzsche, for example, attributed altruism to the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain – in short, a selfish activity. And religion has, of course, weighed in on the subject as well, in the Bible for example, where Jesus says: "Whatever you do for the least of my brothers you do for me."

Though you may not be yearning to follow in Mother Teresa's footsteps, whether you know it or not you harbour the same altruistic impulses that she had. If, for example, you held the door for a colleague as you entered your office building this morning, scientists still haven't got the nugget of a notion as to what made you do it. Everyday acts of altruism such as giving a stranger directions, helping a blind person cross the street, or calling the police if you see a robbery in progress are such normal parts of everyday life that people don't realise how truly aberrant such behaviour is. In other words, what makes us do something without getting anything in return?

When you perform an act of altruism, essentially you're putting more into an action than the compensation you can ever hope to receive for it. Which, of course, runs contrary to human nature, or appears to. To figure out why a person does such things, you can, of course, simply ask the obvious question: "What made you do it?" Whereupon the person might say, "It was the obvious thing to do under the circumstances." Which seems okay at first – until you ask the next question: "What was so obvious about it? What made you want to do something for which you knew you'd get nothing in return?"

Well, the fact of the matter is that the impulses, thoughts and emotions that make us tick have evolved in our brains over millions of years. But unfortunately, trying to explain altruism based on evolution is like trying to open a tin can with a ball point pen: you won't get too far.

That being said, evolution appears at first glance to be based on egotism in that the stronger, smarter and less considerate living beings produce more offspring that inherit their parents' strength, intelligence and lack of consideration, and, in turn, likewise produce more offspring, The number of surviving offspring is the sole currency of evolution. In other words, reductionist though it may be, the origin of humankind is essentially about the survival of the fittest.

Altruism puzzled even the great Charles Darwin, who noted that the trait was a conundrum that at first glance appeared to be unsolvable and that was crucial for his entire theory. Darwin also said that natural selection in a living creature will never generate a structure that will be of greater harm than good to the creature. According to this reasoning, animals (including human beings) would avoid generosity like the plague. What's more, kind behaviour is conspicuously absent from foraging and mating in the animal world for the simple reason that this would reduce the number of offspring, thus threatening the animal's gene with extinction. In other words, evolution is not a realm that promotes selflessness.