The Kindness of Strangers

On the History and Foundations of Compassion

We have a poor opinion of ourselves. I mean the opinion we have of human beings as a whole. Not of the opinion each of us has of ourselves, which is not so bad (guess why).

We probably have good reasons to think badly of human beings. Think of wars, for example; corruption; or the misery in which millions of human beings live. However, the same people who are capable of committing villainy are also capable of altruistic acts, of behaving generously, or of sympathizing with those who suffer and acting accordingly.

Many think, in a very cynical way, that this altruism, this generosity and compassion are not genuine, that deep down they are selfish acts, which indirectly pursue a personal benefit. That they may seek salvation in a hypothetical afterlife; that, in exchange for the generous act, they will receive a reward later; or, finally, that the satisfaction that calms their conscience is reward enough. In short, it is not so much a matter of favoring others as of benefiting oneself.

Social psychologist Daniel Batson, one of the persons who have probably devoted the most effort to studying altruism, has spent the last four decades trying to answer a simple question: do people ever help others out of genuine concern for their welfare? Or is the help we give to others always motivated by selfish concerns, no matter how cleverly hidden (even from ourselves) that selfishness may be? His view is that we humans actually have the potential to care altruistically about others and that empathy can arouse that concern.

I think that concern for others is genuine, or at least as genuine as the self and all the other attributes that adorn it can be. But I will deal with this issue on another occasion.

Evolutionary-based mechanisms have been proposed to explain altruistic acts. To summarize a lot, we can cite inclusive kinship or kin selection (Hamilton’s rule), reciprocal altruism (Robert Trivers), indirect reciprocity (Robert Axelrod; Nowak & Sigmund), and group selection or multilevel selection (David Sloan Wilson, Edward O. Wilson and others, depending on the modality). Inclusive kinship affects related people; direct reciprocity, the universe of people with whom we are likely to relate on more than one occasion; indirect reciprocity, people with whom, without relating directly, belong to the group with which we do relate; and group selection, as its name suggests, the group to which we belong. But none of these mechanisms explains our willingness to help strangers.

According to Michael E. McCullugh, author of the book I gloss today, kindness to strangers is based on a few human instincts. Two of them –considered by Darwin to be "social instincts"–are to help others, because we expect reciprocity, and to gain reputation, because of the benefits that accrue from doing so. The others are the instincts that Darwin called "active intellectual powers," especially the ability to track incentives and the ability to reason. Those instincts provided the desire to care, but it was progress in technology, science and commerce that gave us the ability to care.

McCullugh, who attaches great importance to the ability to reason, identifies several historical periods that led to qualitative leaps in the extent and magnitude of compassionate feelings, ideas and acts.

The first is the Age of Orphans, a historical period corresponding to the advent of the Neolithic, the emergence of private property and sedentarization. In this Age, in the face of inequality and oppression, the kings or warlords of the archaic world began to protect the most vulnerable people in society from oppression, thinking that they would be rewarded with the loyalty of their subjects and a strengthened reputation for goodness and wisdom.

The Age of Orphans ended around the 12th century BCE and, some four centuries later, the Age of Compassion (also called the Axial Age in the literature) emerged, a period that lasts for several centuries and about whose duration there is no agreement.

The societies of the Age of Compassion produced many of the religions and philosophical systems that continue to inform our intellectual and ethical concerns today. All Axial Age civilizations exhibit literacy, complex political organization combining central government and local authorities, elaborate urban planning, advanced metal technology, and the practice of international diplomacy. This is when the Golden Rule, the most universal ethical principle in existence, was established: do not do unto others what you do not wish for yourself.

According to some authors, Axial Era societies were wealthier and it was this factor that facilitated the spread of compassion. Others argue that the determining factors were the size of the cities and the intense wars between states.

With the Renaissance came the Age of Prevention. The ideas that fueled this transformation came from humanist thinkers –especially the Valencian Joan Lluís Vives– who considered that poverty had causes that could be fought against and undesirable consequences for society as a whole. Seen from the perspective of historical time, these were unusually modern and advanced ideas for their time.

Throughout the eighteenth century there was the First Poverty Enlightenment, an intellectual movement that manifested a growing concern for the poor. The two main ideas that circulated in Europe and North America about poverty throughout that century were the concept of distributive justice and that social science had much to contribute to the understanding and solution of poverty. Three thinkers synthesize the essential ideas that characterized that First Poverty Enlightenment: J. J. Rousseau (his arguments to prevent inequalities), A. Smith (his efforts to humanize the poor) and I. Kant (his assertion that all people have equal and infinite value). These ideas were easily transformed into a tidy intellectual scaffolding, and from that scaffolding, political theorists began to make even bolder claims about the rights of citizens and the redistributive duties of the state.

The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 was of great importance, since it unleashed a wave of solidarity never known before. Several countries made important donations to Portugal so that it could recover as soon as possible from the catastrophe. The earthquake occurred at a key moment. On the one hand, the notion of the origin and causes of natural disasters was being transformed from being attributed to divinity to being attributed to natural causes. On the other hand, the consequences of the earthquake also extended beyond Lisbon and Portugal. The rulers and the people realized that helping the people of Lisbon also benefited them. The earthquake generated what McCullugh calls a Humanitarian Big Bang that has continued to expand in the centuries since.

The Second Poverty Enlightenment began in the second half of the 20th century, leading to the emergence of Non-Governmental Organizations and campaigns to provide 0.7% of the GDP of rich countries to help developing countries. This Second Enlightenment culminated with the approval in 2000 by the United Nations of the Millennium Declaration, which established a series of objectives (Millennium Goals) to combat hunger, poverty, disease, infant mortality and achieve goals related to education, gender equality, environmental sustainability and others.

In a world full of trade-offs and limited resources - and where there is an abundance of information and willingness to learn - how do you choose what to do? Where do you make your mark? In the Age of Impact, special attention is paid to science and research, data and facts when deciding what to do. And also, to the consequences.

McCullugh's book concludes with a review of the most important notions and, in particular, with a reflection on the importance of reasoning. According to him, there are three types of reasons for helping strangers.

In the first place, for personal interest; because when we help someone, the beneficiary of our generosity will reward us and the witnesses of our generosity will admire us. These motives are supported by the two social instincts alluded to by Darwin in The Descent of Man. Secondly, for the benefit of the group; this is an indirect interest, because they concern the collective, not the individual.

Reasons of the third type also appeal to self-interest, although only in a broad sense of what is meant by that expression. These reasons appeal to the listener's desire for integrity, i.e., not to be a hypocrite, to walk the right path, to act and not just talk, to the desirability of believing and acting in a manner consistent with logical and ethical principles. These principles include abstractions such as natural rights and justice, the economic law of diminishing marginal utility, and the utilitarian notion that the ethical status of an action is determined by its effects on the suffering of sentient beings.

Throughout history, one of the most important and yet underestimated abstractions, according to the author, has been the concept of identity: that which is identical with respect to any particular attribute must be treated in the same way with respect to that attribute. Therefore, that which is identical in all respects relevant to ethics must be treated identically in ethical terms.

Kant's proposition that all persons everywhere share a fundamental human dignity in equal measure is based on the concept of identity. And Emmerich de Vattel's argument that nations are endowed with the same basic set of natural rights as individuals extends Kant's reasoning to international relations.

On the other hand, McCullugh argues that science and technology have made an indispensable contribution to humanity's efforts to improve the lives of strangers. Unlike most other methods of seeking truth, science thrives on criticism and doubt. This hospitality to criticism is the very reason why scientific claims are so important to coherent arguments about how to improve people's lives, especially in political settings where certain actions-such as those related to social spending-are contentious issues.

That is why scientific knowledge should be central to any discussion of where and how resources should be invested to promote human welfare.

The latest human endeavor that deserves credit for expanding humanity's concern for humanity is international trade. Trade makes its participants interdependent in a way that few other institutions can achieve. Moreover, once two parties become dependent on each other to buy and sell, they find additional incentives to treat each other kindly. Finally, trade gives individuals, associations and nations more resources (money and time) to devote to good works.

McCullugh concludes that we must teach the reasons why generosity and altruism are worthwhile. The reasons that won arguments in favor of generosity and altruism during the Age of Prevention, the First Poverty Enlightenment, the Humanitarian Big Bang, the Second Poverty Enlightenment, and the Age of Impact are no less compelling today than when they were first derived. Compassion can bring us gratitude and glory, it can protect us from the side effects of poverty and despair, it can grow the economy rather than contract it, it can help people take responsibility for their own lives, it can bring deep meaning and satisfaction, and –for anyone who sees suffering as the focus of moral concern– it is a duty.

As with almost all ambitious essays (this one is), not all ideas are of equal merit to me. As an example: unlike the author of the book, I do not share the notion of the selfish gene or the consequences that Richard Dawkins draws from that notion. They are outdated and have done damage to the prestige of the natural sciences. And I also think that the book should have made a place for the great ideologies of the 19th century (socialism and nationalism) because both ideological families have had important effects on the issues discussed here. In a field more directly related to compassion and altruism, I believe that the author does not value in its due form and measure the theories of group selection based on genetic-cultural co-evolution.

But if we dispense with those issues - which are also not essential - this is a very valuable book for anyone interested in answering the question of why we treat well, help or have effective compassion for people with whom we have nothing to do. Whether or not we agree with the author.

Author: Michael E. McCullugh

Title: The Kindness of Strangers, How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code

Ed. by Basic Books, 2020.