Genetic/Evolutionary Determinism vs. Altruism

Does anyone else get creeped out by genetic and evolutionary determinism when it's applied to human behavior? I do, for all sorts of reasons, but chief amongst is probably that I work in an art form that is often about the mystery of human behavior and trying to delve into it. Can you imagine an acting method based on genetic determinism?

--What's my motivation here?
-- Well, Tony, you see back when we were in the prehistorical jungle, men would hunt and...

That scares me. And it's not just that I think mystery is valuable to creative pursuits, it's also that I think that evolution and genetics and biochemistry based discussions of human behavior and motives substitute half-explanations, assumptions and downright junk science for that mystery.

The idea that we can be objective when discussing human beings is mildly absurd in and of itself, because we as observers are shaped by the culture around us and its prevalent mores and attitudes. Applying Darwinism specifically to human behavior and society has a tarnished enough history that you'd think we'd be especially cautious about this. It was used (in general) to justify (in a moral sense) that Haves holding on to and feeling entitled to their massive amounts of power and money at the expense of the Have-Nots.

Take altruism and philanthropy. Why do people donate to charity? Why do people act towards the common good? Why do people try to help people and expect little to nothing in return? Well, it's an interesting question. And science has come up with some pretty stupid junk-seeming answers for it. My personal favorite... that you're trying to destroy your enemies by engaging in a competition to outspend each other, using charity as the means to the end of their bankruptcy. Yeah. You heard me. It's called "The Potlatch Effect" as opposed to the "we spent so much time thinking this up in a Lab so that we could get tenure that we haven't met any actual human beings and don't understand how they work" effect.

Human beings do a lot of things that seem on their face totally contrary to their self-interest. The idea that somehow this all flows from genetics leaves out the rather important component of culture. We live in a cultural context, we are surrounded by various expectations, pressures etc. that have nothing to do with biology or genetics. Also, we live in a certain governmental system in this country, which is different from others etc. etc. and so forth.

Lots of people give money to charity in the United States. Far far fewer do so in Denmark. In Denmark the taxes are much much higher, and the government spend a great deal more on the issues that we try to solve here through charity (housing and feeding the poor, for example, or providing health care to those in need). In Denmark, the culture values the collective good, and the people have expressed that desire to focus on the collective good through electing a series of governments that have created a large and well funded Welfare State. In the United States, we do not particularly value the collective good culturally or governmentally, so we leave it up to people to give their money away if they choose to, we allow them to write it off their taxes, and we allow them to use this write off when they give money to a large swath of things that aren't by any stretch of the imagination charitable like donations to private schools and colleges.

You could look at this difference through any number of interpretive lenses and come up with all sorts of interesting explanations, but to me, the cultural explanations make a lot of sense. Hell, even a geographic explanation of this difference (Denmark is very small and culturally homogenous and nationalistic so other people in the same country really feel like your countrymen, while the US is very large and diverse even from State to State so we don't feel the same continuity) makes more sense then a genetic one.

And I suppose we can all come together and get funding for studies to find out why etc. etc. and so forth and I don't mean to be anti-science, I'm just saying the idea that those studies will come up with some more definitive answer than looking at history, geography, religion, literature is silly.

Comments

[ecoli]

You made some good points in this post, Parabasis, especially in response the idea that competition can sufficiently explain altruism.
However, your idea that human culture can be separated from our genetics in inherently false. In fact, human genetic evolution can explain very well why human societies have developed, and also how human societies have directed evolution.
This can reveal insight into how altruism could have evolved in the context of human societies. A more complete explanation than merely competition.

I responded more fully in my blog. Please read it if you get a chance: http://blogs.scienceforums.net/ecoli/2008/03/17/evolutionary-determism-of-altruism/