Heroes Not Zombies

This morning, as I walked to the railway station, I listed to a podcast from the BBC World Service. It was an old one (from last September) but I was catching up. This particular discussion was about rational and irrational behaviour in human beings and the section I listened to today involved Marilynne Robinson talking about altruism. She mentioned that it was Auguste Comte as one of the first to describe altruism, which he defined as

living for the sake of others

The debate on the podcast was around whether or not altruism had a self-interested root. That argument, I must say, doesn’t convince me. Human beings are social animals and we are hard wired for compassion and empathy just as we are also hard wired for self-interest. It’s the complicated entangling of these opposites that is at the root of so many human dilemmas.

Then, on the train, on the way home this evening, I started to read Karen Armstrong’s “12 Steps To A Compassionate Life” on the Kindle reader on my iPhone. Imagine my surprise when I read, in the opening chapter, her describing Auguste Comte’s description of altruism! Yet another interesting coincidence in my life!

Tomorrow being the hundredth anniversary of International Womans Day, I was especially struck by Karen Armstrong’s highlighting of Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale and Dorothy Day as all “bywords for heroic philanthropy”. She then goes on to make, for me, a very convincing argument that we can track compassion from an evolutionary perspective to maternal love, without which no newborn infant could survive. There’s something worth thinking about on International Womans Day.

By the way, I came across Karen Armstrong’s book when I stumbled upon this website last week – http://charterforcompassion.org/site/

Take a moment, and check it out. And while you’re there, why not join me in signing it?