85th Post: Altruism

OK if you like me your trying to remember where you last heard that word. Well putting the tag
'define:' in front of the word in Google bring up this

al·tru·ism - unselfish concern for the needs or interests of others, providing gratification vicariously or from their responses.

Now initially you are thinking big deal. But I wish to impart upon you that this is in fact a HUGE deal. This concept is so foreign to the human mind that its existence is in fact a phenomenon. Yes that's right, Science has no explanation for why this exists in Human beings. It makes no sense from a Darwin perspective, I mean what the hell happened to the 'The Strong Survive' and the 'Every man for himself' concept? It fails entirely when we take into account the stories of soldiers who jumped on grenades to save their comrades. The answer that Scientists proposed when they first saw this behavior especially with Mothers dying to save their children was that this concept of survival was deeper bred into out DNA and that when Moms saw their children in peril, their children with their DNA they decided that it was essential to keep their DNA going and so sacrificed themselves. An interesting concept and hell I even accept it for the sake of argument. So now we ask when one of us jumps in front of a bullet meant for our brother? How does that make sense? They give the same argument....what the? How is HIS DNA better than mine? Then you have the really strange ones like Schindler went all out to save those Jewish people. How do you plan to explain that? They had no DNA in common. Moreover, by helping them survive he was making it harder for his DNA to continue (more competition with more people around)

In fact Altruism is an argument for the existence of God! The idea that there are some of us (if not all of us) with the capacity for such self-sacrificing nature, necessitates the need for an intelligent designer to imprint this on our beings. However, when you look at the situation you may notice as I have that their are in fact those with much clearer defined imprints then others. That is there are those who you really wonder if the intelligent designer skipped them over when implanting these ideas? Moreover, now this is when Science gets itself into a bit of hot water in my opinion. They call this altruistic instinct to be a genetic defect yes that's right, being so kind is a defect and that the meaner people are better suited to survival. And scientists wonder why no one wants to listen to them when it comes to anything at all related to morals. Such cynicism gets even to me, that Human kind is meant to continue slowly weeding out all kindness until all that is left is the meanest, strongest, fastest, most clever individuals. This recalls a something I once read when trying to decide on a profession:

The law is such that the stronger will not have his way in all things

So there are those who would rely on the law to make this not so, but anyone who has ever had anything to do with the law will realise that this is like trying to stop a tidal with a wall of sand. I mean yes it does stop some of the occurrences but really for those few, those truly strong the law fails. And in fact the only reason is has had in the past putting away people like Nixon and so forth is because another strong element stood up and used the law to topple those men and women who were in fact stronger than they. In short I think the people reason want to believe in God is because they refuse to believe in a world as bad as that being presented by scientists.

Finally, I wish to consider the latter part of that definition. The part that implies that making other people in turn makes us happy. I have been running a small experiment whereby I walk through a shopping centre and smile randomly at people. The old the young the male and the female. (Although I have hesitated to smile at young ladies with large or ugly boyfriends....both are as likely to start a fight with you as the other) My initial results have been that they have in a majority of cases smiled back. And I seeing their smile have in turn caused my own 'fake' smile turn into a genuine one. How strange that I can in fact have total power over my own emotions? I am sure some self-help guru has been preaching it for a while but honestly did they find a way as easy as mine?

DISCLAIMER: A friend of mine tried this recently with a small child....the child stared at the for a second and rand away calling for their mother. So for an initial try attempt this with the elderly.