Are you a giver?

Altruism

“Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and toward the common good...” Jonathan Sacks

I attended the Key Note address at the Southern Voices Writer's conference Friday night, and was delighted to hear Ann Patchett speak about her new book, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. What she really talked about was altruism. She began by recounting a conversation she'd had with another author as to whether we do good deeds out of compassion, or because it gives us a good feeling about ourselves—a little pat on the back. He believed that we are never purely altruistic. Well, that disturbed her, so she went to talk with a friend who is a Catholic nun. She put the question to her as to whether we do good for our own purposes, and the nun told her, “It doesn't matter! If you do something good and someone else benefits, it is okay if you get a little 'ping' off of it. It's a win-win situation.” I happen to agree.

Altruism comes in all sorts of packages, from Mother Teresa at one extreme, to Bill Gates, to the celebrity athletes who work with kids in poverty, to you and I, who give cans of food to our local food banks. I believe that people who have achieved wealth and power stand on the shoulders of many, many others who gave them a hand up. They rarely ever get there by themselves. It is a natural instinct for most to want, at some point, to acknowledge that by helping someone else. I have a friend who just set up a scholarship fund at his alma mater in his parents names. I asked why he didn't set it up in his own name, and he responded, “They paid for my education, so it seemed only right that it be in their names.

Ayn Rand famously said, “If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.” I couldn't disagree more. I think that a society is not civilized until it is deeply altruistic. Perhaps the desire to care for those who cannot care for themselves is evolved from our ancient religious traditions—leaving a certain amount of grain in the field for the poor to glean, forgiving the debts of all every seven years, not throwing the first stone. But altruism stands alone in the human psyche with or without religious underpinnings. It comes from our capacity for compassion and I, for one, hope we never reject it.

                                        In the Spirit,

                                              Jane