Richard Dawkins claims that altruistic behavior is for the benefit of our genes, but I believe that humans help others out of the goodness of their hearts. I emphasize that altruistic behavior is a rational human choice.
We help each other every day, from our neighbors to people far away. It can take many forms, such as sharing delicious food when we find it, or collecting money to send to the victims of natural disasters. These acts are not motivated by selfishness, but by a selfless desire to help others. However, some argue that these selfless acts are actually not entirely selfless. Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, is one such person. Dawkins argues that many of the behaviors we think are for the good of others are actually for the preservation of our genes, a more distant benefit. In other words, seemingly altruistic behaviors are not motivated by a pure intention to help others, but by an inherent selfishness to preserve our genes. However, contrary to Dawkins’ argument, I believe that our altruistic behavior cannot exclude a genuine desire to think about and help others. In the following, I’ll explain why I think so.
As I mentioned earlier, in Dawkins’ view, our actions for others are thoroughly calculated. For example, when we help our neighbors when something happens to them and they are in trouble, we do so with the intention of receiving help from them in the future when we are in trouble ourselves. The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis explains this behavior. In other words, we make choices that benefit us in the long run, rather than those that benefit us in the short run. However, when we help others, we don’t do it because we think, “If we help them now, they’ll help us later.” We do it because we feel sorry for them and empathize with their situation. We do it because we know what it’s like to be in a difficult situation, and we want to help. Of course, if we help someone and then they don’t help us when we’re struggling ourselves, we feel betrayed, thinking, “I helped them in their time of need, why aren’t they helping me? It’s obvious that we won’t help them again in the future, but that doesn’t mean we’re acting calculatingly for our own benefit. We feel betrayed not because we regret not receiving the benefit of their help, but because we understand their situation and they do not. In short, it’s a psychological issue.
If we help people with a view to the reward we will receive later, we will do so to those who we believe can afford to benefit us later. But in this case, it doesn’t explain why we help beggars or collect money for the needy. They are not believed to bring us rewards later. We help them because we are citizens of the same Korea, or because they are our neighbors in the same area, or because we want to live with them, or because we feel sorry for their plight and want to help them, as we said before. Another example of an altruistic act that we perform without considering the future benefits is tipping in restaurants, especially in foreign countries. Tipping a waiter doesn’t guarantee that the waiter will remember all the people who tipped him or her and give you better service on your next visit, and you may never return to that restaurant. Also, tipping is not mandatory, so if you really want to take advantage of it, it makes sense to refrain from spending unnecessarily. However, foreigners do tip to show their gratitude to the waiters who work hard for them. In this way, people do not do things for the benefit of others with the intention of benefiting themselves, but rather to put themselves in the shoes of others and perform altruistic acts in the spirit of generosity and giving.
We may feel proud, rewarded, etc. while performing selfless acts like the ones mentioned above. You may argue that we are not really doing it for the sake of others, but rather for the sake of psychological satisfaction, so we are essentially doing it for others. However, in this case, as in the previous case, it is very difficult to think of an altruistic act as one that is performed before actually helping others, thinking, ‘I should help this person because it will be rewarding. ‘ The psychological satisfaction that follows such an act is a byproduct of the act and is not a strong motivation for the act itself. In Dawkins’ view, altruistic behavior should ultimately help preserve our genes, and it’s hard to see how psychological aspects such as reward or pride would help preserve our genes or help us survive. In other words, psychological satisfaction doesn’t affect the preservation of our genes, nor does it have much of an effect on our desire to help others.
Richard Dawkins has argued that our altruistic acts are ultimately for our own good. However, examples like helping a beggar or tipping a waiter refute his argument. We perform many altruistic acts in our daily lives that don’t benefit us at all. Therefore, I disagree with Dawkins’ argument and believe that our altruistic behavior cannot exclude understanding and respect for others, regardless of their interests. Furthermore, contrary to Dawkins’ opinion that humans are governed by the design of their genes like other creatures, I believe that this ability to think and act in the shoes of others shows that humans, unlike other creatures, are not governed by genes and live rationally.
