This article discusses the need to live altruistically, emphasizing that it benefits both individuals and groups, especially through the example of group activities. It explains that altruistic behavior has a positive impact on an individual’s reputation and social relationships, and that cooperative groups have better survival rates from an evolutionary perspective.
Is there a reason to live right?
Before we can discuss the answer to this question, we need to define what it means to live right. For the purposes of this article, I’ll define righteousness as altruism. An altruistic behavior is one that benefits others, but is actually detrimental to the actor. While the definition of righteousness will vary from person to person, most people would agree that being altruistic is righteous. This is because altruism is a moral life, and morals are not defined by law but are agreed upon by members of society.
A concrete example of altruistic living: group activities
Group activities are a typical situation where altruism is necessary for college students. In group activities, the ideal situation is for everyone to actively participate and cooperate to make the group work effectively. However, there are some people who don’t contribute to the group’s work and “free ride” on the efforts of others. Free riding in a group is a very selfish behavior. It’s selfish because you’re not doing any work, so other people are doing more work, and you’re stealing the fruits of other people’s labor. How can you stop free riding?
You can punish the person and convince them to cooperate with the group. Specifically, you can punish the person and convince them to cooperate with the group. For each activity, the average of the other members’ ratings for each individual is the participation score for that activity, with 3 points for good, 2 and 1 points for poor and very poor, and 4 and 5 points for excellent and very good. After all group activities, if the average of the participation scores is lower than the normal 3, impose a grade penalty. This punishment will encourage them to participate in the group activities to avoid the penalty. Persuasion will also remind them that their selfless act of collaborating on the group task will benefit the group, which will encourage them to not take a free ride.
Why live altruistically?
So, is there a reason to live a righteous life, or an altruistic life? Humans have a reason to live a righteous life, and it’s based on two things. There are two reasons to be altruistic: selfish behavior is detrimental to the individual, and altruistic behavior is beneficial to the collective.
Benefits from an individual perspective
First, a selfish way of life is ultimately detrimental to the individual. Selfish behavior may seem beneficial in the moment. However, because humans are social beings and live in relationships with other people, selfish behavior ultimately harms them. For example, in the case of group work, individuals who are uncooperative in activities are more likely to be marginalized from the group. In the short term, it’s in the individual’s interest not to do work because they need to participate in the group activity. However, what about in the longer term? The selfish individual’s behavior causes the rest of the group to suffer greatly. It’s very unlikely that this person will continue to have a good relationship with the people he or she has offended, and it will also be difficult for him or her to build relationships with people outside of the group, since avoiding group work is a reputation killer. Humans cannot survive as an outcast in a group, so they will not act selfishly.
There are several hypotheses that explain why humans have evolved to engage in altruistic behavior, including the iteration-reciprocity hypothesis and the eusociality hypothesis. The reciprocity hypothesis is based on the principle of reciprocity, which states that we respond to favors with favors and malice with malice. The idea is that retaliation is more beneficial than inaction, and that altruistic behavior is motivated by the possibility that the other party will retaliate. Since this principle of reciprocity applies in repeated situations, selfish people who receive help from others and do not give help to others will not survive in such groups. Therefore, according to the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis, selfish individuals will have difficulty surviving. The eusociality hypothesis states that cooperative people tend to interact in groups of cooperative people, and selfish people tend to interact in groups of selfish people, and that this tendency is because cooperative behavior is maintained and human evolution is suited to evolve in that direction. In other words, selfish people hang out with selfish people, and altruistic people hang out with altruistic people. This theory explains why reputational damage can occur in group work. If you have a bad reputation because of your dishonest participation in a group, most people will be reluctant to do business with someone with a bad reputation, so you’ll be more likely to meet with altruistic people.
Benefits from a collective perspective
Second, altruistic behavior is beneficial from the perspective of the group as a whole. Group selection is the process by which the survival of a group depends on whether it has a certain trait, or how many people with that trait, which in turn determines whether that trait spreads throughout the population or dies out. This process of group selection is what allowed humans to evolve the trait of altruism.
History shows that this is true. For one thing, groups with a high percentage of altruistic individuals are more likely to win intergroup conflicts. Also, the success of hunts, which were especially important during the hunter-gatherer phase before humans became agricultural societies, depended on the rate of altruistic cooperation among participants. Finally, the evolutionary history of humanity suggests that humans have had to survive in a variety of harsh environments, and that for a group to survive for long, it needed to have many altruistic individuals.
The evolutionary basis of altruism
Group selection can explain why humans evolved to be altruistic. However, in terms of individual selection, selfish behavior can be advantageous for individual survival. Why does the rate of group selection outpace the rate of individual selection? One reason is that human societies have different norms than animal societies. The immediate benefit is that the consequences of selfish behavior may outweigh the consequences of altruistic behavior, but because norms allow the consequences of altruistic behavior to outweigh the consequences of selfish behavior, it has evolved to be advantageous to act altruistically.
Humans have reasons to live altruistically. These reasons can be found at both the individual and collective level. Altruistic behavior ultimately benefits the individual and the collective. The consequences of altruistic behavior may be detrimental in the short term or materially. However, in the long run, or from a spiritual perspective, it is beneficial. Therefore, humans have a reason to be altruistic, that is, to live rightly.
