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From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: True Altruism - (not love)
Message-ID: <5533@unc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 10-Jul-83 15:01:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5533
Posted: Sun Jul 10 15:01:26 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Jul-83 02:43:52 EDT
References: houti.340
Lines: 31


    One factor seems to be missing from all this discussion of
altruism.  That fact is that altruism has been observed in non-primate
mammals.  This observation was a big thing for sociobiology (which I
hear has been discredited, but the observation predates the theory).
The belief that humans are not inherently altruistic seems to be made
from the prevailing view in this Judeo-Christian culture that humans
in a state of nature are inherently base and immoral.  The statement
was even made that "Nothing about morality has to do with physiology",
which is just another way of claiming that there is such a thing as
original sin.

    The human mind is most emphatically not originally a tabula rasa.
The fact that members of various cultures have similar emotions is
sufficient demonstration of this.  It is frustrating for me to see
people building on the irrational legacy of Judeo-Christianity without
even examining their assumptions.  My feeling is that certain morals
are more or less hard-wired.  Killing another human without cause is
repulsive to most people regardless of society's training.  Since this
is true of almost all other species of animal, I see no reason to
assume it untrue of people as well.  It can be wholly explained by
evolutionary processes, since tribes without this code hard-wired
would certainly not live as long or reproduce as efficiently as tribes
with it.

______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill