“Generosity is Our Primary Survival Strategy”

As regular readers know, I happen to think that, in stressing the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law, Jesus put his finger on a fundamental law of the universe.  Here’s a story that aired recently on The Engines of Our Ingenuity, a radio spot that airs on public radio stations:

… Carrion is rare and
precious. What does a raven do when he finds a carcass?  Hoard the treasure for himself? Eat his fill and fly away?
             

What really happens is a surprise. The raven circles the find without landing. Then he flies away. A few days later he’s back with forty companions and they fall upon the meal. By the time the carcass is finished, over a hundred ravens have shared it.

Biologists Bernd Heinrich and John Marzluff move into the New England forests to study this action.  It’s completely reproducible. They’re not sure how ravens communicate their find, but their generosity in the midst of hardship is absolute. 

Darwin originally suggested just the opposite — that self-sacrifice acts against the survival of the fittest. Now survival proves to be more complex.  Seeing to the survival of the group assures survival of the species. The individual also knows that, because he shares, he will eat
when a companion finds food.

It is a system based on trust. It’s the world we
all wish we could live in.  * * *

[B]iologists are rediscovering what
Kropotkin, and ancient Greeks, already knew: the fact — obvious once you see it — that generosity is our primary survival strategy.