[REWORKED 12/19/06] Recent news supports the notion that there may be more to loving one’s neighbor than meets the eye — it may play a vital role in the ongoing construction of the universe.
Altruism Drives a Virtuous Cycle of Progress
Consider a few examples:
• Jeffrey Sachs writes about simple, cheap steps being taken to combat 13 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that inflict misery on the poor in the emerging world. For example, teaching villagers to filter their water through cheesecloth helps them to strain out parasitical worms and thus "dramatically reduce the burden of dracunculiasis." Providing them with five-dollar, insecticide-treated bed nets "can break the transmission of lymphatic filariasis and greatly reduce the transmission of malaria."
• KickStart.org develops, markets, and sells inexpensive technologies in Africa to help the poor start their own small businesses. For example, foot-powered micro-irrigation pumps help dramatically increase farmers’ crop yields, resulting in better diets for their families and in more cash income, giving them more security in life and more access to education for their children.
• Micro-lenders such as Kiva.org and WorldVision arrange for amazingly-small loans to community-based entrepreneurs who would otherwise have little or no access to start-up capital (and who have an amazingly-strong repayment rate).
Here’s something significant: All this work builds on progress we’ve made in the past using our
gifts of memory, reason, skill, and empathy. And as a result of these
good works, people in developing countries have more opportunities
for educating and empowering themselves and their children. This makes still more progress possible in the future.
We appear to have a virtuous cycle going here, the very opposite of a vicious circle (although not without its limitations).
And it’s driven by altruism.
Altruism Seems to Be Part of
the Creator’s Basic Engineering "Work Order"
I can’t help but suspect that this whole arrangement is an awesomely-clever engineering trick by the Creator. It appears that a simple, almost-algorithmic "work order" has been laid out for us to follow in life:
- Face the facts;
- Trust that the future is worth living for;
- Seek the best for others just as we do for ourselves;
- Repeat until further notice.
It seems that in doing these things, we unknowingly contribute our labors to an ongoing project of constructing the universe.
(The above bullet points, of course, are just another way of phrasing the Great Commandment
and Summary of the Law that Jesus stressed: Love the Lord your God
with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as
your self — and remember that your neighbor is anyone who happens to cross your path,
not just family and friends; see Luke 10.25-37. )
We appear to seek to follow this work order instinctively, at least to a certain extent. Perhaps that’s due in part to natural selection: Those of us living today inherited our genes, and we learned many of our cultural beliefs and
practices, from ancestors who (obviously) succeeded in raising at least some of their offspring to
reproductive age. Research indicates that over the long term, such reproductive success tends to be associated with practices such as facing the facts and caring for each other.
In any case, whatever our reasons, by following the work order, we seem to help to bring order out of randomness — step by step, millennium by millennium, we contribute our infinitesimal bit to the continuing creation.
To be sure, we seldom if ever execute the work order perfectly. We regularly screw it up, both as individuals and as societies. Our labors have had their setbacks, sometimes catastrophic ones.
But it does appear that, as long as we keep referring back to the basic work order, we eventually find our way back to a more-productive path, and the virtuous cycle of progress continues.
Whoever put that system into place really knew what he was doing.
Pretty amazing and exciting, huh?
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