Disappearing Bonobos and Our Faint Hope for Altruism

Not long ago I was chatting with an old college friend, John, who was trained as a molecular biologist. John and I had discussed cooperation and altruism models before, so it was natural to discuss the exciting and surprising recent discovery of an altruism gene in the Bonobo (pan paniscus, the smaller and more peaceful of the two chimpanzees). Primatologists have long understood that while the African chimpanzee (pan troglodyte) and Bonobos diverged late in evolutionary history they remain nonetheless palpably distinct in their levels of aggression and cooperative behavior. At the risk of gross simplification, it can be said that in the face of great stress, the African chimpanzee reacts with displays of anger, while the bonobo reacts with displays of physical affection (and often the consummation of sexual activity. See for example: http://bonobohandshake.blogspot.com/2009/06/update-from-nick-dsouza.html ).

John had long maintained the jocular but sobering view that humans, having branched off before this evolutionary break, chose the wrong path.

Our learning of the new research led to some quick and casual theorizing. John threw out the idea that the apparently #1 problem of humanity – how to foster cooperation among humankind sufficient to avert planetary disaster – might now be “solved” genetically. Using modern techniques, one could splice out the gene for altruism from our cousin the Bonobo and splice it into a cluster of human beings. After a brief moment of reflection, John reflected a deeper understanding of the science of altruism and added this sobering rejoinder: but we would of course have to then protect that new sub-species of “good” humans from the rest of us, because we would wipe them out long before they could grow to critical mass and make a difference.

There’s the rub. So far, the science of altruism and cooperation has come a long way, and in those studies have been many glimmers of hope: humans are often more concerned with equity and fairness than economists would have us believe; cooperative solutions that have the promise to make a big difference in the long run are not so complex that humans cannot often find them; that despite the many ills that plague us mentally, there are times and places when humans actually engender far more cooperation than do players behaving “rationally” (in a narrow self-interested sense) and end up doing better than the theoretically “optimal” solution. Alas, these are but glimmers of hope, for a prominent result in the literature seems to be that for altruism to survive, it must be quarantined, separated from competitive, self-regarding egoists. The self-interested egoists usually wipe out the altruists and then a world of purely egoistic agents go to work to make a big mess of things, driving the society to a dismal, competitive equilibrium.

If you have a modicum of training in economics (but no recent behavioral study) you may find this especially surprising for two reasons. One, in what sense is a behavior (such as pure egoism) defective if it is so much stronger than a behavior such as altruism? Shouldn’t we prefer people to behave in ways that prove most competitive? (The answer to this one is a resounding no, but the answer will take some time to explain. For now recognize that many behaviors that seem to work well in the short run fail in the long run – a prime example is our overreliance upon fossil fuels.) Two, is not a purely competitive equilibrium brought about by purely competing agents a good solution – isn’t that what markets do? (The answer to this one is “sometimes not,” and while this is what markets do – and you may have been taught that markets are good – in the long run unfettered markets can do great harm. The Great Recession of 2007-? is just one such example of the disease of market fundamentalism. This is another long story I hope to get to later.)

Note that John’s thought experiment suggests something absolutely critical. Those of us teaching and researching in the area of altruism and cooperation usually imagine that if we could just figure it out – well enough if not perfectly – we could teach a few people how to behave in ways that increase the odds that we make it on this little, warming planet, and they would go off and spread that lesson. Yet John’s Bonobo gene splicing thought experiment suggests that even if we could hardwire altruism into some of us (a form of nearly perfect teaching), it is not likely to matter, as the competitive egoists are generally strong enough to kill off the incipient population of altruists. Altruism must not only be taught (or genetically programmed) but it must be cultivated, fostered, protected in order to be sustained.

How do we do that?