The kindness of strangers?

Does altruism really exist? Are there any truly selfless acts?

It's a question that has often troubled me, non more so than when I heard the extraordinary story of eccentric genius George Price. His life story had a profound effect on me & made me question many of my assumptions about altruism.

George Price was an American scientist & atheist who aimed to find out where altruism comes from & whether it provides an evolutionary advantage. He developed one of the most accurate mathematical, biological and evolutionary models for altruism.

Why do vampire bats share blood, mouth to mouth, at the end of a night of prey with members of the colony who were less successful in the hunt? Why do sentry gazelles jump up and down when a lion is spotted, putting themselves precariously between the hunt and the hungry hunter? Is there a natural origin to our own human acts of kindness?"

This is what George Price set out to discover. However what he uncovered scared him so much that he renounced his atheism & became a Christian.

In his quest to understand altruism, Price examined concepts such as self-sacrifice and kindness & he discovered that all altruistic acts are ultimately selfish acts carried out for evolutionary advantage.

He became so vexed by the selfish reasoning for kindness embedded in his own mathematical theory of altruism that he set out to prove that his own theory was wrong by committing a seemingly endless number of random acts of kindness to complete strangers.

He spent the latter part of his life helping alcoholics and the homeless, often inviting them to live in his home and, though he had most of his belongings stolen, he went undeterred until he was forced to move out of his house due to a construction issue. Unable to help the homeless any longer, he went into a deep depression.

On 6th January, 1975, Price committed suicide, very deliberately, using a pair of nail scissors to cut his own carotid artery.

He now rests in an unmarked grave in Saint Pancras Cemetery. (story adapted from this article)

Imagine discovering something so shocking about human nature (love turns out to just be a chemical in the brain or similar) that it rocked the foundations of your world to such an extent. George Prices life became a tragic but fascinating story.

Perhaps sometimes a lie that provokes a smile is better than a truth that brings a tear? I think this might be why so many atheists get such a bee in their bonnet about religion. A tad jealous that they have to suffer the coldness of truth over the warmth & comfort of a lie?

Today's blip - a true random altruistic act in Bradford or simply a selfish evolutionary adaptation? You decide ;-)