“Nice Guys Finish First” documentary by Richard Dawkins throws some light on why Altruism is a very necessary element. The theme of the documentary is reciprocal altruism, simple explanation given is “Individuals allow themselves to remain in the same state or move to a lower state to help another person go up in state within the community”. The theory was applied to a large set where there are plenty of interactions within the observed group, the race to the bottom was inevitable where exploitation of the resources were present.
The definition of the nice guy was demonstrated using the prisoner’s dilemma as a computer game tournament. The rules were simple,
If two players co-operate then they take equal share of the output.
If one of the players does not play nice, then the cheater gets a steal and the loser gets nothing.
If both try to cheat, then they end up with lesser output than they would have co-operatively got out.
There are more than one turn for each player to play against the same player.
Many people submitted their programs as players in the tournament with varied strategies. The one which Richard Dawkins called as nice guy was the “Tit for Tat” strategy. Tit for tat strategy won the tournament. The following were the observations of the nice guy in a setting were multiple interactions with the same individual is possible.
Is always co-operative unless cheated.
Keeps in mind who cheats and does not co-operate with the cheaters.
Will be the first person to forgive and give a chance to the cheaters to be co-operative.
This also reminded me of the Allegory of long spoons. I also have seen some real life examples of nice people living the best life than the people around them.
It was the eve of a festival and I was returning back home from another city. The gateway to my home town was choking with unusually high traffic with everyone trying to rush to meet their near and dear ones. A stretch of few kilometers took more than an hour. It is at this time I witnessed a miracle. There was a sound of an ambulance siren approaching, on hearing almost every one on the road made their best effort to make way for the ambulance. In such a dense choking traffic there was a pathway made under a minute good enough for the ambulance to pass through. The patient who must have survived her illness might not even realized how tons of strangers on the road help save her life.
We humans are altruistic by nature and some how from inside it makes us feel good when we help others. Reader’s digest also mentioned in one article that may be only humans who were helpful to each other survived droughts, war and other adversities so that trait is deeply ingrained within us. There are also some beliefs about collective intelligence being superior than the sum of all individual intelligence. This is very evident from team games like football where the understanding between the team members a mix of skills gets the team to win. I have observed the striker scores more goals than anyone else in the team and most of the times ends up being the most valuable player. In my opinion the striker who scores a goal is largely enabled by the other 10 in the team.
Workplaces are no different, at many workplaces team work always matters; and many of those workplaces have awards like employee of the month/quarter/year or super star awards. The awards definitely help a lot to life the spirits of those who win it but it also puts a dent in the rest of the team’s spirit as the winner is enabled by the team and hardly there is a credit to the team. It is better to do away with these kind of awards and much energy can be concentrated on removing negative influence in the team like someone who exploits the system and team setup. It takes only one selfish person to bring down the morale of a high performing team, we must make sure our workplace does not offer any dividends to someone who tries to exploit; instead make the workplace such a way that the more cohesive the team becomes the more rewarding and enjoyable it is to work.
I never expected watching the movie ‘Spiderman’ would give me an insight about social responsibility. In the movie, Spiderman goes on to wrestle a strong opponent for a promised prize money of 3k$. When he finishes, he is cheated by the cashier and given only 100$ citing some lame reason. As he walks out of the room a burglar breaks into the room, steals all the cash and gets away. Even though the burglar was within the reach of Spiderman to get stopped, he chooses not to act which gives him a satisfaction that something bad happened to the cheater. The burglar’s future action kills the uncle (foster parent like) of Spiderman to get away with the cash. This event makes him feel guilty and makes him go on a mission to protect people in need through his new found powers.
We face many situations on a day to day basis where we may choose to remain inactive as we are not directly affected/influenced by it. In any social setting the loop is closed and our inactivity will hurt us sometime later. We have social circles every where and there is an implicit responsibility to not cause hardships to others. The mutual feeling of getting protected by the others helps us grow in strength and channelize the energy into more productive tasks. The seemingly simple problem will soon grow to be a 800 pound gorilla or the elephant in the corner.
It is not necessary to sacrifice one’s dreams to do whats right like how Aunt May advises Spiderman but it is worth to nip the problems in front our eyes and it is our responsibility too.
Novi's 