Last Sunday, we took up a collection for Haiti relief work here in the Palo Alto church; next Sunday is the formal beginning of the annual canvass, or fundraising drive. In the midst of all this, a member of the church happened to send me a column by Nicholas Kristoffy titled “Our Basic Human Pleasures: Food, Sex, and Giving.” Kristoffy writes:
“Brain scans by neuroscientists confirm that altruism carries its own rewards. A team including Dr. Jorge Moll of the National Institutes of Health found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.”
I’d argue that sex is not a selfish pleasure (at least, not when it involves another person). Nevertheless, giving money does feel awfully good to me — better than food, maybe not quite as good as sex. Actually, this might be a good rebuttal to the whole doctrine of original sin — if helping others makes us feel so good, doesn’t that mean we are essentially good?
Thanks to Dick D. for sending me the column.
It shouldn’t be but, for at least a certain segment of the population, it often is.
As for giving money: I do feel very good when I do it. I usually feel better about money donated to charity than money spent on myself, in fact.
This, along with theories about altruism being an evolved trait, does make a good rebuttal to original sin. Of course, I’ve also heard it argued that altruism is actually a selfish thing—we don’t murder others because we don’t want to be murdered ourselves—so it depends on your point of view, I suppose.
You write:
Actually, this might be a good rebuttal to the whole doctrine of original sin — if helping others makes us feel so good, doesn’t that mean we are essentially good?
So, that kind of works out to:
Doing good, we feel good, thus we are good.
Would that also then lead to:
Doing bad, we feel bad, thus we are bad.
Just wonderin’