Response to Hallie Jackson: Can we advance if we are self-less?

I would like to take the time to respond to Hallie Jackson's question on her blog, Self...ish? Hallie posed the question, "If people were-hypothetically-truly good and selfless beings, what would happen to us as a race? Would we continue to advance as we have?"

It is my belief that no, we would not advance if we were truly selfless. Part of this is because I agree with Hallie that there is no such thing as being completely selfless. The Romans who built the aqueducts did an incredible thing: they created a way to keep sewage out of the streets and people out of the sewage. The sanitation problems in the city got better, less people were sick, and the number of deaths went down. The system benefited everyone in the city, but the people who created the system were included in the list of those who benefited. Would they have started the aqueduct project if, for instance, they were told that only the highest political figures would be able to access the water? If they did, it would most likely have been only because they feared retribution if they refused--another incentive.

As college students, there are a lot of things that we don't want to do. To list a few, we don't want to clean our rooms, do our homework, adhere to the drug and alcohol policy (some of us, anyway), eat the cafeteria food. However, we do these things anyway because there is an incentive. If we don't clean our rooms, we might lose things or gross out whatever boy/girl we bring home for...ahem..."studying." We do our homework because we don't want to fail school and end up working at a McDonald's until we're forty. We adhere to the drug and alcohol policy because we don't want to get written up and kicked out of MCLA. We eat the cafeteria food because we don't want to starve and most of us don't have the money to order take-out every night. If none of those consequences existed, I'm willing to bet we wouldn't do any of those things.

Unfortunately, simple daily tasks are what help us advance as a person and then as a race. Sally cleans her room because Donald is coming over and she doesn't want to gross him out. Donald is impressed and sticks around to...ahem..."study" with Sally. They fall for each other, date, graduate, get married, have kids. Hypothetically, of course. Sally advances personally because she has a loving man and family. The human race advances because Sally and Donald are bringing more people into the world. Bobby does his homework because he doesn't want to fail. He ends up learning the new material better, getting an A in the class, going on to graduate school, and becoming a engineer and making a cushy amount of money. Bobby benefits because he has all the comforts money can buy, the human race benefits because Bobby designs the next World Trade Center.

On the opposite end, when we don't do things that benefit us, the human race suffers. If Lulu decides not to adhere to the drug and alcohol policy and gets drunk every night instead, she'll probably end up missing classes and therefore failing out of school. There goes a mind that could have been used to cure cancer or make another great contribution to the world. Dwayne doesn't like the food in the cafeteria, so he starts eating less and less until he has to be hospitalized. A few months of his life are spent trying to regain his strength when he could be going to school and getting his degree instead.

Although not all selfish behavior helps the world, many behaviors that benefit the individual also benefit the human race as a whole.