Do We Hate Each Other?

In discussions of politics, I always argue for liberty and freedom. Freedom for rational adults to do what they wish as long as they do not infringe on the equal rights of others has been a staple of our society ever since the founders formed our government so many years ago. Although almost everyone believes in liberty as an abstract concept, many seem to loose their faith in the principle of freedom when it is applied to practical matters.

Ludwig vonMises said, "Freedom allows men to do the right thing and to do the wrong thing." Most of us realize this without even thinking about it. The problem that interventionists and statists everywhere seem to have is a lack of faith in humanity to do the right thing when given the choice in a state of unadulterated liberty.

People are, by nature, compassionate beings. It is true that our first instincts are toward self-preservation, but, once our own requirements for survival are fulfilled, it is human nature to turn our affection towards our fellow man. Many would say that this assumption gives humanity far too much credit, but common experience would tend to show otherwise. In fact, when we think about a spouse's care for his or her partner, or a parents love for their child, we see every day acts of love and kindness that would dispute the presumption of man's self-love as his most basic instinct.

It is true that humans have an indomitable will to survive embedded within us; this desire, no doubt, has been placed in us all by nature for our own good. However, when it comes to our loved ones, and in fact to most all of our fellow man, we often act in opposition to our own self-interest. We can easily think of the husband that would step in front of a bullet for his wife, or a mother who would go without food so that her child could be fed. These are acts of self-denial rather than self-love, yet we consider it so much a part of human nature for people to act in this way, that the case of a husband who protects his wife seems to pass without any particular notice, while the husband that would abuse his wife draws the ire of everyone. It is not the mother that goes hungry for her children that garners recognition; rather it is the mother that lets her children starve that draws our attention.

One might argue that while certainly this self-denial is in human nature to preserve our loved ones and those close to us, we often do not show the same type of behavior to strangers or even neighbors. People that promulgate such opinions would have us believe that humans are calloused to the suffering of our fellow man-that, in fact, we do not care about another's misfortune so long as it does not directly affect us. We don't care about the grocer that can't make it to work because of car trouble unless he closes the market and we cannot get any bread. Then and only then will we offer him a ride. We don't care about the poor person without insurance so long as they are not seen in front of us in the emergency room. Then and only then do we think about how insurance could be offered to everyone. We do not think of the drug addict in the ghetto unless they come and rob us for drug money, and on and on this way of thinking goes. However, this is clearly not the case.

In fact, people show self-hate all the time when it would be easier to practice self-love. Every act of kindness towards a stranger deprives the person giving the favor of whatever resources or time they would have retained if they had not given it to the person in need. A person that drops a dollar in a collection plate is showing a small degree of self-loathing. That dollar could have been spent on them or their family, but they were glad to give it, because they were happy to help their fellow man once their own basic needs were provided for.

The person who stops to offer a ride to a young woman whose car has broken down along the highway does the same thing. Though they may not take any alternate path into town or give the girl any money directly, the time that it takes to stop and pick the person up in itself could be considered a resource. It could have spent on a million different selfish purposes, yet the person is glad to trade the time for the benefit of the one who he bestows it upon. In this way, this person, too, has shown a certain disdain for themselves since, surely it requires less effort to pass by without stopping than to pull over to the side and offer a ride, no matter how inconsequential this small action may seem.

We see selfless acts of kindness like this everywhere and-again-we see it as human nature. The good Samaritan rarely is taken note of. In fact, the person that would take advantage of a fellow human being in the situation described above is considered the rare bird. We never read in the newspaper of the man who gives the young girl a ride into town or calls for help, but if a man or group of men were to set upon the hapless lass and rob her or rape her, this would make the evening news.

It is true that stories of violence and gore make the news because the sensational nature of these crimes sells newspapers and draws good ratings. This also, though, is an affirmation of the goodness of mankind to one another. Violence and gore are sensational; that should give us reason for hope. If violence and gore were the norm, they would be considered mundane, nothing to take note of; what makes them sensational is the fact that they are rare.

Why, then, do people say that humans are generally selfish, greedy, and uncaring, then turn to the news reports of violence and debauchery to provide proof for their theory? It is self- contradictory.

Let us consider an example. What would you do if a woman were to knock on your door at 2:00 am claiming that a man was trying to kill her, and immediately you saw a man just afar off running towards your door with a knife, all the while screaming at the poor subject in front of you? How many of us would not quickly usher the beleaguered person inside and lock the door in an attempt to save them from harm? We would do so in spite of the very real risk of injury to ourselves. Assuming the person was attempting to hurt our new friend in earnest, he would probably have no better designs for the person that would shield her from his abuse. Yet, we would think it inhumane to not take this risk onto ourselves in order to preserve her. You see, it is not only human instinct to act in order to preserve ourselves. We, in fact, act instinctively to preserve all humanity, often at our own peril.

Our opening statement about self-preservation could be put another way: We always act in the best interests of others unless our own survival is directly challenged by it. Even then, we sometimes put others above ourselves, as is shown in the example above. Simply put, we do not, as a matter of instinct, take actions that will harm our fellow man until he directly challenges our survival.

When it comes to a mutually exclusive decision in which we must harm (or kill) another in order to preserve ourselves, or allow ourselves to be harmed (or killed) at the hands of another and allow them to survive, then, and only then, will we instinctively take actions to harm our fellow man. This is so widely accepted as a principle of human behavior that, in almost any civilized society, the only acceptable reason to kill another human being is self-defense.

Still the argument may persist along a couple of different lines. This hypothetical girl who knocked upon our door, it may be said, falls into the category of the person who we do not care about so long as their suffering does not directly affect us. Once she has woken us at 2:00 am, we then take an interest in her plight in order that we might be rid of the nuisance she has caused by waking us and then resume our preferred activities-presumably that of sleeping.

However, the same principle applies to the young woman on the side of the highway mentioned before. She did not run out in front of our car or do anything that would make our helping her necessary to our own happiness. Yet we still would subject ourselves to the risk that she might shoot us as soon as she got into the car with us, because the overwhelming tendency in our nature is to help our fellow man. In the process, we often expose ourselves to these types of risks, or put these types of possibilities to the back of our thoughts.

However, the chances of this happening, it might be argued, are very small. To give an example that would subject the good Samaritan to a similar level of risk then, let me ask: How many of us would not attempt to help a person that we happened to walk by that was being robbed or severely beaten? Though they prayed not upon our good will-perhaps they were not even aware that we were passing by-would we not still help them as best we could, presumably at a similar level of risk involved in helping the woman who knocked on our door in the middle of the night? Not only would we, but we would consider it inhumane not to do so.

A second line of argument might be made pointing to the severity of the cases mentioned. Of course, it might be said, the majority of us would rescue a fellow man in extreme peril, but, in day to day activities, we show far less concern for the plight of others. Is this true? Hardly.

Think of every time someone offered you a ride when you had no way to get somewhere, picked you up when you'd run out of gas, or gave you a jumpstart when your car battery was dead. Think of every time you dropped a dollar in the collection plate, donated to charity, or gave a buddy an interest free, five-dollar loan he could pay back on payday. Think of every time you bought overpriced sausage for the boy's troop, or overpriced cookies for the girls troop. Think of every time someone donated vacation time to a coworker who had to take time off to care for a loved one, or a time when church families delivered meals to a grieving widow. Think of the millions of charities that exist or the millions of different ways people help each other without ever thinking of themselves.

Every one of these acts is an act of self denial. We cannot help someone else without using resources that we could have just as easily used to serve our own interests. In fact, the phrase used above 'helping someone without thinking about yourself' is redundant in that helping someone automatically means thinking of them instead of yourself, or at least putting your own self-interest aside.

These type of actions are those that we take out of instinct. These are the actions that we take for granted will be performed for one another. Violence, greed, disdain, discrimination, and all the characteristics we hate in humanity-these are not the nature of man. These actions require a specific thought process, a specific effort to carry out, while the actions of human kindness are performed instinctively without thought.

Humans naturally crave peace, not war; harmony, not tension; love, not hate. Adam Smith's famous quote on charity has been referenced in these same pages before, but it bears repeating here. Smith said in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it."

This statement stands up as perhaps the most accurate summary of man's nature in all of philosophy for a good reason, namely that it assesses human nature correctly. We as humans do have in us this nature that makes our fellow man's happiness necessary to us even though we don't get anything out of it other than the pleasure of seeing it. It's called compassion, and it is in our nature. In fact, it is the dominant feature of our nature. The only thing left to do is to start giving ourselves credit for it.