In Pursuit of Altruism

http://www.savagechickens.com/images/chickenaltruism.jpg

Last Friday, I was standing at the bus stop outside of the campus McDonalds, waiting for the 465 that goes to the southern suburbs, as I was planning on spending the evening with my parents. I'm standing out there in the rain, thinking about something I'd just volunteered myself to do. My professor for my "On Television" class wanted people to sign up as a peer note taker which, I assumed at first, would be a sort of log for people who missed class or just something to share on the class website. After the sign-up form passed through the first one and a half rows, no one had signed it. I decided I would because I take way too many notes and I figured it'd be a good way to help me study for this course. So I wrote down my name and at the end of class I had to go up and talk to the professor about it. I found out I was the ONLY PERSON in a class of thirty that had signed up for this. And it wasn't just taking notes for class, no - I had volunteered myself through University Disability Services to share my notes with a middle-aged man that had just signed up to take the class who seemed to have some sort of learning disability. I suddenly felt like an altruistic badass.

So I'm standing there at the bus stop, thinking about this and wondering why the heck no one else volunteered to be a note taker (OMG, you'd have to take notes in class - you're SUPPOSED to do that anyway). I have a theory that U kids are actually rather blase about life by the time they become upper classmen (not that I'm exactly the spirit squad about my undergraduate education) and that they don't want to have to do anything more than they have to, especially when you have to take five classes, work two jobs and somehow get time to sleep in order to graduate in four years and not run up debt on your credit card. Anyway, I'm standing there in this weird sort of drizzle we really shouldn't be having in January, and this guy comes up to me. He's really tall, African American, wearing this wool sort of coat. He makes a sound and holds out this card on which is hand written, "I am deaf and can read lips. God bless." He flips the card over which I read quickly. I don't catch most of it; I see that something happened to him when he woke up that morning and that he needs money for food and shelter. For whatever reason, I do not doubt him. He makes another sounds, a sort of grunt mixed with a whimper, and flips the card over again, pointing to the information about lip reading and "God Bless." My brain hurries to process what to do. As I reach for my wallet, I try to discern how much money is in there. I quickly recall there is a one dollar bill and a twenty. Without thinking too much farther, I open up the wallet, pull out the twenty and tell him, "I can give you this."

He looks at the bill and his eyes go wide in shock. He opens his arms, hugs me, and walks off. And I feel amazing. Not good about myself, not altruistic. I'm not even thinking about myself. I find that, in this strange little moment in the pause before the five o'clock rush hour, in a strange bit of winter rain, the world is beautiful.

I know what you're thinking - "you gave a man who may not actually be homeless, a man who could just spend that money on alcohol, a man you know nothing about twenty whole dollars?" Yep, I did.
And honestly - I have no idea what he was going to use the money for. There's no way I could possibly know. But I don't usually give out money like that - and never that much. For once, just once, it felt right. And I didn't care about the loss of twenty dollars. It didn't feel like a loss at all.

I was thinking about this on the bus ride to the suburbs, wondering about all of this. Why the man came up to me, why I gave him the money, why he chose that bus stop in the first place. There were a lot of people standing about, and yet I didn't see him going up to anyone else. Of course, I wasn't really paying attention, I was staring off into space like I so often do. There was a lot of luck/chance/coincidences/fate - what have you - going on there.

Later that night, I was thinking about it more. How in my social psych class we talked about the issue of whether altruism really exists, because even doing something like this can make you feel good about yourself and maybe you just give money to feel good. I disagree with this. I didn't necessarily feel good about myself afterwards (actually I wished I could have done more for him and I worried about whether he was going to be wandering around the freezing cold streets all night). I just felt good about the world. It's part of why I didn't think too much about why he needed the money. I doubt people, all of humanity, every second of every day. Once, just once, I wanted to trust and believe someone. Just once. And that's what I did.

And yes, it's possible that I did it for some sort of long term gain. The "God Bless" part had a surprising effect on my decision making.  I mean, once the man pointed to that part of his card, I had already made up my mind to give him the money. So maybe God wanted me to do it, maybe I did it to please God, but considering my track record with doing things for religious reasons, I kind of doubt it. Maybe I did it for karma, or to pay it forward. But if I was really doing it for my benefit, don't you think I want an instant reward? That's probably not gonna happen. Point is - I'm pretty damn sure I didn't do it for me.

So there you go - I believe in altruism. And here's some philosophizing for your Sunday morning. You're welcome :)