Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

506 | HOW THE MIND WORKSthe homeless emphasize the random, variance-driven dimension tohomelessness. Homeless people are worthy of aid because they are downon their luck. They are the unfortunate victims of circumstances likeunemployment, discrimination, or mental illness. Advocates of thehomeless urge us to think, "There but for fortune go I." Those whooppose sharing, on the other hand, emphasize the predictability ofrewards in our society to anyone willing to put in the work. Homelesspeople are unworthy of aid because they are able-bodied but lazy, orbrought it on themselves by choosing to drink or take drugs. Defendersof the homeless reply that drug use is itself an illness that could happento anyone.Even at their most munificent, foraging people do not act out ofhearts filled with loving kindness. They enforce the sharing ethic withobsessively detailed memories of who has helped, a clear expectation ofpayback, and snide gossip about those who don't pitch in. And all thisstill does not expunge selfish feelings. The anthropologist Melvin Konner,who lived with the !Kung San for years and has written respectfullyabout their ways, tells his readers:Selfishness, arrogance, avarice, cupidity, fury, covetousness, all theseforms of gluttony are held in check in their traditional situation in thesame way simple alimentary gluttony is: Namely, it doesn't happenbecause the situation does not allow it. Nor, as some suppose, becausethe people or their culture are somehow better. I will never forget thetime a !Kung man—the father of a family, about forty years of age, wellrespected in the community, a good and substantial man in every way—asked me to hold on to a leg of antelope he had killed. He had given awaymost of it, as one had to. But he saw a chance to hide some of it, for later,for himself and his own family. Ordinarily, of course, there would be noplace in the entire Kalahari to hide it; it would either be unsafe fromscavengers or unsafe from predatory distant relatives. But the presence offoreigners presented an interface with another world, and he wanted toslip the meat, temporarily, through a chink in that interface, into the onlyconceivable hiding place.When it comes to friendship, reciprocal altruism does not ring true. Itwould be in questionable taste for a dinner guest to pull out his wallet